Living near Denton TX, it isn’t exactly hard for a music-lover to be intimately familiar with the name and work of Will Johnson. The band he is perhaps most well-known for, Centro-matic, is a North Texas icon. He may be spending more time in our state’s capital these days, but that doesn’t keep us from claiming him as our own. The guy has been busy. He played lead guitar for Patterson Hood supporting Hood’s solo album. After that, he has toured as the drummer for the much ballyhooed Monsters of Folk. Now, he and his buddy, Magnolia Electric Company’s Jason Molina, have released a pretty solid disc of mellow-indie gold.

Stephen M. Duesner, who happens to be one of the best writers going today,didnt really care much for the self-titled album. While I have enjoyed the disc, a couple of his points are valid. Duesner informs readers that anyone who is unfamiliar with the work of Johnson and/or Molina shouldn’t use this disc as a primer for their other works. Fair enough, I agree. He also says that the track, “Twenty Cycles to the Ground” is the album’s most accessible track, and I agree with that as well. Regardless, I think the differences between this album and the albums from their back catalogs is where the value lies. When you have two talented artists performing together, why create a mish-mash of reheated material? Molina & Johnson succeeds in bringing something new to their fans who have no problem with the fellas branching out a bit.

LISTEN: Molina & Johnson “Twenty Cycles to the Ground”

Best Live Album EVER??? DBT at ACL.

The title here is a bit misleading. 2009 has turned out to be a really solid year for the entire Drive By Truckers group, actually. What’s really unique about this scenario however, is that DBT and Patterson Hood will end up with 1,2 maybe 3 albums on many year-end lists, all without releasing a proper Drive By Truckers album of new material. Another interesting element to this trend is that we are seeing these albums released in a short span of time – June through September – and not spread out as much over the entire year. So, if the entire year will not end up belonging to the powerhouse group from the south, the summer sure has.

Hood’s solo LP, Murdering Oscar (and Other Love Songs) kicked things off in June. I wrote about my enjoyment of it back then and had no problems calling it my favorite album of June, which was packed with great releases. Basically, Hood keeps doing here what he does so well with his main gig, and I have no problem with that.

Drive By Truckers – Live from Austin, TX is the document of their first ever appearance on the seminal TV series. It’s not a shocker to me that a band that rules the stage in a live setting had virtually no problem with ruling the storied stage of ACL. The release is a CD/DVD combo, and while that sounds awesome, something was sorely missed as the collection was put together. On the CD, we get all 11 plus, goosebump inducing minutes of “18 Wheels of Love”, which included more back story on the song itself, as told through Hood’s infectious, everyday way of spinning a yarn. The DVD of the performance had merely the 3 minutes or so of the actual singing portion of the tune, completely stealing the emotion and revelry that would’ve been great on video. That said, it’s still an amazing disc that captivates even the most ardent, longtime fan who has heard these songs a gazillion times.

The most intriguing of the releases for me, is The Fine Print.  Out on Sept 1st, a “collection of oddities and rarities“, these tunes didn’t make it onto a proper DBT release, yet what was seemingly material for the cutting room floor for them would’ve been a career highlight album for most other bands that aspire to be the next DBT. Also noteworthy is the track “TVA”, which serves as a warm, fuzzy and freshly opened time capsule for fans of Jason Isbell’s time with the Truckers. It’s a classic, predominantly acoustic tune where Isbell’s story simply and tenderly recalls a time where there wasn’t shame in looking to the government for help as the backdrop for artfully told instances of sepia-toned childhood memories. ”George Jones Talkin’ Cell Phone Blues” is the first cousin of  “Carl Perkins Cadillac”. The closing number is a rousing, all-for-one version of the Dylan classic, “Like a Rolling Stone” that rally captures their group dynamic in a way that other tunes from previous albums have failed to do.

“Pollyanna”, from Hood’s Murdering Oscar album -