Chris K's Colorado Playlist

Ego and Everlys …. a nice way to spend a couple of very cold days in the office, listening to some great pure rock and roll … thanks to Jilly Billy promotion for getting these two releases to my desk before this week’s show.

Ego vs. Id – Taste (Abbatoir Records)
Genre/Style: rock, american traditional
Released: November 2010
Added: Feb 2011
Website: http://egovsid.com/
Sampled/Recommended Tracks:

• All American Love
• National Disaster
• Landmine

The Broken Everlys – Stoned In Juarez (self)
Genre/Style: rock, american traditional
Released: Februrary 2011
Added: Februrary 2011
Website: www.thebrokeneverlys.com
Sampled/Recommended Tracks:

• Rocket Fuel
• My Troubled Ways
• Anna Lee

There’s one of those old sayings out there that goes the “wait is always worth it.”  Ahhhh sooooo …. I concure kemo sabe … the wait for the new Ego vs. Id album was worth it.  After listening to and writing about and airing  so many thousands of records in my career it is easy to become jaded, cyncical, calloused, and to develop a stone ear – unable sometimes to simply sit back and enjoy the tremendous power of American traditional rocknroll … in all it’s screaming, panting, guitar fueled glory.  Okay, so I dug the non-screaming parts of these two wonderful records more than the screaming parts.  Forgive a tired set of ears for that, okay?  Thanks …

The Broken Everlys was as much a surprise to listen to as was what I already knew to be a great record from Ego vs. Id, since them I had listened to online for the past few months, before receiving their album for review and airplay.  The Broken Everlys at once recalled the first time I opened up the first Izzy Stradlin & the Ju Ju Hounds album years ago, after Izzy ditched Axl in favor of a more roots rock identity… and in the case of Stoned in Juarez, it lies somewhere between the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan – both of whom are covered admirably on this record.  This is all simply rock and roll – love it or hate it – crave it or desparage it – it is simply well done rock ‘n roll, in the grandest traditions of all the rock and roll that has ever come before – and both bands do it proud ….. oh, and make sure when you’re playing these records you are alone in the car with the stereo on 10 and the windows rolled up ….. 🙂

Joe Johnson – A Time to Dance (Blank Tape Records)
Home: Colorado Springs by way of Mississippi
Genre/Style: Americana/Country-folk
Website: http://www.reverbnation.com/joejohnson
Recommended / Sample Tracks:

• Anna
• Don’t Let Your Blue Eyes Cry
• Where the Earth Meets the Sky
• William and Melinda

Thanks to Conor at Blank Tape Records in Colorado Springs for emailing me about this killer new record on their label.

Random access writing engaged. Ghosts and shadows of tradition …. Carter, Williams, and Jennings … spirit and muse.   …way deep soul.  … “voice.”  Way deep age.  …has roots … New Orleans / Mississippi roots … legitimate roots.  The record has soul – it breathes, recorded straight to reel – you can hear the sound of the rocking chair in the beginning of William & Melinda, …”where the fog rolls in, in the morning” … and the almost suffered breathing in the telling of the story.  Where The Earth Meets the Sky – haunting…. eerily sounds like it’s something I have deep inside of me somewhere … a song … a memory … a connection … the language a bit archaic at times … “I’ll be singing Hallelujah when I go by and by.”  And no one says “set forth on this earth for to roam” and gets away with it today unless it really sits in the place where that language is real and expected… a land nearly forgotten by time maybe some where deep in the heart of Mississippi …. or the mountains of Colorado.