Tag: jeff finlin

CP S16 EP24 2022

Milky Way at Mountain Home Reservoir, Fort Garland CO, June 2022, taken by Claire Mannato (used with permission)

July 11, 2022 – As I stated last week, taking NOTHING away from Alysia Kraft’s brilliant solo debut, First Light – that album’s debut at #2 in the JUNE TOP 30 and landing at #1 in last week’s TOP 5, happened largely because it was featured heavily on Indie 102.3 in June. I expected to see it fall …

First Light fell from #1 last week to a tie for #13 with three other titles. Interestingly, a flurry of spins at a handful of mountain town stations this past week propelled David Star‘s September 2021 release, Touchstones, to the #1 spot for the week.

(disclaimer: David Starr’s Cedaredge music store, Starr’s Guitars www.starrsguitars.com is a sponsor of the Colorado Playlist).

TOP 5 #COMUSIC WK END 7/10/22

Spin data pulled from the Colorado Playlist, 105.5 The Colorado Sound, Indie 102.3, 88.9 KRFC  and ten other stations that use playlist generator Spinitron, designed to benefit community/public and college radio stations and offering advanced search functions for artists and agents.

  1. DAVID STARR – Touchstones LP
  2. NATHANIEL RATELIFF & THE NIGHTSWEATS – The Future LP
  3. THE LUMINEERS – Brightside LP
  4. TRASH CAT – The Tide LP (Dec-21)
  5. EUFORQUESTRA – While We Still Got Time LP (Jun-22)

MONDAY MORNING MUSIC MEETING (MMMM)

www.starrsguitars.com

I designed the Monday Morning Music Meeting (MMMM) as a way for you to let me know what you think of new music emerging from around the state. Results enter into which cuts stay in rotation, and which cuts make the final “best of” list.

Harry Tuft – You Gonna Quit Me – Across the Blue Mountains (1976)
Poco – Crazy Love – Legend (1978)
(D) The Drood – Psychic Institute (2022)

Heavy Diamond Ring – Friday Night – The Brightest Light EP (2021)
Kyle Hollingsworth – We Were the Young – “2020” (2020)
Bryce Menchaca – A Better Mood (2022)
Ryan Chrys & The Rough Cuts – Seein’ You Tonight (feat. Lauren Michaels) – Tears and Blades (2022)
Angie Stevens – Give It on Back – Queen of this Mess (2009)
Yonder Mountain String Band – Criminal – The Show (2009)
(D) Kory Montgomery – Name Song (2022)

Such – You (Icytat Vocal Mix) (2016)
Scott Kinsey/Mer Sal – Time Out of Mind – Adjustments (2021)
Keith Oxman – (I’ve Got) Beginners Luck – East of the Village (2017)

Boulder – Join Me In L.A. – Boulder (1979)
Rick Roberts – She Made Me Lose My Blues – Windmills / She is a Song (1972)
(D) Jeff Finlin – Soul On the Line – Soul On the Line (2022)

The Burroughs – Zero Sum Game (2021)
Danny Shafer – Small Town Blues – Weddings, Floods And Funerals (2015)
Euforquestra – Show Me The Way – While We Still Got Time (2022)
Jaiel – Sunshine Lovin’ (2022)
Sherri Jackson – Liberation – Moments In Denial (1995)
Fierce Bad Rabbit – In and out of Mind – The Maestro and the Elephant (2012)
Hunter James and the Titanic – Head On – La Liberte (2021)
(D) The Still Tide – Timothy (2022)

Andy Frasco – I’ve Got a Long Way to Go – Keep On Keepin On (2020)
West Side Joe & The Men of Soul – Keep On Climbin’ – Keep On Climbin’ (2021)
Steve Kovalcheck, Peter Sommer, Paul Romaine, Ken Walker – Homecoming – Ghost Orchid (2022)

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REVIEW: JEFF FINLIN – SOUL ON THE LINE

You cannot imagine how excited I was to get some kind of message – via the Innerwebs or some otherworldly means – that Jeff Finlin, “Fin” as he’s known locally in Fort Collins, put out a new album. I mean, I was so excited my heart jumped. I immediately dived into the entire album and haven’t stopped listening since.

You can’t find this album on SPOTIFY – yet. The published release date is June 24. HOWEVER – the album was released on May 19 via Continental Record Services out of the Netherlands on Bandcamp.

Produced by Jeff Finlin.
Recorded By Darren Raddach at Stout Studios, Fort Collins, CO.
Jeff Finlin – Drums, electric and acoustic guitars, vocals, percussion, piano
Taylor Tessler – Bass
Joe V. Mcmahan – Electric guitars
Eben Grace – Electric guitars
Eric Straumanis – Electric guitars
Brian Keller – Horns, accordion

Jeff Finlin’s legacy goes back decades. In my case it’s two decades since I first heard his music. Ever since then I have anxiously and quietly pleaded, cajoled and otherwise stamped my goat hoofs for something new.

After all, for as prolific as Jeff as been in his career –  13 critically acclaimed records – I honestly thought another album would never come my way. Silly me; Jeff has basically put out an album every few years. The last, The Guru in the Girl (2017), was a measly five years ago – an eternity it seems in Jeff’s catalogue.

Soul On the Line doesn’t move far from Jeff’s established Americana trad folk-rock style that travels nicely in the car with the likes of John Hiatt, Levon Helm or Bob Dylan. A literary mastermind, Jeff’s songs have taken us on an journey of life filled with vivid imagery. In the lead single, “…we walk the line, years repeating all our tears and time. Compromise our patron saint …hangin’ out with our Soul On the Line.”

Throughout the album, Jeff touches on issues that as he’s said are about “…these extreme and harrowing times we currently live in. Everything about our existence seems to be hanging in the balance.”

In What Went Wrong he ponders, “We all get tired of waiting, waiting on ourselves, so then we go and settle, set our feet in something else and then wonder why we can’t feel nothing here at all; and we’re stuck here on the telephone …wondering what went wrong.”

The songs on this album are not about the hope for the future. Jeff’s reflections and voice are those of an aged muse, tired and worn out from the battering waves of the very life that has inspired so many of his greatest stories in song and verse.

Jeff’s Northern Colorado friends and worldwide fans will love and adore and cherish this album as yet another intimate chapter in our friend’s collection. I’d suggest first timers visit earlier albums like Epinonymous, his highly acclaimed fourth album, before diving into this one.

The Colorado Sound – V4 EP41 2012 + Pepper Tree (review) + Alchemy (video)

I guess it was a week or so ago when I mentioned to my wife I had not heard anything in years from John William Davis, and I wondered how he’d been since I last saw him round about 2005 or maybe 06.  His debut album, Dreams of the Lost Tribe, has remained a vibrant part of my music consciousness for fully a decade now, a wonderful still frame of deep Southern mysticism and mythology …of swamp moss, diamond backs, hurricanes, bull gators, floods and deep spiritualism.  So, it was with considerable joy that I caught a post by John on Facebook this week – announcing a new recording; this one a stripped down guitar and vocal release, no less a work in lyrical imagery or in his incredibly adroit guitar style.  On the first single, Pepper Tree, he begins by telling us he’s been staring at a crack in the wall indeterminately, waiting for it to blink, before enjoining us to be aware of the chimpanzee in the tree who he imagines looks a “whole lot like you and me.”  In the telling, a baboon wants to kick the chimp’s ass and a crocodile wants to “gobble you up with that pepper seasonin’.”  Cocaine contrails and perfume bombshells, an angel with bent wings and a tail on fire…. and in all of it a lesson for living … “if you ever get stuck up in the pepper tree, you’d better hang on tight if you happen to sneeze.”

We’re blessed here in Colorado to have a couple of fellas who know how to use words to paint stories with details that lesser songwriters can only imagine and then attempt to conjure with vapid cliches.   As John William Davis is just releasing his new work, Jeff Finlin is preparing one – a kickstarter project in place, and a new video accomplished with the help once again of award winning steel guitarist and up and coming filmmaker Sally Van Meter.  Enjoy.

PLAYLIST

(D) = debut of new album, ep or single release.  (N) = a new track from previously debuted album or ep.  (D) and (N) => linked to artist/band.

The Samples “Tom Joad” from Return to Earth (2001)
Acoustic Junction “Strange Days” from Strange Days (2000)
(D) Ten Pound Elephant “Talk to Me” from Ten Pound Elephant (2012)
Petals of Spain “Working 9 to 5” from Late Night Visitor (2011)
FaceMan “Feeding Time” from Feeding Time (2012)
(N) I’m With Her “Hang Among the Stars” from I’m With Her (2011)
Firefall “Cinderella” from Firefall (1976)
Chris Thompson & the Coral Creek String Band “Catfish John” from Forty Years (2012)
Ash Ganley and Lyons Rock Council “Elysian Fields” from Dark Fuel (2006)
(D) John William Davis “Pepper Tree” from Dead Simple, Vol. 1: You Talk Funny (2013)
Cary Morin “Sing It Louder” from Sing It Louder (2011)
(D) Jill Brzezicki “The Horizon” from The Horizon (2012)
After Midnight Jazz Band “A Smooth One” from Midnight in Madison (2010)
Dan Fogelberg “Part of the Plan” from Souvenirs (1974)
Big Head Todd & The Monsters “Broken Hearted Savior” from Sister Sweetly (1993)
(N) Jeff Brinkman “Face” from Strange (2012)
(N) Bop Skizzum “Known It All Along” from Coloradical (2012)
Places “Honesty” from No More Wasted Days (2012)
(N) Beats Noir! “Going Nowhere (feat. Venus Cruz)” from Where the Sun Goes Down (2013)
The Blender Cats “Somethin’s Gotta Give” from Just Like This (2012)
Megan Burtt “Walls Come Down” from Megan Burtt (2008)
Halden Wofford & the Hi Beams “Hippie In My House” from Midnight Rodeo (2006)
Palmer Divide “Knockin’ At Your Door” from Shenandoah Train (2009)
Esme Patterson “My Young Man” from All Princes, I (2012)
Lumineers “Ho Hey” from The Lumineers (2012)
Strange Americans “Roses On Ice” from A Royal Battle (2012)
Shirley “4th of July” from From A Bright Clearing (2012)

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