The Defibulators "Your Hearty Laugh"

I am starting to get really excited about the Americana Music Association’s Conference, which is coming up in three weeks in Nashville. We had a blast last year, taping scads of artists, and running around town to see more of them at night. Music Fog will be there again in full force. We are taking the Marathon Recorders for our home away from home this time. It's in Marathon Village, where WRLT, Lightning 100 can be found, along with lots of other artistic endeavors. It was where the Marathon car was made way back when.  We will be making magic of our own. I can’t wait to share this year’s line up with you.

One of the bands we met during last year's AMA festival is bringing us today’s video. The Defibulators travel in a spiffy vehicle of their own, a 1977 Dodge ambulance.  Listen for two of their songs in the independent feature film, The Dry Land, or during The Rejection Show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in NYC, where they serve as house band.  From last year’s Americana Fest 2010, here’s “Your Hearty Laugh.”

- Jessie Scott

Jon Langford "Book of Your Life"

I spent the day trying to keep up with everything. The phone was ringing, things were tugging at my consciousness, I would remember that I needed to make some more iced tea, only to forget for several more hours while I tended to more stuff. It is good to be busy, but it is a bit nerve wracking at the same time. The numbers of windows I have open at any given time is a testament to not being able to immediately follow through. And the email just keeps coming. Today I decided that 7,000 were just too many, and I proceeded to carefully delete 1500. The minutia of life. But being in the thick of all this stuff is somehow comforting, not caring about the beginning, and not knowing of the end. Somewhere in the middle.

Jon Langford’s song today confronts the ‘exploding plastic inevitable,’ as Any Warhol put it in the 60s. The end. And will it be kind? Who knows. 9/11 a few days ago gave me pause to look back on this decade and see how much our lives have changed. Older, wiser, and maybe sadder too. Are we witnessing the decline of a great empire, or can we rally back, personally and as a nation? We hope you live long and prosper. Here is “Book Of Your Life” which Music Fog recorded with Jon Langford and Jim Elkington when they came to visit us at the Sheraton suite at the Americana Music Festival in Nashville last year about this time. It is a tune that can be found on last year's Old Devils album from Jon Langford & Skull Orchard. This year, there is a new Mekons project being released on September 27th, their 26th album! Jon Langford is BUSY.

- Jessie Scott

Somebody's Darling "Been Better"

It’s like someone waved a magic wand, or the weather was looking at the unofficial end of summer. Labor Day weekend, and it magically cued the thermometer to drop. Mind you, it’s still in the 90s, but it's not triple digits. It really is cool at night, which is cause for joy. We have been in the grips of a stifling hot season, with a record breaking 80 days over 100 here in Austin. Could normalcy return, might the fires stop, will it ever rain again? It is one step at a time, though, and the spell is broken. There has always been something invigorating about the autumn. It feels like the beginning of the year. It is a time to redouble one’s energy, commit to new initiatives - back to school, back to work - and tuck in for the duration.

Somebody’s Darling visited us during our Americana Fest taping last year in Nashville. I think lead singer Amber Farris is aptly named, as her voice has that rich honeyed quality. She simply wails, and the band does as well - makes this an appropriate song to celebrate the changing of the season. “Been Better” is the track, and you can find it on the self-titled Somebody’s Darling CD that came out in February. Amber, along with band mates David Ponder, Nate Wedan, and Mike Talley came to our studio at the Nashville Sheraton and tore a hole in our souls with their performance for the Music Fog cameras. For a good time, you gotta see this band! Your next chance is in College Station, TX on Saturday.

-Jessie Scott