Nakia "Slow It Down And Stay Awhile"

The 2012 Lone Star Music Awards took place on Sunday night at The Texas Music Theater in San Marcos, we wanted to congratulate all of the artists on their wins. While we are at it, congrats to all the nominees, too!

For Best Album - Stoney LaRue, Velvet
Songwriter - Hayes Carll
Country Album - Jason Boland & The Stragglers, Rancho Alto
Americana/Roots Album - Reckless Kelly, Good Luck and True Love
Singer-Songwriter Album - Adam Hood, The Shape of Things
Emerging Artist - Whiskey Myers
Vocal (Female) - Miranda Lambert
Vocal (Male) - Stoney LaRue
Song - Reckless Kelly "Good Luck and True Love"
Musician - Cody Braun (Reckless Kelly)
Album Artwork - Reckless Kelly, Good Luck and True Love (Art by Shauna and Sarah Dodds)
Venue - Gruene Hall

Nominations have been called for this year’s Americana Honors and Awards, and we would like to remind you of our fine album, Who’s First? – Music Fog Sessions Volume 1. If you are a member of the Americana Music Association, we would love to be one of your ten for Best Album of the Year. The deadline for nominations is this Friday. We would be humbled to be on your list!

And while we are on the subject of musical contests, allow us to introduce you to Nakia, who ran it up the flagpole for The Voice on NBC in its debut year, being picked by Cee Lo Green to be on his team in the quarter finals. He is a Virginia Beach, VA native, who migrated to Austin, TX around ten years ago, and initially was taken under the wing of Miles Zuniga of the band Fastball. On April 14, 2009, Nakia release his first full-length album, Water To Wine. He is working on the follow up, and when he came to play for the Music Fog cameras, he brought the new stuff with him. Here is an as yet unreleased tune, ”Slow It Down And Stay A While,” with Chris Johnson on bass, Kevin Lance on drums, Ulrich Ellison on guitar, and Derek Morris on keys. Nakia is on a roll. This here is powerful stuff!

-Jessie Scott

ORBO & The Longshots "Highway Tears"

My houseguests left on Monday. When you live in Austin, Texas, you always have houseguests during SXSW®. It’s kind of like living in Orlando, where you always have guests that are heading to Disney World®. And I have to say, that there is a certain similarity in that Austin actually becomes a theme park of a sort this time of year. The theme is music. In retrospect, I am sifting through magazines and websites to read the raves on bands I missed, of which there are many. The Dunwells were terrific, Brown Bird wowed them, and JD McPherson was on everyone’s lips as well. Maybe we will see them all on the next Music Fog Marathon! But today we dig one event back, to October’s sessions held during Americana Fest in Nashville, at Marathon Recorders.

ORBO & The Longshots got its start in the year 2000, by singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer Ole Reinert Berg-Olsen aka ORBO. They have six albums under their belt, and won the Norwegian equivalent of the GRAMMY® Award, Spellemannsprisen, for their 2008 album High Roller. Ten years of endless touring means this band has learned their craft the hard way---on the road. In fact they will celebrate their one-thousandth live show this year. ORBO & The Longshots have recorded their albums all over the world, from the mountains of Norway, to the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis, TN. Their new album Prairie Sun was recorded at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, California, and features special guests Delbert McClinton, Fats Kaplin, and John Jorgenson. We bring you a tune today as yet unreleased in the States, which we recorded during our October Music Fog Marathon, “Highway Tears.”

- Jessie Scott

Citizens Band Radio "Whistlin' Dixie"

Things are certainly squirrelly about music labels lately---the term you use to describe a style. The GRAMMYs® didn’t help matters much by redefining the Folk Category to be almost the same thing as the Americana Category, but then there are blurred lines between Folk, and Singer Songwriter, and Texas and Red Dirt, and it just goes on and on. So much of this is about perception, anyway, with each person filtering things through what they know, or how they got introduced to something. I reference the term ‘Rock and Roll’ for the definitive; that became understood by the songs and sounds that lived under its name until everyone KNEW what it was. And then Rock came along, and that was sonically different than the earlier era. And so it goes.

Time was that the term Country was something of a dirty word. It was thought to be low brow, nasal, and unsophisticated. Kind of amazes me now to think back, but when I was on the radio in the 70s at the Country station in New York City, WHN, we NEVER actually said we were country on the air. We just played the music and let the audience decide whether they liked it or not. And they did. The station was a huge success, with an audience of 2 million people, in NEW YORK CITY?!!!?

We might have played today’s song on the air, if only it had been out back then. It does plant a couple of references to tunes from old. And whatever you call it, it is fun to revisit the set we did last year during the Music Fog Marathon at Threadgill’s. Here is Citizen’s Band Radio with “Whistling Dixie.” They are playing New Jersey next weekend, March 11th, at the Garden State FOLK Festival. See what I mean?

- Jessie Scott