Cory Branan breezes into Homespun Republic for a Bedrock 66 Live! concert with Tim Easton on Thurs., April 16.
Cory Branan breezes into Homespun Republic for a Bedrock 66 Live! concert with Tim Easton on Thurs., April 16.
On Thursday, the Bedrock 66 Live! concert series hosts another show for the 2015 season at Homespun Republic (formerly Donnie’s Homespun). This event features Cory Branan and Tim Easton, two well known, singer-songwriter guys out on the roots-rock, Americana market. Perhaps best known to the public for recording with Wilco sans Jeff Tweedy in 2000 during his days on the New West label, Easton continues to make real good records and tour consistently, keeping his music sharp and inviting and his live shows provocative and enticing. Branan, a member of the Bloodshot Records family in Chicago, lives in Nashville and also continues to put out welcomed records while touring relentlessly.
I spoke with Cory a few weeks ago about making music and living life. He had just returned from a trip across the pond (so has Easton, by the way) and was enjoying a two week stay at home before heading out for a run across the Midwest. His latest record, The No-Hit Wonder is full of delights, from the expressive guitar work and driving backing band to the genre-jumping songwriting. Debuting at #22 on the Heatseeker charts in Billboard magazine last August, the combination of Bloodshot promotions with Branan’s tenacious touring keeps the record on the move.
“I’m happy to have a label that works as hard as I do,” Branan says about his relationship with the Chicago-based imprint. “They’re good people and the other work there falls between genres and labels kinda like mine.”
From his heady beginnings back in 2002 when his debut album, The Hell You Say, garnered national positive press and an appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman”, to the darker days of constant touring in 2007 with a second record that didn’t receive such high praise, Branan rides the wave of decidedly doing things. Now settled in Nashville with his family (a wife and two children), he talks more of the positive path ahead and the possibilities of the working artist than unchanneled chances and destroyed desires.
“I’m trying to stay true to what’s natural to me, what’s going to make me feel like I’m doing what works,” he says. “My shows are solo acoustic and I never play the same way twice. Nothing is fixed. There are no certainties. And I like it that way.”
The Clayville Historic Site hosts a workshop for budding musicians called, Fake It Till You Make It: Playing Old Time Music in a Group, on April 18, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., with your guide Pete Ellertsen. Contact Pete at [email protected] for all the skinny. I’d like to extend a hearty “welcome back” to my son, John Irwin, from his first year as a successful “Young American” performer and student. We booked a gig playing separate sets together Saturday night at Dr. Ugs in Virginia, from 7 to 10 p.m., to celebrate his time at the music college. Busy Boondocks features famed singer-songwriter Chris Knight on Friday and actor-singer Billy Bob Thornton and The Boxmasters on Saturday, plus Here Come the Mummies on April 24.
Here’s a crazy-cool list of rock-blues-cover bands on the scene in town this Friday: Big Daddy Jasper hits the Blue Grouch, Hard Road Blues Band drives hard at Long Bridge Golf Course Clubhouse, Hipbone Sam rocks Casey’s Pub, Juke House jumps in at Lime Street Cafe, Second Chance Band shakes, rattles and rolls the Trading Post Saloon, while Brooke Thomas & the Blue Suns do Frankie’s on the Boulevard up right.
Look for the rest of the best in Pub Crawl.
Contact Tom Irwin at [email protected].
