Caterwaul's Favorite Albums of 2014

In no particular order.

Bronwynne Brent - Stardust - CD Baby

Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis - Our Year - Premium

The Duhks - Beyond the Blue - Compass

Kerri Powers - Kerri Powers - kerripowers.com

Sean Rowe - Madman - Anti

Carolina Story - Chapter Two - carolinastory.com

Passenger - Whispers - Nettwerk

Parsonsfield - Afterparty EP - Signature Sounds

Jason Eady - Daylight and Dark - Old Guitar

Kris Delmhorst - Blood Test - Signature Sounds

Eliza Gilkyson - The Nocturne Diaries - Redhouse

Grant Peeples - Punishing the Myth - CD Baby

Lake Street Dive - Bad Self Portraits - Signature Sounds

Robby Hecht - Tobby Hecht - Old Man Henry Records

Thompson Family - Family - Fantasy

Roseanne Cash - The River and the Thread - Blue Note

Rose's Pawn Shop - Gravity Well - Roses Pawn Shop

Truckstop Honeymoon - The Madness of Hapiness - CD Baby

Zoe Muth - World of Strangers - Signature Sounds

Yvette Landry and T Coe - Me and T Coe's Country - CD Baby

Magnolia Sisters - Love's Lies - Valcour

Mark Erelli - Milltowns - markerelli.com

Chuck Prophet - Night Surfer - Yep Roc

Irene Kelley - Pennsylvania Coal - Patio

Elliott Brood - Work and Love - Paper Bag

Luke Pruitt - Songs of Home, Part 1 - lukepruitt.com

Lynne Hanson - Riverof Sand - CRS

Kelly Pardekooper - Milk in Sunshine - kellypardekooper.com

Sturgill Simpson - Metamodern Sounds in Country  Music - High Top Mountain

Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn - Rounder

Old Crow Medicine Show - Remedy - ATP

Parker Millsap - Parker Millsap - Okrahoma

Shakey Graves - Light the Stars - Dualtone

Winterpills - Echolalia - Signature Sounds

http://www.ctnow.com/music/sound-check/ctn-listen-to-winterpills-cover-sharon-van-ettens-one-day-20141008,0,5224722.story

Bonsoir Catin - Light the Stars - Valcour

Heather Maloney and Darlingside - Woodstock - Signature Sounds

Shaken From My Slumber By Olberman

It's been months since I've posted anything here, but I'm awake again.

My nap was interrupted by the intentional destruction of a life, a reputation and a career by a right wing blogger named Breitbart, and unintentionally by everyone else who should have known better.

Keith is in best form when he scolds everyone from Breitbart, to Obama. And he's right, we all need to do our best to stand up to those who would destroy others for their own profit.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Billy Bragg vs the bankers

Over in Britain, the general public is as outraged as we are here about bailed-out bankers receiving huge bonuses. RSB (Royal Bank of Scotland) is now owned, in large part, by the government and the taxpayers. Billy Bragg has begun a campaign to stop the payment of bonuses, and he's declared he'll withhold his taxes to prove his point. I think it's called talking with the poet about taxes.

Kate McGarrigle, RIP

Kate McGarrigle, the influential and popular folks singer who sang for years with her sister Anna as the McGarrigle Sisters has died after a long battle with clear-cell carcinoma. McGarrigle was formerly married to Loudon Wainwright III and is the mother of singers Rufus and Martha Wainwright.

All you single deputies

Jeff Bridges, America's most under-appreciated actor, gets his due

There ain't half been some clever bastards

An Ian Dury biopic. Now only if it can get theatrical release in the US.

It's a wonderful idea

What a magnificent mash-up. George Bailey meets Arianna Huffington. Bernie Sanders vs. Mr. Potter. Capra unmasks Wall Street.

Move your money.

Caterwaul Favorite Albums 2009

This is the entire list, all 27 of them, with some video augmentation.

Caterwaul Albums 2009

Albums of the Year

Elliott Brood - Mountain Meadows (Six Shooter)

Loudon Wainwright III and Dick Connette- High Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project (2nd Story Sounds)

Avett Brothers - I and Love and You (Anti)

Buddy and Julie Miller – Written in Chalk (New West)

Gourds – Haymaker (Yep Roc)

Levon Helm – Electric Dirt (Vanguard)

Todd Snider – The Excitement Plan (Yep Roc)

Wilco – Wilco (The Album) (Nonesuch)

Elvis Costello – Secret, Profane & Sugarcane (Hear)

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone (Anti)

Low Anthem – Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (Nonesuch)

Vic Chestnutt – Skitter on Takeoff (Vapor)

Tim Easton – Porcupine (New West)

The Sweetback Sisters – Chicken Ain’t Chicken (Signature Sounds)

Putnam Smith – Goldrush (Itchy Sabot)

Lyle Lovett – Natural Forces (Lost Highway)

Red Stick Ramblers – My Suitcase is Always Packed (Sugar Hill)

Kendal Carson – Allright Dynamite (Train Wreck)

Felice Brothers – Yonder is the Clock (Team Love)

David Greely - Sud du Sud (davidgreely.com)

Dave Rawlings Machine – A Friend of a Friend (Acony)

Chuck Prophet – Let Freedom Ring (Yep Roc)

Caroline Herring – Golden Apples of the Sun (Signature Sounds)

Deer Tick – Born on Flag Day (Partisan)

Linzay Young and Joel Savoy (Valcour)

Vince Bell – One Man’s Music (vincebell.com)
Amy Speace - The Killer in Me (Wildflower)

Creepy Joe™ Lieberman: the first to exploit fear

Hot off of his outrageous, mercurial performance as the enemy of universal health care, our junior, and I do mean junior, ructious Senator has found new hope in an attempted act of terrorism.

On Sunday, while the White House tried mightily to prevent panic, Creepy Joe™ Lieberman stoked the fires of fear, and beat the drums of war suggesting that we establish a new front in Yemen. Yeah, man.

Lieberman spared no time moving from the limelight as "health spoiler" to the bellicose beast of bombing preemptively. All right, (creepy) Joe, let's make yemenade out of Yemen!

Never was a bigger chickenhawk ever hatched.

And as the head of the Homeland Security committee, might it be presumptuous to suggest that Lieberman had failed in his duties because a Nigerian with an explosive dildo almost brought a jetliner down. If it wasn't for a brave lad from the land of licentiousness, Amsterdam, one would say that the Senate Homeland Security committee might have had some blood on its hands.

But that's okay with Lieberman. A little blood bath, just like too little health care, is a good thing for his benefactors.

Vic Chestnutt, RIP

A heroic story of a man overcoming incredible odds to create an amazing body of music, inside a broken body, ended Christmas Day when Vic Chestnutt committed suicide. His songs are strange, beautiful and haunting. Anyone who ever saw him perform live understands the eerie magnificence of his songs.

It's unfortunate that our vaunted health care system was failing him in a time of great need. A page to help his family pay for medical bills has been set up for donations.

The bells are ringing out with Bragg

Interesting, though not equal to the original. And who are Florence and the Machine?



Though the great man does it justice.



And there's a certain stadium appeal to the Coldplay cover.

Chainsmokinig while the stereo plays Noel

Creepy Joe™ Lieberman, noble statesman "Nya-nya-nya-nya-nya."

President Barack Obama went to the US Senate Sunday to address the Democratic caucus on the topic of passing a health care bill, and the disastrous results of failing to do so.

When he was done with his 30 minute speech, which neither mentioned the public option, nor restrictions on abortions, our own Senator Creepy Joe™ Lieberman apparently could not contain his glee.

He trotted over to Harry Reid and gloated, dancing, pointing his finger (okay that's my version), and chanting in a schoolyard singsong: "He didn't mention the public option; he didn't mention the public option, and you stink too."

Reid asked Lieberman if he had seen where the horse bit him.

Must be

Christmas at Dylan's house.

Thanksgiving Loudon's way

Creepy Joe™ pulls one from the Bush playbook

A total embarrassment to the majority of Connecticut residents who favor a universal healthcare plan, Creepy Joe™ Lieberman has become a focus for vituperative remarks, and the butt of jokes on national television.


But none of that seems to affect his curdled narcissism.

Still, in a flash of inspiration that he borrowed from George Bush and his homeland security chiefs, Lieberman has raised the specter of terrorism as a distraction.

If the world is hailing our junior senator from Connecticut as the biggest egotistical turncoat since Benedict Arnold for opposing the public option, Lieberman thinks he has a way to divert attention, and make his far-right supporters hail him as a patriot by discovering a new "terrorist threat" in the tragedy at Fort Hood. He's wielding the committee chairmanship from which he should have been toppled, as the bully pulpit for his self-serving nonsense.





Maybe Creepy Joe™ ought to acknowledge his own role as terrorist. How much time will he be spending scrubbing the blood from his hands for his active support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? How many bodies of innocent children need to be placed on the doorstep of his swanky Stamford digs before he stops his anti-Muslim yowling? And how many sick mother's, daughters, sons and husbands can look to the Senator from Connecticut and see the thick, brutish impediment that stands between them and decent health care?

No shit from Shinolas

I've been meaning to make it down to Tapas on Ann St. in Hartford for months to catch the Monday night stand with the Shinolas, an erstwhile band consisting of great session players.

Local guitar slinger, producer, film scorer and friend, Jim Chapdelaine, and also-local percussion, multi-instrumentalist, producer and friend Lorne Entress recruited bassist Paul Kochanski and talented pedal steel player Ed Iarusso to form the Shinolas.

Every Monday they gather in the Asylum Street window of the modest eatery and turn it into the kind of joint you only find in Nashville or Austin. Great players having a great time singing and playing originals and covers, mostly of the rootsy rock, rockin' country or pumped-up traditional variety.

Last night they were joined onstage by acclaimed Boston singer-songwriter Mark Erelli, who enjoyed a sabbatical from being the "folksinger" so that he could trade leads on rockers with Chapdelaine, and so he could share band versions of some of his great tunes including "Compass and Companion," and his tragic take on the Hartford circus fire he calls "Hartfordtown." In between the band moved easily between Jimmie Rodgers, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Warren Zevon. During two extended jams, it was difficult to tell who was having more fun - the band or the audience.

This regular gig has turned an off night for the Hartford eatery into a a busy night that has become an important staple of their week's income. On Monday the restaurant was fully booked out, with standing room only for latecomers.

The Shinolas have made it a practice to invite friends onto their stage. Besides Erelli, they've hosted Al Anderson, John Pousette-Dart and Daisy Mayhem fiddler Rani Arbo. Chapdelaine hinted of a few surprise guests to come.

While the wind whistled through the rest of Hartford's empty streets Monday, the joyful noise was warm and welcome inside Tapas.

The Bogmen are back

I know they've been reuniting once a year for benefits, but rooting around in the Bogosphere on a rainy Saturday, I discovered that the that one of the greatest unappreciated bands ever, the Bogmen, has gone back into the studio to cut tracks for an EP to be released next year. If you've never seen them live, you've never experienced one of the most electrifying performances of genius rock ever to hit the stage.

"I haven't seen you since the big burn...."

One of the new ones.

Walking the Walk With Merrick

It intrigued me: a decorated war veteran who support the military, but who is willing to walk across Connecticut with t-shirted companions demanding an end to the Afghan war. Merrick Alpert is a Democrat running against Chris Dodd for a spot on the Democratic ticket in the 2010 Senate race. I told Merrick he was tilting at windmills, and he told me that somebody had to do it. He's a bundle of contradictions. He admires Martin Luther King and the intelligence community. He's believes in the principles of the Democratic party but not in the "career politicians" who have bent the party to their will. He voted for Barack Obama, cried at his inauguration but is willing to say he's dead wrong about Afghanistan and Iraq. He's a realist, and a capitalist who has built two successful companies, but he's ready to follow the impossible dream of toppling a tottering incumbent. He's intriguing, so I decided to lend a hand and produced this:



Thanks to Bruce Zimmerman for the custom score, and to Glenn Orkin, Paul Nelson, Crystal Place and Todd Sanderson for production assistance.