Never Grow Old

Patty Griffin with Buddy Miller performing "Never Grow Old".

Wide River to Cross

Roger Waters and the Wounded Warrior Band featuring Tim Donley performing Buddy and Julie Miller's song "Wide River to Cross".

Get Right With God

Lucinda Williams performs "Get Right With God" with some help from Brandi Carlile and Buddy Miller.

Gasoline and Matches

An animated video of Buddy & Julie Miller's song "Gasoline and Matches" performed by LeAnn Rimes and Rob Thomas with Jeff Beck on guitar.

All My Tears

Buddy Miller performs "All My Tears"—a song written by his wife, Julie Miller.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken

I am planning to do some posts related to the Americana Music Awards that took place earlier this week.  I am starting with this performance from a couple months back when the nominations for the awards were announced.  Buddy Miller, Lucinda Williams, Shelby Lynne and Jim Lauderdale perform "Will the Circle Be Unbroken".

Patty, Buddy, Darrell & The McCrary Sisters

I think these videos are all from the same concert. This must have been some show.

Three of the greatest song writers of all time, Buddy Miller, Patty Griffin and Darrell Scott, performing a song that none of them wrote, "Satisfied Mind"



My favorite Buddy Miller song, "Wide River to Cross", performed by Buddy, Patty and The McCrary Sisters.



"Move Up" is on Patty's latest album, Downtown Church. Here is a performance by Patty with Buddy and the McCrary Sisters, who also appear on the album.

RIP Solomon Burke

A video tribute to Solomon Burke who died yesterday at 70 in an Amsterdam airport. While never attaining the commercial success that he deserved, over the last decade he has released several critically acclaimed albums, including Don't Give Up on Me in 2002 which won a grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Through out the many years of his career his voice remained smooth and powerful. Here are some examples.

"If You Need Me"



"Everybody Needs Somebody to Love"



Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin accompany Burke on "Up to the Mountain" - The words from Martin Luther King's final speech that Griffin set to music.



In this fun video Burke joins the Rolling Stones on stage in a performance of "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love"




If you like this, try these previous posts:

Martin Luther King Day - Jnauary 18, 2010

The Blind Boys of Alabama - January 20, 2010

Percy Sledge - August 27, 2010

Buddy Miller

Buddy Miller has probably been included on more videos on this blog than anyone else. Often he has been playing guitar and was not credited. So it is only fair that he gets his own post. The first two songs are off Buddy & Julie Miller's latest album, Written in Chalk.

"Chalk" was included in my 2009 Favorites Post, but here is a version of the song where Buddy duets with Patty Griffin. This is the way the song was recorded for the album.



"Gasoline & Matches" with Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris and Shawn Colvin



From the album Universal United House of Prayer, my favorite Buddy Miller song, "Wide River to Cross".

Emmylou Harris - How She Could Sing the WIldwood Flower

This post is about one of the songs on Harris' latest album All I Intended To Be. Here is an interview where she discusses the song, "How She Could Sing the Wildwood Flower".



Here Buddy Miller helps her sing the song she wrote with Kate and Anna McGarrigle



Here is the show about the Carter Family that inspired the song.



You can click out and see Harris and Iris DeMent singing the Carter Family song "Wildwood Flower".

Emmylou Harris

The best part about writing a blog is that you get to make up all the rules. So, in that vein, I am declaring this Emmylou Harris week on this blog. Last week was her birthday, but I am not going to say how old she is, because I consider to be ageless.

Of the songs that Emmylou has written herself "Red Dirt Girl" is my favorite.



Here, with some help from Buddy Miller, is a great cover of the Townes Van Zandt song "Pancho & Lefty".



From the same concert, one of Lucinda William's best songs, "Sweet Old World".

2009 Favorites

This last post of the year contains videos of my five favorite songs from 2009. Not all of the videos have the best sound so I am also including a link to the lyrics for each song.

"Funny the Way It Is" written by Carter Beauford, Stefan Lessard, Dave Matthews, Leroi Moore, Boyd Tinsley and Tim Reynolds.

The song is from the Dave Matthews Band album Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King.

I posted an another version of this song previously in my Animation post.




"Nemesis" written by David Gray, Robbie Malone and Neill MacColl.

This is from David Gray's album Draw the Line. I had trouble getting a video of this with good audio quality. Here is an extended version of the song that ends with what I think are a couple lines from the Kate Bush song "Running Up That Hill".




"Chalk" by written by Julie Miller.

This song is from Buddy & Julie Miller's album Written In Chalk. On the album Buddy performs the song with Patty Griffin, but there is no good video of them performing it together, so here is a version with just Buddy performing.



"Remember Well" written by Luke Bulla.

This song is on the album WPA put out by the group Works Progress Administration. The band is fronted by Glen Phillips from Toad the Wet Sprocket, Sean and Sara Watkins from Nickel Creek, and Luke Bulla, who wrote this song and also sings lead on it.



"Sulphur to Sugarcane" written by Elvis Costello and T Bone Burnett.

None of the songs so far have been particularly upbeat, and the last song was about Alzheimer's. So I at least want to end with some levity. This song is off Elvis Costello's album "Secret, Profane & Sugarcane".

Lucinda Williams Covers

I just came from the Lucinda Williams concert. She is celebrating 30 years since she released her first album on Folkways. So in the concert she started with her first album and did about two songs from each succeeding album, ending up with Honey Bee. This provided a lot of variety, since the first two album were blues and country and then she progressed on to more Rock & Roll

I had decided to post these videos before I went to the concert, but she mentioned at the concert that there are only three people in Nashville who would touch her songs. So here they are.

Patty Loveless performing "The Nights Too Long".



Mary Chapin Carpenter performing "Passionate Kisses".



Emmylou Haris doing "Crescent City".




Finally, Emmylou Harris & Buddy Miller performing "Sweet Old World". This is a more recent video than the previous three.

Death

Flowers, the theme of my last post, was a little soft. I was going to counteract this with a post of murder ballads, but when I found the first video below, I decided to just do Death. I will do a post of murder ballads some other time.

This is Emmylou Harris performing my favorite Julie Miller song, "All My Tears". Julie and her husband, Buddy, both appear with Emmylou in this video.

You can't get more to the point than this. Ralph Stanley singing "O Death" a cappella.

And for a really sad one, Alison Krauss performing "Jacob's Dream".