Anyone who reads this blog or knows me in the semi-real world knows that I frickin’ love The Wrinkle Neck Mules.

Somehow, though, I managed to totally miss their new record, Apprentice to Ghosts, released back in February.  Fortunately, the excellent music blog Twangville alerted me to this ear-pleasing development.

Sadly, I don’t see the record on Spotify.  It’s available via Amazon, via Google Play or via iTunes.  Look for a review shortly.

This is huge!

I get a bunch of records to review, and discover and review a lot of good music that way.  But it’s not everyday that a new record by the original lineup of one of the best bands of all time hits my inbox.  But that just happened.

The dB’s have a new record!

It gets better.  Lots better.  This record is excellent.  Better than excellent.  Wonderful.  Perfect.  Holsapple, Stamey, The frickin’ dB’s!

‘Falling Off the Sky’ is the first new dB’s album in a quarter-century. It’s also the first in three decades to feature the band’s original lineup of Peter Holsapple, Chris Stamey, Gene Holder and Will Rigby — the same lineup that recorded the beloved early-’80s classics for deciBels and Repercussion.

Street date is set for June 17 on Bar/None Records.

Listen for yourself.  That Time is Gone.  Is that The dB’s or what?

The second track, Before We Were Born, is even better.  Far Away and Long Ago sounds like a great, undiscovered Beatles song.  There’s not an average song on this record.  It is excellent, from start to finish.  It’s a beautiful blend/mash-up of 80s alternative rock/indie rock/Americana.

She Won’t Drive in the Rain Anymore is as wonderful as its title.  Beautiful.  Wistful, like most great music.

Early leader for my record of the year.  If you buy one record this year, it should be two copies of this one.  One for you and another for some poor soul who doesn’t know about The dB’s.

I gotta go, so I can listen to this record over and over.

Courtesy of Twangville, the best music blog on the internets, I’ve queued up Michael Donner & The Southern Renaissance in my Spotify player for the weekend.

Good stuff so far.

Here’s the Spotify link.

And here’s a music video.

When I was a kid, there were these things called newspapers.  Basically, someone took some wood pulp, pressed it into into thin sheets, wrote stuff on it, and sold it to you.  Crazy I know, but it really happened.

Today at work, I walked by my secretary’s desk, and lo and behold, there was one of those newspapers.  Just laying there.  Beside some compact discs, paper checks and Burma-Shave signs.  A cornucopia of dead technology.

Curious, I picked it up.  Before I could reminisce about how it must have been to get day old news in flimsy print format, I noticed another relic of the past.  I read that someone has uncovered a previously unreleased live record by Fever Tree, one of the best (of the 3 or 4) bands to come out of Houston, and it was going to be released next week.  Immediately, I dropped the newspaper, wiped the ink off my hands and ran to my computer to read about this.

It was true!

Not only that, but it turns out Fever Tree’s keyboard player is the organist for St. Luke’s.  That’s the local Methodist Church for rich people.  I go to the local Methodist Church for non-rich people, but Cassidy has attended drama camp and worked as a vacation bible school counselor at St. Luke’s.  So she may have met the guy who might have played on one of my favorite songs ever.

Fever Tree -  What Time Did You Say it is in Salt Lake City.

I can’t really explain why I dig that song so much, but I have, from the first time I heard it.

That record is not on Spotify, but here’s one (from 1968) that is.  There’s a good Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out cover on there.  Ninety-Nine and One Half rocks, as does Where Did You Go.  Good stuff.

Hopefully, I’ll get my hands on the new old record.  If so, I’ll do a review.

I don’t have many rules, but one of them is that whenever Robert Bobby does a new record, I’ll review it.  I can’t overstate how much I like some of his work.  Most particularly Genuine Queen of Milwaukee.  10 or so years later, this is still one of my favorite songs.  The line “you ought to see her Adam’s apple, man dance” [Robert tells me I had that last word wrong] is one of the best ever put to music.

Enough about that.  Just one day after Genuine Queen was among the first songs I added to my Turntable.fm listening room (look for a full review of Turntable.fm tomorrow), I got a review copy of Robert’s brand new record, with The Robert Bobby Trio.   A Brief History of Time is available now at CD Baby.  You can buy a CD or download MP3s immediately.  And you should, because this is a really good record.

A Brief History of Time is not as country-ish as my favorite Robert Bobby songs, but it is full of good Americana and acoustic blues music.  It has been described as “a perfect blend of singer-songwriter, folk, Americana & blues!  Like John Prine only cheaper!”  That’s not a bad description.  A Brief History of Time, the title track, sounds like good Prine in his prime.

This record was recorded live in the studio, which gives it a more immediate sound, with some of the energy of a live performance.  It’s all about the picking and playing.  Bill Nork’s dobro and mandolin tracks are uniformly excellent.  Robert’s guitar work is stellar and Robert’s wife, who plays a mean bass, demonstrates that Robert is not the only musician in the family.

Wild About My Loving would have fit right into a Townes Van Zandt & Guy Clark set list.  Great guitar and mandolin.  The Peace Song doesn’t tread any new ground lyrically, but again the guitar work is stellar.  Ain’t No Way, a remake from an earlier record, is a fantastically wistful number.

Rocking My Baby Back Home picks up the tempo a little, with an acoustic rockabilly vibe.  My favorite song on the record is Hearts Like Atoms Split, probably because it sounds the most like the older Robert Bobby songs I have listened to for years.  When Strangers Start to Cry also has the country sound that I like so much.

I was prepared not to like One Meatball, based on the title, but it got me with a Stray Cats vibe, a good story and, I know I sound like a broken iPod, some excellent guitar work.

At the end of the day, I don’t like this record as much as I like some of Robert’s older stuff, such as Genuine Queen, Lucinda Williams (great tribute song to a great artist whose older work I also prefer) and The Best of All Possible Worlds, but that’s sort of like being critical of the Rolling Stones because every record isn’t Exile on Main Street.

Go buy this record.  It’s highly recommended.

My all-time favorite guitarist is Clarence White, of The Kentucky Colonels, Nashville West and The Byrds.  Here’s a great version of Old Blue from the Boston Tea Party (February 22, 1969) bootleg.

The Byrds – Old Blue

Robyn Ludwick blew me away a few weeks ago, when I saw some of her concert footage  on Youtube.  To say that I dig her is a massive understatement.

Today I received a pre-release copy of her forthcoming record, Out of These Blues, which will make the world a better place on April 19, 2011.

The short answer is that this is the first must-buy record I’ve heard this year.  My biggest gripe about most records in these digital days is the uneven quality of the songs.  You generally get a couple of great ones, some decent ones and some filler.  That’s not a problem on this record – there’s not an average song on it.  They run from excellent to very, very good.

Listen to Hollywood, and you’ll see what I mean.  “She left me for Hollywood.  Oh, don’t you know it feels so good.  In Hollywood.”  Awesome.

The title track has a timeless vibe, that would’ve been at home in the glory days of MP3.Com, when I discovered many of the alt. country bands I still listen to, or during the Gram Parsons-nurtured infancy of country rock.  The best music, of any genre, has rural roots, but a harder, darker edge- like someone who came to country music via Macon, Georgia as opposed to Nashville.  This record sounds like that.

New Orleans is a great song, with some excellent country noir lyrics.  Cajun country, Springsteen’s Rosalita, Austin style.

Steady has a bluesy organ vibe that just boils with an early Lucinda-like passion.  I’d love to hear Robyn cover Lucinda’s Side of the Road.  Actually, she can sing whatever she wants.  As long as I get a copy.

Fight Song may be the best alt. country torch song ever recorded.  I Am may be the second best one.   Can’t Go Back channels Guitar Town era Steve Earle. A fiddle led, danceable number that needs to be heard at Gruene Hall, after a day on the river.

Let’s recap.  We have alt. country, rock, blues and country torch.  I love the way this record so easily and effectively moves from country to blues to rock.  The arrangements are excellent.

This one will clearly be a contender for my 2011 record of the year.  Count the days, friends.  April 19 will be here before you know it.  Wake up early that morning and buy this record.

In the meantime, Robyn has two records you can buy at Amazon right now.  For So Long and Too Much Desire.  I bought them both, and they are also great records.

I’m gonna have to do a two-fer tonight.

I’ve discovered more great music via the must-read music blog, A Truer Sound (RSS feed), than just about any other place on Earth.

Tonight, this.

Wow.  That’s about as good as music gets.

More info and tour dates at Robyn’s website and Facebook page.