08.30.06

It’s the HCT mailbag!

Posted in random - August 30th, 2006 at 12:17 am by Mimi

So, a friend of mine in L.A. emailed me about going to see Corb Lund the other night, it went like this:

MIMI OH MY GAWD!

So Corb played Hollywood a few nights ago and there were like, 8 people there. Including me and my mom. Which is just sad. But he killed. And afterwards, my mama was like “What a very charismatic young man.” and I was like “Holy hell, I’d like to get into those big boy pants…”

…Anyway. He sat with us before and after the show and talked shop. He’s got Shooter [Jennings] opening for him in October and he didn’t know what his sound was like. Which seemed really odd to me. So we talked about slut country and shit for a while.

Then he goes “So, how do you even know who we are?” And he’s got this confused, beautifully naive Canadian look on his face. I swear, half of the hot is that he’s Canadian…

08.28.06

G-string free since Tuesday – Chris Milam Podcast

Posted in podcast - August 28th, 2006 at 7:40 pm by Cricket

I know we promised Hank3 next, but we lied. I’m sure you’ll like this so much you won’t even care about our lying ways.

We’re continuing a two ‘cast trend of pretty boys from Memphis with Chris Milam!! He came by and played for us (right click and ’save as’) and as we do, we’re sharing it with you. His G-string broke in the third song, but that didn’t stop him.

Chris wonders why he came to our house and if he’ll get out alive.

Along with our usual blather, this ‘cast includes the following tracks (all Chris Milam originals, unless otherwise noted (most are g-string free):

Someday (Steve Earle cover)
Mimi and Cricket are my Favorite Girls (a.k.a Don’t Give Up on Me Now)
Whenever It Rains
She Changes with the Breeze
Maria, Maria
Chelsea Hotel (Leonard Cohen cover)
Waiting for a Call (Cory Branan cover)
Talkin’ Divinity Blues
Memphis Queen
A Song I Used to Know

08.24.06

All Muckled Up!

Posted in hot live action - August 24th, 2006 at 11:05 am by Cricket

Mucklewain has been done. I came out of it without bug bites or sunburn. Mimi survived a chupacabra bite and I think she has some magical powers now. Okay, she didn’t get bit by a chupacabra, but she does look like she was mauled by a mythical beast. We’ll get to that in a bit.

So we rolled into Harriman, TN late as ever. Stupid time zone changes get us every time. Well, that and the whole not being ready and leaving late, but no one needs to know about that, right? We found our hotel (HCT girls don’t camp; it would be a disaster you don’t want to see) and hooked up with Sarita and Lulu (Cookie was already with us). We packed our bags up and headed up the road to Whicker Park where we were shuttled from the parking lot and summarily searched. Though not searched very well, thankfully. *cough* [Apparently the cloaking device on my huge orange backpack functions just fine.--Sarita]

08.18.06

Snakes on a Motherfucklewain…

Posted in cricket spazzes, podcast, random - August 18th, 2006 at 7:18 pm by Cricket

Alright kids, our bags are packed with whiskey and sunscreen and we’re getting geared up for Mucklewain tomorrow. It’s not too late for you to come too. If you do go, look for us, we’ll surely be front and center for Scott Miller & The Commonwealth, Steve Earle, Todd Snider, Cory Branan and Lucero and bopping around dipping into everything else. If you are going and you want to catch up with us at the festival tomorrow, just email us tonight. We’ll be there with Cookie, Lulu, Sarita, Esse, Troublesome Girl and other HCT regulars.

We’ll be back in Nashvegas Sunday and back to our regular antics next week. Though if you don’t hear from us again you’ll know it’s because we died of sunstroke, sunburn, bug bites or alcohol-induced dehydration.

*

08.14.06

Our Neighbor – Todd Snider

Posted in some albums we done liked others we ain't - August 14th, 2006 at 2:03 pm by Mimi

The title of Todd Snider’s brand new album, The Devil You Know, name-checks Satan (our lord and master) and it only goes up from there, people.

So, I bust out the Google-fu on Todd Snider after listening to East Nashville Skyline (to be reviewed at length in the future; contains the gem “Conservative Christian, Right Wing, Republican, Straight, White, American Males”) and the first site I land on compares him to Steve Earle and Kris Kristofferson.

[My Google-fu got me shout-outs to Todd from Billy Jo Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker and John Prine. Damn good no matter what direction you look at it from. He might be my new musical boyfriend. An East Nashville boy from my neck of the woods back in the day and songwriting that I can not find enough emphatic words to describe the phenomenal, amazing, wondrous, genius of it.--Cricket]

Huh.

08.13.06

Just the facts – an HCT Index

Posted in random - August 13th, 2006 at 6:06 pm by Cricket & Mimi

Total amount (in time) of Steve Earle songs that Cricket has on her iPod: 9 hours, 12 minutes and 24 seconds.

Number of empty liquor bottles sitting around casa de HCT (in gallons): 3.2

Times the HCT girls called someone to fix their neighbor’s washing machine (that he shares with them) and were told it was unfixable and it later turned out to not be broken at all: 1

Estimated percentage of people at a given show in Nashville that one of the HCT girls have not made out with: 0.0034

Amount Mimi and Cricket have spent since June on cabs in Nashville to avoid a DUI: $338

Number of times the HCT girls have been stopped while walking late at night and managed to avoid a drunk and disorderly charge: 1

Chance that a given, random, Nashville musician wants to talk to Mimi and Cricket and takes them seriously about HCT: 1 in 2

In the gutter with Ben Nichols

Posted in talk to us - August 13th, 2006 at 11:35 am by Cricket

[We can't always get the coverage we want, but fortunately HCT has agents all over the globe. A few days ago our pal, Ethel, had a conversation with Ben Nichols of Lucero. We'll let her tell the story…—Cricket]

It’s past two on a New York Saturday morning. My clothes are covered in splatters of beer and less identifiable filth. My feet must really be killing me from the pounding they’ve taken for the past few hours, because there’s no other reasonable explanation why I would have chosen to sit on the curb with my feet in the gutter. At least, that’s what I told myself at first. The other reasonable explanation crouches two feet away, and NOW would be the perfect time to ask him some burning, insightful questions. Yet the only flotsam in my whiskey sea brain is “I am sitting in a New York gutter outside CBGB’s with Ben Nichols. This is awesome.”

08.11.06

HCT Podcast Two – Cory Branan: Our Future Houseboy

Posted in podcast - August 11th, 2006 at 3:14 pm by Mimi

You know that friend you have who’s always laughing at something inside his head, who goofs on your porcelain hippo collection with more affection than venom, who holds your hair back when you puke but then tells everyone all about it the next day?

His name is Cory Branan, you’ve been waiting your whole life to meet him. He smiles as he sings and turns his face into his shirt when he’s embarrassed by the cheesy-ass lyrics he wrote while drunk.

I’m sort of a loss for describing how charming and intelligent he is for two reasons: one, it sounds like hyperbole because of his transcendent wonderment, and two, I’m scared for his safety if a bunch of wackjobs ganged up on him to haul him off to be their loveslave.

08.10.06

More Mucklewain anticipation – Allison Moorer

Posted in back catalogue - August 10th, 2006 at 8:40 pm by Cricket

Allison Moorer’s album Alabama Song isn’t a summer fun album. It isn’t a spring flowers and sunshine right outside your window album like her new one is. It’s full of the seasonless light of two a.m. loneliness and self-realization. It’s timeless heartbreak on a backbone of good deep, soul shivering twang. For reasons I don’t understand, I think this is the least known of her albums, though perhaps only because it was her debut. I can make a good critical case for her other albums–I can recognize the greatness in them as well, but this one, Alabama Song, is the one that really speaks to me. [Hi, she's from Mobile.--Mimi]

You can’t passively listen to it–you have to take the ride the artist is offering you on this one, and the ride Allison gives is worth it.

08.09.06

HCT Podcast One – Stand thigh-deep in the river and cast your pod

Posted in podcast - August 9th, 2006 at 12:56 pm by Cricket

Alright, folks, we’re on the air. The first HCT podcast is up (right click and ’save as’), one of many to come. Maybe sometime I’ll be able to record it with out sounding like I might pass out from anxiety. [After a couple of vicodin, you'll be fine.--Mimi]

First up we have 8 songs played by Joshua Scott Jones. Go on, give it a listen, then come back and tell us what you think.

Tracks include:

1. Independence Day
2. Lover, You Should Have Come Over (Jeff Buckley cover)
3. Light It Up
4. Clang
5. Seventh Street
6. Dear Isabelle
7. You’re a Star
8. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen by way of Jeff Buckley cover)

Josh is playing the Basement in Nashville Monday, August 14 at 6pm, so if you’re in town or nearby you should come and hear him play. We’ll be there, so bring cash to buy us beers too.

08.08.06

No need to be less polite – Will Kimbrough

Posted in some albums we done liked others we ain't - August 8th, 2006 at 1:18 pm by Mimi

Will Kimbrough – Americanitis

So I was assing around earlier, and Cricket hollers into the kitchen “You should review this one.” I assumed that meant she had some kind of Texas swing music, as per usual. I was about as wrong as it gets. I click on his website, and lo–he’s from Mobile! Ok, then let’s cue this up and see what we find. [Baby, I know what you like. Um. Usually.--Cricket]

The opening track is a Leonard Cohen-y, country by way of a French coffee house, fluttery number with the repeated lyric “I lie because I can” twined through out it. *this is me perking up to pay attention*

There is a real Serge Gainsbourg thing, minus the frighteningly disgusting vibe, working here. Ok, sign me up for the rest of the album.

08.07.06

Summer lovin’, had me a blast – Scott Miller & the Commonwealth

Posted in some albums we done liked others we ain't - August 7th, 2006 at 3:40 pm by Cricket

It’s countdown to Mucklewain here and that means we get to wallow in all the great bands that will be there. [We might as wallow in something besides degeneration and whiskey for once.--Mimi] Maybe we’ll get you all set up, so that even if you can’t be there, you’ll have enough good album recs that you might get some beer, cover yourself in sunscreen and bug spray, and sit in your living room pretending like you’re there.

So I love The V-Roys like whoa. Just having been in The V-Roys is reason enough for me to seek out someone’s album and give it a listen. Luckily for me, they’ve all been somewhat prolific since they broke up and haven’t gone off in some insane experimental music direction or done something jazzy and intolerable. [Intolerable and experimental are synonyms, ain't they?--Mimi]

08.04.06

The final countdown

Posted in cricket spazzes - August 4th, 2006 at 1:10 pm by Cricket

Mucklewain is so close now. A mere two weeks and I can barely stand it. It’s worse than waiting for Christmas when I was little kid, I think because I know I’m gonna like what I’m getting at Mucklewain.

So are you going? If you’re undecided what can we do convince you?

Tickets are still available. If you buy them now online they are only $30!! $45 if you wait until you’re at the gates. I know there’s still hotel rooms in the area and there’s always camping for those of you who like that sort of thing (HCT girls don’t camp).

Okay, well, what about the line up? Check this out:

08.03.06

What we’ve all been waiting for – new Lucero! WOO!

Posted in some albums we done liked others we ain't - August 3rd, 2006 at 6:54 pm by Cricket

I can’t believe I have Lucero’s Rebels, Rogues and Sworn Brothers here. I’ve been waiting forever for new Lucero! I know some of you have been waiting for my review, because y’all keep emailing me about it. But us HCT girls have been big travelers lately (NYC and Atlanta, both ends of the Sprawl—though I guess only a handful of you get that joke) and not around so much. But really I’ve been putting this off, even though I’ve had the album for days. Our pal Timmy Mac envisions me with the new Lucero album: I can kind of picture you, sitting at a bare kitchen table. You in one chair, and the CD sorta sitting there on the other end. A cigarette burning in an ashtray. Total stare down. [We don't smoke in the house, folks. That's just about the only rule we have.--Mimi]

08.01.06

Lookin’ back might break your heart – Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams

Posted in back catalogue, some albums we done liked others we ain't - August 1st, 2006 at 2:43 pm by Mimi

This isn’t about albums, but songs I think are worth getting from iTunes or Soulseek, however you roll.

Cricket doesn’t listen to Ryan, and I think that’s because before he went bonkers she was punk rawk enough to mainly ignore him. Then there was the whole personality thing, and, well, I don’t blame anyone for ignoring him or giving him a skip.

That being acknowledged, if you pass on Ryan and Whiskeytown because of Love is Hell or Demolition or Rock N Roll then you need to relax a little and realize that every once in a while when something’s popular it isn’t because the masses will buy anything marketed well–sometimes something really is good.

Whiskeytown

Sold out to the Man

Posted in cricket spazzes, random - August 1st, 2006 at 10:49 am by Cricket

Yes, those are ads you see there on our sidebar. Web space doesn’t pay for itself, my babies. Think of the endless possibilities for entertainment it brings. I mean really, Death Cab for Cutie ads? I guess from here on out we have to be careful what we say lest we generate the right combination of keywords to bring about the advertising apocalypse. Send us hate mail when the Kenny Chesney ads start appearing (that will obviously be right after I post this). The ads will go away once y’all figure out how to bypass the USPS’s rules and keep us in liquor even when you can’t come to the bar with us, and as soon as one of us finds a rich, old husband who wants to support our entire drunken enterprise. Yes, right, the ads are here for the long haul, kids. Man, the next thing you know we’ll be on MySpace and then a different kind of apocalypse is nigh.

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