TIE FOR #11: WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE "FIELD SONGS"

I first heard singer/songwriter William Elliott Whitmore a few months ago, when I saw him open for Chris Cornell.  I was knocked out and wrote about him. He's put out a number of albums, and his latest one came out a few weeks after the show.  Field Songs is one of the best albums of 2011, and you should check it out.

The photo on the cover was taken in 1947, and these songs could have been written back then.  The whole record is just Whitmore singing and playing acoustic guitar or banjo.  But it never sounds like a folk revival, it sounds like a working class guy telling the stories that he's seen with the instruments he has at hand. If I had five minutes with Bruce Springsteen, I'd ask him if he's heard this album: he should check it out, especially before doing another solo acoustic record.  This is the album that I wish Devils & Dust was.  I liked Devils & Dust, and I liked the songs, but I feel like he was going for something like this.  I wish Bob Dylan had heard of him: he would have been perfect for The Lost Notebooks Of Hank Williams LP that came out earlier this year.

It's sparse, hard and beautiful, and certainly one of the best things I have heard this year.  Big props to Anti- Records (also home to Tom Waits) for having the balls to put this out.  

MEET WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE

A few weeks ago, I was knocked out by William Elliott Whitmore, an artist I hadn't heard of before. He was opening for Chris Cornell at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, New Jersey.  I'd never heard of him, so I checked him out online the week of the show and found this video of him performing "Hell Or High Water." That's all I needed to know to get me to get to the Wellmont early enough to catch him, and I'm glad I did. Like Cornell, he played a solo show, and he did really well - odds are that most people didn't know who he was, and by the end of the show, everyone in the theater was paying attention.

He is a solo acoustic badass.  If I had to guess, his influences are Cash, Waits and Springsteen.  As soon as his set ended (I felt it ended too soon, a rarity among opening acts, especially ones that I'm not familiar with) I went downstairs to buy his new album.  I wasn't surprised to see that he was on Anti- Records, the same label that Waits is on, as well as Mavis Staples and Nick Cave. Anti- is one of the best labels out there, but most of their artists are a lot more well known than this guy. But good on them for taking a chance, he deserves it. Anyway, I picked up his most recent album, Animals In The Dark, and I definitely recommend it highly. His next record, Field Songs, comes out July 12, and you can hear the first song, "Everything Gets Gone," here. Meanwhile, he has lots of older records that I have to catch up on.  (PS I got the above photo from WEW's website)