(3506) Elvis Costello / The Band of Heathens

WATCH FULL EPISODE ONLINE

From the ACL taping program on August 31, 2009:

It’s been five years since Elvis Costello was last on the Austin City Limits stage. Tonight he returns as part of our 35th anniversary with new music that takes the music legend back-to-basics, combining his witty lyrics and country sounds “with a fitting old-timey feel” (Los Angeles Times).

Costello has had a long relationship with the country roots genre and an equally long relationship with its key city, Nashville. Costello first recorded in Nashville with George Jones in 1979 and again for Almost Blue, his 1981 album of classic country covers. He returned to the city in 2004 to record a duet rendition of “The Scarlet Tide” with Emmylou Harris. This song, co-written with T Bone Burnett, received an Academy Award nomination for Alison Krauss’ rendition in the motion picture, “Cold Mountain” in 2003.

Teaming up again with Burnett, Costello’s newest release, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane “marks a full-blown return to Nashville” (Boston Globe) with music that “brings out the terser side of one of pop’s most prolix lyricists, with some spectacular results” (Rolling Stone). Burnet and Costello put together a supergroup of bluegrass musicians for the recording including Jerry Douglas (dobro), Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Mike Compton (mandolin), Jeff Taylor (accordion) and Dennis Crouch (double bass). These musicians have joined Costello on tour as The Sugarcanes.

With Secret, Profane & Sugarcane “Costello once again hits his mark and makes yet another case for his position among the greatest songwriters of his generation” wrote Under the Radar.

From the ACL taping program on July 9, 2009:

With “tremendously gritty vocals and scything guitars” (Maverick Magazine), Austin’s own The Band of Heathens have created their own style of Americana music that is bringing them praise from across the nation. These purveyors of smart southern/country rock make their Austin City Limits debut tonight.

The band began to form in 2006, when the three principle songwriters, Colin Brooks, Ed Jurdi and Gordy Quist, were sharing the bill every Wednesday night at Austin’s Momo’s club. Originally, it started as each songwriter performing his own set. But in a short time they started sharing the stage equally and collaborating on each other’s songs. The Wednesday night series was originally billed as “The Good Time Supper Club” but a newspaper misprint credited them as “the heathens” and the name stuck. Largely improvised and unrehearsed, the shows quickly gained in popularity. “We thought of it as a side project for a long time,” Quist said. “Eventually, it got to a point where the chemistry was undeniable.”

The Band Of Heathens’ first CD and DVD releases were live recordings that captured the media’s attention. “Not many acts can pull off having three frontmen and three songwriters, but each band member’s talent and style meld together seamlessly,” wrote Lone Star Music Magazine.

In 2008, the band released their first studio recording. The self-titled CD is a “real treat to country rock and roots rock connoisseurs with its blend of rich vocals, ballad and upbeat sides, and rootsy rhythms propelled by good musicians” (Jupiter Index). Vintage Guitar Magazine wrote with equal parts southern rock, ‘50’s R&B, and Louisiana swamp-rock with a punkish swagger, they conjure a post-modern roots rock.”