We're thrilled to announce that Ryan Bingham has won the ACADEMY AWARD® for Best Original Song for "The Weary Kind", theme from the Fox Searchlight Pictures film Crazy Heart.

Jeff Bridges also received a very well-deserved "Actor in a Leading Role" Oscar for his portrayal of Bad Blake in the flim.

Along with co-writing "The Weary Kind" with soundtrack producer T Bone Burnett, Bingham performed the song for the soundtrack and played the character Tony in the film. He and T Bone Burnett also recently won the Golden Globe® Award in the Best Original Song – Motion Picture category and received a nod from the BFCA Critics Choice awards.


Click here for the list of all Oscar winners


Watch Bingham's performance of "The Weary Kind" from The Tonight Show w/ Jay Leno by clicking here.

Be sure to check him out tonight on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

Ryan Bingham and his band, The Dead Horses, are slated to record a new album produced by T Bone Burnett, due out later this year on Lost Highway.

» www.imus.com

American VI: Ain't No Grave - Available Today!

Here's what the critics are saying:
“A” -Entertainment Weekly
“Still a powerful presence to the end” -People
“4 Stars”- The Independent
“Some guys just know the right way to say goodbye” –Billboard
“4 Stars” –The Sunday Times
“3.5 out of 4 stars” – The Chicago Tribune

Order from:
Amazon.com

iTunes

Shop locally and get a free Cash lithograph w/ Purchase!
(at select stores, while supplies last)
Click here for a list of participating stores!

Don’t forget to wear black for Johnny’s birthday this Friday, 2/26/2010 & post your pictures.

Vinyl available 3/9/2010.

American VI: Ain't No Grave, the sixth and final installment of Johnny Cash's critically-acclaimed American Recordings album series, will be officially released on February 26, 2010 (American Recordings/Lost Highway), the day that would have been The Man in Black's 78th birthday. As with the previous five albums in the American Recordings series, American VI was produced by Rick Rubin.

American VI is deeply elegiac and spiritual, with each song its own piece of the puzzle of life's mysteries and challenges - the pursuit of salvation, the importance of friendships, the dream of peace, the power of faith, and the joys and adversities that entail simple survival. It is an achingly personal and intimate statement, as, from the end of the line, Johnny Cash looks back on a most extraordinary life.

The songs on American VI are drawn from all over the musical landscape and from various eras, and include Sheryl Crow's moving "Redemption Day," close Cash friend Kris Kristofferson's "For The Good Times," "Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound" by Tom Paxton, Bob Nolan's "Cool Water," the hopeful "Last Night I had the Strangest Dream" by Ed McCurdy, J.H. Red Hayes and Jack Rhodes's "Satisfied Mind," Queen Lili'uokalani's song of farewell, "Aloha Oe," and the never before heard Cash original, "I Corinthians: 15:55," written over the last three years of his life.

American VI was recorded by Cash's long-time engineer, David "Fergie" Ferguson, and, as with its American V predecessor, tracked at the Cash Cabin Studio in Henderson, TN, and at Akadamie Mathematique of Philosophical Sound Research in Los Angeles, CA. Guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench, who played on all of the series' albums sans the first one, were joined in the studio by guitarists Matt Sweeney and Jonny Polonsky, as well as Smokey Hormel, who also played on American IV and V. In addition, The Avett Brothers' Scott and Seth made cameo appearances on the track "Ain't No Grave."

Cash and Rubin recorded many songs between the completion of American IV: The Man Comes Around in 2002 right up until September 12, 2003, the day Cash passed. Songs recorded during this time frame were released in 2006 as American V: A Hundred Highways, and now this final grouping of songs, American VI: Ain't No Grave, ends the series that began in 1994 with American Recordings.

During these sessions, in May of 2003, less than four months before he passed, Cash lost his wife June Carter Cash due to surgical complications. According to Rubin, "Johnny said that recording was his main reason for being alive. I think it was the only thing that kept him going."

Cash feared that American IV might be his last release, so Rubin suggested that he immediately begin writing and recording new material. Due to the artist’s frail condition, Rubin arranged for an engineer and guitar players to always be on call. “Every morning, when he’d wake up, he would call the engineer and tell him if he was physically up to working that day,” Rubin explains.

During those months, Rubin went to Nashville several times to record with Cash. After a particularly productive four days of sessions, the artist said to the producer, “Oh, this is great; please stay longer.” So Rubin canceled his return flight to L.A., only to get a call the next morning that Cash was back in the hospital. “So there was a lot of stopping and starting, based on his health,” says Rubin. “But he always wanted to work. The doctors in the hospital kind of lectured me, saying, ‘He’s not going to stop, so you have to make sure he doesn’t work too much.’”

Though Cash knew his days were short, “There was no fear,” Rubin says. “I remember speaking to him maybe an hour after June died. He was in the hospital, with her, and I’d never heard him so distraught. And he said, ‘You know, I’ve been through tremendous pain in my life, and I’ve never felt anything like this.’ It was so bad that I didn’t know what to say. He sounded so weak, so beaten, and I’d never really heard him like that before. I’m not sure where the question came from, but I said, ‘Do you feel like somewhere you can find faith?’ And when he heard that word, a switch went off in his head, and he answered in a strong voice, ‘My faith is UNSHAKABLE.’ And the conversation changed after that. So he had tremendous faith, he didn’t really have fear and he already was dealing with pain; I think he had acceptance. When he knew he was going to die, he was calm and matter of fact about it, and…that was it.”

"Ain't No Grave," the title track, speaks to the overall theme of the album - "Well there ain't no grave/Can hold my body down..." American VI may be his final album of new material, The Man in Black may no longer walk this Earthly realm, but through his music, thankfully, Johnny Cash is very much alive and well and living among us.


For more information on American VI: Ain't No Grave as well Johnny Cash and Rick Rubin's entire American Recordings Series, please click here.

from the Houston Chronicle...

The last time Hayes Carll had a new batch of songs ready for release, he was playing a festival in Colorado. Backstage he told friend and mentor Ray Wylie Hubbard he planned to title his album Trouble in Mind. “You can't do that,” Hubbard told him just as an announcer called Carll's name to go onstage. He didn't find out until later it was the name of a blues standard.

Carll says he doesn't yet have a title for his new album, which he's hoping to release in July. He's likely to take his time titling it.

But fans will likely hear four or five of the new songs when he plays Monday night at McGonigel's Mucky Duck, backed just by multi-instrumentalist Scott Davis.

Carll says one big difference between Trouble and the new album is his backing. Last time he recorded with a group of Nashville players. “This record I used my band, which I've never really done before,” he says. “But we spent most of the past 2½ years together. I was just enjoying the vibe I was getting with them being on the road. I wanted to get that on the record.”

A few songs are still being tweaked, but Carll sounds confident that the summer release date will hold. “I still have a little work left to do with some of the writing,” he says. “One song I started writing about one thing, and it ended up being about another.”

Though the Bolivar Peninsula has figured into Carll's music before, none of the new songs directly addresses the region hit so hard by Hurricane Ike. “I'll get back there at some point, but for this one I was in a different place.”

He's also suspending his popular Stingaree Music Festival, the annual gathering he began on Crystal Beach.

“The storm changed the whole makeup of how you pull off a festival,” he says. “And it takes a lot of time. We just didn't have that time or the resources. But we're going to figure out a way to pick it up in 2011. I'm really proud of what we had going.”

» www.chron.com