Bobby Bare, Jr. playing a cut from his new record, A Storm - A Tree - My Mother's Head. In 2008 a storm brought a tree down on the Bare family home, with Bobby Bare, Jr.'s Mom inside. Within a year, and after two broken vertebrae, his mother and the family home recovered and Bobby got a song out of the tragedy as well as the title of his new album.

I don't own those particular versions (though they are on my ever growing Wishlist) but I'd say at the prices you can find them for on Amazon (new and used), they're well worth it.

If you haven't had a chance to hear this yet be sure to check it out when you have a few minutes. It's a very fitting tribute to Rick Danko and Richard Manuel penned by Jason Isbell, formerly of Drive-By Truckers. He now has his own band called The 400 Unit. Let the night air cool you off. Tilt your head back and try to cough. Don't say nothing 'bout the things you never saw. Let the night air cool you off. I ain't living like I should. A little rest might do me good. Got to sinking in the place where I once stood. Now I ain't living like I should. Can you hear that singing? Sounds like gold. Maybe I can only hear it in my head. Fifteen years ago we owned that road now it's rolling over us instead. Richard Manuel is dead. God forbid you call their bluff. Like the nightmares ain't enough. Remember when we used to think that we were tough? God forbid you call their bluff. First they make you out to be the only pirate on the sea. Then they say Danko would have sounded just like me. "Is that the man you want to be?" Can you hear that song? It sounds like gold. Maybe I could make it bigger overseas. Fifteen years ago we owned this road now it only gives us somewhere else to leave. Something else you can't believe. Can you hear that singing? Sounds like gold. Maybe I can hear poor Richard from the grave singin' where to reap and when to sow when you've found another home you have to leave. Something else you can't believe. Jason Isbell © House Of Fame Music (BMI) Mellophones and Fender Rhodes - Jason Isbel "Got to sinking in the place where I once stood." Jason Isbell When I started writing this one, I wanted to capture some of Levon Helm's feelings about the deaths (and lives) of Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. The longer I worked on the song, the more impossible that became. I felt like the best I could do was to explain my own attitude toward being a working and traveling musician. The horn parts came to me in a dream.

This ended up on their newest record, an EP called Heretofore:

Patterson promises even more collaborations between himself and Ray McKinnon which is something I'm looking very forward to. There's even been hints of Patterson writing a screenplay himself, which is exactly how Southern Rock Opera began.

If you ever decide to go whole hog, there's also this collection of all of their albums from the Ozzy era called The Black Box:

If you ever get a chance to see The Accountant, Chrystal, Randy and the Mob or the newly released That Evening Sun starring Hal Holbrook, I highly recommend all of them. With the exception of The Accountant all of them feature music by the Drive-By Truckers or Patterson Hood. In the case of That Evening Sun, Patterson penned a song just for the movie called "Depression Era".

I have an older brother who's responsible for turning me onto so much great music over the years, The Band is one of them. Stage Fright got a lot of airplay around his house and was instrumental in expanding my knowledge of them outside of their more well known radio hits. Not that there's anything the matter with those as they sound just as fresh today as when they were first released. That's the beauty of The Band to me, their music is timeless. Over this past weekend I attended something called Sounds of the South with Megafaun & Fight the Big Bull featuring Justin Vernon of Bon Iver & Sharon Van Etten where the artists drew from Souths of the South, a collection of field recordings compiled by Alan Lomax. The encore for all three nights was The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". It fit in perfectly.

What Swede said but I see no harm in a Greatest Hits type collection if you're just getting into a certain artist and want some type of overview. If you do choose to go that route, I suggest this collection: 1. Black Sabbath 2. N.I.B. 3. The Wizard 4. Warning 5. Evil Woman 6. Paranoid 7. Iron Man 8. War Pigs 9. Fairies Wear Boots 10. Sweet Leaf 11. Children of the Grave 12. Into the Void 13. Lord of This World 14. After Forever 15. Snowblind 16. Laguna Sunrise 17. Changes 18. Tomorrow's Dream 19. Supernaut 20. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath 21. Fluff 22. Sabbra Cadabra 23. Am I Going Insane (Radio) 24. Symptom of the Universe 25. Hole in the Sky 26. Rock 'n' Roll Doctor 27. Dirty Women 28. Never Say Die 29. A Hard Road

Deluxe Edition

I ask only because you didn't reference any name at all (individual or otherwise). I can only guess you mean Lynyrd Skynyrd. If so, is that correct?

Who are you referring to?

For fans of Hal Holbrook, you should love this. That Evening Sun also features the work of Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers) who has become closely associated with Ray McKinnion (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Deadwood, etc.) beginning with Ray's Oscar winning short fillm, The Accountant, which inspired the Drive-By Truckers song Sinkhole from their Southern Rock Opera record. Here, Patterson contributes a couple of tunes, one of which is called Depression Era which was written specifically for this film.

More a "short film" than a "video", This Fucking Job shows what can happen when a band and a filmmaker are on the same level artistically.

Leonard Skinner, Namesake of "Lynyrd Skynyrd," Dies By T. Rees Shapiro Tuesday, September 21, 2010 Leonard Skinner, 77, a high school physical education teacher who was the improbable namesake of the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, died Sept. 20 at a nursing home in Jacksonville, Fla. He had Alzheimer's disease. In the late 1960s, Mr. Skinner was the by-the-books basketball coach and gym teacher at his alma mater, Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville. He had a reputation as a disciplinarian and was a stickler for personal appearance. One day, Mr. Skinner sent a smart-aleck student named Ronnie Van Zant to the principal's office because his hair was touching his collar -- a flagrant violation of the school's dress code. "It was against the school rules," Mr. Skinner -- who had a flattop haircut for most of his life -- told the Florida Times-Union in 2009. "I don't particularly like long hair on men, but again, it wasn't my rule." Mr. Skinner left the high school in 1969 to become a real estate broker and bar owner and had completely forgotten about the brush with Van Zant until he got a phone call from an out-of-town friend. Van Zant, who was later suspended from the school for other rules violations, decided to get back at his physical education teacher by renaming "One Percent," his fledgling rock band "Lynyrd Skynyrd." Shortly after the release of their 1973 album, (pronounced leh-nerd skin-nerd), Lynyrd Skynyrd became one of the most in-demand acts of the 1970s, playing such signature hits as "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird." They played to sprawling crowds at concerts with the Confederate flag as a backdrop -- an homage to their Southern roots. At first, Mr. Skinner later said, he was peeved at Van Zant for mangling his name and repurposing it for his band's moniker. Mr. Skinner eventually warmed up to the rockers, and even introduced them at a homecoming concert in Jacksonville. For the group's third album, Mr. Skinner let the band print a picture of his real-estate sign on the inside cover. For many years, he would get voice mails on his business line from curious Lynyrd Skynyrd fans seeking to speak to the real Leonard Skinner. "He embraced it," Mr. Skinner's daughter, Susie Moore said in an interview. "As he got older, he mellowed and then he was able to embrace all types of music, really, even country." Still, in the 2009 interview with the Times-Union, Mr. Skinner said he never developed a taste for Lynyrd Skynyrd's repertoire. Instead, he made his musical tastes absolutely clear: "I don't like rock 'n' roll music." He was born Forby Leonard Skinner in Jacksonville on Jan. 11, 1933. After graduating from Robert E. Lee High School in 1951, Mr. Skinner attended Florida State University, where he was a fraternity brother of Burt Reynolds and a 1957 physical education graduate. He spent two years in the Army but hated it, his daughter said, because he had to wait in line to get food in the mess hall. He owned and operated a bar called The Still in Jacksonville, to which he later added his name after the band's surge in popularity. He sold it in the mid-1980s. It is now a topless bar. On Oct. 20, 1977, Lynyrd Skynyrd's private plane crashed near McComb, Miss. Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and four others were killed, and other band members were severely injured. In an interview after the crash, Mr. Skinner expressed remorse about the death of onetime troublemaker Van Zant. "They were good, talented, hardworking boys," Mr. Skinner said in 1977. "They worked hard, lived hard, and boozed hard." Besides his daughter, of Jacksonville, survivors include his wife of 54 years, Rosemary Jones Skinner of Jacksonville; a son, Leonard S. Skinner of Jacksonville; and two grandsons.

The Gourds' original cover of Snoop Dogg's Gin n' Juice.

Try these Takeaway clips when you get a chance and let me know what you think.

I've been trying to track down some DeYarmond Edison (the band Justin Vernon was in with the guys from Megafaun prior to forming Bon Iver) but it's out of print and very hard to find. I have seen Bon Iver once before (opening for Wilco) and really enjoyed them. If you haven't checked out Megafaun yet, I think you would like them.

They're here this week. I've never seen them so I may have to catch this show. Over the weekend: Sounds of the South Megafaun & Fight the Big Bull feat. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver & Sharon Van Etten The members of Megafaun moved from Wisconsin to Raleigh with Vernon as the band DeYarmond Edison. After Vernon went back north to record as Bon Iver, the Cook brothers and Joe Westerlund stayed on in the Piedmont, crafting a timeless folk-pop that “drinks deeply from the well of the past but could only have been made today” (Drowned in Sound)—an archive of rural America's ghosts. In this exclusive live recording event, the rustic avant-gardists team with Fight the Big Bull, the “thrilling” (NPR) 9-piece jazz collective from Richmond, VA, along with Vernon and the blisteringly talented Van Etten. Together in Durham for three shows only, they'll cut a live album based on Alan Lomax's collection of shape-note songs and dirt-floor hymns, Sounds of the South, gathered during a two-year trek through the American southeast (1959-1961). Recast through Megafaun's experimental Americana, FtBB's brass jazz, Vernon's "chilly, rusty grandeur" (Village Voice), and Van Etten's haunting soprano, the folk songs Lomax immortalized will live again at Hayti, once an AME Zion church and now a semi-sacred venue whose acoustics rival any studio's. 1. Bulldozers and Dirt 2. One of These Days 3. Feb 14th 4. Gravity's Gone 5. Hell No I Ain't Happy 6. Zip City 7. After The Scene Dies 8. Birthday Boy 9. Girls Who Smoke 10. Sinkhole 11. Marry Me 12. Santa Fe 13. Women Without Whiskey 14. Charlie Drag the Lake 15. Ronnie and Neal 16. Where The Devil Don't Stay 17. Dead, Drunk and Naked 18. Guitar Man Upstairs 19. (One Day It's Gonna Be) I Told You So 20. Buttholeville > State Trooper (Springsteen) Encore: 21. Everybody Needs Love (Eddie Hinton) 22. Ghost To Most 23. Let There Be Rock

You're in for a treat as I saw them last night in Raleigh. They have reaffirmed my faith in rock n' roll.

For those of you into the heavier stuff, this may be right up your alley. These guys played last Sunday night as part of the Hopscotch Hangover party at Slim's in Raleigh. I was there but never ventured inside to check them out, I could hear them just fine from outside. To my ears it sounded like a murder occurring inside the club. That's not a slight, it's the sound the band aims to project (especially since they cite Charles Manson as an influence).

Elf Power with Let's Wrestle at the Nightlight in Chapel Hill.

Tonight, at the new Raleigh amphitheater. No opener, all Crowes.

You really should get out more. These are just a few, there's many more.

You're in for a real treat. Most of their albums have received the deluxe treatment so I suggest going for those. I never even knew about the expanded version of Nuthin' Fancy until just a few months ago when I heard a live version of Railroad Song at one of my favorite local eateries. Hell, I didn't even know a live version of that song ever existed.