Guitars, Drums, Tones, and Saxophones

Chuck Ragan - Gold Country

So I’m sitting here listening to this album, thinking about how much I like it, and I realize that I never posted about it here. Which is a shame, because it’s a great album that deserves to be talked about!

Obviously, you now already know how I feel about it. Like any good bearded .Org-lurker, I have a deep love for the works of Mr. Chuck Ragan. Hot Water Music made some incredible records (Fuel For the Hate Game and A Flight and a Crash in particular), and his post-HWM solo albums and collaboration with Austin Lucas (Bristle Ridge) have represented a fairly dramatic stylistic shift, but one that really lets his deep, rich voice shine, and allows his excellent songwriting to come through.

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Hot Water Music - No Division

Hot Water Music broke up in 1996. But unless you were a serious fan, you wouldn’t have known it; at their farewell show, recorded as the 1999 Live at the Hardback album, they announced that they were gonna keep the band going after all. And it’s a good thing they did, as the Gainesville quartet ended up recording a string of incredible albums.

If you want to get a listing of the band’s discography, go to Punknews.org and comment asking which Hot Water Music album is the best. You’ll be treated to a LOT of comments, and every album the band released will be mentioned at some point in the (very long) thread. However, if you take the average, you’ll probably end up with two of their albums coming out on top: 1998′s Fuel for the Hate Game, and 1999′s No Division.

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Various Artists - All Aboard: A Tribute to Johnny Cash

Now, I think we can all agree that tribute albums are hit-or-miss affairs, at best; often, the albums are terrible, and offer no compelling evidence to justify their existences. How many times have you listened to a tribute album to an artist you like and not come away thinking “I’d have rather had this as a ‘Greatest Hits’ package?” I bet it’s a handful. We’re not even going to talk about genre/era “tributes,” since more often than not those are just “hip” bands making ironic covers that they think are HI-LARIOUS. (Notable example: the late’90s Metaliska album. That shit was so good)

And it’s with that in mind that one enters into this, Anchorless Records’ (based out of Allston, MA!) tribute to Johnny Cash. They’ve assembled a punk-centric collection of artists like the Bouncing Souls, the Gaslight Anthem, Chuck Ragan (of Hot Water Music), MxPx, the Loved Ones, and others, along with local favorites gone national, the Dresden Dolls. So the talent is strong, not a bunch of rookie bands looking to make a name for themselves with an ironic cover of a classic. Remember how well that worked out for Alien Ant Farm?

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Chuck Ragan & Austin Lucas - Bristle Ridge

Chuck Ragan is probably, hopefully, known to many as one of the lead singers and guitarists for Gainesville’s beloved post-hardcore quartet Hot Water Music. Since that group disbanded back in 2006 (though they have been playing a few reunion shows here and there in 2008), the members have gone onto other projects; Chuck Ragan releasing a number of acclaimed acoustic solo albums in a country/buegrass vein, and the remainder of the band performing as The Draft. Austin Lucas might be a name unfamiliar to some. He’s played in a few punk bands over the years, and released some well-received folk/bluegrass albums. With a solid backing band (including Lucas’s father), they got together to record Bristle RIdge.

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