Tift Merritt Back with "Stitch of the World"

Grammy Award-nominated artist Tift Merritt’s new album Stitch of the World will be released

January 27 on Yep Roc Records. Listen to “Love Soldiers On,” the second song from the album, below.

Stitch of the World, Merritt’s sixth studio album, was written on a friend’s farm in Marfa, Texas, at Merritt’s California cabin and in New York City in the wake of several major changes in her life. Merritt workshopped the songs on Stitch of the World with longtime friend Sam Beam of Iron & Wine after bumping in to him in an airport. The album was recorded in Los Angeles while Merritt was six months pregnant, after which she relocated to her hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina.“Dusty Old Man,” the album’s first single, recently premiered via Rolling Stone Country, who said, “Powered by guitars from Marc Ribot and pedal-steel wiz Eric Heywood over a bouncy shuffle rhythm from drummer Jay Bellerose and bassist Jennifer Condos, ‘Dusty Old Man’ has more of a bluesy, loose-limbed feel than anything Merritt has ever done.”

The time since the release of Traveling Alone has also found Merritt recording and touring with Andrew Bird in his Hands of Glory, MC Taylor’s Hiss Golden Messenger and classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein.

Fountain of Wayne's Chris Collingwood Sets "Look Park" Release Date

Chris Collingwood, the lead singer of  Fountains of Wayne, will release his debut album, LOOK PARK (via Yep Roc), on July 22, 2016; the loose-limbed psychedelic pop of first track “Aeroplane” premiered today. Listen below from B&T.

LOOK PARK is Chris Collingwood’s first album outside of Fountains of Wayne and was recorded in collaboration with legendary producer Mitchell Froom (Elvis Costello, Crowded House, Suzanne Vega). Shot through with earnest emotion and restless energy, LOOK PARK is unlike anything in Collingwood’s already extraordinary canon, a fact affirmed by his decision to dub both the album and overall project as “Look Park,” the name borrowed from a favorite green space in his hometown of Northampton, MA.

“I don’t like the expression ‘solo record,’” Collingwood says. “It means you don’t have to pay attention to it, that it’s really just a side project. It’s band music and I thought it should have a band name.”

Collingwood returned home after touring the world in support of SKY FULL OF HOLES, unsure of how to proceed. The next three years saw him demoing a slew of new songs with acoustic guitar, keyboards, and spare percussion – tambourines, shakers, and sometimes a full drum kit.

The Felice Brothers Ready "Life in the Dark" Release

The upstate New York band The Felice Brothers will release a new album, Life In The Dark, through Yep Roc Records on June 24. The band recently debuted the lively, rousing “Aerosol Ball,” from the forthcoming release. With the track comes a video created by the band’s bassist Josh Rawson: an entertaining, re-purposed collage of stock footage from the 1950s and 60s, interspersing pin-up girls, boys stuffed in phone booths, mod-dancers and more. Watch it below, from B&T.

Life In The Dark was recorded in a rented garage-turned-recording-studio on Letterbox Farm, a working farm in New York State’s verdant Hudson Valley in Columba County. This album follows The Felice Brothers’ 2014 release Favorite Waitress, which American Songwriter hailed as “a remarkably varied and well-paced collection of tunes.” The nine new songs on Life In The Dark find lyricist Ian Felice continuing to explore modern life in a complicated and divided America, through a cynical and occasionally heartbroken lens, in the tradition of songwriters like John Prine, Shane MacGowan and Michael Hurley.

Musically the band (Ian on guitars and vocals; his brother James on accordion, keyboards and vocals; Greg Farley on fiddle and Josh Rawson on bass) incorporates their expansive knowledge of American folk music — both its creators and what makes it so compelling and enduring — with other elements of contemporary music — classic rock and blues. The result which, has previously been dubbed “rowdy, vivid, moving and playful…just glorious” (Uncut), is in full-effect here on songs like “Sally,” “Plunder” and more.

Yep Roc To Release ‘Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll’ 2CD/3LP Collection Curated By Peter Guralnick

On October 30, 2015 Yep Roc will release ‘Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll,’ a companion release to Peter Guralnick’s forthcoming biography of the same name, and a personal, idiosyncratic survey of one of the most important bodies of work in recording history. The 2CD/3LP set features songs hand-selected by Guralnick, who also wrote an exclusive track-by-track essay for the release. Mostly spanning the years 1950 – 1961, the set shines a light on Phillips’ unique approach to recording, his cosmic genius, and revolutionary role in the evolution of blues, country, r&b, gospel and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll.

Featuring big hits, near misses, and never-even-close tracks by Elvis Presley, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Cash, B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and scores of other singular artists, ‘Sam Phillips’ delivers, in his own words, “individualism in the extreme.”

“Sam believed most of all in perfect imperfection,” Guralnick writes, adding “every track on this collection celebrates, whether intentionally or not, the diversity and beauty and rawness, the grandness and intimacy and comic and tragic drama of the human experience.”