The debut album from Billy Allen + The Pollies.

There is a ferocious Southern engine inside Black Noise, marking a new chapter in the evolution of the “Muscle Shoals Sound”. The 11-track album sees one of the best young soul singers in Billy Allen alive joining forces with indie rock stalwarts The Pollies. The result is an instant 21st century genre-bending classic, pulling from rock and roll, classic soul, and psychedelic to form a sound of their own.

Alabama’s favorite haunted artists The Pine Hill Haints return with their latest long player, Shattered Pieces Of The True Cross. This collection of southern psychedelic tunes were recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound on Jackson Highway, captured and mixed by Ben Tanner, Grammy-winning producer/engineer and Single Lock co-founder.

The Haints have long represented a 21st century chapter in the Muscle Shoals music legacy, applying a DIY ethos to folk and blues traditions. Not unlike their Swamper forebears in the same studio, the Haints transcend their myriad influences to sculpt a sound of their own.

The album bears their signature sonic palette - washtub bass, snare drum (no bass drums allowed!), washboard, and the occasional singing saw - and combination of styles: Scotch Irish traditional music via Appalachia (“Ki Yi Woopi Ti Yay” and “Henry My Son”, classic country (“Honky Tonk and Dance With You”) and punk rock (“Svenghoolia”), plus a fresh take on the Grateful Dead song “Loser”.

Gravel Springs is a new project from Luther Dickinson and David Katznelson.

Deep in the hills of San Anselmo, in an octagonal room three stories above the trees (supported by stilts), under the view of Mount Diablo and while birds of prey flew by the windows…over a five-year period of time, two friends who would become known as Gravel Springs recorded Crows Nest Meditations.  Every December, for over a decade, Luther Dickinson and David Katznelson would gather to plot musical adventures for the following year. Luther, the legendary guitar player known for his southern slide and picking, David, the road weary music industry vet who released Luther’s first record as producer, Otha Turner’s Everybody Hollerin’ Goat.  Ever since Luther’s Dad Jim Dickinson introduced both of them, they have been thick as thieves.

Ambient music had the ear of these two during one of the December plots. The music of William Basinski, Johan Johansson, The Deep Listening band and aspects of The Spacemen 3.  What would it be like to take Luther’s guitar playing and surround it with alien sounds…sounds of wombs and spaceways…. drones that link the human to nature? They set up a makeshift primitive studio in the octagonal room a bridge away from David’s house…the Crow’s Nest…plugging in amps and pedals and guitars…using a 4-track digital recorded Luther’s band The North Mississippi All Stars used for live recordings…and began making feedback loops and experimenting with layers of sound.  That first recording session was a primitive one, junior sound sculpturists in full-on laboratory mode, channeling 60s Nonesuch electronic sounds, with Luther’s slide guitar providing the compass to humanity; Luther was battling a cold that weekend and picked a melody on his acoustic as the sun set, eyes closed, leaving his congested body behind.  Music was, as it always is, the healer,

Five years of random days navigating the air molecules of the crow’s nest with acoustic strumming’s, bowings and pluckings and electronic vibrations waving.  A career of experimentation given more life by Phil Lesh and his calling to Luther to be a part of his Terrapin Station band, back in the days that Terrapin Station was a community center for Marin heads and Lesh would often play with carefully curated pick up groups…bringing Luther more often to the Bay, allowing more time for two friends to have a day of exploration. Five years that expanded through the Covid lock-down. Five years with the career of Luther’s engineering prowess beginning primitively and ending with an expert knowledge of the digital tools of the day, editing and even mixing the crazed tracks they as Gravel Springs had measured out and whisked together. What began as two friends fucking around, sending noises through the hills of San Anselmo and Fairfax, led to The Crow’s Nest Mediations, a record of friendship, family (Luther’s father Jim makes a heroic appearance from the netherworld, and David’s kids and dog also appear, with his wife Barbara designing the package), and expanding the idea of possibility through ambient drones, dark wonderings and heroic mistakes.

The Crow’s Nest Meditations is the new evolutionary amoeba of Americana music, the translation the aliens would make when listening to the Voyager’s Golden Record, the surviving mutation of the last century of musical forms, designed as a singular trip through history and the future. 

“Part of the reason why we gravitated towards Americana and country music was that the tradition was so full of complicated characters, and storytelling,’ says Grammy- and Tony-Winner Michael Cerveris, who along with Kimberly Kaye, fronts Loose Cattle, a band who have been part of New Orleans, Louisiana’s uniquely diverse and eclectic roots music scene for over a decade.

The pair of bandleaders—a one-time couple, enduring friends, and lifelong working artists—put such an emphasis on character development and storyline because, well, they’ve spent most of their lives acting, singing, and playing, logging hours under stage lights on- and off-Broadway, in punk clubs and on Warped Tour stops, and in honky tonks and classic theaters country-wide.

On Someone’s Monster—out November 1st on Single Lock Records—Loose Cattle have taken the reins and written their own roles for their first LP where original compositions take center stage. They’ve also written in parts for friends like Lucinda Williams, members of Drive By Truckers, and the Grammy-winning Lost Bayou Ramblers who make guest appearances throughout the record.

You are someone’s monster. But don’t freak out: according to the New Orleans country-rock ensemble Loose Cattle, everyone is. It depends on your point of view, and what you decide to do about it.

Someone’s Monster comes as a deluxe double LP vinyl release.

Someone’s Monster Tracklist:

Further On
Joanne (ft. Lucinda Williams)
Cheneyville
Here’s That Attention You Ordered
God’s Teeth
Crescent City
Before We Begin
Not Over Yet
The Shoals (ft. Patterson Hood)
Antiversary
Big Night Out
Tender Mercy

Previously only available at the band’s merch table, we’re happy to make these special 7” 45RPM singles available to you!

A: All of Me
B: Ridin Wit Chu

Here are the band’s merch table… these are the ONLY places you will find this exclusive single! Get one before they’re gone!

The Vinyl LP comes packaged in a limited edition die-cut Braille cover.

Hailed as "gospel titans" by Rolling Stone, the Blind Boys of Alabama defied the considerable odds stacked against them in the segregated South, working their way up from singing for pocket change to performing for three different presidents over the course of an 80-year career that saw them break down racial barriers, soundtrack the Civil Rights movement, and help redefine modern gospel music forever. The five-time Grammy-winners’ latest album, Echoes Of The South, draws its name from the Birmingham radio program that hosted the group’s very first professional performance back in 1944. Pairing traditional spirituals and long-lost gospel classics with vintage soul and R&B tunes, the collection is as moving as it is timeless, transcending genre and era to touch something deep and fundamental about the human condition. These are songs of love and friendship, joy and gratitude, faith and perseverance. Uplifting as they are, the recordings can feel bittersweet at times, too: 91-year-old Jimmy Carter retired from performing following the sessions, while two longtime members, Paul Beasley and Benjamin Moore, Jr., have since passed away. Despite the losses, the Blind Boys of Alabama show no signs of slowing down.

“The spirit of the Blind Boys isn’t about what you can’t do; it’s about what you can do,” says singer Ricky McKinnie. “As long as we stay true to that, as long as we sing songs that touch the heart, this group will live on forever.”

Echoes of the South was produced by Matt Ross-Spang & Ben Tanner, recorded in the Shoals, and includes musical contributions from Phil Cook, Chad Gamble, Joey Williams, Dennis Crouch, Kerry Gilbert, Ben Tanner and Matt Ross-Spang.

Tracklist:

1. Send It On Down

2. Work Until My Days Are Done

3. Friendship

4. You Can’t Hurry God

5. Jesus You’ve Been Good To Me

6. The Last Time

7. Keep on Pushin’

8. Paul’s Prayer

9. Wide River to Cross

10. Nothing But Love

11. Heaven Help Us All

"This is the party music many of us most closely associate with New Orleans and you are invited to crank the shit out of it because the louder you play this one the better it sounds." –Analog Planet

"A true celebration of the party spirit of New Orleans music. Cleary shows his total assimilation of the New Orleans tradition..." –Offbeat

Funk, jazz, R&B – these genres are so deeply rooted in New Orleans that it’s no wonder the young British pianist Jon Cleary was compelled to move to the city to play. In the early 80’s, he was painting the bar at the famous Maple Leaf Bar, where he listened to James Booker play live every week while soaking in the sounds of New Orleans piano greats such as Huey “Piano” Smith, Mac Rebennack, Fats Domino, and Professor Longhair.

Now, four decades later, New Orleans has fully embraced Cleary as one of its own. Coming full circle for this recording, Cleary is backed by James Booker’s rhythm section — from his last studio album Classified — James Singleton on upright bass and Johnny Vidacovich on drums. They are joined on several tracks by James Rivers, a legendary New Orleans saxophone player who played on many New Orleans funk and R&B classics from Big Chief to Carnival Time.

Single Lock is proud to release “So Swell”, previously available only as a limited edition LP, to fans worldwide on CD and digital formats. We want to thank Newvelle Records for their cooperation on this project.

Musicians:
Jon Cleary - Vocals, Piano, B3 Organ, Percussion
James Singleton - Upright Bass
Johnny Vidacovich - Drums
James Rivers - Saxophone

“My family was Londoners but my mom and dad moved down to the country when I was very little. What I heard was what every kid heard at that time. We had one program a week on English TV called Top of the Pops, which was usually pretty dreadful. But through my family I had access to this other world of music. They all were music lovers and they all had tastes that were in a particular area. One of the people I learned the most from was my Auntie, who around ’73 was a striking gorgeous girl with big afro and platform shoes and hot pants. And so I’d go through her record collection and there was Donny Hathaway, and all kinds of hip Staple Singers, Dr John, the Right Place, Wrong Time album. And her brother, my uncle, had recently returned from a long stay here in New Orleans. He was an exotic character that would flit in and out of our lives depending on where he was traveling in the world. One minute he’d be working on sardine boats in the Mediterranean and the next thing he was living in a cave in southern Morocco right on the edge of the Sahara. And then one time he came back and he’d been in New Orleans for about 2 or 3 years and he was raving about a piano player that he would see called Professor Longhair, and that name just always really tickled me, Professor Longhair. So I was probably 10 or 11 years old at that time. And when I’d go up and stay with him and visit he had piles of New Orleans 45s that he’d brought back in suitcases and we’d spend hours .. he knew I was interested and gave me a lot of encouragement and say you should hear this, and check this out. So I got a great education in New Orleans R&B from him. He had 45s by Professor Longhair and Clarence Henry, Smiley Lewis, all kinds of great people. Obscure bands like Jiving Gene and the Jokers that still people don’t talk about. So that was the stuff that I really liked. Part of the appeal perhaps was because it was so rare. No one else knew anything about it. No one else at my school had ever heard of Professor Longhair. No one in England had ever heard of Professor Longhair. There were no ‘Fess albums then, just 45s... So anyway, I learned from records. I didn’t know it was funk at the time. It was just very syncopated music that spoke of something exotic to a young child in England in the 1970’s. ”

--Jon Cleary March 12, 2020

A timeless rock & roll band for the modern world, The Prescriptions sharpen their sound with Time Apart. Produced by Ben Tanner (Alabama Shakes) and Brendan Benson (The Raconteurs), the album funnels a half-century of American and British influences — including taut power pop, explorative indie rock, jangling heartland hooks, and New Wave nuances — into something sharp and singular. The result is a warm, widescreen follow-up to The Prescriptions' 2019 debut, Hollywood Gold, its songs balanced halfway between classic craftsmanship and progressive exploration.

Fiery and forward-looking, Time Apart explores both sides of the pop/rock divide. It's a 21st century album rooted in everything that made the classic stuff so compelling — sharp songwriting, ringing refrains, percussive stomp, and guitars that chime one minute and churn the next.

Time Apart is an album for the heart, head, and hips. The Prescriptions have never been shy about nodding to the hook-driven rockers who came before them, but here, they carry those influences into uncharted territory, uncovering something that's truly theirs along the way. It was time together that created Time Apart, and The Prescriptions have never defined their ambition or abilities so clearly before.

Tracklist:

1. April Blossoms

2. Long Past Tonight

3. Love is Red

4. I Get Lost

5. Compartmentalize

6. Fire Moon

7. On Satellite

8. Not The Issue

9. I Might Try

10. Baby Be Nice

11. Camp Hill

A CD pre-order gets you a compact disc.
An LP pre-order gets you a VINYL RECORD.
A CD/LP BUNDLE gets you BOTH!


Written and recorded in the midst of a dizzying stretch in which nearly everything about the way the band lived and worked was turned on its head, Motel Radio's "The Garden" is indeed a work of relentless hope. The songs are profoundly vulnerable here, and the performances are warm and breezy, calling to mind everything from Andy Shauf and Cass McCombs to Beck and Tame Impala with an easygoing demeanor that belies the deep emotional work underpinning them. Motel Radio generated early buzz in their adopted hometown of New Orleans on the strength of their 2015 debut EP, Days & Nights, which helped land them dates with the likes of Kurt Vile and Drive-By Truckers in addition to festival slots at Firefly, Jazz Fest, and more. The band followed it up with the similarly well-received Desert Surf Films in 2016 and their first full-length, Siesta Del Sol, in 2019, touring the country on a seemingly endless loop as they built up their devoted following one night at a time. Since then, the band had set a goal of becoming more self-sufficient and learning to record on their own, and when it came time to cut The Garden, they dove in headfirst, cutting half the collection in an old fishing camp south of New Orleans with the help of engineer Ross Farbe (Video Age, Esther Rose) and the other half fully remotely while engineering themselves. “There was this real creative freedom that came with working remotely and learning how to run the sessions on our own,” explains co-lead singer Ian Wellman. “Synths, samples, beats, plug-ins; suddenly these whole new worlds of sound were at our fingertips and the possibilities were limitless.” That creative liberation is easy to hear on The Garden, which opens with the mesmerizing “Wise.” Like much of the album, it’s a gentle meditation on finding joy and fulfillment, on spreading love and positivity. “I’ve gotta open my eyes,” co-lead singer Winston Triolo sings over dreamy guitars and a hypnotic digital drum loop. “I only get one life, well now how can I live it wise?” The airy “Outta Sight celebrates the simple pleasures of letting go and being present, while the washed-out “Sweet Daze” revels in the warmth of human connection, and propulsive “Happiness Pie” looks for ways to share the comfort and contentment that comes with self-acceptance. On The Garden, they’ve realized there’s no sweeter garden than the one you grow yourself.

• The record was pressed at RTI and comes in gatefold packaging with a Stoughton tip-on jacket. It’s also available as a gatefold packaged CD.

GRAMMY AWARD WINNER!!!!!

I Be Trying might be the title of the new record from two-time GRAMMY nominee Cedric Burnside, but it’s also a mission statement in an era when plenty of us have discovered what “the blues” really means. Recorded over three days at Royal Studios in Memphis (the home studio of Al Green and Hi Records in the 60s and 70s), this album is the ultimate statement of purpose for a critically acclaimed artist who has proudly carried the mantle of Mississippi Hill Country blues around the world.

Over thirteen tracks, Burnside delivers his bruised but unfettered truth over blistering guitar and deep pocket drums—a sound birthed in his soul but developed and perfected on the road. But no matter how far he travels, the righteous sound he makes could only come from one place. I Be Trying is the sound of modern Mississippi.

Produced by second-generation Memphis soul trailblazer Boo Mitchell (“Uptown Funk”) and featuring guest appearances from Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars) and Zac Cockrell (Brittany Howard), I Be Trying takes the sound that Burnside learned from his grandfather, blues legend R.L. Burnside, and reinterprets it into a modern, bold Black American sound that expands the sonic landscape while respecting and honoring its roots.

Tracklisting:

1. The World Can Be So Cold

2. Step In

3. I Be Trying

4. You Really Love Me

5. Love Is The Key

6. Keep On Pushing

7. Gotta Look Out

8. Pretty Flowers

9. What Makes Me Think

10. Bird Without A Feather

11. Hands Off That Girl

12. Get Down

13. Love You Forever

Almost Home is the GRAMMY-nominated and critically acclaimed new album from the Blind Boys of Alabama, released August 28, 2020.

The 12-song collection serves as a fitting capstone to a seven-decade career that has both defined the sound of the American South and pushed it forward from the 20th century and into the 21st. NPR Music hails the record as “a gorgeous rumination on the body’s labor and soul’s legacy.”

This album is available in CD format only.

Track listing:

1. Stay On The Gospel Side

2. Let My Mother Live

3. God Knows Everything

4. Pray For Peace

5. Singing Brings Us Closer

6. Almost Home

7. Live Forever

8. I Shall Be Released

9. Train Fare

10. I Can See

11. I Kept On Walking

12. I Was Called

13. See By Faith

ABOUT THIS RECORD:
For more than twenty years, Duquette Johnston has been amongst the vanguard of Alabama music. From the founding of the seminal indie-rock band Verbena, his work in Cutgrass and the Gum Creek Killers, to his acclaimed solo releases "Etowah" and "Rabbit Runs a Destiny", Johnston has consistently pushed the boundaries of what Southern American music can sound-- and feel-- like. On his latest, The Social Animals, Johnston partnered with producer John Agnello and an all-star cast of players including Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley to create his boldest and most powerful music to date.

In a career that's taken him from stages with Pavement, Foo Fighters and The Strokes, to the Etowah County Correctional Facility, and then into the world of fashion with his Birmingham-based company Club Duquette, Duquette Johnston has gone to the edge and survived. Throughout that, he's won acclaim from NPR's World Cafe, Paste Magazine and Rolling Stone.

On The Social Animals, he opens the door into that experience with eleven songs that shake off the typical Southern Americana sound and present a lush, loud, and eloquent meditation on the human experience.

Tracklisting:

1. Year to Run

2. Whiskey and the Wine

3. Baby Loves a Mystery

4. Holy Child

5. Motorcycles

6. To My Daughters

7. Forgive Me

8. Mystics

9. Run With the Bulls

10. Fortunate Ride

11. Tonight

With a storyteller's eye and sly sense of humor that echoes not only his “honorary uncle” Del Reeves, but Tom T. Hall and Roger Miller, The Kernal delves deep into everything from family dysfunction to road trips to matters of the heart on his new LP, Listen to the Blood.

The music, which he describes with a laugh as “diet country,” embodies the spirit of that genre without any of the slavishness or self-seriousness of much modern Americana. Rolling Stone has called his style “sweetly subversive, intellectual and addictive,” while Lo-Down said “the songs have an air of nostalgia but they sound far from old - modern, yet timeless. ”

From the joyous, southern-fried grooves of “U Do U” and “Pistol in the Pillow” through the revved-up rockabilly stomp of “Green Green Sky” and the cinematic travelogue of “Wrong Turn to Tupelo” to “The Fight Song,” a sparkling '80s style duet with Caitlin Rose, it's a nine-song sequence that showcases The Kernal's warm, confidential voice while managing to make profound connections with the head, heart and feet.

“When people ask me what kind of music I play, I say, 'It's like sixteen-foot trailer country music,'” he says. “You pull up a hay trailer in a field and you barbecue a bunch of stuff and there are people setting off fireworks and there are kids running around in diapers with ice cream running down their bellies. You get up there, turn it up and have a good time. I just love seeing people have a good time, and I think that's why I like country music. The groove of it. It speaks to people's legs. They loosen up and enjoy themselves and it's no big deal. I love that. And I love to be able to contribute to that.”

Tracklisting:

1. U Do U

2. Pistol In The Pillow

3. Green, Green Sky

4. Wrong Turn To Tupelo

5. The Limit

6. Long, Cool Finger

7. Fight Song

8. She’s Seeing Somebody

9. Super (Marijuana) Wal-Mart

10. Corrie Took the 409 (Bonus Track)

Produced by Ben Tanner
Assistant Production by Austin Motlow

FOR A LIMITED TIME: AVAILABLE ON MARDI GRAS COLORED VINYL!

PLEASE NOTE: THE VINYL LP IS CURRENTLY BEING RESTOCKED, WHICH MAY ADD A COUPLE OF DAYS TO YOUR ORDER. THANK YOU!

GRAMMY-nominated New Orleans band Cha Wa will return on April 2 with My People, a new collection that honors and builds upon the rich culture and traditions of the city’s Mardi Gras Indian community. Arriving via the renowned southern independent label Single Lock Records, My People is an exuberant homage to the sounds of the Mardi Gras Indians - a group predominantly made up of New Orleans' African American community which pays respect to the area's Native American tribes with their wardrobe, music and dialect. Packed with a vivid assemblage of New Orleans sounds and stories, this new Cha Wa record infuses the traditional chants of the Mardi Gras Indians with grooves reminiscent of a ‘70s New Orleans funk band like The Meters (particularly on offerings like “Wildman” and “Bow Down”) and takes clear influence from the city's rich history of jazz, R&B, hip-hop, rock, soul and African-inspired arrangements (including a chilling cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masters Of War” in this style).

With roots dating back to the 19th century, Mardi Gras Indians are most commonly associated with internationally-known New Orleans celebrations like Fat Tuesday, but the tradition is said to have started as a way for the city’s African American community to express gratitude to Native Americans for giving shelter to black New Orleanians fleeing enslavement. Cha Wa’s music has deep roots in this Mardi Gras Indian community, with vocalist Joseph Boudreaux Jr. serving as Second Chief of the Golden Eagles tribe and his father, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, having played a pioneering role in bringing Mardi Gras Indian music onto the national stage for the first time as a member of The Wild Magnolias. In more recent years, Mardi Gras Indians have displayed their role as community leaders with front line responses to both Hurricane Katrina and the unlawful NOPD conduct that resulted in investigations by the Obama administration.

Cha Wa was formed by bandleader Joe Gelini shortly before the release of the group’s 2018 debut album Spyboy, which was recognized with a Best Regional Roots Album nomination at the GRAMMYs that year. A student of the legendary New Orleans drummer Idris Muhammad, Gelini was taken by Mardi Gras Indian culture and began to immerse himself in the community’s musical circles after moving to the area. Working with Boudreaux and many of the top musicians from New Orleans’ Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs and Second Line brass bands, Cha Wa quickly became a staple of its city’s street culture before bringing Mardi Gras Indian music to the GRAMMYs and around the world. My People represents the next step for Cha Wa in preserving and advancing these sacred New Orleans traditions.

CHA WA TRACKLIST

My People
Wildman
Bow Down
Morning Glory (Intro)
Morning Glory
Uptown
Firewater
Love In Your Heart
Second Line Girl
Masters Of War
Shallow Water

Tis the season for Christmas music— and this limited edition 7” vinyl record comes courtesy of The Pine Hill Haints. They’re on Christmas Colored Vinyl and limited to 250 copies. The packaging and liners are screen printed by the band at Black Owl Trading Company in Florence, Alabama! Once they’re gone, they’re gone!

A: The Ghost of Christmas Past
B: Curoo, Curoo, Christmas Day in the Morning

The Hurting Kind is the third solo release from 4-time GRAMMY winner John Paul White. This special deluxe edition LP was originally offered exclusively for Record Store Day 2019. It includes an additional 7” 45 RPM vinyl with tracks “Loving the Day Away” and “See If I Care.”

This item is limited—once it’s gone, it’s gone!

Leading up to the sessions for The Hurting Kind, White was inspired by artists like Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, Chet Atkins and Bill Porter. Drawing on these timeless influences, White sought out classic writers like Whisperin’ Bill Anderson and Bobby Braddock to collaborate with. “Coming out of each and every one of these situations, I got a resounding thumbs-up that I was on that right track,” says White of the collaborations. “I didn’t need anybody else’s approval after that.”

Please note - the additional Black Friday 20% off music discount does not apply to this item.

Track List:

1. The Good Old Days

2. Wish I Could Write You a Song

3. Heart Like a Kite

4. Yesterday’s Love

5. The Long Way Home

6. The Hurting Kind

7. This Isn’t Gonna End Well (Feat. Lee Ann Womack)

8. You Lost Me

9. James

10. My Dreams Have All Come True

    Deluxe 7”:

    Side A:

    1. Loving The Day Away

    Side B:

    1. See If I Care