Bill Kirchen - Seeds and stems

American singer/guitarist Bill Kirchen has a career that has spanned 45 years so far, beginning with his time in the band Captain Cody and his lost planet airmen in the late 60's. With this new album he's taken songs from this long career and given them a new lease of life - not by just re-releasing them, but by re-imagining them.

Brief comments on a couple of tracks..

The album kicks off with 'Too much fun', a nice fast paced song that appropriately has a nice fun feel to it It's a great start to the album.

'Hot rod Lincoln' is a song that really stands out. The main part of the song is great (as is the rest of the album), but then there's a section of the song where he not only name-checks a whole list of musicians or bands, but in the space of a few seconds for each plays a brief bit of music that you can instantly recognise as being the artist he's just named. He covers a huge range of artists from The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Cream, BB King, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Ben E King, Deep Purple, Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop and many many more. It's amazing how just a few seconds of music can be so recognisable and even if he didn't name the artists then people would certainly recognise many of them just from those few seconds of music.

It's a great album - rockabilly, rock, Americana, call it what you will, but there's great music and there are also lyrics that tell stories, and often include humour too.

'Seeds and stems' will be released on 21st June 2013 via Proper records.

Track listing:

1. Too much fun
2. Tell me the reason
3. Down to seeds and stems again
4. Semi-Truck
5. Rockabilly funeral
6. Womb to the tomb
7. Flip flop
8. Swing fever
9. It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry
10. Truck stop at the end of the world
11. Mama hates diesels
12. Hot rod Lincoln
13. Talkin' about chicken