Today, for your listening and viewing pleasure, we offer the following the trailer for a documentary called “Out of the Ground,” which explores “how Pittsburgh and its neighboring regions in western Pennsylvania have been profoundly shaped by coal mining for over 100 years.” Pay close attention to the music that accompanies the narrative:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkB0ux5dfvA[/youtube]

That’s our friend and client Ken Bonfield, playing a track called “Requiem” from his digital-only EP, Harbortown.

“Out of the Ground” looks like a very interesting project, as it appears to document one of the pivot points from America’s agrarian past to its industrial future, a shift in which coal was one of the dominant forces. Congratulations to Ken for getting his tunes placed in such a worthy project.

Over the weekend of August 1, Ann and I were privileged to accompany our friend and client Dana Cooper as he opened two shows for his old friend Lyle Lovett in Kansas City and St. Louis Missouri. During both of his shows, Lyle brought Dana back out on the stage to join him a duet of Dana’s song Needless to Say (from Dana’s 1992 CD Stone by Stone).

Click the photo below to open a window with a slide show compilation of photos from both nights; Click the “play” button in the lower right of to start the slide show and play Dana’s recording of Needless to Say.

Dana Cooper joins Lyle Lovett for "Needless to Say" - Kansas City, Aug 1, 2010

Click the photo above to open the slide show window; click the player button in the lower right corner to start the slide show and music (Needless to Say, from Dana Cooper’s 1992 CD “Stone by Stone.”

Dana Cooper appeared on the Music City Roots program, “Live from the Loveless Cafe” on the outskirts of Nashville on Wednesday, May 12. Click the image to launch the slide show; click the play button (arrow, lower right) in the slide show to start the show accompanied by “Leave A Little Mark” (from The Conjurer) recorded live during the show:

Dana Cooper LIVE on Music City Roots

…when the music is really good….

Last week, Rosanne Drucker finished setting up her website using the “SiteBuilder” feature of ReverbNation (which is a plugin-partnership with Bandzoogle).  From the site, Rosanne offers streaming audio and downloads of her new “Virtual EP” Doin’ Hard Time.

That was like Thursday.  Today (Monday), she’s got her first review of the “virtual release,” in a glowing blog-post by Nelson Gullett, who works as a DJ at WDVX , a listener supported Americana radio station in Knoxville, TN and reports on his musical encounters with his “Fifty Cent Lighter & A Whiskey Buzz” blog.  After describing his serendipitous encounter with Rosanne at a club (“…In Nashville… what are the odds?…”), Nelson writes:

The EP contains seven original tracks co-produced by Rosanne and Mike Loudermilk (John D. Loudermilk’s son), and blends several Americana styles to mostly paint pictures of heartbreak and love gone sour. Three of the four songs on the sampler Rosanne gave me dealt with such topics. The title track makes solid use of Bailey and Ickes to tell a heavily bluegrass flavored tale of a heart trapped behind bars, and “This is Sunday” is a piano ballad that counts the days until a lost lover’s return (he’s not coming). Even the optimistically titled and musically upbeat rockabilly bluegrass tune (featuring Rocker) “Mr. Dream Come True” is about a race horse and not an actual Mr. Right. I’m guessing by the “Aww shoot” thrown in at the end of each chorus that the horse doesn’t even finish in the money.

There’s some validation in this review for Rosanne, who has been working on this project for many months and is suddenly getting positive feedback just as it begins to see the light of day.

This review puts Rosanne in some pretty good company.  Elsewhere on the page… Ellis Paul, Anne McCue, and somebody named Emmylou-somebody.

We all gotta start somewhere…