I was a little bit surprised about Dylan not getting a nom, but at the same time not surprised he got pushed out by Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers, even though neither of those are actually Americana records. It's a sad state of affairs, indeed. But I'm all for John Fullbright's nomination.
For what it's worth, here's the Americana/Alt Country records I really dug from last year...
Quote:
Andrew Combs - Worried Man
Ben Kweller - Go Fly A Kite (Grammy nom for best packaging)
Bill Fay - Life Is People
Dylan - Tempest
Dwight Yoakam - 3 Pears
Iris DeMent - Sing the Delta (Incredible songs.)
J.D. McPherson - Signs & Signifiers
Jamey Johnson - Living For a Song (More standard country, but standard country is alternative country these days)
John Fullbright - From the Ground Up (Contender for my favorite record of last year)
Justin Townes Earle - Nothings' Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now
Kasey Chambers + Shane Nicholson - Wreck & Ruin
Marty Stuart - Nashville Vol 1 (Again, more traditional)
Punch Brothers - Ahoy! (Bluegrass, but gets lumped into alt country)
Ry Cooder - Election Special (Another of my favorites of last year, even better than his last record, Pull Up Some Dust & Sit Down)
Sara Watkins - Sun Midnight Sun (kind of poppy/polished)
Shovels & Rope - O' Be Joyful (my favorite band, really taking off these days, incredible record, not to be missed live)
Todd Snider - Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables
Turnpike Troubadours - Goodbye Normal Street
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Also, I've been listening to Terry Reid's Seed of Memory a whole lot lately... Terry was Jimmy Page's first choice for a singer for the New Yardbirds (who would become Led Zeppelin), but he was signed to a production deal so Jimmy ended up going to Robert Plant. The production deal ended up killing Terry's career, & eventually he moved to the U.S. & recorded this comeback record with Graham Nash in '76. It starts out & it sounds exactly like a modern Gillian Welch/Dave Rawlings record (and kind of like Harvest, too). A real early alt country forgotten gem.