Josh T. Pearson -- Daytrotter Session

Loyal followers of this blog (haha. thanks dr. nick, I think it might be just you and me here...) May have noticed there was no Mediafire link in my post about his sublime Last of the Country Gentlemen. Well, check below. It's here as a bonus to this post on his Daytrotter session. I still recommend you buy it though as it is worth every penny. Anyway, Daytrotter posted a session he recorded during SXSW yesterday that serves as a nice introduction to what we should expect from the live performances from Pearson that are likely to hit the US this summer. He's in NYC in June and I wouldn't miss this show for anything. I have to say this session lacks the haunting elegance of the studio recordings what with the absence of Warren Ellis and the pitch perfect production. The passion from the album persists though and the sped up "Sorry with a Song" seems even more arresting and tragic than the studio track. All in all, a pretty great session though. The "Rivers of Babylon" cover is a welcome addition to the LotCG tracks and actually sounds more like that album then a lot of the other tracks that actually were on the record. I can't wait to see the whole set in June.

Daytrotter Session

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Josh T. Pearson -- Last of the Country Gentlemen

Pearson hasn't put out a record since 2001's The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads with his group Lift to Experience. That record was released to a lot of acclaim and even impressed John Peel so much that he had them record 3 sessions in 5 months. Pearson couldn't handle the success and felt music should be a more personal endeavor. He threw in the towel only to resurface every 3 or 4 years to play a few shows to extremely grateful audiences. A few of those shows came in 2009 as the opening act on a tour of Ireland with The Dirty 3. In fact, Warren Ellis helps out on a few tracks off ...Country Gentlemen. That's a lot of beard for one record. It was on that Dirty 3 tour that Pearson encountered two Irish toughs who who greeted him with tears in their eyes thanking him for sharing so much of himself. The songs were dark, angry confessions about suffering with and without love. After meeting these two toughs he began to feel he was being selfish keeping his music to himself and decided to record the music that could so deeply affect these guys. He and Ellis and a few others got together in a studio in Berlin to record those songs over the course of just two nights. The Last of the Country Gentlemen is the product of ten years of heartache, betrayal, and alcohol. Get ready for tough listen. Stand out tracks? This album is best consumed whole. Choke it down if you can.

Try...can't find a mediafire link. You're gonna have to buy it like I did (or stream it here). Believe me, it's worth every cent.

Buy.

Check out two of the best beards in music here: