Americana - Classic or Dud?

http://www.citypaper.com/blogs/noise/bcp-with-its-awards-show-the-americana-music-association-embraces-blues-gospel-and-rb-20140922,0,3909868.story

Geoff Himes article:

To accurately represent roots music, you have to include country rock, string bands, and folkie singer-songwriters, but you also have to widen your umbrella to cover blues, R&B, and gospel as well. Though the organizers and audiences are still overwhelmingly white, they are making a good-faith effort to include African-American artists in the hope that African-American audiences and music buzzers will begin to feel welcome.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2014/09/24/351141281/roots-plugged-in

Ann Powers' take. No mention by her of the lack of African American artists

African Americana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Enn0_EvFdms

the new Jake Xerxex Fussell album is so good, in fact all his albums are.

X post - just checked out that video with its lyrical reference to Americana!

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/americanafest-bristol-rhythm-roots-reunion-2022-re/

Geoff Himes asserts in this article:

And if it’s going to be an Americana song, it should be rooted in music older than your James Taylor and Roberta Flack records. I actually like Taylor and Flack, but they are not useful starting points for a musical tradition. Carlisle found his launching pad in the vein of the weird, wonderful blues and Celtic songs from the 1920s found on the Anthology of American Folk Music.

Eh, not sure of that.

Article covers many folks I don't know -- Willi Carlisle, Sunny War, Christina Vane, Queen Esther, Tiffany Williams, Bette Smith, John R Miller, Tami Neilson

dunno if we have an ongoing alt-country/country thread but thought this set was pretty good, especially that first song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn4q9j-ZCo0

xpost Willi Carlisle's Peculiar, Missouri was one of the best albums of 2022. top shelf stuff.

during the 77 rollout i thought, "it'd be nice to have more country/Americana/folk stuff on here ... perhaps i should try to rally those threads / votes in 2023" and then i realized that'd be a lot of work for, likely, very little gain. this - i'm talking specifically about non-mainstream country/Americana/folk, etc. - is a corner of the music world that has grown and gotten *much* more popular over the past few years as a wave of new artists build on the work of Isbell, Stapleton, Sturgill, Childers and others. i talked to Melissa Carper recently and she confirmed they can feel the surge in popularity on the artists' side, too.

some good things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh7guH2W688
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CJyipxyf6s

Oh jeez, Isbell and Drive-By Truckers and The Mountain Goats and Richard Thompson are among several Americana circuit regulars who have long had their own threads, visited fairly often, ditto Bonnie Raitt, members of the Roche family, The Wainwrights, others who set the example along time ago and still do good work. We've talked about Carper, Sierra Ferrell, Brennon Leigh, SG Goodman, Allison Russell, Rosali, Leyla McCalla, Amanda Shires on several Rolling Countrys. Also see threads for Dave Alvin, The Blasters, Giant Sand / Howe Gelb P0X
and Giant Sand / Howe Gelb P0X

Meant to end with TS: Lone Justice or Cruzados or Drivin' & Cryin' or Green On Red or Del Fuegos or Jason & The Scorchers or Long Ryders or Bodeans?

dow, are you responding to me? i was speaking specifically about this kind of music's representation on ILM's 77 Top Albums of 2022 poll. not general representation on ILM.

Sorry, but also just a general news thing, since these threads aren't nec. updated/visible all that often.

Reminds me, Iris Dement thread was recently updated w news of her forthcoming album (& now newsletter announcing at least one advance single).

https://americanamusic.org/americanafest/

The annual Americana fest in Nashville is always way too white. No southern soul (like on my Chitlin Circuit soul thread), no obscure Mississippi blues musicians like you can read about in Living Blues

So, uh, who is this Jesse Welles guy that is suddenly everywhere except, it seems, on ILX, where I only got one hit?

he's been growing steadily in popularity/profile over the past couple of years - a bit polarizing, it seems, but a good-sized chunk of the Isbell/Simpson fan base / authenticity police believes they've discovered the next guy who is writing "real" songs blah blah blah.

he was on Colbert the other night doing a song called "Join ICE" (which is anti-ICE) and when i saw the clip on social media, i thought, "Oh, he's about to rocket to a different level" ... lots of grey-haired lefties are going to love the guy, i'd guess.

oh cool shitty folk protest songs. just what everyone was asking for

It's weird, I think he's been around for a while but I'd never heard or even heard of him until a few months ago. I was scouring a Wilco forum over the summer, trying to figure out what time they were hitting the stage, and saw a picture of Tweedy with some dude I didn't recognize, and the caption was something like "my two heroes!" I was perplexed, since I'd never heard of him, then discovered he's been around for years, released several albums, and gets compared to Dylan. OK, I thought, and that still wasn't enough to listen to him. Then they started (had been?) playing songs of his on the radio here, and I thought, yeah, sounds a bit like Dylan (or Ryan Adams or whoever), and since then not a day seems to go buy without seeing his name somewhere. Still haven't listened, lol.

I don't know anything about this guy but "Join ICE" is a good song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61I4hlig78w

He's been a viral hit for a few years now. I think he's fine at what he does, I haven't listened to much but he gets off some good lines. He's kind of a like a liberal answer to Oliver Anthony — they share the shtick of doing live takes of their songs in rural outdoor settings — and as such I endorse his project even if it's not something I'm going to listen to on purpose.

I like "Join ICE" and in general wish more artists were engaged with the current political shitshow even if that means making John Prine knockoffs. This year's Margo Price album (very good) has a track that features him, too.

yeah, i don't feel strongly about this guy or this song but would love to know what Heez would rather hear/see instead.

it's a good question. i very much doubt it would come from Americana nowadays. i want something like Rage Against the Machine lol. this dude seems fine it just feels like he's trying to recreate some Dylan in the 60s thing that will not make it further than the grey-haired lefties mentioned above

Rage Against the Machine lol

Ironically, the first thing I think of when I think of RATM is Republican meatheads working out to it.

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/9ae/615/334ede6460683266f247f75c16d138c8bf-2----.rvertical.w330.jpg

Actually I think my answer is “not like us” so I’ll exit the Americana thread

Before I go, Imagine the next Super Bowl with Jessie Welles playing the halftime show and all these old grey hairs losing it in n the audience

will not make it further than the grey-haired lefties mentioned above

i guess if i was his manager i would care but i'm not, so fine with me? pretty short list of popular artists willing to sing about ICE, including Dylan who is still actively performing & recording last I heard. if Bob wants to continue releasing standards albums, i'm fine with some tiktok guy stepping up to sing about ICE, even if he's not exploring daring new frontiers of sonic experimentation. not that i'm like ride or die for this guy but he seems totally fine imo.

Yeah, I think that's a fair observation: if guy wants to sing about ICE or whatever, protest songs in the tradition of Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan, good for him, it's not like any/many others are doing it. Without knowing anything about this guy, really, he seems primed/aligned with Isbell/Simpson, sure, but also (why not) Zach Bryan, Noah Kahan, Tyler Childers, Billy Strings or a bunch of other crossover Americana acts whose fans afaict do not default grey haired hippies.

i'm not sure i'd care much even if i was his manager - if he can find the Isbell/Simpson audience i mentioned above, he'll do just fine. they're passionate/loyal and they have money.

xpost, obviously

i think Tyler Childers' and Billy Strings' audiences are mostly "lefties who will be gray in 10 years" as opposed to gray-haired hippies. not sure there's that much difference.

Bryan/Kahan is a different deal, obviously. hard to imagine this particular guy getting *that* big, but i guess you never know. i haven't heard any of his recordings, maybe he's got a little more major-crossover potential than i realize.

Billy Strings also has a massive following in the jamband world/broad network of Grateful Dead-related things

My parents love this guy to pieces, I think he’s been on Colbert a few times actually, that’s where they would have first encountered him I imagine. They even bought me one of his records a birthday present, which I havent opened yet though I did listen to him in the car when taking my dad to the doctor a few months ago and thought he was pretty clever, definitely seems to be hoeing a different row than Isbell or Childers, less of an all-around songwriter and more of a fairly cheeky folk poet

i dont care about strings in part because years and years ago an adjacent friend/relations group of jam/phish fans became obsessed with even the smell of his shit, o boy. he seems ok i guess

I don't know too much about Strings. Have the jam fans just adopted him, or has he actively courted them?

Not unlike the neo-folk VH-1 late 80s movement, I think there’s a wide appeal to something that balances out over-produced pop. The idea that it’s just for grey-hairs any more than Boygenius is seems off base.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFNC8HaUUsk

I don't know too much about Strings. Have the jam fans just adopted him, or has he actively courted them?

A bit of courting, he definitely plays jamband festivals, of which there seem to be a bottomless well of options. But he also has legit bluegrass roots and chops and there’s a lot of overlap between those scenes.

he deliberately courted grateful dead fans

but yes he is a legit phenom, an instant classic, has played with all the surviving greats

i love welles fwiw. though a little goes a long way

Tracer OTM re Billy Strings. Although he no longer plays Dead covers. Meet Me At The Creek is arguably his Dark Star

Funny the one dude I know who still puts Fox News clips on his FB is a Billy Strings fan, but yeah it comes via widespread panic and stuff like that

welles strikes me as more of a phil ochs than a dylan tbh

Yeah, and so far does no harm (agree w tipsy that new Margo album he's on is sounding pretty darn good these days). Maybe Nora Guthrie will give him some Woody lyrics and he can be the next Billy Bragg (don't know yet if he quite has BB's way with tunes, though).

Sorry, shoulda said Indexed, not Tipsy! (though I'm guessing you like it alright too, TM?)

Every generation gets the Wally Pleasant it deserves.

James Carville: Out With Woke. In With Rage.

well i know someone who gets it

Out with Woke Pop, In With Dream Pop

you get corn pop and like it

Haven't actually heard the new Margo Price, I should. I really liked her last one.

It's excellent. And I never really cared for her stuff before this one, which always felt a bit too manufactured authenticism/cosplay.

Zach Bryan, Noah Kahan, Tyler Childers, Billy Strings

i heard a song on the radio yesterday that turned out to be Tyler Childers, it was fucking abysmal

i think Billy Strings has a real talent but he's basically doing bluegrass Like They Used To, doesn't really have anything to do with the others as far as i can tell, who are just making a kind of horrible folk inflected pop music in a strained old man hat voice

was zach bryan the one that actually got the trump administration's attention with an anti-ICE song and then kinda backed down?

aw I like Tyler Childers. i don't really listen to his albums but I'd certainly check out a live show

lol yeah i realized after posting that this is the Americana thread, sorry

what's a good gillian welch album?

Time (The Revelator)

Childers is the most interesting artist of the bunch y'all are lumping together. He's rough around the edges, and his voice won't be for everyone, but he's a genuinely progressive songwriter and artist. Purgatory (produced by Sturgill Simpson) is one of the best country albums of the last 15 years, with great writing and range -- contrast traditional opener "I Swear (To God)" and the bluegrass romp "Purgatory" with the more contemporary, ricocheting "Universal Sound." And then just as his fanbase was getting huge, he put out a concept album composed solely of public domain tracks and a single original protest song called "Long Violent History" publicized by a long YouTube video talking straight to his white Kentuckians about institutional racism.

Billy Strings is the most talented player of all these. He is a gifted picker; check out his duet with Tommy Emmanuel "Doc's Guitar / Black Mountain Rag." But I've never cared for his songwriting. He has definitely wormed his way into the jamband community.

Zach Bryan is on another planet in terms of popularity from these folks. A prolific writer and performer with an incredible following of young people ~18-30. A lot of his writing is unrefined but charming, and there's a real authenticity to him. I appreciate that he's fought the ticketmaster machine and has put himself out there politically a few times.

Noah Kahan I cannot say I understand at all. Aside from a pleasant voice, I find his music to be incredibly thin, stomp-clap-indebted treacle, but "Stick Season" is one of the most popular songs of the last decade. He reminds me more of Jason Mraz or Jack Johnson acoustic guitar pop than these other Americana acts, which are all gifted in their own ways.

i love this primer ty

xxp

Time (The Revelator) was our #1 voted album in the ILM Women of Country Music a few years ago:

POLL Miner's Daughter - ILM Artists Poll #117 - Women of Country Music - Results Thread

Noah Kahan I cannot say I understand at all. Aside from a pleasant voice

it is interesting how we all hear different things. this guy's voice is pretty much my idea of hell

it's been discussed at length elsewhere, but guys who sing like weird babies in order to communicate "authenticity" just make the hair on the back of my neck stand up

I was trying to be generous. I like his voice when paired with Zach Bryan's on "Sarah's Place."

Xp me too budo does that apply to the four above? i’ve one album strings experience i know his style i guess

ah i guess that was at kahan on reread

Indexed otm.

Childers completely and totally rules ... one of those artists where I like his attitude/messaging/views/approach even more than I like his music, and I really like his music.

Purgatory is, indeed, an all-timer. New one's really good, too.

yeah i was talking about kahan, childers has a voice i also don't care for but it's not nearly as grating

billy and zach both excellent singers (and songwriters) imo but they're doing very different things

i listened to the first track on the new Childers record thinking maybe i was being ungenerous, it sounds like Blues Hammer? lol

I'm in a coffee shop that's playing a mix of mostly drum-less songs in this genre: Rhett Miller's new Come as You Are, Tyler Childers' Play Me A Hank Song, and now Turnpike Troubadours' Empty as a Drum, the latter with the repeating line "I'm too old to be this dumb." All new to me, all good.

I think Noah Kahan sings like a muppet, and takes up the Dave Matthews mantle. But the four dudes I listed, I picked them not because they sound alike but because they all have (afaict) a lot of fan overlap, and I could totally see them on stage with one another. Heck, I could see any of them on stage with Dave Matthews.

Anyway, Kahan I can't stand, but that dude is huge. Bryan I've liked what I've heard, but I haven't listened to him on purpose yet, and have sort of kept him at arm's length, at least until I can suss out his politics. Childers, I like what I've heard. I saw Strings live once and he was good but have never listened to him on purpose. He seems like a good sport.

Oh, and by fan overlap I also mean lots of different age groups, too.

Dag, Childers is playing Wrigley Field here next summer, guess I had no idea he was *that* big. Wednesday is an opener.

in 9th grade my beatnik dean of students taught a class and made us read bhagavad gita. i did not expect a ref to it in an americana album

he wasn't like, still a beatnik by 1981 tho. much.

I consider the Chitlin circuit southern soul music that has it own thread here on ilx, and zydeco that also has its own thread as also types of Americana even if they don't have the marketing of the roots countryish folks.

I always conflated those, just because Rounder Records was releasing all of those genres.

it's a continuum for sure. one of the reasons i like Nick Spitzer's show American Routes so much is how he's able to do justice to local contexts while still highlighting how it all fits together at a larger level

There are like galaxies and galaxies of mediocre Americana bands right now it seems like

And unfortunately there is an Americana Association that has a yearly fest in Nashville which just emphasizes white roots alt-country groups with only token acknowledgment of blues, New Orleans sounds, Mississippi blues, southern soul, zydeco, Cajun

yeah i loves the country soul/honky tonk rapidfire back and forth charlie crockett did in the teens, he blew up way more than i thought he would. I saw him i think before covid and he really was quite fun.

I know I'm late, but Tyler Childers isn't Americana to me, whatever it is.

He seems like a throwback Country artist to me, but not as radio friendly as the Neo-Traditionalists.

This one's practically power pop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi7ZSIrF6wI

Haven't caught that many of the words on his latest set, but musically it goes w my impression that, when he's going with what he really knows how to do, he's effectively reconfiguring seemingly familiar elements, and making them shine anew, or afresh---like proto-Americana of the Basement Tapes and John Wesley Harding persuasions---this was my gateway, in 2019:

T
op Ten Country Albums
I had the blurry, ancient impression of Tyler Childers as sounding like an (alternate-universe) Sturgis Mini-Me, humble and homespun in the way SS never was, not on this side of the line---unless you count the way he gave up on them voices in his head, at least the ones that"ain't got nothin' to say," but he soon lit out for the territory. On Country Squire, Childers is never that resigned, or that bold, just insecure, without whinin'---full-throated even when high lonesome---and he seizes on the good times like he does the bad, knowing it could all blow up, will turn again---oh well, "Honey don't cry, you're married to a Gemini"---and even the fella who "guards the rusty missiles" tonight like he does every night, daydreaming of rustic weekend adventures, sounds like he's 'bout to fiddle-waltz over the mountain, even though he must be down below the holler, also way out West of it, unless there's something our Government never told us.
Keep trying to keep up with the words, and catching more bits every time I listen---he's playing down at the bar every night, "turnin' songs into 2 by 4s": first I thought he meant he was making them very functional, down to the essentials, but come to think of it a 2-by-4 is a humble thang: is this bar gig reductive? But he's always resourceful, and diligent: The Country Squire is an ancient camper, the basis of "a temple" for his loved one---putting up "rafters" in a camper?? I know about making trailers into ex-mobile homes, building all around those tin walls, but---anyway the music is very solid and mobile, with enough variety and continuity to pull me along, in a plausible, not-quite-"universal" way, like the words "House on Fire" has an organ burning through, around and with string band instrumentation, "All Your'n" is the most Sturgill-esque in terms of early 70s R&B crossover appeal, yet country as its title, and overall there's a good balance of acoustic and electric, incl. choice and placement of microphones.
9 songs, 35 minutes, and I've listened four times in the last couple of days--could prob listen that many times a row.

Also: doin' time on Planet Earth, and "bored enough to fuck with it," in xgau's immortal phrase--he may have been talking about punk, but can apply to other aspects of folk process--

Grayson on Welles:

"I Protest His Protest Song, or Why Jesse Welles Is Bad—And Bad for Us"

https://currincy.substack.com/p/i-protest-his-protest-song-or-why

But I have now seen so many folks call Welles the new Dylan or Prine or, god help us, Cohen

Sounds like the writer's hanging around the wrong places

Or, god help him, listening to Welles. That piece sure doesn't make it feel like I am missing anything, especially coming from Grayson (who I like), king of boldly going to bat for stuff I've avoided or maligned (Dave Matthews, Phish, Geese) as if I *was* missing something.

i don’t know who this asshole is but i have to say from what i’ve read it perplexes me that anybody « likes » him

quite apart from feelings on Welles which … totally fair if he’s not your cup of tea (not mine either)

i mean, look at this asshole. and he goes around calling himself "Grayson Haver Currin"? lmao

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/10/multimedia/10cul-basinski-cpqt/10cul-basinski-cpqt-square320.jpg

sorry, i'm not sure why i care. Welles makes the kind of videos that my bernie mom would send me an email about, i think it's fine that people get some kind of jolt from his songs and that he isn't presenting solutions to our political moment or whatever it is that this guy wants

A lot of this feels even more cosplay-ish than being in a rock band in 2025. An old friend of mine who was involved in a lot of garage rock pivoted a few years to performing old country songs and wearing silly cowboy shirts and stuff and… well it just seemed like a weird thing to lean into in 2020…

wearing silly cowboy shirts and stuff and… well it just seemed like a weird thing to lean into in 2020

well yeah he was 11 years late

you just know a sizeable amount of 'em are miffed they can't drape themselves in confederate flags anymore

x-post that photo is of musician William Basinski from an article by Grayson Haver Currin. But yeah, Currin makes these broad proclamations - Geese is America's best young rock band etc.

I really want the hat basinski is wearing in this photo

https://www.self-titledmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/000086730008a.jpg

He can make proclamations, that's fine by me. It's part of the music writing gig! Who amongst us has not? I don't agree with him that there's anything bad morally/politically about Welles, it sounds like the equivalent of people snarking about No Kings rallies. I do agree with him that Welles' shtick wears thin in my experience, and he's not really much of a tunesmith. But so I don't listen to him! I don't mind that other people do. I think he's sincere, he's kind of figuring out what he thinks, he's not a political sophisticate. That's OK. Maybe that's what a left Joe Rogan actually looks like.

that photo is of musician William Basinski

never seen him with a mustache, he looks cool as hell in every photo i've even seen of him but i stand by my assertion that he looks like a fucking douche in that pic, apologies to Grayson tho

He makes targets of them all without so much as suggesting a solution or, more importantly, writing about a future where such solutions may even exist

Sorry I must have missed the songs John Prine and Bob Dylan wrote that laid out a blueprint for escaping consumer capitalism

That's what jumped out at me. Dylan in particular, he's hardly an activist (in song), let alone heavy on specifics. Protest and activism are different things, and I'm not sure how many acts truly espouse the latter in their music. Drive-By Truckers added a line about unaffordable health insurance to the recent "Colbert" version of "Hell No I Ain't Happy," that's more than many do.

I think Grayson is pretty smart and generally a pretty good writer; his recent Eno profile for GQ was great. Maybe he modulates based on outlet? That newsletter, I guess he only recently just started it, so perhaps that is his less professional voice. I think as Grayson has gravitated to high-profile profiles he's gotten less critical and more prone to positive proclamations, so this hit piece was a little surprising. Regardless, he's thought about and listened to Welles more than I have or will, so I'll give his conclusions the benefit of the doubt, especially when he's writing about a guy as apparently cagey about his beliefs as Welles.

I'm mad that Punk Rock didn't offer concrete solutions to the No Future problem.

You could argue they were otm.

It's fine if Welles isn't writing songs that anyone will want to listen to 10 years from now. It's okay to sing the news. Not all music has to do the same thing

Dag, Childers is playing Wrigley Field here next summer, guess I had no idea he was *that* big. Wednesday is an opener.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, December 2, 2025 10:31 AM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Amazing considering he was at SPACE just a few years ago. His rise has been meteoric.

To be fair, that SPACE show was early 2018.

He played to 1,000 in my town in 2019, bumped up to theaters pre-pandemic, came out of the pandemic playing amphitheaters and larger (5-10K) and played a couple of small stadiums this last summer.

I think a lot of people don't understand how big he is.

I like to imagine him doing curls right before each set

Childers or Welles?

Childers openers are Wednesday and...Jon Batiste? Huh?

Welp, looks like my Folk Alley ballot fits better here than on Rolling Country (polls still open 'til 12/12, noon Eastern):

1. Brandi Carlile: Returning to Myself
2. Eliza Gilkyson: Dark Ages
3. Jason Isbell: Foxes in the Snow
4. Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellart: Volume 4
5. Margo Price: Hard-Headed Woman
6. Mavis Staples: Sad and Beautiful World
7. Patty Griffin: Crown of Roses
8. Tyler Childers: Snipe Hunter
9. Various Artists: It's All Her Fault: A Tribute To Cindy Walker
10. Willie Nelson: Workin' Man: Willie Sings Merle

My No Dep Top Ten will prob be a little different because the ballot's a little different (voting ends Dec. 17), and I'll prob do a composite with still more variations---my own Country & Related, for RC 2026. Nominations for Most Pathetic?

Related to protest music, I got around to Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover's What of Our Nature from earlier this year, which overtly uses Woody Guthrie as a prompt for new songs and does it well.

that Cindy Walker tribute is really terrific ... good call.

I finally heard a Jesse Welles song, called "Wheel," and it was pretty bad. Basically akin to what I have heard from Noah Kahan, milquetoast folk/whatever.

xpost Yeah, and for one thing, it was a good balance of singers new to me---Summer Dean, Kimmie Bitter, Jolie Holland, Ginny Mac, Mazzy Dee, Gail Davies--and (mostly) my favored knowns: Kelly Willis, Katie Shore, Amythyst Kiah, Brennen Leigh, Rosie Flores, Melissa Carper, Mandy Barnett---did not know, 'til I heard Barnett rocking it, that Walker wrote "Dream Baby. Hats off to Grey Delisle for putting it together (she duets well w Leigh too):
https://greydelisle.bandcamp.com/album/its-all-her-fault-a-tribute-to-cindy-walker?search_item_id%3D288252752%26search_item_type%3Da%26search_match_part%3D%253F%26search_page_id%3D4958483242%26search_page_no%3D0%26search_rank%3D1
Willie Nelson did a good tribute too: You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lLOj5TR_MCMUfxYItqVg98t5s9IsibhmI

love Summer Dean so much. she’s a great songwriter herself. “You’re In His Arms and I’m in the Palm of His Hand” one of the alltime great country titles

Still mean to check her EP; she didn't release an alb in 2025.
Here's my No Dep ballot:

Folk Bitch Trio: Now Would Be A Good Time
James McMurtry: The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy
Jesse Sykes And The Sweet Hereafter: Forever, I’ve Been Being Born
Joe Ely: Love and Freedom
Joshua Ray Walker: Stuff
Los Originarios del Plan: ¡Puritito Michoacán!
Michael Hurley: Broken Homes and Gardens
Peter Stampfel: Song Shards
Tommy Talton: Seven Levels
Tony Joe White: The Real Thang

Some comments, maybe more later:

Folk Bitch Trio's alb def rec to those jonesing for the Roches, esp their debut, with the seemingly sibling harmonies (unrelated, in this case), words also flying in via oblique strokes, sometimes, but clear enough as they land, also spare production, w some variety, always effective.

McMurtry's set is playful and ugly, esp guitar and words, nostalgic monster aholes on trampolines etc., c'mon along!

Jesse's album---from Dave Alvin C or D, because she's also in Third Mind w Dave:
O man, this year's Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter album def has Third Mind appeal, w all original songs, sticking to me like birds on a wire, and, within overall stylization, I can tell 'em all apart on first listen---not a usual thing with this kind of cosmic balladeering. Guitar is more accompaniment than Third Mind, though always just the right turn of a note, slightly extended phrase, and can also step right out, like on title track and finale--so rec to those who would lhave liked more guitar activity, however discreet, on Double Infinity--also a bit like VU ballads:
https://jessesykesandthesweethereafter.bandcamp.com/album/forever-ive-been-being-born

Joe Ely, from Flatlanders thread:
New one, from stash of tracks recorded over quite a few years, is refreshingly sung and played, with Lloyd Maines doing some more polishing, and Ely provides continuity, as writer, interpreter of well-chosen covers, and compiler of well-sequenced tracks. He does a Guy Clark show-stopper that Clark never released, also "Deportee," "Waitin' Around To Die," and "For The Sake of the Song," another TVZ, which goes with several (sometimes Dylan-y) originals re pushing and twisting verbosity into agreeably melodic word-balloons, though as w some previous Joe of recent decades, I had to listen a couple times to get into some of those. Hope there's more.

Los Originarios del Plan: ¡Puritito Michoacán! The guys are entertainingly bad singers, though eventually some good female voices show up, and the music is always robust, expanding my sonic vocabulary in unexpected ways (I knew I was ignorant of most Mexican music, but didn't really know, of course). Michoácan an association fondly recalled from weed yore.

RIP Tommy Talton was, with Scott Boyer, co-founder of the somewhut misleadingly named Cowboy, whom I've posted about on the Southern Rock thread---here, with early cohorts like Randall Branblett and Chuck Leavell, he delivers a swan song with characteristic discipline and warmth.

Re Tony Joe. from an email response tp Chuck E.:
Your "sounds like his understanding of rap music ends around 1980, which I always appreciate,"
goes with Tony Joe's early 80s (maybe 80?)-as-hail "Swamp Rap," which kicks off a sled team of uptempo country hybrids, also "Even Trolls like Rock 'N' Roll," and a version, maybe the hit one, of "Polk Salad Annie." but it seems faster than the hit, mebbe cos of context----all this following a first half of mellow yet candid candle post-Outlaw songs---"Pour me another memory, before this one is gone," also taking women " too lightly...one day you go to the Bank of Texas and you're overdrawn." Until he seems to experience ego-death in an ambient fried-egg sunset(of cumulative memories) ----but then: "Swamp Rap." "I Get Off On It.": and other new adventures. That's The Real Thang, which finally came out this year. PS: Since I brought up this Tony Joe Thang, should add that the post-Outlaw first half usually gratifies the appetite for apt detail as "Swamp Rap" and subsequent tracks.

Summer Dean didn't release an album, but she did put out a (predictably great) cover of Terri Gibbs' "Somebody's Knockin'."

Lots of great picks on that ND ballot; the consensus list placement for what I thought was a pretty dreadful Ringo Starr album had me arching an eyebrow...

Loved the McMurtry