Two Cow Garage frontman Micah Schnabel has quietly self-released a solo album entitled When The Stage Lights Go Dim. The plan is for Suburban Home to release it later this year (or early next) with new artwork, but currently it is only available by emailing Micah’s father.

I’ve always felt like Two Cow is akin to Lucero five years ago, busting their ass on the road and building a rabid following one show at a time. Where Ben (Lucero) writes about the one that got away, Micah likes to write about the misery that the life of building the aforementioned following can produce. Personally, I am constantly surprised at how good Micah is at writing about the struggles of life on the road without ever coming off as whining. Rather, he does it with an eloquence and flair many songwriters can only aspire to.

When The Stage Lights Dim features another 10 tracks of tales from the road and of life in small town Ohio. Musically, the songs are stripped down affairs dominated by Micah and an acoustic guitar, with the occasional piano or backing vocal chiming in. It also features some of the finest songs Micah has ever written in “American Static” and “Cut Me, Mick”. Which brings me to my only complaint (whine?) about the album. I wish so badly some of the tracks like “God and Money” and “Throwing Rocks At The Sun” could have gotten the full Two Cow treatment, but I suppose there’s still hope. I first heard “Swingset Assassin” on a cd-r Micah and his father did together a few years ago.

This album is perfect for winding down in the middle of the night with a whiskey while you wait for the amplifier ring to subside a little. While it might not be a very easy cd to get right now, it’s easy to put it on the Essential Listening list, and I suggest you put the effort into acquiring it.

Micah Schnabel – American Static
Micah Schnabel – Cut Me Mic
Micah Schnabel – Throwing Rocks At The Sun

Two Cow Garage’s Official Site, Two Cow Garage on myspace

A Passing Thought: As time goes by and new music comes from Micah, it’s obvious he’s becoming one of the best pure songwriters in this genre. Can you imagine how good the next Two Cow album is gonna be?

Two Cow Garage – “American Static” from TCSG on Vimeo.

If you can watch the video above and not be blown away then I’m pretty sure we can’t be friends.

It’s a new track from Two Cow Garage being sung by frontman, Micah Schnabel and shot by thunderclapsupergenius. I’m not quite sure who thunderclapsupergenius actaully is but they’ve been pumping out some stellar videos as of late. They should send this one to Fuse as is.

I haven’t been a fan of Two Cow Garage for that long, which is a travesty, but they have taken a rightful place among most played artists. I went a different route with this intro as, much like Cory, I was working with a limited selection of releases only this time I had but a single bootleg recording with which to supplement. So instead of walking through the Columbus, OH rockers’ career in chronological order I decided to slap down one tape of my favorites from all of their albums and give you the only concert I have in full and un-cut. While seemingly limited two tapes is more than enough to show anyone who’s tastes cross mine that Two Cow Garage is an awesome band. I advise listening to these tapes while point you browser at Suburban Home Records and buy their three albums as quickly as you can.

• Tracks 01, 08, and 11 are from Speaking In Cursive
• Tracks 02, 03, 05, 12, and 15 are from III
• Tracks 04, 07, 09, and 13 are from The Wall Against Our Back
• Tracks 06, 10, ad=and 14 are from Please Turn The Gas Back On

Track Archive Here

This is a show I found linked on the Drag The River message board. It was formerly hosted on cotapers.org but isn’t in their database anymore. Thankfully there were two seeders for the torrent and it took about eight hours. I’ll probably never know who the seeders were but I owe them a debt of thanks. Also thanks to the original taper: James Freeman for making this available for us. I did convert the FLACs to MP3 for this tape but it’s always nice having FLACs of concerts laying around. And there you have it….

Track Archive Here

Well folks that’s all for this intro. I have one more in the alt-country vein then I am going to bring in some Texas/Red Dirt music to fill out the intros series. I may have two or three more months of weekly intros in me. If you have heard me mention a band and would like to request an intro please feel free to drop me a line on twitter and I’ll see about taking care of it for ya’.

So, Paste Magazine finally finished the internet’s equivalent of “spanging” and came back into the office in time to discover what the rest of us figured out last year…that the latest Two Cow Garage album is awesome.

Congratulation’s Paste. Next month perhaps you can tell us about that awesome new band, Drag The River.

All snark aside though…It’s nice to see a “major” press outlet giving Micah, Shane and Co. some props. Two Cow is easily one of the most underrated bands touring right now and any press is good press.

Two Cow is also currently on the road on a tour that not only shuns Tampa but doesn’t even come near us on a weekend. This breaks my heart.

Anyhow, tour dates are here and if your as late to the party as Paste you too can experience the awesome via the Suburban Home album stream below.

(Give track #10, Swingset Assassin, and tell me you don’t like it…I dare ya.)

We’re gonna take a break from classic country week for a moment the talk about some serious awesomeness that is gonna go off tonight:

Drag the River and Two muthafucking Cow Garage @ New World Brewery.

I can tell you right now that there is nothing better than this show going on this weekend. Two Cow bring the rock harder than dick on Viagra, while Drag sings the kind of songs that’ll make a baptist order a drink in public.

Come out. Have fun.

If you’re torn between this show and the St. Pete show, you had better do this one. THERE WILL BE LIMITED AVAILABILITY OF TICKETS IN ST. PETE.

Two Cow Garage – Bastards & Bridesmaids
Two Cow Garage – Alphabet City
Two Cow Garage – No Shame
Two Cow Garage – Swingset Assassin

Drag The River – Br00tal
Drag The River – Medicine
Drag The River – Tired & Fired
Drag The River – The Cause & The Cure

You have no idea how excited I am to finally be able to tell y’all about this album. Much like the O’Death cd, my expectations were through the roof for this album.  However, after the whopper they dropped on us with III I wasn’t even bothering with trying to quell my expectations. Once again, just like the new O’Death, my expectations weren’t just met, they were also met, exceeded, lapped and then chastised for being insultingly low. The amount of ground that this band has covered from The Wall Against Our Back to III to Speaking In Cursive is more than many bands cover in their entire career. The maturity level of their musicianship and Micah’s songwriting is night and day over that 3 album span. There really is no unbiased way for me to talk about this album, I just love it too damned much. I mean, it’s not just Essential Listening, it’s album of the year candidate.

So, there. Now that the gushing is over let’s talk about the disc, but first I wanna disclose that, yes, in two weeks Two Cow is playing my wife’s birthday, but that has no bearing on what I said above. I value ninebullets.net and y’all reading the site way too much to play it like that. If I hadn’t liked the album I just wouldn’t have talked about it at all.

One of the first things about this album that caught my attention was the name. Speaking In Cursive. It’s curious at first and brilliant in context. The title comes from the track, “Bastards and Bridesmaids” and when I heard it in the song I thought, “Fuck! I know that girl! She hangs out at the bar.” and much like Micah (I’d imagine), I avoid her. Another highpoint on the album is “Swingset Assassin”, a song I heard for the first time a few years ago when Two Cow played Tampa. It was first released on a cd-r that Micah and his father released and I was hoping one day it would make it’s way onto a Two Cow disc. Well, it did and it’s great. One of my other favorite tracks on the disc, “Skinny Legged Girl”, is a ridiculously humorous romp through a handful of letters Micah may (or may not) have written to a girl back home that he’s into, who may (or may not) have refuted his affection.

The lack of time between III and Speaking In Cursive suggests that the verse on “No Shame” where he sings of “600 pages of regrets and hundreds of songs I haven’t finished yet” is more reality than hyperbole, and the maturity they are starting to show would suggest that rather than being the “bastard child of Lucero and The Drive-By Truckers”, they are truly becoming a band on par with those guys. I think so. Maybe you will, too. Check out the samples below and the album and lemme know what you think.

Two Cow Garage – Bastards and Bridesmaids
Two Cow Garage – Swingset Assassin
Two Cow Garage – Skinny Legged Girl

Two Cow Garage – No Shame (from III)

Two Cow Garage’s Official Site, Two Cow Garage on myspace, Buy Speaking In Cursive

Unless his name is Ted Nugent, a man can not be all rock all the time. While Kyle Gass and Jack Black try to put forth the notion that they live a 100% rock lifestyle, I have it on good authority that once a month they sneak out and perform at a local coffee house’s open mic. Decidedly unmetal; and while “High Fidelity” rocked to the max, Jack’s scenes in “True Romance” were left lying on the cutting room floor…and Ozzy has the freaking shakes…all proof that Ted Nugent is the only man on Earth that rocks 100% of the time.

While on stage with his band Two Cow Garage, Micah rocks like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. He’s not to be fucked with. When he is recording with his pops, however, he more like the Jackson in “Black Snake Moan”, and these two have released their second disc, Prism Halo on a Quarter Moon. Like last time, the disc is pretty low-fi and raw, but this time around the track listing is much stronger. Also like last time, this isn’t exactly an easy cd to get…should you be interested I advise sending John a message via their myspace profile. Check out the tracks below:

John & Micah Schnabel – North End Tavern Song
John & Micah Schnabel – My Blue Heart
John & Micah Schnabel – Bring Back The Cadillac

Two days in a row talking about Suburban Home releases. Why? Cause they’re awesome.

One of my very favorite bands is Two Cow Garage. They are the kind of band that makes rock and roll music great, and very well might be some of the nicest fellas you will ever meet. On the heels of Suburban picking up Two Cow, they’ve reissued Please Turn the Gas Back On. Originally self-released by Two Cow back in 2003, Suburban is giving it a proper release, complete with remastering and six bonus tracks.

If you have ever wondered what the bastard child of Lucero and Drive-by Trucker’s would sound like, I present to you with Two Cow Garage. Earlier this year they released, Three, an album that is easily one of the Top 5 albums of this year. If you do not own it, you need to. Now you can hear where all of that awesomeness got it’s start. All thanks to Suburban Home Records, a label that, much like Two Cow, deserves your support. They work hard to bring the fans of the country/punk/rock sound great music at fair prices. Check out their catalog and take advantage of their super awesome sales.

Two Cow Garage – Been So Long
Two Cow Garage – Farmtown
Two Cow Garage – Swallow Your Pride

Two Cow Garage’s Official Site, Two Cow Garage on myspace, Buy Please Turn the Gas Back On

Well. Here we are. July. The official beginning of the ass end of the year. So far, this year has proven to be a rather phenomenal concert year for the normally lacking Central Florida region. I was reading an exchange between a bunch of “big-time” bloggers earlier this year about how cheesy all of the “best of” lists that come out at the end of the year are, and it got me to thinking. Shit, I can out-cheese a year-end list…with…wait for it (sorry Bonnell), THE MID-YEAR LIST!

WTF? Why not. I already keep the Essential Listening list. I can spend a day telling you what may favorite 5 so far are. Maybe you’ll buy one, and you should…downloading all the time is like fucking whores. Sure, in the end you got off, but wouldn’t it be nice to get a pretty package every once in a while?

These are selected from my Essential Listening list. It is basically the best albums I have come to hear this year. They may have been released earlier but I did not hear them until 2007 and the same rules apply here. Furthermore, these are not in any order, and isn’t a be-all end-all list. This list could change depending on the day and my mood. All the albums in the Esslist list get regular play. However, some get more than others, and trying to trim those down to a mere 5 has left a few out that may have been on it if I was typing this yesterday….or tomorrow. Without further ado:

My favorites of the first half of 2007:

JJ Grey and Mofro – Country Ghetto.

This is one if those albums. Honestly, I didn’t even put it on the Esslist when I originally posted about it, but I never stopped listening to it. Ever. Then my brother started listening to it in the cubicle next to me at work and it just kept occupying more and more of my music time. So finally, with no fanfare, I quietly added it to the Essential Listening list. Country Ghetto is so much better of an album than I initially gave it credit for. Of everything on this list, this will probably be the album I still listen to 5 years from now. It really is timeless like that.

JJ Grey and Mofro – Circles

The Fox Hunt – Nowhere Bound

Unlike the JJ Grey album, I knew I was in love with this album the moment the cd changer tried to switch to the next disc and I got my drunk ass up off the porch swing and walked inside to play it again. I opened my write-up about these guys with these two sentences:

Somewhere on the highway between Drag the River and Lucero, there is an exit with a dive bar. The Fox Hunt, out of Martinsburg, West Virginia, is that bar’s house band.

I still think those are the best two lines to have ever come from this little blog. At the same time, I have never thought my writeup did these guys justice. The album they put together really does only get better with time. Listening to them way too early in the morning a couple of weeks ago on my way to go fishing sealed the deal on these guys making this post. I do not care that they are just some unsigned band from Virginia who happened to put out a cd. It is better than 95% of the crap that Pitchfork is gonna bust wood over. That’s a fact. If these guys manage to buck the odds and stay together they are gonna be mainstays on your community radio station in a few years. Do yourself a favor and check these kids out. They gots mad skills.

The Fox Hunt – Change My Ways

The Wells – The Outcasts Will Make a Strong Nation

On the way home from mountain biking over the weekend, I was telling the wife about this post and asking what she thought. I asked her what her choices would be, without thought she says, “Alela Diane and The Wells! I’ll have to think about it after that.” The Wells were already on my short list as well. The characters of this album and myself have spent many an evening and a bike ride together. I cannot wait for the next Wells album, but ’til it gets here, me and outcasts are like a familiar and well worn book.

The Wells – I had a Dream, Jess

Kenny Wayne Shepherd – 10 Days Out

At the risk of hyperbole, 10 Days Out is much greater than the sum of it’s parts. 10 Days will serve as documentation of some of the lesser known, but by no means lesser, blues musicians of the South. Some of the people featured on the cd/dvd release passed on before it was released, and more have moved on since. The object was to shine a spotlight on these people while there was still time, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, along with the legendary Double Trouble and producer Jerry Harrison, achieved their goal in spades. No overdubs, no high-tech fixing, “Live as it went down,” says Shepherd. “What happened is what you hear. We kept it as real as possible.” More history than mere album release, this is the most ‘important’ album released this year, in my opinion.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd w/Cootie Stark and Neal ‘Big Daddy’ Pattman – Prison Blues

Cootie Stark (1926-2005) – A blind street singer, he learned his stuff from Greenville, South Carolina, bluesmen Uncle Chump and Pink Anderson in the 1930’s. At 70 he rediscovered his unplugged genius and has headlined at festivals throughout the U.S. and Europe. His card catalog repertoire runs from soul classics to Piedmont blues songs like “Sandyland” and “Metal Bottoms.” Cootie Stark was one of the last authentic Piedmont blues guitarists/singers and provided a direct link to a South long gone.

Neal Pattman (1926-2005) – Nobody made moonshine, worked a cakewalk, chopped wood or played a harmonica like Neal Pattman. Losing an arm in a wagon wheel at the age of nine didn’t slowed him at all. “66 years ago the Blues knocked on my door and they wouldn’t leave.” His testimony can be heard in a sound and a style his daddy taught him as a child in the country outside Athens, Georgia.

Two Cow Garage – Three

As I said before, “Two Cow Garage is a band I can root for. Three completely awesome guys who write completely awesome rock music and play it with everything in them, regardless of the size of the crowd behind the monitors, and if you can’t get behind that, then I dunno why you would even bother to read this site.” They may hate their name, but what a name they are making out of it. “Three” shows the band at their cow-punk/rock-and-freaking-roll best. Life on the road may have left them a little jaded, but not so cynical you need a white belt to listen to them. Three will be one of the best albums this year, regardless of what gets released in these remaining six months, and if you are so lucky to have them come to your town, they will also be one of the best rock shows you will get to see.

Two Cow Garage – Should’ve California

The album I most regret not being on this list:

Gill Landry – Ballad of Lawless Soirez

I kept thinking that damned Gill Landry album has got to be on this list, then I could not find anything to bump, but at the same time, I could not accept leaving this list without a mention of Lawless Soirez. This album is beautiful on many layers. “Featuring a mixture of old country blues, jazz and songster music of the 20’s and 30’s, and Gill’s voice….and oh what a voice, makes this the perfect cd for a quiet night with a warm glass of whiskey and a little sweat.” One listen to the song Dixie and you should understand.

Gill Landry – Dixie

And there you go. Hopefully there is much awesomeness left to be found in the remaining six months. I’m gonna go find some to write about tomorrow.

Take care.

Two Cow Garage is a band I can root for… three completely awesome guys who write completely awesome rock music and play it with everything in them, regardless of the size of the crowd behind the monitors. If you can’t get behind that, then I dunno why you would even bother to read this backwoods corner of the internets.

Back in December I named Three as one of my most anticipated albums of 2007, so when it leaked to the internet I couldn’t resist the download temptation⁽¹⁾. I am happy to report my anticipation did not turn to disappointment … quite the contrary: this CD makes a beeline for my essential listening list.The signature Two Cow rock sound is in there: still brash, still loud, still walking the tight-wire between punk and alt.country . With this album, the band shows a maturity or perhaps a jadedness that the previous two did not. Yes, there are still the signature “growing up in a hick town and girl that got away” songs on the disc. Yes, they are fantastic. Shane’s growl on “Blaket Grey” and Micha’s story line in “Arson” are great, but there is a new element of wisdom in this CD. Seems to me there have been a lot of dusty miles, missed rent payments, strained relationships and “Am I doing the right thing?” contemplation between the previous The Wall Against Our Backs and this new CD, Three.

�The band’s apparent ’seasoning’ seems to have added just the right amount of a jaded temperament to their songs to really push them over the top; and my favorite tracks from the disc reflect it. “Postcards and Apologies” delves into how easily one can become a self-centered prick when there isn’t anyone around willing to call you out. “Should’ve California”, my current fave track, has Micah wondering about the things that could have been, had he chosen a different path in life … instead of “wasting all of his time in these basement bars in this rock and roll band”. His angst comes to a head in “No Shame”, when Micah laments that “things have never been worse”… a line you can imagine being written over a bowl aramen noodles while his current girlfriend is bitching about his constant absence. While he is right, there is no shame in just giving up and walking away. As a fan, I would have to say it would be a shame.

Two Cow has all the makings of a great band. I don’t feel I am typing hyperbole when I say they have the talent and band chemistry to be the next Drive By Truckers or Lucero. They made it through all the questions and doubts that turned into Three with “600 pages of regrets and hundreds unfinished songs” and 13 finished tracks with regrets of their own… regrets that you should hear. The new CD is set to be released on April 24th via Suburban Home Records. Till then, check out the track below, or go stream the entire CD over on their website.

Two Cow Garage – Blaket Grey

Two Cow Garage’s Official Site, Two Cow Garage on myspace, Pre-order Two Cow Garage – Three

⁽¹⁾At this moment allow me to say something: As a rule, I support the notion of downloading, and do it from time to time. I never judge others for using their local p2p application instead of supporting a bloated record label that is just as happy suing you, raping internet radio and fucking their own consumer base. There are plenty ways of supporting bands and I tend to use the “go to shows and buy shit there” method. However, there are plenty of bands out there trying to get shit done with out the dick of a mafRIAA member in their ass …. Two Cow is one such band. The CD is out there and anyone with an ounce of knowledge can get it in 10 minutes, and if you do that’s awesome …. listen to it. BUT, If you like it … do your part when it comes out in April…and buy it. All of your dollars will be going right to the band … which will go right into their gas tank, and if you are lucky one of your dollars will bring them to your town, and then you can witness a rock show of epic proportions.