Sound Bites

Song Review: Billy Strings - “If You're Gonna be Dumb, You Gotta be Tough”

In addition to being a badass, Billy Strings is a “Jackass.”

On his first release since breaking his leg skateboarding backstage in April, Strings, somewhat ironically, contributes to the soundtrack of “Jackass: Best and Last” (June 26) with “If You're Gonna be Dumb, You Gotta be Tough.”

Dobro master Jerry Douglas is the featured soloist. Strings sings unaccompanied and plays guitar alongside mandolinist Jarrod Walker, banjoist Russ Carson, bassist Royal Masat and drummer Jamie Dick, who add confident, if misplaced, strut for the cocky narrator to declare:

If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough/when you get knocked down, you gotta get back up/I ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I know enough to know/if you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough, Strings sings.

He didn’t write the “Jackass” theme - Roger Alan Wade did that - and Strings recorded “Dumb” with only two (Walker and Masat) members of his touring band. But this soundtrack single is the relatively uncommon studio track that captures Strings’ live personality on wax.

Grade card: Billy Strings - “If You're Gonna be Dumb, You Gotta be Tough” - A

Song Review: Norah Jones - “Lovesick Blues” (Live at Home)

With eyes shut, it’s no stretch to imagine Noah Jones perched on a barstool next to Hank Williams, the two shedding tears in their beers as the former performs “Lovesick Blues.”

Recording for her “Live at Home” series, Jones is, in reality, seated on her piano bench playing saloon-ready, honky-tonk accompaniment and singing the “Lovesick Blues” in homage to Williams. Jones does her version of yodeling, retains the original pronouns and declares herself, ruefully, no one’s sugar daddy.

Being homemade and informal, Jones’ video lacks a bit in quality of sound. It doesn’t matter, as Jones’ bluesy piano and impassioned vocal performance glosses over any sonic deficiencies.

When she smiles at the camera and blows a kiss to her listeners, Jones confirms she, too, was pleased with the results.

Grade card: Norah Jones - “Lovesick Blues” (Live at Home) - A-

Remixed “Spiral” Announces J-Tull Dot Com Reissue

- Subtitled Another Cast of the Net, expanded LP set for Aug. 14 download

Spiffed up with a Bruce Soord remix, Jethro Tull’s “Spiral” separates itself somewhat from its era and announces the return of Jethro Tull’s final 20th-century LP.

Due for an Aug. 14 download, J-Tull Dot Com: Another Cast of the Net includes six previously unreleased studio tracks and three 2000 live recordings alongside Soord’s new mix, which, if “Spiral” is any indication, is its own selling point.

Gone is the sterile, trebly sound of the original 1999 release. There is nothing new in its place; no obvious missing elements called up. Soord has, however, managed to undate a song, and perhaps an album, that were dated almost from the minute they arrived.

Song Review: Steve Cropper & the Midnight Hour feat. Ronnie Wood - “Until Now”

Steve Cropper never had the blues - “Until Now.”

The second single from Cropper’s first posthumous LP is a swashbuckling, mid-tempo, blues-soul number that finds the guitarist sharing licks with Ronnie Wood’s slide while the Midnight Hour lays down a funky underpinning.

The music and the Cropper-Wood interplay are so exciting, Roger C. Reale’s delivery of such trite lyrics as: Wind at my back/I was right on track/until now, are easily enough dismissed.

“Until Now” follows “Ticket First” from Watching the Tide, scheduled to come in May 28.

Grade card: Steve Cropper & the Midnight Hour feat. Ronnie Wood - “Until Now” - B+

Song Review: Grateful Dead - “Viola Lee Blues” (Live, July 3, 1966)

Thirteen months into their three-decade long, strange trip, Grateful Dead were already honing their signature, psychedelic sound on numbers like “Viola Lee Blues.”

The song was a monster by the time it exited rotation in 1970. But this newly released version, taken from one of the Dead’s earliest full-show recordings, is a glorious sonic look back at “Viola”’s gentler origins before the days of super-far-out jams and smooth transitions back to reality.

This one finds the nascent Gratefuls straddling their local-dance-band roots while bassist Phil Lesh and guitarist Jerry Garcia begin turning the kaleidoscopic lens toward something not yet in focus but clearly closing in from the blurry horizon.

“Viola Lee Blues” follows “Cold Rain and Snow” ahead of the July 3 release of Fillmore Auditorium San Francisco, CA (7/3/66).

Grade card: Grateful Dead - “Viola Lee Blues” (Live - 7/3/66) - B

Song Review: Max Wareham - “Closer to You”

Max Wareham takes the wide-eyed, ethereal route on “Closer to You.”

On the third advance single from If the Cosmos Were Whiskey … , the banjo picker and ostensive bluegrass player is a blissed-out space cadet singing high in his rage alongside the wispy Lily Sexton over a droning soundtrack of double bass, acoustic guitar, banjo and percussion.

Every day that goes by like an eagle in the sky/only brings me closer to you, Wareham and Sexton sings on the chorus which appears after shimmering, waterlogged six- and five-string solos.

The six-minute mediation follows “I’m Just Along for the Ride” and “If I Had My Way” ahead of the June 19 arrival of Whiskey … .Taken together, they suggest an adventurous, stylistically diverse offering from the youthful Peter Rowan collaborator.

Grade card: Max Wareham - “Closer to You” - A-

Song Review(s): Sierra Ferrell - “Rosemary” and “Dollar Bill Bar” (Live, June 10, 2026)

When Sierra Ferrell sings of “Rosemary” in her man’s garden, she’s singing of her murder victim.

Ferrell opened her June 10 show in Chicago with the (presumably) tongue-in-cheek tale of homicide and it, along with “Dollar Bill Bar,” was streamed gratis as bait for the full-show webcast, which battled sound issues in the early minutes.

While the spurned narrator of “Rosemary” comes off as absolutely serious about taking out her competition, the music, with its tempo shifts and pingponging between spare-acoustic and full-on electric arrangement betrays its playfulness as Ferrell sings: I killed that witch that was on my back.

In the “Bar,” Ferrell issues a warning of another sort - to potential suitors, who will only get hurt if they find what seems to be success. A straight-ahead country-rocker with band choreography, a swampy backbeat and swaggering electric and pedal-steel guitars, “Bar” was like a delayed opener after the warm-up that was “Rosemary.”

Both, in any event, were full of the special characteristics that make Ferrell, Ferrell.

Grade card: Sierra Ferrell - “Rosemary” and “Dollar Bill Bar” (Live - 6/10/26) - B/B+

Song Review: Roger Taylor feat. Ndlovu Youth Choir - “Come on Summer (It’s Party Time)”

Roger Taylor is unrecognizable on the new Roger Taylor single.

The Queen co-founder and drummer recruited the Ndlovu Youth Choir and employed a bunch a synths, programmed beats and vocal effects to create “Come on Summer (It’s Party Time),” which announces the Sept. 18 release of Violence Insane in a Beautiful World.

This is an unimaginative pop song undistinguishable from any number of like-minded, like-sounding pop stars and nothing like what fans might hope for, but know better than to expect, from the gravelly voiced drummer of one of rock’s most innovative bands. The choir is no help when it’s reduced to singing such lines as: Wise men say, it’s no crime/wise men say it’s party time.

Despite the banality of the lead track, Taylor says Beautiful World is something of a concept album.

“There is a theme, you know - it’s in the title really,” he said in a statement. “What a beautiful world we live in; don’t fuck it up.”

Some people say the same about reputations.

Grade card: Roger Taylor feat. Ndlovu Youth Choir - “Come on Summer (It’s Party Time)” - F

Song Review: Rodrigo y Gabriela - “Monster”

Previewing OurHome with a six-minute lead single, Rodrigo y Gabriela signal both a return to their roots and a willingness to retain some elements of their expanded sonic palette as it evolved over time.

Initially tame, with the guitarists showing off their creative approach to duo music with a mix of acoustic, electric and percussive elements, “Monster” turns soon enough to a fuller instrumental arrangement that could fill an arena as easily as its quieter passages could fit in an intimate listening room.

Accompanied only by cello - and in the spirit of RyG, Hiyori Okuda makes the instrument barely recognizable - the guitarists signal a welcome return to form for fans to prefer the pared-down side of Rodrigo y Gabriela as OurHome heads toward its Sept. 18 release date.

Grade card: Rodrigo y Gabriela - “Monster” - B+

Album Review: Yarn - Saturday Night Sermon

The opening song and title track from Yarn’s Saturday Night Sermon is more like a roadmap or mission statement of the album that follows.

We’ve got us a sermon to sing/we’ll touch on the good times, the laughter, the joy/and the pain it often all brings, bandleader Blake Christiana sings as his and Andy Thomas’ guitars gently soundtrack the song’s runup to a Queen-like burst of bombast.

Like the song itself, Saturday Night Sermon goes on to hit on all the promised themes with multiple musical styles to match.

There’s country rock of the rompin’-stompin’ (“Let the Universe”) and clip-clop balladry (“Goodbye Cowgirl”) varieties. Christiana spotlights his love of “Domino”-era Van Morrison on “Brand New Light.” And the band meets at the intersection of Silver Bullet and Lynyrd Skynyrd avenues on such rockers as “Good Things” and “Never Enough” on which Christiana declares his life is great, but perhaps not a great as it could be.

The Sermon is ultimately a therapy session for the songwriter as Christiana’s many minds duke it out for supremacy.

To put the battle in stark relief, Yarn ends “Good Day” and its tale of booze and blow and sex as a charismatic gospel rave-up - and when the good, the bad and the in-between are thus dealt with, the LP closes, appropriately, with the humanistic religiosity of “A Welcome New Home.”

Occasionally overwrought, a little long at three-quarters-of-an-hour, Saturday Night Sermon is at its core an honest, revealing record. And that helps strengthen its weaker moments.

Grade card: Yarn - Saturday Night Sermon - B-

Song Review: Eilen Jewell - “Soul Kitchen”

Doors covers are rarely successful endeavors, but rare talent Eilen Jewell had no problem making “Soul Kitchen” her own while retaining the essential elements of a song that’s perennially cool.

Jewell eases into the “Kitchen,” eerily singing its opening lines over Jerry Miller’s ethereal guitar - nothing else.

Still one place to go, she sings.

With that, the band kicks in and the Doors’ arrangement, à la Jewell, emerges in an incongruous cacophony of consonance driven by Miller’s swashbuckling guitar and with Jewell’s smooth vocal delivery and the tight rhythm section keeping things under control.

The track follows “Deportee” as Jewell heads toward a previously announced touring hiatus. If a farewell-to-the-road LP is in the offing, it’s off to a good start.

Grade card: Eilen Jewell - “Soul Kitchen” - A

Song Review: Grateful Dead with Steve Miller and Norton Buffalo - “In the Midnight Hour” (Live, July, 1, 1992)

It would’ve been really cool to hear Steve Miller sing a verse of “In the Midnight Hour” with the Grateful Dead, but balky mics had other ideas. Miller sung the verse, but no one heard it.

Said mics also put the kibosh on Bob Weir’s opening vocals and Vince Welnick’s backgrounds, but when things finally did improve, the lack of rehearsal prevented Weir, Miller and Jerry Garcia from getting into a mess of call-and-response “Waits.” On second thought, the “Waits” were pretty messy.

Norton Buffalo, meanwhile, kept looking for a spot to pick, but couldn’t find much room in the music for his harmonica.

It was July 1, 1992, and Miller and Buffalo, who’d opened the Ohio show with Miller’s eponymous Band, were sitting in. And while the mics botched the “Midnight Hour” to some degree, Miller’s guitar was loud and clear and Sound Bites remembers this show - particularly the second set - as a strong performance from all involved.

This video, just sprung from the Grateful Dead vault, is, however, visual and audio evidence of an opportunity missed.

Grade card: Grateful Dead with Steve Miller and Norton Buffalo - “In the Midnight Hour” (Live - 7/1/92) - C+

Quarter Notes: Blurbs & Briefs from Sound Bites:

- In this edition: Farm Aid; Dark Star Orchestra; Tedeschi Trucks Band: & Bronwyn (Keith-Hynes)

FARM AID 2026 SET: I’m With Her, Sierra Ferrell, Jesse Welles and Amythyst Kiah are among the artists who will join Farm Aid board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young (& the Chrome Hearts), John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews (and Tim Reynolds) and Margo Price at the annual festival, slated for Sept. 26 in Virginia.

DONOR STAR ORCHESTRA: Dark Star Orchestra will donate $1 from every online ticket sold for the majority of its summer-tour gigs to Grateful Guitars. The nonprofit obtains instruments for musicians and funds music-eduction nonprofit organizations.

TTB EP TBA: Tedeschi Trucks Band have a six-song EP in the can that Derek Trucks says contains “equal siblings” to the tracks on Future Soul, which Sound Bites reviews here. There is no release date, per JamBase.

MEET BRONWYN: Former Molly Tuttle & Golden highway fiddler Bronwyn Keith-Hynes has dropped her last name and will go mononym for her solo career.

Album Review: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders - GarciaLive Volume 22

Any one of the few people who witnessed Jerry Garcia fronting an unnamed quintet for two shows Sept. 25, 1971, in San Anselmo, Calif., would’ve been forgiven if they’d walked out not knowing the band had played “Imagine” and “Summertime.”

Both instrumental and neither sounding much like the respective John Lennon or Gerwshin songs they are, the tracks are now out - and identified - on GarciaLive Volume 22. The album, comprising both shows with just one song MIA, is credited to guitarist Garcia and keyboardist Merl Saunders, but also features former Creedence Clearwater Revival guitarist Tom Fogerty, bassist John Kahn and Garcia’s Grateful Dead bandmate Bill Kreutzmann on drums.

This is the sound of Garcia transitioning away from his role as only the Dead’s frontman and toward the polymathic approach that would carry him toward Old & in the Way, Legion of Mary and the Jerry Garcia Band as the ’70s unfolded. And hearing him play alongside a traditional rhythm guitarist in the form of Fogerty is revelatory on its own as Garcia develops mainstream rock ‘n’ roll chops on the fly.

Garcia, Fogerty, Saunders, Kahn and Kreutzmann sound most like a working band on the slow-build balladry of “Biloxi,” which closes show No. 1 and show No. 2 opener “Hi-Heel Sneakers,” which previews the arrangement of “Big Boss Man” Garcia would bring to the Dead the following decade.

Fogerty and Garcia sing co-leads on “Baby What You Want Me to Do,” delivered in a slow shuffle not dissimilar to “Deal.” Saunders, meanwhile, is the bandleader on originals like the instrumentals “Save Mother Earth” and “Man-Child,” where Garcia previews what would become the Dead’s “Space” in the 1980s.

More jam session than ticketed concerts, the music on Volume 22 will fascinate Dead Heads for its freeform approach, obscure songs and unusual lineup. And Garcia’s take on “One Kind Favor” is another reminder the guy could play the blues with authority.

Grade card: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders - GarciaLive Volume 22 - B

“Rare Recording” Captures Walter Hyatt and Champ Hood Playing “Norwegian Wood” in 1970

- “The Beatles were a huge influence on Uncle Walt’s Band”

From the take-what-you-can-get department comes a snippet of Walter Hyatt and Champ Hood acting Fab while rehearsing “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” in 1970.

The informal home recording finds the future Uncle Walt’s Band mates doing their best to recreate with two guitars and two voices what the Beatles did with a studio, some guitars, a sitar and George Martin in 1965.

“The Beatles were a huge influence on Uncle Walt’s Band, but you never heard them covering the Beatles in their live shows,” read a descriptor on Uncle Walt’s Facebook page accompanying the “rare recording.”

The audio of the late musicians ends abruptly after Hyatt sings, It’s time for bed around the 70-second mark, leaving listeners to wonder how the balance of the song might have unfolded and whether Hyatt and Hood attempted other Liverpudlian songs that long-ago day.

Song Review: Widespread Panic - “And it’s Stoned Me” (Live, May 8, 2026)

Widespread Panic is perfectly capable of playing “Stoned” - with a big “S” - thank you very much.

As performed May 8 in Las Vegas and released on professional black-and-white video, Panic’s take on “And it’s Stoned Me” reveals fidelity to both Van Morrison’s original recording and the band’s own sonic aesthetic.

John Bell’s vocals are the most apparent lines in the Widespread fingerprints; however, Nick Johnson and Jojo Hermann enhance the Panicky flavor on guitar and piano, respectively. Johnson’s solo is particularly alluring as he balances restraint with intensity in the first instrumental break.

Taken in toto, Panic’s reading of “Stoned” is something of a breather, a chance for band and audience to catch their collective breath - perhaps inhale deeply - amid the energetic arc of a Widespread Panic performance.

Grade card: Widespread Panic - “And it’s Stoned Me” (Live - 5/8/26)

Colorized Version of “All You Need is Love” to be Released for Global Beatles Day, June 25

- Informal commemoration gets Apple Corps’ stamp of approval

After 17 years as an informal, fan-initiated movement, Global Beatles Day has Apple Corps’ stamp of approval.

Celebrated since 2009, GBD 2026 will be marked with the release of a colorized version of the Beatles June 25, 1967, performance of “All You Need is Love” for broadcast to 400 million people around the world.

It’s the first official release of the complete video, though it can be easily found online.

“More than ever, the message of the Beatles, and of ‘All You Need is Love’ speaks to something vital for community, connection, and the power of bringing people together,” Apple Corps. CEO Tom Greene said in a statement.

“That is what makes Global Beatles Day so special. It asks nothing more than for people, wherever they are, to stop, listen and share a little joy.”