This post originally appeared on my other blog Strawberry Flats, which was dedicated to my love of roots music.

Here it is: Strawberry Flats’ top 10 albums of 2008. Christ, this took me a whole lot longer to produce than I had originally anticipated. Oh well. It was a fun exercise. Most folks seem to think last year sucked balls for music, but after writing up this post, I have to disagree. If 2009 produces this many good releases, I will be a happy man.

D. Charles Speer & The Helix
After Hours
(S@1/ Black Dirt)
If you’re at all familiar with this blog, then you know I incessantly bemoan the lack of modern bands that can a) approach roots rock as if it’s craft to be mastered, b) traverse galaxies of sound like true cosmonauts and c) fuse points a and b into a music that’s stylish, groovy and speckled with killer hooks. After Hours, D. Charles Speer’s second album, fulfills all these demands, and that’s is why it is Strawberry Flats’ album of 2008 (woohoo – somebody break out the bubbly and cut up a line or two). This record is a damn near-perfect chunk of acid tonk(?), equal parts brash exploration, musicianly skill and pop panache. This thing could’ve only come from thoroughly modern dudes who strive to be tight and full-time pro like the Buckaroos or Merle’s Strangers while free-floating through a homebrewed dementia that’s as nervy and blasted as Here It Is-era Flaming Lips (that’s the early stuff for all you post-Soft Bulletin brats). Another cool thing about the Speer is this: It’s obvious to these ears they believe the later Moby Grape albums (Moby Grape ’69, Truly Fine Citizen and 20 Granite Creek) are really good rock albums — and they’re right! The only time After Hours didn’t blow my mind came just after the group’s Asheville gig last December. Compared to the new material D. Charles unleashed that night the record felt like a sleepy stopover left behind by pioneers in search of some kind of promised land.*

TK Webb & the Visions
Ancestor
(Kemado Records)
When I first heard Ancestor it threw me for a loop. It sounds nothing like TK’s previous record Phantom Parade, one of my fave albums of the last couple decades. Webb went out and got himself some stoner-metal dudes to beef up his blues rock. As a result, damn near every song felt thick and formless like hot tar. Then I recalled actually having the same problem with Phantom Parade. TK’s music in any incarnation always takes its sweet time to blossom. And eventually Ancestor did. In fact, it contains his most crafted compositions to date — sprawling, multi-layered epics meticulously carved from polished obsidian. Webb isn’t your average rocker. He’s one of them introspective singer-songwriters who just so happens to make some heavy music. The Visions, meanwhile, are less like Howlin’ Rain than Sweet Sixteen-era Royal Trux. They groove with economy and restraint, executing the strict roles Webb has laid out for them in each song. It’s really kind of amazing: Ancestor boasts a handful of six-to-eight minute tracks, yet none of them can be considered a jam in the hippie sense of the word. That’s no easy feat in an age when songwriting and hard rock rarely, if ever, intersect.

The Black Twig Pickers
Hobo Handshake
(VHF)
The Black Twigs (a.k.a. Black Twig Pickers) are one of southwest Virginia’s best old-time acts, yet they might as well be playing balls-out boogie rock. This trio can do more with fiddle/banjo, guitar and washboard than most bands can with towering stacks and squealing feedback. The Twigs understand that rhythm isn’t a question of volume or force — or feedback and reverb for that matter. It’s about timing. Hobo Handshake boasts some truly incendiary throw downs: “Glory in the Meeting House,” “Rattletrap” even a seven-minute version of “Train 45.” You could call these guys alternative, which some in the old-time community do, but the Twigs aren’t indie foreigners tinkering with Appalachian traditions. They are natives who just so happen to be mavericks. There’s a subtle but definite difference.

Warmer Milks
Soft Walks
(Animal Disguise Recordings)
When I found out Kentucky drone dude Warmer Milks had gone and made an album full of actual rock songs I presumed it would be more of a psych-folk/noise thing somewhere along the lines of Hush Arbors, MV & EE and Ben Chasny. That stuff is totally hit or miss for me, so I was blown away to discover Soft Walks is classic mid-American indie rock, earthy and real, not dreamy and mystical. With its country-folk undercurrent, this music shares far more in common with Will Oldham, Souled American, Arbouretum, Red Red Meat, Jason Molina and The Anomoanon. Friends have even detected traces of Royal Trux and Wowee Zowee-era Pavement. Though Soft Walks does contain stretches of avant/free improv exploration, they’re not schizophrenic breaks, as if Warmer Milks is a motley collection of fractured personalities. All their many interests have been woven into a single, unified statement. Great work.

The Coydogs
The Coydogs
(GoDigital Records)
The Coydogs are three punks from New York weaned on Johnny Thunders and the Dead Boys. After the demise of CBGB they came together and started listening to a lot of Crazy Horse, Flamin’ Groovies, Gene Clark, Big Star and Tom Petty. The fact that these dudes groove like an authentic power trio (we’re talking some serious bar rock sweat) obscures just how subtlety they’ve fused New York punk, power pop and country twang. Massive riffs are laced with sharp licks, plucked banjos and echo-soaked slide work. At first I cranked the car jams, stuff like “It’s Raining,” “Lost Horse Mine (Pt. 2)” and “River Ran Red.” But lately I’m addicted to this faux-rockabilly number called “Half and Half.” The tune is a burn-scarred train spewing black smoke: retro-Presley slowing building into a hypno-choogle that blows right past side two of Teenage Head and the version of “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad” that closes the skull-and-roses Grateful Dead. These dudes can totally jam — but they’re rock and rollers, not hippies. Something tells me this is going to be the Coydogs’ only album, and that totally sucks.

Jack Rose
Dr. Ragtime & His Pals
(Beautiful Happiness/Tequila Sunrise)
2006′s Jack Rose was good but ultimately a warm up for the more fully developed Dr. Ragtime & His Pals. Now I can’t tell you shit finger-picking techniques or the difference between Weissenborns and resonators guitars. What I do know is Rose has delved deep into country blues and Appalachian folk, far deeper than most of his peers. Much like the Black Twigs, who makes several appearances on this record, the guitarist innovates from the inside-out rather than outside-in, as Joe Carducci would phrase it. Something tells me fans of Rose’s raga drones are bumming over his recent forays into instrumental acoustic blues. They’re not psychedelic enough. But there’s something far more dramatic about this stuff. The pulsating “Knoxville Blues” does just about everything one of Rose’s longer piece does, only better. The tune builds a tremendous amount of pressure but ends just before the dam is breached. Order is what Dr. Ragtime is all about: how it can be stretched, loosened and twisted without ever shattering its outward appearance.

The Moondoggies
Don’t Be a Stranger
(Hardly Art)
Sometime last fall this dude from Seattle e-mails me out of the blue. He put out a record by some band called the Moondoggies. He’s curious to find out what I think. Well, I never expect much from unsolicited promos. But fuck, I started playing the thing over, over and over, especially the seven-minute “Long Time Coming.” Many reviews have drawn comparisons between the Moondoggies and The Band, but I hear more of an early J. Geils/Little Feat vibe, particularly the Feats’ second album Sailin’ Shoes. The group possess the chops (incredible piano playing) and heft of an alt-country band, but their songwriting skills are slyly modern. Don’t Be a Stranger was built according to a kind of jigsaw logic. Riffs and rhythmic schemes appear then reappear in slightly different permutations. Repetition is a big part of the group’s aesthetic. It’s as if the Moondoggies were raised on a mix of vintage Black gospel and mathematics. Best of all you can tell these guys are a living, breathing band capable of kicking some ass on stage.

Chatham County Line
IV
(Yep Roc Records)
I’m no expert on modern bluegrass by any stretch of the imagination, but from what little I’ve heard the scene is packed with badass pickers and great voices but suffers from a lack of non-corny songwriters. This is where Chatham County Line come in. They’re neither newgrass a la the Waybacks and Yonder Mountain String Band nor NPR-friendly “chamber bluegrass ” — Is that the proper term? — in the vein of Alison Krauss, whom I dig, and the Infamous Stringdusters, whom I sort of dig. Chatham County Line are kind of hip, actually, transforming their love of Gram Parsons, Dillard & Clark and The Band into a bluegrass-based sound that’s all about killer tunes: a mix of rocking numbers, historical epics, and vulnerable ballads. Plus, they’re soulful. When I saw them for the first time back in early ’08 I had never before seen white boys get down and actually groove — outside of insane shit like The Jesus Lizard, of course.** But this was different. The group gelled into a single organism that cut itself open and poured all its love into the single microphone around which it danced. Of course, I haven’t even mentioned this record yet. That’s because Chatham County Line hasn’t made a record that quite matches their live show, though IV easily contains the group’s best tunes. With good headphones (mine: Sennheiser PX 100s) and a little moonshine (that’s not posturing — I actually have some stashed in my freezer), this Chris Stamey-produced record turns three dimensional, allowing the mind to slip inside the band’s artful picking and searing harmonies. I mean, seriously, mandolin player John Teer has a voice that shoots straight up my spine. What a gorgeous instrument.

Ralph White
Navasota River Devil Squirrel
(Spirit of Orr/Mystra Records)
Most modern avant-folkies do more or less the same thing. They paste together a little free improv, some finger-picking, and an exotic instrument or two and dip them in a vat of reverb. The end result is spacey and cool on a superficial level; kind of rootsy and more often then not sloppy, formless and utterly rudimentary. I suppose you could call them “sub-tradition” in the sense that they tinker with elements from old folk styles they can’t actually play. Ralph White, in contrast, is “supra-tradition.” Navasota River Devil Squirrel is the work of a banjo player who has fully internalized old time and bluegrass and who is now reshaping them into a brand new, highly individualized form. This album is avant garde, yes, but it’s not loose or amorphous because of ignorance. In fact, it’s hyper-stylized. White’s picking trickles oh so naturally, just like a stream. His falsetto whisper delicately curls every word into a spring blossom. This guy isn’t naive; he’s a master. Navasota River Devil Squirrel would’ve cracked my top five with ease had the thing not arrived in December. It has spent more time on my turntable this month than just about anything else in the new release stacks.

Turner Cody
First Light
(Boy Scout Recordings)
I’m cheating. I’ve submitted four best-of-2008 lists to four different publications, and every one contains Donovan Quinn & The 13th Month’s latest album somewhere in the mix. It’s great, but since I wrote a feature on the guy for the SF Weekly and since I’ve never written about Turner Cody (at least I don’t think I have) I making a last minute substitution and going with the latter’s First Light. (Donovan is now no. 11.) Cody is a master lyricist, spitting words so fast and furious I don’t even know what he’s talking about most of the time. He’s obviously some genius man-child, with a private school understanding of poetry and literature. Then again, a good chunk of First Light is simple, tender and utterly sentimental: girls, parents, daydreaming, alienation, long car drives, sadness, Europe, bullshit, wandering America and so on. There’s also a lot of humor to be found in this record: I am sorry that I missed you dear/ I was hung out on pills, I swear — as if such a revelation requires further convincing. I mean, hell, if the dude is lying, I’d hate to discover the truth! Amazingly enough, just about every one of Cody’s songs is the same: a strummy folk-rock fusion of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and Highway 61 Revisited, colored with touches of ragtime, country and Broadway schmaltz. What really makes the music tick is the swinging back-up band he’s put together. They’re tight and effective: all sharp angles and no mush, good picking and snappy solos. They push Cody and he returns the favor. In fact, they sound super excited just to be making music with the guy.*** Cody’s guileful rowdiness feels like a one-cocktail experience at first, but he’ll easily take your fourth and fifth. First Light isn’t singer-songwriter fare; it’s rock an roll — even if the first song features clarinet.

Other Notable Releases:
Donovan Quinn & The 13th Month – Donovan Quinn & The 13th Month (Soft Abuse)
No-Neck Blues Band – Clomeim (Locust Music)
The USA is a Monster — Space Programs (Load Records)
Fire on Fire – The Orchard (Young God Records)
Enos Slaughter – Beisbol (Three Lobed Recordings)
James Blackshaw – Litany of Echoes (Tompkins Square)
Jack Rose – I Do Play Rock and Roll (Three Lobed Recordings)
Tift Merritt – Another Country (Fantasy)

Notable Reissues:
Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue (Sony/Legacy)
Gene Clark – Silverado ’75: Live & Unreleased (Collector’s Choice)
V/A – Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli (Numero Group)
Harry Taussig – Fate is Only Once (Tompkins Square)
Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms (Sunbeam Records)
Fotheringay – 2 (Fledg’ling)
Old & In the Way – Live at the Boarding House (Acoustic Oasis)****
V/A – Nice and Nasty: Selections From Dr Ragtime’s Private Stash (Yodtapes)
Robbie Basho – Bonn Ist Supreme (Bo Weavil Recordings)
Richard Crandell – In the Flower of Your Youth (Tompkins Square)
V/A – Wooden Guitar (Locust Music)

Notes:
*For a taste of D. Charles’ new jams track down the recently released “In Madagascar” b/w “Bar-Abbas Blues” seven-inch. The emergence of pianist, singer and songwriter Hans Chew (who grooves like Lowell George — no shit) has added a new dimension to the band.

**Shit like this is improper to say in 2009 (which is why I’m saying it in a smaller font in the notes section), but since moving to the South I’ve learned White boys down here are more like Black boys than their northern counterparts. They know how to swing.

***On a related note, when I saw TK Webb & the Visions in Atlanta last autumn it seemed as if his band also enjoyed playing for a guy whom they knew was a major talent. Then again, what do I know? Maybe he’s a hardass?

****I have a feeling this title was already deleted. What the fuck, Grisman?