MySpace a place for friends

www.hackberryrecords.com

There's a town in western Alabama where football is king, yes ma'am is still common vernacular and college students pack the local drinking holes on every night but Sunday. It's a town where the summers are quiet and the falls are like a great migration. It's a town where the old South meets the new America, where the habits of past generations blend with new interests in a glorious blend of pure grade Americana. This town is Tuscaloosa, Alabama-- and year after year, the regulars and the students co-exist in a world where tradition and growth battle for regular superiority.

This, my friends, is the world that has influenced and birthed a rock-and-roll band (yes, rock and roll) like The National Trust. In fact, three of the four members of the band have spent most of their lives here, with the only holdout coming from the Shoals-- and you all know about the Shoals. Just like the Shoals had a sound, Tuscaloosa does too, and it's being ushered into a new generation by these four guys, barely averaging 21 years in age.

So what is that "T-Town Sound"? Well, it's a melting pot-- just like the South. At first glance, it's a loud, raucous "romp-and-stomp" noise. But the more you dig into what these guys are doing, the more you begin to peel back the proverbial "onion" of influences-- everything from Delta blues to Tennessee country to American pop music. You hear the Stones, you hear Leadbelly and you hear the Strokes, sure. But you also hear something strikingly vintage that sounds shockingly new. It's loud. It's exciting. It's contagious.

The National Trust have bottled that "T-Town Sound" for mass consumption on their new LP, "Goodnight Dixie Goodnight". The band (Stuart Bond on vocals, Jake Cain on guitar, Daniel Crisler on bass and Reed Watson on drums) recorded and produced the album themselves, completely after hours on a twenty-something budget and analog tape at a studio up in the Shoals. It's a loud, urgent record that chronicles life, love, loss and daily reflection in the American South. It is one part singable and one part contemplative-- but solely and uniquely "The National Trust". It is, in essence, the "T-Town Sound". Pick it up and be compelled.

hackberryrecords.com