Wednesday, November 26, 2008

you knew just how you'd been blessed...



For the last two years, I've had the privilege of following the Johnson City, TN band The Everybodyfields, quite closely. I was General Manager of WQFS Greensboro, Guilford College's radio station, when Everybodyfields fever began to kick in among our community DJ's. Their sad, slow, breathtaking and beautiful down-home country music found a perfect home on the radio shows of the community DJ's, many of whom had been living in Greensboro for years, and had seen country acts come and go. WQFS and The Everybodyfields began forming a close relationship, with us booking two shows for them on campus, and placing their newest album at the top of our charts for three months straight, while vocalist/singer/songwriter Sam Quinn wrote the theme song for one of our DJ's radio shows, a song which they still play live frequently. I had the privilege of getting to hang out with them most times they came through Greensboro or Chapel Hill. One night, my friend Carra and I spontaneously drove to see them in Chapel Hill and stayed up all night with them, driving back home to Greensboro as the sun was coming up.

Fortunately, the band are still hard at work, and better than ever. Today they just posted two new songs on their myspace site, "City Noises" and "Mardi Gras." These songs, in addition to three other new ones they recorded for Daytrotter.com. After years of burning through accompanying musicians, the central songwriting duo of Sam Quinn and Jill Andrews have finally found a lineup that works, with Josh Oliver (keys, guitar), Tom Pryor (pedal steel) and Jamie Cook(drums), the drummer being the most recent addition, and seemingly the secret puzzle piece that sealed the deal.

The band still seem to work much like they used to, with Sam and Jill splitting songwriting duties, the writer playing guitar on whatever song is next in the set. I have posted a lot of videos below, so I will let their music speak for itself. I have so many memories associated with this band, having been to see them over 15 times in the last two years. The Everybodyfields kind of supplied a soundtrack to my life in Greensboro, from settling in to calling the city home to coming to terms with leaving it, their music as equally applicable to the bright times as it was to the dark times of my life in that city. It makes me so happy to see them writing the best music of their career.

Basically, check this band out, download the songs from the links posted above, watch the videos before, and hopefully your roommates won't mind the mess when you melt into the floor.


their spot on, nearly better than the original cover of Neil Young's "Harvest Moon"


another new song, "Another Man." one of my favorite of their recent batch of new ones


"A Way Out," another one of my favorite new ones

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