“We’re just in a band. That dude swallows swords!”

listen to the audio clip

I’m a very far cry from what you’d call a country music aficionado – I don’t think that Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies count – but for various reasons I can sometimes be found associating with people affiliated with the industry, and as a music-lover in general I can certainly appreciate great musicianship, regardless of genre.

More than that, I appreciate when someone does something nice, and “nice” does not begin to describe the country music band Whiskey Falls and how they gave up a huge portion of their own promotional appearance on the Bill Breakfast Show (Bill Country, 95 FM, a Clear Channel station) to plug me, my work and my website a few weeks back.

So in the interest of saying “thank you” to the guys, I’m sharing with you here the segment of their interview that got them off on the sword swallowing tangent, and you’ll find links to their websites below.

I was originally going to include their live on-air performance of Falling Into You – which follows the funny bits – but as their album is not set to be released until later this month I didn’t want to step on their toes. Moreover, from what I’m told, they had a few friendly “objections” to the station rebroadcasting it simply because they were only half awake when they played it that morning. In truth it sounds fantastic, but as a performing artist myself I can certainly sympathize with the desire to keep anything but the best performance out of the public eye. As I say, it sounds great, but in lieu of that performance you can hear others on their MySpace page, and you can buy the album when it’s released.

Included in the interview is a live, early-morning on-air performance of their song Falling Into You. I was originally going to leave the performance out (see above paragraph) because I didn’t want to be giving away their song prior to the release of their album. But in the interest of promoting the album, and as there is already an informal YouTube performance of the piece available, I decided to keep it in and still encourage you to buy the album!

-The Official Whiskey Falls website can be found here.
-Whiskey Falls can be found on MySpace here.

And while band members Seven Williams and Wally Brandt do not seem to have individual MySpace pages, both Buck Johnson and Damon Johnson do.

Visit their sites, “friend” them, sign up for their mailing list, and, for goodness sake, buy their album! Their four-part harmony is beautiful against the backdrop of their orchestration.

As I say, I appreciate great musicianship when I hear it, and these guys have it!

Postscript: While you’re at it, check out all of Amanda’s pictures on her Flickr account and the Bill Breakfast Flickr account. You’ll find pictures of her with Emerson Drive, Dierks Bentley, Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert and even Jared Fogle of Subway fame (don’t forget Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street!).

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[tags]Bill 95 FM, Bill Breakfast Show, Bill Country, Buck Johnson, Clear Channel, Country music, Damon Johnson, Roderick Russell, Seven Williams, Sword Swallowers, Sword Swallowing, Wally Brandt, Whiskey Falls[/tags]