Pinebox Serenade: News

Here is a link to our Facebook page, so if your on here come and befriend us!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pinebox-Serenade/319936173282?ref=ts#!

Our own Patrick Newkirk has just released his debut solo album for FREE here http://soundcloud.com/patrick-newkirk! Patrick wrote and played everything on the record except bass and banjo which were played by his brother Mike Newkirk.

All we have left on the new record is a Trombone part played by the Great George Neal and vocals. We should get those done soon, and then mixing and mastering. We're hoping for an August or September release. More to come soon.

Check out this cool video someone made and posted on Youtube!

Our wonderful label, Devil's Ruin Records have put out a label compilation for $1!! It has the Let the River Take Them Home track Witch on the Mountain on it, plus tracks from all the other bands on the label. You can check it out here:
http://www.rodentiamusic.com/

We are well into recording our new record! We are finishing up basic tracks this week and then back to the rehearsal space to write the more orchestrated parts. We will finish it up sometime in December or so, then lots of shows!

These will be the last two shows for a little while, we have babies to be born and records to be made.


Friday, August 7th, 2009
Rubber Gloves
411 E Sycamore St
Denton, TX 76205-6144
(940) 387-7781


Pinebox Serenade
Bridges & Blinking Lights
Dim Locator

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Saturday, August 8th, 2009
The Moon Bar
2911 W Berry St.
Ft. Worth TX 76109
(817)926-9600

Pinebox Serenade
Dim Locator

Recording for our new album will probably start at the end of June or beginning of July. So, in the mean time we will be playing some solo shows and playing with our other bands and such. Chris Welch will play a couple of solo shows in the next week at Dan's Silverleaf and Rubber Gloves, on May 29 we are doing a kinda stripped down/Bluegrass style with upright, acoustic guitar, mandolin and fiddle at the Boiler Room in Denton. Last but not least Dust Congress with Pinebox members Nick Foreman and Jeff Barnard are heading out on tour, so go check them out if ya can.

Dust Congress tour 2009
denton,tx
may 20 2009 - dan's silverleaf
w/ burntsienna trio, chris welch

birmingham, al
may 21 2009 - bottletree
w/ don chambers, broken letters

athena, ga
may 22 2009 - flicker theater
w/ the visitations

savannah, ga
may 23 2009 - the wormhole
w/ geistheistler

fort myers, fl
may 28 2009 - wgcu "gulf coast live" radio show

fort myers, fl
may 28 2009 - house of cats
w/ geistheistler, let's go exploring, french paradox

gainesville, fl
may 29 2009 - the kickstand
w/ geistheistler, french paradox, squirrel pool

Denton, Texas’ Pinebox Serenade are on the roster of one of my new favorite labels, Devil’s Ruin Records. Last month they announced that they have begun the process of recording what will be their third, as of yet untitled, album. That announcement coincided with me hearing their second album, Let The River Take Them Home, for the first time.

The Pinebox Serenade are seven musicians; Chris Welch, Patrick Newkirk, Holly Manning, Tyler Adams, Chris Ott, Nick Foreman and Jeff Barnard playing every single instrument you would expect to find in a roots-meets-bluegrass-and-goes-goth band. If I had to describe their music in a single word I would use ‘tense’. Listening to the album doesn’t make you feel tense, but you can tell there is an underlying intensity to these dirges of desperation and despair. While I type that there’s another side to it all. Those same songs are these full, multi-layered beautiful songs that are absolutely perfect for getting my undivided attention during a session with a glass of warm bourbon and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Had I known of this album last year it would have easily found it’s way onto my year-end top 10 list, and even now I’ve gotta say it’s Essential Listening.

Saturday 3-14 J&J’S NX35

PINEBOX SERENADE
THE HUDSONS
THE AM RAMBLERS
DAN MONTGOMERY


Starts at 8

We are in the rehearsal stage of the what will become our new album, we have around 11 to 13 songs that we will be working with. Hopefully recording will start in the next couple of months with the GREAT Brent Best doing the honors as he has on our first two albums. We promise this one won't take two years to get out!

"Let the River Take Them Home" is the second long-player from Texas septet Pinebox Serenade. Fans of alt-country should probably own this already. If they don't they should pick it up right now.

'Serenade mix indie rock (provided you consider a style that can trace its roots back to The Band indie) with real bluegrass/roots music. Overall they remind me of early (and *very* late, think "Rainy Day Music" era) Jayhawks. But only if the Jayhawks had truly immersed themselves into americana instead of just sitting at the shores of roots music.

All of the elements of good roots music are here: instrumentation (guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, accordion), arrangement (clever but not pointlessly complex), themes (alcohol, god, love, death). There is a somber (occasionally morbid) view-point here that typifies contemporary gothic-americana/blackgrass music. I enjoy this but I was raised on 1940s & 50s country music (which fell into two camps: good time dance music and white/dark blues). As such where others hear Leonard Cohen or the Pogues I hear Hank Williams. And that couldn't be a better thing.

True the vocals are gruffer than the old country greats, think Mark Lanegan with bits of Eddie Vedder. But not only does the style work perfectly for the music it's acts as a nice sign post that this isn't the bland, safe contemporary pop music that's been masquerading as country music.

When it comes to the songs my personal preferences lead me prefer the circus swirl of "Darkness Falls" and the rough wildness of "The Lash". Though "Bottle and Rusty Blade", "Sons of Soil" and "Witch on the Mountain" all hold their own.

PS: I LOVE this album cover.

Pinebox Serenade are seven Texans who are somehow connected to Devil's Ruin Records, a musical label operating in Leo, Indiana. I think there's an underground railroad for wayward musicians, but my sources haven't been able to bring me any concrete proof. Yet. Anyway, Pinebox are showering the world with love in their second full-length album, Let The River Take Them Home, hereafter referred to as LTRTTH, or LeatherTooth for short. Contained within the microscopic pits of the silvery platter are 12 old-timey songs that are dark and organic. "Gothic Americana" they call it.



To make their own special "Gothic Americana" moonshine Pinebox Serenade start with traditional folk instruments like an acoustic guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, accordion, lap-steel and ciddle (a cello in the field-roughened hands of a folk musician). Then they play original mountain music and bluegrassy dirges and smoky campfire songs, music that is formed from the dirt of despair, songs of love and rejection, life and death, daily pleasures and hourly pains.

The songs are surprisingly sophisticated without betraying their rural origins. The instrumental "Sons of Soil" begins with a mournful accordion that weeps into a dark lamentation that will leave a hollow ache in your chest. "The Plains" is hypnotic shoegazer folk full of eerie sounds and droning woodwinds and is driven painfully home by a perfect and passionate performance. If it's a mandolin solo you want, look no further than "The Faithful", an uncharacteristically upbeat song where the upright bass and fiddle form an unbeatable alliance. "Isabelle" soberly finds that "Midnight is a mask that covers me" leading to the rowdy Celtic romp "The Lash", where angry and aggressive vocals pelt the listener with missives of "Who wants to live to a ripe old age?" I can't help but thinking that our own Lee Miles would enjoy this band.

Folks, you just don't get music like that created by Pinebox Serenade from the radio. You can't churn it out according to a computer-generated formula. No, you've got to live a rough life (or at least read a lot about people living rough lives) and then use your music to work through the pain. But for such a sorrowful album, Let The River Take Them Home, er, LeatherTooth is a joy for the ears and the soul. (Jason Hoffman)

The prospect of hell and the potential for redemption provide the tension for Pinebox Serenade's excellent "Let The River Take Them Home." Call it Gothic-roots-country or Gothic-rock-grass. Touchstones for Pinebox Serenade might be a harrowed Johnny Cash, The Pogues but replace the Irish with American, and Richard Buckner at his most morose. There is a dreamy dark energy to the band's music that presents something pleasant on the surface only to discover that discontent lurks below. Pinebox Serenade take you on a dark, glorious journey. -- Jeff Weiss, Miles of Music (Devil's Ruin)

Use the link below:

Devil's Ruin Records Store

We are very proud to tell you that our second album "Let the River Take Them Home" is finally available for preorder from Devil's Ruin Records!!! You will recieve two bottons for free, plus all preorders have free shipping in the US!!! You can preorder using Paypal if you click on the link below.

CD Release - May 5, 2008

Pinebox Serenade - Let the River Take them Home will be available for the first time at our CD release show on July 12th at Dan's Silverleaf in Denton!!! We will have the band Starhead opening and then the incomparable Brent Best (Slobberbone/The Drams) will play, so it should be a great night.