Just wanted to mention that I'm heading to Europe at the beginning of May to play some acoustic shows. I'll be joined by stellar East Nashville songsmith Peter Cooper and we're doing 12 dates in Holland and Germany. Yowza! Peter and Last Train Home are both signed to the Dutch label Corazong Records, and so we're doing a combo-promo tour.

Please check out the tour dates on the "tour" page of this website, and tell all your euro-friends to come see us!!!

Not coincidentally, my record label, Red Beet Records, has just released Peter's CD in the U.S. It's called "Mission Door," and it's spectacular. Read the reviews at www.redbeetrecords.com and get you some of his great music!

I've also just released the debut CD of Fayssoux McLean, who is a spectacular singer from South Carolina, whom you know (if you know her at all) for singing harmonies on the first few Emmylou Harris records, the great, great ones from the mid-'70s, like "Elite Hotel," "Luxury Liner," "Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town," "Pieces of the Sky." On Fayssoux's debut, "Early," Emmylou returns the favor and sings lovely harmonies, but the show is all Fayssoux's. Don't miss it. And note the fact that her CD was produced by Peter Cooper.

Last Train Home, meanwhile, is getting great notices over in Europe for "Last Good Kiss." I wish I could be taking the whole band over there, but dang, the dollar is low over there, and it's just too much to bring 5 people.. someday!

Below I've pasted in the latest rave (very positive, though he does point out that we're destined for obscurity...)

Thanks for reading, and i'll be blogging while in Europe! Stay tuned!

-- Eric

p.s. this news page and the "EB's Blog" page on this site now have the RSS feed capability, so click on that if you want to know when I've been busy typing!

Last Good Kiss

**** (4 out of 5 stars)

Eclectic musical stew from an accomplished band of ace musicians A band like Last Train Home are unlikely to feature in any mainstream chart. In fact, you're unlikely to hear them on mainstream radio (unless you think Bob Harris is mainstream).

You see this Nashville-based outfit are too eclectic for their own good. They bring in musical threads from country, folk, bluegrass, swing, jazz, blues, rock'n'roll and even mariachi into an original repertoire that has elevated them into an acclaimed live act but a little known recording one. They've released a half-dozen albums on small indie labels-each one has been critically-acclaimed and readily embraced by a small, but growing fan base.

But to the general music buying public who look for tunes they know or a recognised sound that doesn't colour outside of pre-set boundaries, Last Train Home is destined to remain virtually unknown.

But Maverick readers are more discerning than the multitudes, so they should get what's going on here. It's high-class rootsy, rock-inflected music. Most songs are written by lead singer Eric Brace and range from the heartbreaking ballad ‘Go Now’ to the almost jazzy ‘You’ and the rhythmic ‘Kissing Booth’ with a little fuzz on the electric guitars, some accordion way down in the mix and a soulful lead vocal.

They throw in a couple of bonus tracks-a neat acoustic reworking of the Carter Family's ‘Lovers Farewell’ and Dylan's ‘This Wheel's On Fire’. Eclectic, maybe, but also very accessible and highly recommended. testurl('http://www.redbeetrecords.com/store'); testupload('');
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Last Train Home: Live At Iota (Red Beet/String Theory Media)
-- This DVD captures, very well, a typically varied and smart performance by the veteran, versatile
bi-capital Washington and Nashville-based alt-country band, in a show
marking their tenth anniversary at an Arlington, Virginia nightclub. Lead
singer and songwriter Eric Brace produced and edited this polished,
multi-camera video, along with director Craig Havighurst; the result is
quite a sterling example of what indie bands and filmmakers can do together.
As the band - in its horn-augmented, full-sized D.C. version - blasts and
coos its way through Brace's originals old and new, plus their trademark
covers of classics from Tom T. Hall, Merle Haggard, Rodney Crowell and
Dylan, the cameras, like the guitars, steel, horns and keyboards (Jen
Gunderman), are in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.
It's alive for you.

LTH just had some great shows in Easton, MD, and at the Barns of Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA. Thanks for coming out if you were there!!
Upcoming shows include Harrisonburg, VA,  and Ashland, VA, and IOTA of course, and Roanoke VA, and... well, check that calendar... We'll be adding dates frequently over the next few weeks.

Also, you should know that the LTH HQ doubles as the Red Beet Records HQ, and RBR would like to announce that in March, we'll be releasing two debut CDs, from excellent songwriters and singers Peter Cooper and Fayssoux McLean. If you're in Nashville on Friday, March 21, try to come to the Station Inn, where both Peter and Fayssoux will be having their CD release shows.

Also, Eric keeps promising to update his blog, so stay tuned....

Now through Dec. 25 

We hope you'll check it out and say nice things about it too....

Here are three links to see clips from the concert video (while you're there, you should become our friend on Virb. It's cooler than myspace and facebook...)

"Darling Say Won't You Be Mine"  http://www.virb.com/lasttrainhome/videos/28215

"Dogs on the East Side" http://www.virb.com/lasttrainhome/videos/28205

"Last Good Kiss" (the video, not the concert footage):
 http://www.virb.com/lasttrainhome/videos/28207

Yes it's true, the van, known as "Stealth Tiara," has zoomed beyond 200,000 miles (that makes 150,000 in 3 years, goodness gracious....)

I type this from the fabulous Paragon Studios south of Nashville, where I sit with our old pal Doug Derryberry linking the audio of the DVD that Doug's been mixing up in NYC to the video edit of the shows, edits done down here by me and our video director Craig Havighurst.

I gotta say, to my amazement, i'm not sick of hearing/seeing it, despite the hours and hours immersed in this. It's been a blast being able to watch the show like a spectator instead of from the perspective of the "frontman"... And I hope you'll think so too. It looks and sounds great, and catches LTH at the top of our form, methinks... I'm proud of it, and glad we documented those nights.

We're mixing it in "surround sound" so that if you have one of those fancy 5.1 stereo systems, you can pretend you were there in IOTA on April 14, 2007 !

Aug 31 and Sept 1 we're playing nice long sets at the Johnstown Folk Festival

and on

Sun Sept 16, we'll play an afternoon set at the Bristol Rhythm & Roots Festival

See you there, or somewhere, down the line....

-- Eric 

That's the link to the video to the song "Last Good Kiss." We filmed it at the Sewanee Municipal Airport....

And holy mackeral, CMT played it !!

If you buy a copy of "Last Good Kiss," or of any other Last Train Home CD, off the website here, you'll get a free copy of our EP, "Tributaries," thrown in. That's one we made a few years back, with six songs that originally appeared on various tribute and/or compilation records.....

Also, as long as you're on this site, you might as well get a free download, right?

On the home page, there's a banner on the left.... you'll see it soon if it's not up yet.... and click it to get a free song off the new CD.... come back often, because we're going to change that song around... old songs... new songs... unreleased songs...

Hope to see you at a show soon!!

thanks for stopping by

-- LTH

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE "LAST GOOD KISS" VIDEO

Or you can watch it, as part of the CMT's "Top 20 Countdown" program:
* Thursday May 17 (4-7 pm, ET & PT)
* Friday May 18 (1-4 pm)
* Saturday May 19 (11 am - 2 pm)
We don't know at what point in those 3 hours it will run..... but pretty cool, if we do say so ourselves. We're NOT in the Top 20 over at CMT (though we are still #16 on the Americana Radio Chart!), but every week they pick an indie band to spotlight, in between videos by Sugarland and Miranda Lambert.... Check it out!

Here's what The Washington Post has to say about "Last Good Kiss" :

'LAST TRAIN HOME is based in Nashville these days, but the band travels so much it might seem that frontman Eric Brace would be hard-pressed to keep coming up with first-rate songs between tour stops. Apparently, that's not a problem. If anything, "Last Good Kiss," the quintet's new release, suggests that as far as the quality of Brace's songwriting is concerned, the more road work the better.

Consider the album's opening and title track. A rushing, Last Train express out of Nashville, where the disc was recorded, the song swiftly reveals Brace's knack for conveying hair-trigger emotions with just a few choice words. It's also a stirring showcase for the band's new lineup, featuring guitarist Steve Wedemeyer and keyboardist Jen Gunderman, formerly of the Jayhawks.

Brace, who wrote the "Nightwatch" column for Weekend a few years back, penned 10 of the 11 songs collected here, including "May," a poignant reflection on the jarring nature of family loss. Then there's "Flood," a song about the redemptive power of love with soaring gospel overtones, and "Anywhere but Here," a loping, heartsick plaint. They couldn't be pitched further apart. But each in its own distinct way ranks among the band's best studio tracks. In addition to well-crafted songs, Brace's increasingly soulful vocals and guitarist Wedemeyer's twang-town thrust, the album features evocative touches of accordion, trumpet, banjo, percussion and vocal harmonies. None of the arrangements is more atmospheric than "The Color Blue," the album's enchanting coda, but there's no shortage of mood-enhancing accents from start to finish.'

But there's more news!

On Tuesday Sept. 26 we'll be filming a video for the new song, "Last Good Kiss." It's going to be directed by Amy Dickerson, a photographer who shot many of the images on this new LTH website. She's taking us to a tiny airport in Suwannee, TN, and we'll see what we come up with!!! Woohoo! Our first video!! (Those of you who were at IOTA a few years ago as we taped what we thought would become a "Doughnut Girl" video, we're still not sure what has become of that footage. Working on it....)

Then there's the launch of Red Beet Records, which will be the new label home of Last Train Home. Give a look at www.redbeetrecords.com. You'll notice that we're predicting a new LTH CD in January, 2007. And you can hear a preview of that on the LTH streaming jukebox. It's that new song "Last Good Kiss." As you can hear, the band is on to something big. That song will also be on the Red Beet site's jukebox, along with songs from TWO other releases: "The Skylighters" and "The Other Side: Music From East Nashville." Here's some info on them:

The Skylighters is a side project of Eric, Martin, and Jim's. They took a little time away from Last Train Home to record some songs with a couple of their musical heroes, Mike Auldridge and Jimmy Gaudreau. Those two are both legends in the bluegrass world: Mike was a founding member of the groundbreaking band, The Seldom Scene. His dobro playing changed the bluegrass world (heck, he taught Jerry Douglas!). He also played with Cliff Waldron & the New Shades of Grass, Chesapeake, Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Auldridge Bennett & Gaudreau, and lots of other folks. On top of that, Mike is an incredible pedal steel player, and though he's played a little steel on Chesapeake recordings, it's here with The Skylighters that he really gets to show what he's got.
Jimmy Gaudreau is one of the world's greatest mandolin players ever. He was an early member of the Country Gentlemen (replacing John Duffy when Duffy left to form the Seldom Scene), he played with J.D. Crowe & the New South, the Tony Rice Unit, Spectrum, Chesapeake, Auldridge Bennett & Gaudreau, Robin & Linda Williams and many more amazing acts.

When the five of us got together for a show in 2002, we had a blast and promised to do it all again sometime. Over the next three years, there were only four live shows, but they were magical musical evenings. We kept talking about how we needed to go into the studio to capture the magic, and finally, in January, 2006, we did.

With former LTH guitarist Jared Bartlett producing, we recorded 14 songs in two days, and now they've become the debut Red Beet Records release. The self-titled CD is full of country, bluegrass, western swing, gospel, country-rock, and more. We're all extremely proud of it. We hope you'll give it a listen and buy it and take it home with you.

If you're in the DC area on Thursday Oct. 12, maybe you'd like to come out to the Birchmere for The Skylighters' CD release show. We're sharing the bill with the great Tim O'Brien.
And if you're in the Nashville area, keep an eye on the Station Inn's schedule for a Skylighters date, probably in January.

As for "The Other Side: Music from East Nashville," well, that's just about the greatest colleciton of music you'll ever hear. Ever since some of us moved to East Nashville from DC a few years ago, we've been amazed at the amazing music scene here, consisting mainly of friends and neighbors: Todd Snider, Kevin Gordon, Thad Cockrell, Elizabeth Cook, Tim Carroll, Tom Mason, Amelia White, Paul Burch, and on and on and on and on.
When we were talking about the creation of Red Beet Records, we thought about how to launch it with a splash. A collection from the East Side seemed like the way to go. It soon became clear, once we got started compiling it, that it was going to be a two-CD set. 
It took just two months for the idea to become reality. The record is out, and you can read more about it at www.redbeetrecords.com. If you're in Nashville end of October, we're having TWO CD-release shows: Friday Oct. 27 at the Basement, and Saturday Oct. 28 at the Family Wash.

So that's all the news for now, and if that's not enough for you, then you've got a problem.
Stay in touch,
Come see us,
Drop us a line,
Be our myspace friend (www.myspace.com/lasttrainhome)

And see you soon.......

We've made a new website! What do you think?
Please do tell us your thoughts. There's a streaming jukebox so you can listen to ten LTH songs. One of them is a newly recorded song, "Last Good Kiss," which we just did down here in Nashville. It's a taste of the next record, which should be out in January. We'll be playing lots of new songs live. Hope you like 'em.

(You can download "Last Good Kiss" if you sign up for our e-mail list.... if you're already on our e-mail list, well, be patient, and we'll get a download up there for you soon.)

We've been touring like crazy this summer, but we're not done yet! There's lots of shows coming up in September and October. Please come out and say hey.

In other news, keep an eye out for a new CD by The Skylighters. That's a group featuring Eric, Jim, and Martin from LTH, along with bluegrass legends Mike Auldridge (dobro, pedal steel) and Jimmy Gaudreau (mandolin, guitar). It's country, bluegrass, western swing, honky tonk, folk-rock, tin pan alley, and it's (frankly) great. "The Skylighters" comes out in September on Red Beet Records, a spankin' new Nashville label that's going to release the next Last Train Home CD as well. We'll keep you posted on all of that, you can be sure.

We want to take a moment here to thank Eric Christensen, who for the past six years has volunteered his time and his extraordinary skills to create and maintain the Last Train Home website. It was a gorgeous site and we're sad to see it go. We're updating with a good team of people here in Nashville, Echo Music, and they've got lots of ideas on how to get the word out on LTH to a bunch of new people, something that's just gotta happen for us to keep this train on the tracks.

So here's a huge THANK YOU to Eric Christensen. Give him a round of applause (can you hear it, ec??).

And getting back to that point about spreading the word on LTH, please give us a hand on that front. If you like LTH, chances are you've got friends who'd like us too, and we need your help. Send them a link to this site, and tell 'em to sign up for the LTH email list so we can let them know about gigs near them and such. They'll get that free download too.... beat that with a stick!!

Guess that's all for now.
Stay in touch.
See you in your hometown.
Or else plan a trip to Nashville or D.C. and time it so you can see an LTH show!
Thanks....

-- LTH