- HANNAH SAYLE
- Cory Branan made his debut for Chicago’s Bloodshot Records at SXSW.
Cory Branan and Valerie June have a lot in common. They are both Memphis-bred, roots-oriented singer-songwriters. They’re both making a new city their primary home now. They’ve both gone a ridiculously long time without an album on a legitimate national label, given their talents. And they both his Austin this year on the verge of rectifying that situation.
They also found themselves on the same stage Friday afternoon at the Yard Dog folk art gallery on South Congress, for the annual SXSW day party sponsored by rootsy Chicago indie Bloodshot Records.
Branan, now based in Nashville, signed with Bloodshot earlier this year and was making his debut for the label at Yard Dog, ahead of an official showcase the next night. Playing with a new three-piece backing band made up of Nashville’s Thriftstore Cowboys, Branan ripped through five songs from his terrific Bloodshot debut, Mutt, which is due out May 22nd.
He opened with the hard-rocking, darkly funny “Survivor Blues” and segued into the nostalgic “Yesterday” (“You were a walking want ad/You had summer on your side/Our front yards faced each other from across the great divide”) with, “Ladies, in the second verse — if you stick around for the second verse — I will teach you how to break his heart every spring.”
After the Tom Waits-like “Snowman,” Branan introduced “Karen’s Song” as “a love song about an ex. She wasn’t an ex at the time, but I find it’s good to throw an insult in just in case.”
Branan ended the loose, funny, spirited set with the anthemic “Badman” (“Well, okay, I’m a bad man, baby/I think a bad man would do you good.”), beginning the song by saying, “I’m with the late, great Jim Dickinson on tuning. He said it’s a decadent European tradition. So that’s close enough.”
Mutt, which was recorded a couple of years ago in San Francisco, will be Branan’s first album since 2006’s 12 Songs and his first for an established label. It’s about time.
