Music

Live in the Sierra (2012)

Recorded live on tour in 2012

1. Fruit of the Vine
2. Squall
3. Way Back When
4. Blue Moon Stars
5. Banished Set
6. Beyond the Sky
7. Ramblin’ Girl

8. Be Kind Boys
9. Like the French
10. Loretta
11. Cody
12. Where the Streets Have No Name
13. Desert Rat
14. Lovelight

Limbs Akimbo (2010)

Produced by Tim Bluhm (Mother Hips), and features guest appearances by Jackie Greene, Zach Gill, and others.

1. Two Loose Cannons
2. Something New
3. Beneath the Blossoms
4. A Great Many Things
5. Brokedown
6. Sexy Bakery Girl

7. Queen Elizabeth
8. Turning the Wheel
9. Honkytonk Tequila
10. Summertime Gal
11. Limbs Akimbo

The Olive Sessions, Vol. 1 (2008)

1. Amanda Lynn
2. Bit By Bit
3. Day Trader
4. Right Between Your Eyes

Well-Oiled Machine (2007)

Produced by Mike Marshall, engineered by Decibel Dave Dennison and Josh Osmond.

1. Firefly
2. Guns or Butter
3. Idaho Pines
4. Poison Oak
5. Waterpocket Fold
6. Always Be the Moon

7. Well-Oiled Machine
8. Waiting For a Squall
9. Butch & Peggy
10. Sweet Honey Fountain
11. Wedding Day

Live in the Northeast (2006)

Recorded live on Hot Buttered Rum’s Northeast Tour 2006.

1. Busted in Utah
2. Limbo in Lovelock
3. Desert Rat
4. Return Someday
5. Cumberland Blues
6. Metrosexual

7. Summertime Gal
8. California Snow & Rain
9. Spider
10. Queen Elizabeth
11. Honey Bee
12. You Make Me Feel Like Dancing

In These Parts (2003)

Recorded in the hills of Fairfax by veteran sound engineer Decibel Dave Dennison (Garcia/Grisman projects).

1. Three Point Two
2. Flask, Alas!
3. Evolution
4. Old Dangerfield
5. I’ve Let Go

6. Lighten Up Your Load
7. Horseshoe
8. Reckless Tex
9. Immaculate Rain
10. In These Parts

Live at the Freight & Salvage (2002)

Recorded live at Berkeley’s premiere acoustic music venue on August 6, 2002.

1. Backrooms of My Mind
2. Elephant Hunting Song
3. Red-Haired Boy
4. String’s Breath
5. The Trial of John Walker Lindh
6. Norwegian Wood

7. Warm Up
8. Naked Blue
9. Red Clay Halo
10. The Crest
11. Dolphin
12. I Saw the Light

Girl Thursday

In the winter of 2011-12, Nat lead a trip to Ghana with musicians from Elephant Revival, Big Light, Huckle & HBR. After ten days learning from Ghanaian music and dance masters, this crew headed to an Accra recording studio and recorded this album with their new Ghanaian friends. There are several tunes familiar to HBR fans; the music has elements of bluegrass and highlife music. Pick up a copy at your next HBR show, or order one here now.

1. Swing and Sway

2. Like the French
3. Bells Under Waves
4. Every Stone We Lay
5. Shape the Stone

6. Waterpocket Fold
7. What To Do
8. Limbs Akimbo
9. Friday Night

Nat Keefe Concert Carnival

In December 2006, guitarist Nat Keefe put together a multi-media variety show with musicians from the Mother Hips, ALO, New Monsoon, the Peter Rowan/Tony Rice Quartet, Everyone Orchestra, and HBR. These talented musicians mixed with film, circus arts, and West African dance to create a unique night of entertainment that was enjoyed by an enthusiastic full house.

Sound engineer Josh Osmond recorded the preformance and mixed it to studio-quality perfection. The CD features several notable collaborations, including “Brokedown” by Tim Bluhm/Nat Keefe.

1. Introduction
2. Every Stone We Lay
3. Emmylou
4. Bliss Monkeys
5. Honkytonk Tequila
6. Walker
7. Brokedown
8. La Poblanita

9. Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue
10. Be Kind Boys
11. Eucalyptus Wood
12. Promiscuous Proboscis
13. Improvisation
14. Every Stone We Lay reprise
15. Dolphin

Music for Ordinary Motion

Music for Ordinary Motion is Nat Keefe’s college senior composition project, and captures Keefe’s expansive and inclusive notion of music. The CD includes a symphony orchestra movement, a string trio, music for modern dance, an a Capella piece, the earliest studio work of Hot Buttered Rum (not available anywhere else!), a guitar/flute duet, a setting of an e.e. cummings poem for female voice, baritone sax, and piano, songs for guitar and voice, and much more. This is a must for the serious fan of Hot Buttered Rum.

1. Windows Without Walls
2. La Poblanita
3. Spouting Violets
4. Bassmaster
5. Five Ways to Cross the Street
i) clean as Key Soap
6. Long Slow Distance
7. The Crest
8. ii) with dysentery

9. Gahu Elegy
10. This Is What Democracy Looks Like
11. iii) cool as Daddy Lumba
12. Rumi
13. iv) in the rain
14. v) with the wrong trousers
15. Twelve String Trio
16. Green Drop

Ghana boko paa 1999

Ghana boko paa 1999 was recorded and produced by Nat Keefe during a five-month trip to Ghana, West Africa. Keefe traveled to the far corners of Ghana to present a diverse selection of traditional and modern music, from the virtuosic xylophone of Rallio Kapakpul, to the groovy dance music of the Muwuli Borborbor Band, to proverbs sung on the famous “talking drum.” It should be noted that Ghana boko paa 1999 features some of the last recordings of palmwine highlife guitarist T.O. Jazz before he passed. It was lessons with Jazz that inspired Nat Keefe to cowrite “Limbs Akimbo,” the title track of Hot Buttered Rum’s new album. Ghana boko paa 1999 also feature’s Keefe’s early experiments with electronic music, “Water” and “Elmina Dungeons.”

1. Homeless
2. Kpanlogo
3. Bewaa Medley
4. Sogtaa
5. Water
6. Kolo Mashi
7. Oboatia Komfo

8. Talking Drum Proverbs
9. Hot Highlife
10. The Zonglo Beats
11. If You Have Millet and Don’t Share, You Will Die
12. Elmina Dungeons
13. Goodbye

City by the Bay

Aaron’s premiere solo album, City by the Bay.

1. Renaissance Woman
2. Missoula to Miami
3. Late Bloomer
4. A Song About Rio
5. Rocketship

6. Apple of My Eye
7. Cougar
8. City by the Bay
9. Most of All
10. Whole Lotta Things

The Sleeping Giants

Like their home in Oakland, CA, the music of The Sleeping Giants is rolling hills and towering steel; It swings for the gut when you’re dancing and pats you on your back when you’re blue.Singer and primary songwriter Erik Yates brought the Giants together in 2011 on a lark. Yates fell in love with the sound of the pedal steel guitar, and wanted to frame some of his newer songs with the instrument. Keyboardist Jeff Coleman (Big Light), bassist Mark Murphy (Huckle) and drummer Lucas Carlton (HBR) — a trio of friends who have played together for a decade (most recently in Izabella) — turned up to help, but as fate would have it, the pedal steel player was busy, so the guys called on Chris Haugen (Melvin Seals, Poor Man’s Whiskey) to fill the spot with his tasty Telecaster & lap steel playing.

A fresh batch of tunes from Yates, Haugen’s new guitar tones, and that dank West Oakland rehearsal studio proved a potent mix, and the ‘country band’ phase lasted around twenty minutes. Maybe twenty-five. By the end of that first rehearsal, a rock band was born.

This band can push, pull, bend, and bruise with the best of them — there’s no shortage of raw talent, refined skill, and youthful energy between them — but listening to these songs, it’s not just the decades of musical experience one hears, but all the glorious, messy living that’s accompanied it. That familiar mix of love, joy, fear, and heartbreak that defines us all.

Their debut release might get filed under Americana, Indie Folk, or even (gasp!) Country Rock, but it’s all just Rock & Roll. It’s an Oakland potluck, where banjo, steel guitar, and gritty rock organ come together like beef ribs and kale salad. It’s all good, and you’re always welcome.

1. At the End of the Day
2. Button
3. Diamonds in the Wind
4. Let It Fall

5. The Sweetest Thing
6. 13th Avenue Blues
7. She Spent the Night

Campfire Singalong (Kid’s album)

Hot Buttered Rum joins Orange Sherbet around a virtual campfire to bring this collection of classic songs that will be instantly familiar to anyone who has roasted marshmallows and watched the flames dance in a fire pit. This collaboration creates rich layers of song and tradition, and it was truly a group effort. Campfire Sing-Along is steeped in the rich sounds of American Roots music, while managing to create a new sound for the campfire sing-along.

1. Campfire Song
2. Ram Sam Sam
3. Crawdad
4. One Man Band
5. Down By The Bay
6. I Love the Mountains
7. Marshmallow
8. Froggy
9. Down By The Banks
10. Frog Went A-Courtin’
11. Make New Friends
12. Bit By Bit

13. Sippin’ Cider
14. She’ll Be Comin’ Round The Mountain
15. Uncle Sean
16. Sky In Me
17. Skin & Bones
18. Barges
19. Down By The Old Mill Stream
20. My Paddle/Canoe Song
21. Down By The Riverside
22. Hey Ho, Nobody Home!
23. Mr. Moon
24. Shenandoah