Those of you who might be familiar with my posting schedule, if such it can be called, may have noticed that I didn’t offer up my usual second post last weekend. Apologies if I have wrecked your life, but the reason for this was twofold: firstly, I was unwell for three days and secondly, coupled with the terrible news from Ukraine, that all left me feeling that I just didn’t want to do it. I had been thinking of giving you a Saturday Smiles post but somehow it just didn’t seem right: the funnies will still be there for another occasion. But Tuesday is here again and I want to keep this series going: we all need some music to brighten our lives at present, I think. My theme for this week is: Run. I’ll leave you to work out what prompted it.

This seems as good a place as any to begin, and the song is accompanied by some great pictures from Jackson Browne’s 1977 tour, with 3-D effects:

Running On Empty was the opening and title track of Jackson Browne’s fifth album, released in December 1977. It was recorded during August and September of that year, either live on stage or in tour-related locations such as hotel rooms. The video is a montage of the album in creation, and gives a great photographic record of the enjoyment the band had in making it. It reached #3 in the US and #8 in Australia, but didn’t chart in the UK. This feels slightly odd to me, as it has been awarded a gold disc here but Jackson’s previous album, The Pretender, did make our chart, reaching #26, but only has a silver disc. This one must have been a slow burner of a seller!

That is one of the five tracks of this week’s selection of eight that I think might be familiar to you. This next tune is one of the three on which I’d take bets that you don’t know them:

This is the opening track on a 2011 album by Dax, entitled Beating Hearts And False Alarms. I came across the album in the days when I made much use of a site called Noisetrade, on which artists could offer for free tasters of their music. These could be singles, EPs or, as in this case, full albums, and were sorted by the site as being ‘for fans of…’. I don’t recall who they thought Dax was like, but I downloaded the album and have never regretted it – it is very good, and this track has been a favourite of mine since then. Dax – whose full name is Dax Penick – is a difficult guy to pin down. In my Apple Music library I also have an album by him from 2003 and an EP from 2010, but these were downloaded from Noisetrade and don’t appear to be available now. He has, however, been releasing new music since 2017 under the name Of Jagged Risings and this song is included on an EP from 2020 called Crooks. It’s almost as though he doesn’t want people to hear his music, isn’t it! Whatever he is doing, it seems to be working: I’ve found a website that gives his net worth as being $20m. Noisetrade, by the way, has been taken over by Paste magazine, which is continuing the Noisetrade role in offering free music via their website, if you’re interested.

After that trip into the ‘unknown but very good’ here’s one from the ‘well-known but very good’:

Run To You is a track from Bryan Adams’ fourth album, Reckless, released in November 1984. This is the one that gave him his big breakthrough, getting to #1 in both the US and his Canadian homeland, and #7 in the UK. This song was released in October 1984 as the lead single for the album, and did its job well, reaching #6 in the US, #11 in the UK and #4 in Canada. The album is fantastic, and includes songs like Heaven, Somebody, Summer Of ’69, and the brilliant duet with Tina Turner, It’s Only Love. Highly recommended.

Another of the ones I doubt you know is next. This is from one of the bands who prove that, although it might be a surprise to American readers, we have a thriving country music scene here:

As you can see from the video, this was a track on The Wandering Hearts’ debut album, Wild Silence, which was released in 2018 and got to #1 in the UK Americana chart. The band is now a three-piece, comprising A.J. Dean, Tara Wilcox and Francesca ‘Chess’ Whiffin, and they released an eponymous second album in 2021. They have appeared several times at the big UK C2C event, and have played at both the Ryman and the Grand Ole Opry, having been invited there by Marty Stuart. I rather like their lovely harmonies, and I’ve read that, once conditions allow, they will be returning to the US to tour there: I hope it goes well for them, as I think they deserve a wider audience.

This next one is also an audio-only version, but I think you may know this lot:

Run For Your Life was the closing track on The Beatles’ sixth album Rubber Soul, which was released in December 1965 and reached #1 in the US, UK, Canada, Germany and Australia. This was another of those albums which was buggered around by the record company: North America only got twelve tracks on it, the rest of the world were given fourteen. Your loss, guys! Like almost all of the songs on the album it wasn’t released as a single: those were the days when singles and albums were largely kept apart.

My next choice is one of those that simply had to be included. Not only is it a superb song, but while you watch the video think about runaway children who have been lost to their families. Many have been found as a result of this video and the publicity it generated, but sadly many others are still missing, as you can see from the comments if you watch it on YouTube:

In view of what I said earlier about Ukraine, this is a heartbreaking watch: it makes me so grateful for my family. This was the third track on Soul Asylum’s sixth album, Grave Dancers Union, which was released in October 1992 and became their first album to make the charts anywhere, ultimately peaking at #11 in the US and #27 in the UK. Runaway Train was released in June 1993 as the third single from the album, and was the main driver for the album’s success, getting to #5 in the US, #1 in Canada, and #7 in the UK, as well as making the top ten in many other countries. I used to play the album a lot during my long commute around the North Circular Road in London, and still bring it out occasionally now: this song is too good to ignore!

For today’s penultimate tune I’m giving you the third of the three that I said you might not know. This is another great song with a superb video, filmed at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science:

Thunder And Rain are an ‘Americana’ band from Golden, Colorado. They have released three albums to date, and this song featured on the third of those – 2020’s Passing In The Night – though that was listed as an alternative version: this one is the original. Run With You was first released as a single in 2016 but, as the band isn’t widely known, they don’t have a Wikipedia page and information about them is a little hard to come by, so I can’t tell you how well it has done. The driving force behind them is their vocalist, Erinn Peet Lukes, who has been forging her own path since the pandemic began and getting the band tother proved too difficult. I follow them on Facebook, though, and there are signs that they may be getting back together. I hope they do, as their music is a delight, and they have one of the best covers of Sweet Child Of Mine under their belt. For a time this disappeared from YouTube, after gathering loads of views, but someone reposted it a few years back. It’s well worth a look, and you’ll find it here – G’n’R go bluegrass, and before anyone tells me that Walk Off The Earth did a bluegrass version of the song, I can only say that Thunder And Rain did it first and, in my opinion, much better!

I’ve played today’s final song before, but I love this guy’s music and this video is brilliant:

Running Down A Dream was a track on what was officially Tom Petty’s first solo album, Full Moon Fever, which was released in April 1989. The members of The Heartbreakers played on the album, though, as did Jeff Lynne, George Harrison and Roy Orbison from The Traveling Wilburys. The album reached #3 in the US and #8 in the UK, and has sold more than 6m copies. This song was released in July 1989 as the second single from the album, peaking at #23 in the US and #55 in the UK. It’s a great album, and it includes the song I Won’t Back Down, which has become an iconic signature tune for the Florida Gators college handegg (sorry, football) team since Tom’s passing. Again, highly recommended.

That’s all for this week. I’ll return in a few days with my regular monthly review, which will be a short one, as it was a quiet month. Until then I’m keeping everything crossed for the safety of the people of Ukraine, and hoping that all those morons who told us that a vote for Brexit was ‘taking our country back’ will now realise what those words really mean. Take care 🤞