Almost Blue? Hardly, As Elvis Costello Brings His Secret to Grand Prairie on September 2.

By Robert Wilonsky Wed., May 13 2009 at 4:30 PM

I spent way much of the wee small hours of this very morning listening to Elvis Costello's Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane, his country record due June 2 and one produced by Fort Worth's own T Bone Burnett. It's more or less Almost Blue 2, though a wee bit more hushed and rushed--a jingle-jangle ramble through rustic roots music that features an Emmylou Harris guest vocal, a Loretta Lynn co-write, loads of Lauderdale (Jim, that is) and a track Costello wrote for Johnny Cash's 1990 Boom Chicka Boom album. No doubt I'll hear plenty more of the record September 2, when Costello makes his first-ever Nokia Theatre appearance--with his new band, the Sugarcanes, of which Lauderdale's a member.

Tickets go on sale Monday at 10 a.m. via Ticketmaster. So, till then, these bonuses from one E.C. fetishist to, no doubt, another and another and another ...

Though it's been plenty available elsewhere (including the Live at the El Mocambo album, not to mention the My Aim Is True deluxe reissue), over here you'll find the infamous "Less than Zero (Dallas Version)," wherein a certain "Mr. Oswald" has his identity altered to better fit a certain 1963-set storyline. Which is a nice addition to the canon, but which is nowhere near as essential as a certain 1977 show during which E.C. covered Richard Hell and Wreckless Eric.

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