Author Archives: Easy Ed

Oh No…A Facebook Friend Supports Donald Trump…What Would Pete Seeger Do?

Once upon a time I collected Facebook friends as if they were baseball cards. The more the merrier it seemed, drawing together a large community and network of people from my past, present and future. Childhood friends, high school girlfriends, long lost co-workers, fellow travelers and even the friends of other Facebook friends who I’d meet only via comments and online chats. I linked them on Linkedin and connected with them on Twitter, put their email addresses in a contact file and stayed in touch such as it was by watching their lives move across the magic screen in an endless parade of family and pet pictures, status updates that ranged from silly to sad and of course news, views and opinions. Lots of those.

Like many, I fell into the trap. With too much time on my hands and a sense of self-righteousness, and indignation, I used Facebook as a means to communicate political rants and anger by finding articles with similar viewpoints as my own and sharing them along with my wonderfully witty and sarcastic personal observations. It seemed like the right thing to do…quickly reaching a few hundred folks with a cut, paste and post. And when my friends responded by hitting the ‘LIKE’ button, it only fueled that addictive rush of confirmation and acceptance.

Look ma….they like me, they really do.

A couple of years ago I recognized that I didn’t much like the ‘social media Ed’ anymore. He’d grown jaded and isolated and snarky and petty. And I wasn’t alone. So I took a break, stopped posting anything for a few months, quietly watched what others were using social media for and went through my list of Facebook friends…silently deleting more than half of them. The next thing I did was to create a new Facebook identity, one that only reflects my passion and interest in particular forms of American vernacular music and serves as a place where I can share my published work. It seems healthier for mind and spirit. (If you care…here it is.)

The other night a gentleman named Ian from Minneapolis who I once worked with about fifteen years ago and remains on my list of Facebook friends posted this…which I am slightly editing to cut to the essence of his thoughts:

I find myself stepping away from Facebook as I’m appalled by the endless, vile and petty posts that serially savage political candidates on an hourly basis. I understand that people are passionate but endless repetition changes nobody’s mind. Maybe going for a walk and screaming obscenities is a better plan. I prefer to remember my Facebook friends as they were before this endless political cycle.

Yes…I could feel my head nod in agreement to that. But wait…he can’t possibly be talking about me, could he? Haven’t I been a good Facebook citizen these past years? Wasn’t I a recovered and reformed serial poster who walked through social media with better judgement than in my past?

I ran to my personal page…a few pictures of my kids, a couple of links to recent music-related articles I’ve written, shameless self-promotion of my other Facebook page, my personal website and…oh no…almost a dozen anti-Donald Trump stories mostly from Huffington Post or Politico going back to last July. Where they hell did those come from? What was I thinking?

In ten minutes they were all deleted. Without even realizing it, I had became the angry Ed again on a mission to share my political feelings to friends. And to be clear, sharing thoughts and having conversation is not only important but essential…and I am extremely angry and pissed off and scared about the rise in popularity of a man I consider to be exactly what the Huffington Post calls him out on every single day:

Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

But the dilemma is how does one express and communicate emotion and passion about any issue on a slash and burn media platform that is in reality not conversational in any way, shape or form. Whether you post an update or leave a comment, you are pushing out and not pulling in. It may give you satisfaction and inner-bliss, but it does nothing to connect you to another person and you’re left shouting words over the roar of an ocean.

It was at this moment I should have shut off my computer, turned off the lights and went to bed. But I decided I needed to respond to my old friend. This is in part what I wrote:

Everyone has access to whatever news media they choose, everybody can read, discover and come to their own opinions, everybody carries their own experiences and views. Does anybody think that posting yet another HuffPo or NYTimes piece about some politician saying something outrageous will move the needle? No. I imagine we think it portrays us as witty or clever, or we have this delusion that we can change peoples views with a simple cut and paste or worse yet….our very own ‘on the fly’ observations.

So anyway, I’m sort of going to start moving forward with the WWPD approach. What’s that you ask? What Would Pete (Seeger) Do?

From what I’ve been told by friends of his, and I won’t pretend to know for sure if this is the truth or a tale, in his later years when something happened that Pete felt he needed to speak out on, he’d write it down on a piece of cardboard, go stand on a corner in his hometown of Beacon New York, and hold it up for people to see. I can imagine some folks would drive past and ignore him, and some might pull over and ask ‘What’s up Pete’?’

If you are the person who wants to work toward a goal, or make a change in someones life, do it one to one. Person to person. In conversation, not a meme. Leave social media for cat videos, signposts of life and passing, new restaurants, trips, friends, promoting your products or services and the very very very very occasional moment when you can connect again with someone you’ve thought you lost.

Lights off. Sleep came.

Yesterday I took a few hours and looked over my current list of Facebook friends. There are just 305 of them now, down from what once was over a thousand. I have found two who are very vocal about supporting Donald Trump and one who used to like Marco Rubio but now is pushing Ted Cruz. All three individuals are professional colleagues from over two decades ago, but they’ve remained on my friends list because I liked them when we worked together and we created a connection that is unexplainably still there at the very least with good memories.

I won’t lie…for a moment my finger hovered over the delete button…the kill switch. Is it possible to actually have a friend in my life…online or real…whose views run polar opposite of my own? And it’s not like we talk or see each other or likely ever will. I should just cut and run. They’re still there.

I recall this quote from Pete Seeger, and it has helped untangle my thoughts.

It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.

The next few months are likely to get more turbulent and divisive. The shouting will get louder, the rhetoric more heated, the lines further divided. While I have not been one who actively campaigns or takes to the streets in protest as I did in my youth, neither apathy and inaction…nor hiding behind a keyboard…can be the acceptable default position. I will raise my voice, but I will speak to people and not at them.

I’m not completely in touch with why Pete Seeger’s spirit and voice have long resonated within me, but they do. He’s the closest thing to what I would call a hero, and I wish he was still here with us today. His presence would comfort. What would Pete do?

He’d make us sing together of course.

Easy Ed’s Broadside Outtakes #2

Photo by Sandy Dyas

Easy Ed’s Broadside weekly column has been a fixture at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music for over ten years. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

New Music Rising

It doesn’t seem all that long ago when hardy music buyers and fans would get in line late on a Monday night outside their local record store. At midnight the doors would be unlocked and the Tuesday new releases were put out for sale. The bigger titles would have been advertised in the Sunday papers, there would likely have already been reviews printed in magazines or other print media, you may have heard a tune or two on the radio and for at least that week you’d get a reduction off the regular price.

These days, the ‘official release date’ that the music industry uses is Friday, but that has little meaning anymore to most consumers who hear about new music online at infinite points of origin. A click here, a click there…and you can pretty much learn about new stuff and hear anything at anytime. There are exceptions, but not often.

So with that, there seems to be a revised definition to this term ‘new release’. With an annual pipeline of almost a couple hundred thousand albums released, something is new when you first hear about it. Yeah…there is still this mini-factory assembly line that a lot of musicians follow trying to get the word out in a short burst for maximum impact…but that makes sense for the one percenters, not necessarily every single title.

With that in mind, here’s something new to me that was released back in February from Alligator Records. I love me a good tribute and anthology, and God Don’t Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson fills the bill.

blindwillie-compressed

The project originally began as a Kickstarter campaign, and features crazy-great performances from Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Sinéad O’Connor, the Blind Boys Of Alabama, Cowboy Junkies, and more. Listen to the full stream via Pitchfork and here’s the man himself, filmed in 1927.

Every Picture Tells a Story

Sandy The image at the top of this page was shot by my long-time-we’ve-only-met-online friend Sandy Dyas, who is a visual artist based in Iowa City that I’ve written about often. You can visit her website here and check out her work, books (buy them…really) and blog. And more of her images can be found on this site….including this one I originally published back in January 2014 at No Depression dot com.

Long Before N.W.A. There Was Country Music Straight Outta Compton

Back in 1951 a weekly country radio show was broadcasted live from Town Hall in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton. Within two years it had been picked up as a TV program by NBC and local station KTTV, there were 39 syndicated shows taped for Screen Gems and it had a damngood run, with it’s final show in January 1961. Had a few different names, but mostly it was either the Town Hall Party or The Ranch Party. There’s a good wiki page here on details.

Hosted by Tex Ritter, the list of weekly guest stars included pretty much anybody you might think of back in those times…Lefty Frizzell Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Patsy Cline, Merle Travis, Gene Autry, Sons of The Pioneers, The Collins Kids, Johnny Bond, Smiley Burnette. To our good fortune, many of the shows and individual performances are available on You Tube. Try this search link if you want a shortcut.

The 10-piece Town Hall Party band featured Joe Maphis, Merle Travis, the superb female steel guitarist Marian Hall, Billy Hill and Fiddlin’ Kate on violins, PeeWee Adams on drums, Jimmy Pruitt on piano, and other excellent musicians who created a Town Hall Party sound also heard on many country sessions produced by Columbia Records in Hollywood in the 1950s. Thought I’d share this one with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXmNdRJ1E_Q

What Exactly Did Tony Visconti Say at SXSW Music 2016?

Acclaimed American record producer Tony Visconti, famous for his many records with David Bowie (including his final album, “Darkstar”), Marc Bolan, Paul McCartney, Badfinger, Iggy Pop, Morrissey and others, briefly choked up onstage last week during his South by Southwest keynote talk at the Austin Convention Center as he finished reading a fictionalized account of the grim future of the record industry. (Story here.)

The story ended with a jaded record executive jumping from the balcony of his skyscraper residence to his death. The dapper 71-year-old producer threw down his prepared notes and had to compose himself afterward.

Couple of thoughts from Tony:

-The vast amount of music being uploaded on to YouTube is “clogging the arteries” of the music business; unmediated and unfocused.

-“With the population doubling how come we can’t sell records? The record labels now are not giving you quality, that’s why you’re disenchanted, that’s why you don’t buy records.”

-Fans “used to put a vinyl record on a turntable” and play it hundreds of times. “None of that goes on today. There are great people all around us – the next David Bowie lives somewhere in the world, the next Beatles, the next Springsteen but they’re not getting a shot, they’re not being financed.”

-Our music industry is one “where singles all sound the same, where sales aren’t that great, where people are streaming and if you get 20 million [plays], you get enough for a nice steak dinner”.

-“I’ve always had black kimonos. I’ve always loved black kimonos. I know I’m rambling on. I’ll get to the point where I met David Bowie.”

Mixed reviews, but Vulture wrote: “By catering to cultural curiosity, excavating his early career, and using both his platform and the room’s rapt attention to strike while the iron was hot with a cautionary tale, Visconti did better than a sentimental speech. He casually played with prophecy, a move his much-missed friend would certainly appreciate.”

Bob Dylan’s 25 Musical Heroes

This list was assembled and published a few weeks ago over at The Telegraph and I found it a quick interesting read. Here’s just a couple of my fave quotes, but do go take a look for yourself at the whole enchilada.

Boy, I love them . . . the Flying Burrito Brothers, unh-huh. I’ve always known Chris Hillman, you know, from when he was in the Byrds, who had a distinctive sound. And he’s always been a fine musician. The Brothers’ records knocked me out.

John Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about Sam Stone the soldier junky daddy and Donald and Lydia, where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be Lake Marie. I don’t remember what album that’s on.

Karen Dalton is my favourite singer. Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday’s and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed and went all the way with it.

I Just Sold My Newport Folk Festival Ticket and Won’t See Joan Shelley.

It ain’t easy to get a 3-day pass to Newport because they do this email notification thing through Ticketmaster, and you gotta act fast. I did, and bought mine a couple months ago. It was just around $200, which I think is a bargain for what you know will be an amazing musical weekend of exploration and discovery. You don’t even know yet who’ll be on the program, as only about a dozen folks have been announced, but its hardly a leap of faith to know it’ll be great. Joan Shelley will be there…knowing I’ll miss her is a disappointment. Her music speaks to me.

My one and only time at Newport was in 2014, and although I held tickets for last summer a ‘life happens’ moment forced a pullout. I was pretty sure I would be good-to-go this year until I sat down and worked on the details. A sad-assed vertigo sufferer, the train seemed like a better mode of transport than my Civic, and there would be some ground transportation needed to get to town from the station. Once there, moving around is pretty easy. Walking, boat shuttle, taxis. But where to stay…oh my. With an average lodging cost of about $300 per day…camping not an option…that’s what did me in. I couldn’t find a way to make the whole thing come in at much less than a thousand bucks, and although I love music, I’m a man with a budgetary restriction. So not this year…sorry.

By the way, Ticketmaster has a pretty neat way for you to take a ticket, put it up for sale through them, and in less than a week it was sold to someone else and my dough was re-deposited into my account. I think I lost twenty bucks or so in fees, but its an easy way out.

On Sharon Jones: A Favorite Story from Oxford American

Homecoming Queen by Maxwell George was published on January 19, 2015.

North Augusta Baptist Church is a humble house of God, steepleless and cast in brick, with a pair of squat towers flanking the stained-glass black Messiah on its façade. Last summer, I got my picture taken next to the marquee out front, which advertised an upcoming Youth Revival weekend—fitting enough, since my being there related to a former young congregant. In the mid-1960s, soul singer Sharon Jones gave her first public performance here, as a singing angel in the Christmas pageant when she was in the third grade. (Click here to continue.)

Videos You Wouldn’t Know Existed, Unless You Found Them By Mistake.

I aggregate and post daily on my Twitter feed:@therealeasyed and Facebook page:The Real Easy Ed: Roots Music and Random Thoughts. My every other week Broadside column is published at No Depression.

Easy Ed’s Outtakes #1

Photo by Sandy Dyas

Easy Ed’s Broadside weekly column has been a fixture at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music for over ten years. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

Killer Duets: Teddy Thompson and Kelly Jones

Almost two months ago RS Country reported on a new project from Teddy Thompson and Kelly Jones. They wrote: ‘Little Windows, the first collaborative album from singer-songwriters Teddy Thompson and Kelly Jones, packs a whole career’s worth of sparkling pop gems and sobering country ballads into a collection that runs just short of 26 minutes. What’s more remarkable, however, is that the LP represents a relatively new partnership, and every one of the songs is original to the project, although any of the album’s 10 tracks could be mistaken for some long-lost sonic nugget from the Fifties or Sixties’. Read more here.

Bars of Allman Joy

The first time I laid eyes on the Allman Brothers was inside a beer and clams bar on the boardwalk of Atlantic City on July 4th 1971. It was a way too early too early Sunday morning and residue from the previous nights activities could still be felt and smelled. I was there with a blonde haired girl named Karen who was pregnant and running away from her boyfriend Bobby. He later married my cousin, and then they broke up. I recognized Duane among the seven or eight guys who sat across the stick from us, and I recall we traded some laughs about weed and the condensation dripping down the outside of the pitchers of beer that sat before us. They were finishing up a week long run at The Steel Pier. I may have seen then that week, or not. Hard to remember, but I know I went to one of their shows sometime that year. Duane was gone by October.

Garden and Gun has published a slideshow of photos that appear in a new book by Kirk West. This is one of my favorites, and here’s the link to it and the overview: Back in the 1970s, photographer Kirk West was just a self-described “hippie with a camera” and a diehard Allman Brothers Band fan who traveled to see his favorite Southern rock group whenever he could. He became such a fixture that the band invited him backstage and to studio sessions, and in 1989, West joined the crew as an assistant tour manager. “I was only supposed to work for three weeks,” he says, “and it ended up being twenty-one years.”

Over at Oxford American, my favorite music journalist and author Amanda Petrusich…whose books you should add to your reading list asap if you somehow missed them…has published The Road Goes on Forever, a beautifully crafted article on the band. You can read it here, but if you’re super-smart you’ll also buy the OA Georgia Music Issue before it sells out. It includes their annual sampler CD that is indeed exceptional. (Read more about Amanda and her books at My Back Pages.)

Radio is a sound salvation. Radio is cleaning up the nation. Radio, Radio

Somewhere along the way, despite my early adaption of digital music files over shiny discs of plastic, I missed the podcast thing. In a recent article over at No Depression from Sloane Spencer, her recap of the past year caught my eyes.

Top-notch programs from media powerhouses and coalitions of their expatriates have brought the medium to general recognition in America. Many of the early, grassroots, or DIY programs, though, went on permanent hiatus or completely ended their runs. A lot of this churn is normal attrition, but a lot of it is due to the success of podcasting itself. Superstars exploded from the top echelons while those bubbling up from below saw downloads stay flat or vastly decrease while streaming took over. For indie podcasts, streaming is not even monetized by the content maker, as most of it is via apps that pick up the RSS feed and redistribute thousands of programs.

As we all muddle along trying to figure out what is happening and will happen with “new media,” change is gonna come. Change is opportunity.

While I still figure out for myself if I have the time and inclination, my friend Carter recently shared with me how he finds so much (free) old-time music on the web using a couple of podcast apps. So as I was on the Smithsonian Folkways site today looking for something other than this, when I happened to discover that they have a series of 24 one-hour shows called The Folkways Collection. You could spend an entire day listening to this.

On Roy Zimmerman, Donald Drumpf, Kylie Jenner and the kitchen sink.

Every other week my Easy Ed’s Broadside column is published on the No Depression website, and my most recent one is a meandering walk through the current state of how hashtags have usurped the sixties protest music movement that used to ‘spread the word’ back in the day. Actually, I contradicted that thought when I noted the last song ever written that galvanized a generation to actually do something was Ray Steven’s “The Streak”. Anyway…you can read the article here and I’m putting up one of Roy’s videos for your amusement and joy.

https://youtu.be/Ege_RBhh37A

Every Picture Tells a Story

Sandy The image at the top of this page was shot by my long-time-we’ve-only-met-online friend Sandy Dyas, who is a visual artist based in Iowa City that I’ve written about often. You can visit her website here and check out her work, books and blog. And more of her images can be seen on this site too.

Videos You Wouldn’t Know Existed, Unless You Found Them By Mistake.

A List of Performers at SXSW 2016 That I Found.

Happened to notice this on Untitled Magazine‘s site, and it just seemed such a strong image of randomness, not that I didn’t immediately recognize that it was simply arranged alphabetical. I choose to think that simply staring at the letters is particularly intellectually satisfying if you’re not planning to take the trip to Austin. And I’m not.

3ballMty, Abjects, Barry Adamson, Adée, Alex G, Alice on the roof, Aloa Input, Altimet & the Kawan Band, Anamanaguchi, And The Kids, Autobahn, Avec Sans,The Ballroom Thieves, The Band of Heathens, Bee’s Knees, Better Person, Beverly, Big Phony,Bird Dog, Bombino,Boulevards,Brass Bed, Bye Bye Badman, Laura Carbone,Rosie Carney, Caveman, Ceasetone, Chirkutt, Cirkus Funk, Cóndor Jet, The Crookes, Crystal Castles, Dash Rip Rock, David Wax Museum, Demob Happy, Dolce,Downtown Boys, Dubioza Kolektiv, Eau Rouge, EMUFUCKA, Expert Alterations, Lena Fayre, Fear of Men, Few Bits, Ian Fisher, The Foreign Resort, Andy Frasco & the U.N., A Giant Dog, Matt Gilmour’s Patient Wolf, Gold Class, Jon Dee Graham, William Harries Graham & the Painted Redstarts, Guerilla Toss, HÆLOS, Haihm, Har Mar Superstar, Hinds, Howardian,S ilvana Imam, Imran Aziz Mian Qawwal, Into It. Over it., Jahkoy, Jambinai, John GRVY, Judah & the Lion, KAO=S, Marina Kaye, The Kickback, La Banda Morisca, Lazyeyes, Lois, Demi Louise, Love X Stereo, Lushes, Mai Nimani, Mamamoo, MC Lars, Methyl Ethel, Mise en Scene, Missi & Mister Baker, Moving Panoramas, Mumiy Troll, The National Parks, Oil Boom, OKRAA, Paul Oscher, Overload, The Parrots, PHASES, Platonick Dive, The Pocket Rockets, Ron Pope, Prince Rama, Pure Bathing Culture, Quebe Sisters, Self Defense Family,S kyline, Sleepers’ Reign, Southern Hospitality, The Spook School, Suboi, Summer Heart, Sunflower Bean, Sur du monde, Tarmac, The Nightowls, Throwing Shade, Vaadat Charigim, Victim Mentality, Victoria+Jean, Waco Brothers, Wahid Allan Faqir, The Wet Secrets, Wildhoney, Marlon Williams & The Yarra Benders, Womps, Wordburglar, XYLØ, Yuck

I should note the passing of the SXSW music festival co-counder Louis Meyers who was part of the original team that started this back in 1987. He left it in 1994 citing the stress of the conference. Meyers was also a musician, playing banjo and recording, touring, producing or performing with Bill & Bonnie Hearne, Bob Schneider, Killbilly, The Killer Bees, Mojo Nixon, Fastball, Willis Alan Ramsey, Tommy Ramone, and Jello Biafra, among many others.

And In The End…A Song I Love That Sir George Martin Produced. RIP.

Updated: Trouble in Texas for The Black Lillies

Grace Flower On the morning of Sunday, Jan. 24, Tennessee-based roots rockers the Black Lillies were finishing up their final day in Texas. They sent out a message on their Facebook page to let folks know that, in the afternoon, they’d be doing an in-store appearance and playing a set at Cactus Music in Houston. That night, they woud be playing at Conroe’s Dosey Doe Music Cafe. After the gig at the Dosey Doe, they went back to the Quality Inn near the airport, parked their van and trailer under the lights out in front, locked it all down, and went to sleep. At six the next morning, as the band got ready to roll out, they discovered an empty space on the blacktop.

When the Houston police pulled the video from the security cameras, they discovered that sometime around 2:30 a.m., a black SUV pulled up, someone jumped out, and in about two minutes the van and trailer were driven off. The band’s manager, Chyna Brackeen, wrote about the damage done:

Instruments – many vintage and irreplaceable, like Cruz Contreras’ iconic guitar – were in the trailer. Most of the band’s merchandise stock was in the trailer. Boxes of CDs and vinyl records … personal items … clothing. So far we estimate that there was around $70k worth of stuff (besides the van and trailer) taken.

The band does have insurance on the van, and an instrument policy. The band’s policy does not cover their merchandise, members’ personal items and clothing, and certain gear. There’s a big gap between what was lost and what will be covered.

The staff at the Quality Inn has been extremely helpful. Houston-area media is responding in droves and helping us get the word out. And you guys have been a tremendous help by sharing our posts and of course by contributing here.

This is every band’s worst nightmare. The one silver lining is that the Black Lillies have one of the best groups of fans and support systems in the world.

That’s an understatement.

Quickly establishing a place where friends and fans could help, they chose Rally.org. When I first checked at that link on Monday afternoon, there was $12,000 pledged. Six hours later, they had more than doubled that amount. And today as I write this (it’s Tuesday afternoon, the 26th) there is $36,896 committed from fans, friends and strangers. I’ll let the narrative continue with another update from Chyna:

It appears at this point that we will likely be able to pay off what is owed on the van (which isn’t the same thing as replacing it, but at least it’s a good start). As for the instruments, the policy – if paid in full – will likely only cover about 60% of the losses there. One major issue is that a vintage instrument doesn’t have the same value to an insurance adjustor as it does to a musician. The insurance adjustor wants to replace things at the lowest cost – so if your Dremel cordless drill is stolen, they’ll find the best price for a new Dremel cordless drill and give you that amount (adjusted, of course, for depreciation).

But when you have a 1952 guitar that’s one of a kind, that has a soul and a sound that you can’t just go out and buy, that sounds the way it does because of how it has been played over the years and how it has worn through and cracked and been put back together again … well, you can’t just find the cheapest price and replace it.

So, we both had more gear in the trailer than was insured (a couple of instruments had just been purchased), AND we had a lot of vintage stuff that the insurance company doesn’t understand how to value.

Plus, there’s other stuff – the merchandise, the personal clothing items, the stage banners/backdrops – that aren’t covered at all.

Anyway, all of that is to say that the gap is big. BUT, we are feeling so much more prepared to handle things because of your tremendous support.

On Monday night the band posted this to their Facebook page:

It has been a long, hard day. But in the midst of the stress and uncertainty, we’ve been shown so much love and support. From venues who are calling to offer us gigs, to musicians calling to offer us gear, to people literally offering us the clothes off of their backs, to members of the media from all over the country who are calling to ask what more they can do to spread the word, to friends, fans, strangers donating money to help with the gap between what the insurance will cover and what was lost … every email, tweet, call, post, smoke signal is showing us the beauty that is out there. We will never be able to tell you what it means to us. Just know that you’re getting us through this, and we love you for it. Thank you.

And on Tuesday afternoon:

Update! The van has been retrieved by a towing company in Houston after being abandoned by the side of the road. Trailer and instruments still missing.

For any bands who are slugging it out day after day, going from gig to gig and trying hard to just eke out a living, this loss is a devastating blow. It has been perhaps softened by so many people willing to contribute something so that this talented, beloved band can quickly get back on their feet.

While the Black Lillies have suffered a terrible loss, I suspect that they’ve also got something in return that will feel very special over time. To have met people along the way who’ve been touched by your music — who will extend a helping hand in time of need — is something nobody can ever take from them.

Lets hope that in the days ahead their trailer or contents are found. Here’s a link to a list of their stolen instruments with serial numbers. And if you’d like to make a contribution, here’s the link to their Rally page.

Update from The Black Lillies via Facebook/February 26 2016: A few people have asked, so a quick update on our stolen gear: besides the van itself, nothing has been recovered yet. The trailer, instruments, merchandise, music and personal items are still missing. We’ve bought a few new things, borrowed some others, and we’re back out on the road doing what we love. We couldn’t be doing that without the tremendous support you gave us. Thank you for keeping us pushing forward!

March 6, 2016: While we’re incredibly grateful to everyone who has shown us support (financial and otherwise) after the theft of our instruments, we were especially thankful for a $5 contribution and beautiful picture from our friend Grace. (Image credit: Grace.)

Grace Black Lillies

The original article was published at No Depression dot com, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.

Will Supermarkets Stop the Vinyl Album Revolution?

vinyl-factory-tesco-edited1-copy-665x400 I knew it was over when Britain’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco, announced that they would begin selling vinyl in their stores. Not raincoats or reclining chairs or shiny boots or garden hoses, but actual record albums. What has been a shining light for many independent record stores and labels, and a nice revenue stream for musicians selling them at their concerts, has caught the attention of big box retail. Here’s what Tesco music buyer Michael Mulligan told The Guardian last December:

“Vinyl is definitely coming back with demand, growing stronger year by year, and we think there will be a big demand in the UK this Christmas as music fans look for trendy gifting options.”

Hold on … did he really say that? Trendy gifting options?

Before Tesco got into the music business, last summer, they tested the viability with a new Iron Maiden record. They followed that up with adding 12 models of phonograph players and, right before Christmas, added 20 classic titles that included Springsteen, the Stones, Prince, Nirvana, and Coldplay, among others. In other words, trendy gifting options.

Here in the United States you’ll find a plentiful assortment of vinyl at your local shopping malls in “lifestyle stores” such as Hot Topic and Urban Outfitters, in large strip centers where bookseller Barnes and Noble and electronics behemoth Best Buy reside, and in-between the cosmetics and pet food departments at Target.

The reason for this renewed interest in plastic music delivery is probably obvious, especially given the selection of titles that Tesco decided to stock. Baby boomers love trendy gifting options, and they have demonstrated a willingness, if not some primal desire or need, to continue to buy the same stuff over and over and over again.

With streaming rapidly growing to become the number one way we consume music, and despite the fact that vinyl sales still account for a tiny fraction of overall revenue, the percentage of sales keeps growing year after year. In other words, somebody has to make money from albums, so why not us? Or rather, them.

Back in the late ’80s, when I was working as sales manager in Los Angeles for the distribution arm of Capitol-EMI Music, I got marching orders to put The Beatles’ compact discs into the large Ralph’s supermarket chain. Since they wouldn’t fit neatly alongside cans of beans, and the artwork contrasted with the cellophane-wrapped chicken parts, we had to provide a free-standing floor rack, custom packaging with price stickers and security tags, very expensive signage and posters, and television advertising. It cost us a fortune.

I learned a lesson: When people come to a supermarket to buy food and diapers, they’ll stand in the checkout line where they are easily lured to drop another buck or two on chewing gum and candy. But when it came to a $15 Beatles CD, yeah yeah yeah turned into no no no. We took back almost 90 percent of what we shipped.

Last week, I noticed a Facebook post from a musician who was traveling to Folk Alliance, and they apologized for not being able to bring their new vinyl release because the pressing plant couldn’t fill their order. Made me wonder … do we have an international vinyl deficiency? Turns out, we do.

About a year ago, there was an article written by indie record label owner Thaddeus Herrmann, published on his German website Das Filter, which spoke to the problem confronting a rise in vinyl production. (If you’re interested, it was translated by Britain’s Fact Magazine and can be found here.) I’ll skip the details about electroplating, lacquers, and plant facility degradation, and skip right to consumption.

The hype surrounding the reissues, which appear to be responsible for a large part of the current situation, doesn’t have a long tail. What the collateral damage will be on the labels and artists who don’t view vinyl as a status symbol or as a machine to print money, but as the best format for their music, is hard to determine. One of the steps in the production process will fail eventually. If this happens because an entire industry is busy manufacturing the flea market records of the future, it wouldn’t be an adequate end for the vinyl record.

If all that is not enough to ponder, consider last week’s Salon interview with music critic Jim Fusilli that comes with this bombastic headline/quote: Stop buying old Bob Dylan albums. “Every time somebody buys a reissue, they’re just taking money away from new musicians.”

While the interview doesn’t specifically focus on vinyl, it addresses this notion of creating packages of old music that siphons money that could and should go to support new artists. As someone who recently tried to navigate the recent Dylan box set with multiple sessions of the same old stuff, I came away better understanding why the producer’s job is to choose the best of the litter for us to enjoy. And I have a new realization of why old tapes are kept “in the can.”

Here’s one thing of note that Fusilli says about reissues, which ties into this new push for vinyl sales:

The industry keeps people in the prison that they put them in 30 years ago. You go down a dead end with some people, who say to you, Where’s the new Bob Dylan? Where’s the new Beatles? Well, there is no new Bob Dylan. There is no new Beatles. There is no new Thelonious Monk. There’s no new Duke Ellington. These people and their achievements are beyond the reach of anyone, so maybe it is interesting to empty the vaults and study how they got to be who they are. But for most artists, they had something to say in their own times, and that’s really where it belongs.

I’m going to let Thaddeus Herrmann have the last word, and extrapolate a bit on the theory that the major corporations are tilting the playing field.

A look at the vinyl section of a large Berlin store proves the shelves are full of reissues of old titles, mostly from major labels. Record players can be purchased right at the checkout. There’s nothing wrong with that – music should be sold in the formats that meet customer demand. But there are indicators that the majors are actively trying to secure substantial vinyl production capacity at the remaining pressing plants.

If this is the case – and the pressing plants are denying it – it would mean that the majors are attempting to buy their way into an industry that they played a significant role in destroying. And they are attempting once again to starve the indie labels, the very labels that never gave up on vinyl.

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com .

Folk Alliance International 2016: The Video Sneak Peek

1952tv Wedged between two holidays that celebrate heart and history, this year’s Folk Alliance International conference will be convening in Kansas City with over 2,500 attendees that include those who make the music, those who write about it, those who bring it to you either onstage or through your speakers, and those who simply are fans.

The roots of this organization began 27 years ago in Malibu, when Clark and Elaine Weissman from the California Traditional Music Society hosted 125 people to see if they could unify other regional groups with common interests in music and dance. In attendance were representatives from the Philadelphia Folksong Society, Sing Out!, the Vancouver Folk Festival, Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, Charlotte’s Fiddle and Bow Society, International Bluegrass Music Association, Augusta Heritage Center, Woods Music and Dance Camp, and more. A year later, the North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance was officially born, and in 2008 the name was changed to Folk Alliance International.

While I’ve never made it to any of the annual gatherings, I watch with much interest every year from afar. Through the eyes and ears of friends who attend, as well as both traditional and social media, I’ve come to learn it’s a great week to discover new music and artists. And for the musicians who perform at the private and public showcases, its an opportunity to break out and create a buzz literally around the world.

Looking through this year’s official program, I can tell you that the talent traveling to Kansas City is staggering. As I’ve done in the past, below are a handful of videos I put together of musicians I think you’ll likely be hearing a lot more about in the coming year. If you’re going to KC, catch ’em if you can.

Caitlin Canty
This past year, Canty has been touring almost nonstop in support of her Reckless Skyline album. You may have seen her open for the album’s producer Jeffrey Foucault either as solo, with his band, or as a duo with pedal steel wizard Eric Heywood. Here’s the song that has earned her an FAI Song of the Year nomination, and I chose this intimate version where she collaborates with Jefferson Hamer, one of my favorite guitarists.

Darlingside
The Massachusetts-based Darlingside are longtime college friends of Canty, and they’ve all toured and played together for years. Their new album Birds Say really showcases superb four-part harmony and interesting instrumentation, and the production quality expands their acoustic roots to a new level.

Joe Crookston

Crookston is this year’s Artist in Residence. He’s been making music and touring extensively in the US, Canada, and Ireland since 2004. Born in Ohio and based in Ithaca, New York, Crookston’s official bio offers this description of his work: “Songwriter, singer, guitarist, painter, fiddler, banjo player, eco-village member and believer in all things possible.”

Applewood Road

This is a band of three songwriters with their own solo careers who met a year and a half ago at a cafe in East Nashville and the next day recorded one song that got a lot of attention. Emily Barker, Amber Rubarth, and Amy Speace have now finished and released a complete album and it’s a special collaboration. (Note: Amy had trouble with her voice at FAI and their showcase was postponed, along with solo dates she had planned soon after.)

The Small Glories

Out of Canada comes this new project from Wailin’ Jennys co-founder Cara Luft and singer-songwriter JD Edwards, who has fronted his own band for ten years. Each are certified road warriors who bring two very distinctive vibes that somehow mesh together like tea and honey.

Dori Freeman

It seems that everybody has been talkin’ about Dori Freeman’s new self-titled album and how it came about. This 24-year-old woman from Galax, Virginia, sent a message to Teddy Thompson via social media and it led to him signing up as producer and a release on Free Dirt Records. Her Facebook page features a whole bunch of covers from artists as different as Selena Gomez and the Police, which are a blast to watch.

Lowell “Banana” Levinger

Levinger played guitar and keyboards with the Youngbloods, one of the finest “early Americana” bands to come out of the 1960s. His musical career spans both performing and songwriting, and he’s a vintage musical instrument collector. This past year, he released an album of new arrangements of Youngbloods’ tunes that reunited him with Jesse Colin Young and also featured the late Dan Hicks, Ry Cooder, Maria Muldaur, David Grisman, Darol Anger, Peter Stampfel, Duke Robillard, and Nina Gerber.

This video isn’t from that album. In true folk tradition, I’ve decided to share his arrangement of Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” instead, because it simply knocks me out.

Image credit: Photo from the John Atherton Collection. CC2.0

This was originally published at No Depression dot com, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.

When Kelly Pardekooper Ditched His Day Job

Camera: DCS520C Serial #: K520C-06536 Width: 1728 Height: 1152 Date: 7/8/02 Time: 20:29:17 DCS5XX Image FW Ver: 3.2.3 TIFF Image Look: Product Antialiasing Filter: Removed Counter: [77774] ISO Speed: 800 Aperture: f3.5 Shutter: 1/125 Max Aperture: f2.8 Min Aperture: f22 Exposure Mode: Manual (M) Compensation: +0.0 Flash Compensation: +0.0 Meter Mode: Evaluative Flash Mode: No flash Drive Mode: Continuous Focus Mode: Manual Focus Point: --o-- Focal Length (mm): 24 White balance: Preset (Daylight) Time: 20:29:17.659

Kelly Pardekooper in Iowa

Update January 2018: Kelly Pardekooper has released his ninth album 50-Weight, marking a 20-year bookend to his lo-fi debut release 30-Weight. Going back to his home state roots, 50-Weight was recorded in a rural Iowa barn studio June 1-4, 2018. Producer and guitar wizard hats are again worn by Iowa City friend Bo Ramsey. This article was originally published January 2016.

If you’re an indie musician and not living full-time in a van that takes you from city to city for gigs – gigs that can be as glorious as a packed club with respectful fans, or as humbling as a house concert with a dozen folks your parents’ age who’ve put together a potluck dinner – you probably have a day job. It’s a way of life for many, and although most choose not to bring it up publicly, we all probably know a tale or two of those that are now rich and/or famous. Jay-Z sold dope, Kanye West worked at the Gap, Kurt Cobain was a janitor, Tom Waits tossed pizzas, and Debbie Harry was a Playboy bunny.

Record labels have long ago stopped handing out advances and financing tours. So these days you’ll be more likely to find musicians playing weekend gigs within a few hundred miles of their home base while maintaining a steady income and doing the same type of day labor that we all do: retail, the food service industry, education, health care, technology, art, or construction. If it pays the bills and gives you the time and flexibility to both create and perform, its a win-win … especially if you’ve got a family situation to tend to.

The other day I got an email from the music editor at NUVO, the Indianapolis-based weekly magazine that bills itself as “Indiana’s Alternative Voice.” Kat Coplen wrote to me that one of their former employees had recently left his marketing gig with them to focus more on his music, and they are working up a cover story on him. Since its someone I’ve written about here at No Depression on a few occasions, she chose to pose this question to me: “In a world with a lot of roots rockers, what makes Kelly Pardekooper’s music and songwriting special?”

While you might not recognize Pardekooper’s name, you most likely have been among the millions of people who have heard his songs, thanks to shows like True Blood, Sons of Anarchy, and Justified. To recycle my own words from a previous article, he is a roots musician who writes some of the sweetest blues-infused, countryfied, American rock music of our time.

I first became aware of Pardekooper not from his music, per se, but because he was featured in my friend Sandy Dyas’ photographic book that documented the music scene in Iowa City, where he used to live. It’s a great community for all sorts of American roots music artists who build their sound on folk, blues, and country traditions and who mostly make their way by playing music in bars. Differentiating itself from your standard fare of quiet coffeehouse confessional noodlings, Iowa City music can sometimes tend toward a louder rock-based beat.

If you’d like to know what really sets Pardekooper far apart from the herd, though, it’s his business acumen and good fortune. Those two things have allowed him to figure out he can reach a much larger audience by placing his songs in film and television rather than spending 300 days a year living in a minivan and playing in front of a couple dozen people each night for table scraps.

While that upside allows for his music to be heard by millions, the downside is that it’s part of an audio-visual experience for which he doesn’t quite receive full credit, which it makes it more challenging to establish his own brand. And so it came to be that, a few months ago, Pardekooper decided to ditch the day job and devote more time to his craft. Here’s what he wrote in his journal and posted on his website:

Lots of changes for me to end 2015. A few months ago I left my alt-weekly newspaper gig at NUVO in Indy. Anyone who has followed me the past 15 years knows I love alt-weekly newspapers and they’re very connected to my University of Iowa education/background. And other than music, weekly press has always been my main gig having worked at three alt-newspapers over the years.

I’ll be spending more time working on new songs/recordings in 2016. I’ve been lucky to have a very patient and active music publisher who has always been supportive of my songs. Life is funny. When I left East Nashville over a decade ago to follow my wife’s medical career, I never thought it would eventually lead me to Los Angeles and a whole new life for my song catalog. I guess the moral would be follow your heart ya’ll.

And in recent music news, I just got word that my song “Just Shoot Me” is going to be used in an upcoming film called All We Had. Releasing sometime in 2016, the film stars Katie Holmes and Luke Wilson. So there’s that little news nugget from the universe nudging me along to keep plugging away at the songs. My music career pretty much equals slow turtle.

That song comes off of Kelly’s Haymaker Heart album, released back in 2004. Twelve years ago. When he talks about the slow turtle, he is referencing his spirit animal, providing a definition written by Elena Harris. For those in a rush to succeed, you might want to take a moment to read these words:

The turtle totem wisdom teaches us about walking our path in peace and sticking to it with determination and serenity. Slow moving on earth, yet also incredibly fast and agile in water, those who have the turtle as totem or spirit animal may be encouraged to take a break in their busy lives and look around or within themselves for more grounded, long-lasting solutions. Traditionally, the turtle is symbolic of the way of peace, whether it’s inviting us to cultivate peace of mind or a peaceful relationship with our environment.

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.