Author Archives: Easy Ed

The Carter Family Documentary That Was Kicked and Started

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While it’s a little hard to admit that every now and then I can lose my focus and get sidetracked, there are those occasions when I take on a particular subject only to end up somewhere else. For example, about a month ago I sat down to write a short essay about the Carter Family, and by the time I got to the second paragraph I had shifted the focus to the African-American influence in roots music, featuring videos from Uncle John Scruggs to Grandmaster Flash. But after spending several months of researching and reading books about Sara, Maybelle and A.P. Carter, listening to hours of audio recordings and radio transcriptions, and watching an excellent documentary titled The Winding Stream you’d think I would be prepared this time around not to stray from the path. Wrong.

As much as I’d love to retell the story of the Carter Family for those who may not know how they’ve left an everlasting imprint on American music, it is the journey of award-winning independent producer, director and writer Beth Harrington and the way she brought the Carter’s story to the screen that has currently captured my interest. It’s too good of a tale to not be told. And better still, most of it will be in her own words. God bless digital footprints.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22R5IgxP_pg

On November 15, 2010 a Kickstarter campaign was created to help fund a feature-length documentary. At the top of the page it’s described as an “epic story of the dynasty at the heart of American roots music – The Carter and Cash families.” Here is an excerpt of the introduction:

My name is Beth Harrington, and I’ve been a documentary filmmaker for more than 30 years. I’m also a former musician – a singer in the band Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers. So there you have it, my two loves – music and documentary film.

A few years ago, I successfully combined these loves on a film called Welcome to the Club – The Woman of Rockabilly. It was really well-received, so much so that it got nominated for a Grammy Award. Needless to say, this encouraged me to move ahead on my next music documentary, The Winding Stream which has the subtitle “The Carters, the Cashes and the Course of Country Music.”

I’d been aware of the Original Carter Family – the biggest “old-timey” music act of their day – and their musical legacy for a long time. But working on Welcome to the Club and meeting Rosanne Cash (who narrated that film) made me think it was time to do a film about this music dynasty that stretched from the 1920s to the present. I wanted to explore how the Carters practically “invented” country music and how legions of musicians – from Woody Guthrie to Elvis to Johnny Cash to Joan Baez to Jeff Tweedy, to name a few – all feel a debt of gratitude to them. And, as a result, how the tradition instituted by the Original Carters has carried on in their family and in the culture at large.

And I realized that, even though small parts of this family’s epic story had been told before, no one had presented this big picture. No one had shown the connection to the Carter Sisters, to Johnny Cash, to the folk movement and to the Americana movement. And no one had told the story using both original recordings AND contemporary roots music artists performing (and discussing) the music.

I started shooting The Winding Stream in 2003 and, with Rosanne Cash’s help, one of the first interviews I did was with her dad, Johnny Cash. Sadly, it was to be one of his last interviews; he passed away only three weeks after we’d spoken with him. This forced the realization that I needed to step up production because we were losing some of the key players in this story. I felt a real urgency to get these interviews on tape. I spent a lot of my own money doing so. And I’m very glad I did. But I knew I would need more.

What stuck out for me when I first read those words was the year that Beth noted she first started to shoot this film: 2003. Seven years later she was seeking money to complete editing, sound design, music and footage rights, animation, graphics and titles. That right there is the definition of vision, focus and tenacity.

For those of you who’ve either started or contributed to a Kickstarter or any other crowdsourcing project, it’s a leap of faith that you’ll get to your goal. Sometimes there’s just not enough money donated to keep it going, and there are other times that the original idea turns out to be either flawed, abandoned or simply unable to be completed for any infinite number of reasons.

But there was something I noticed about The Winding Stream campaign that was different than most, aside from the fact that the picture was actually completed and released: in five years Beth has published forty-two updates to her supporters. What follows is a look into what it took to get this film to the finish line. I’ll share a few of her updates with a little selective editing, and dispense with quotation marks since y’all know it’s Beth’s writing.

Update #4, December 8 2010: Hi everyone. Well, as you may know by now, we’ve reached our Kickstarter goal! I’m moved and grateful to all of you who contributed to this campaign. And you did it in three weeks. Thank you so very much!

Update #15, March 21, 2011: Just a quick note to let you all know that we’ve been putting the funds we raised with your help to very good use. Just back from Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia (yup, it’s a city in two states) and we got five critical interviews done, plus a musical performance with the Carolina Chocolate Drops.  Wildly successful trip.  Probably a Nashville shoot still in our future and one in California and we’ll be close to done shooting.  

Update #17, February 28, 2012: I realize it’s been a while since I’ve updated you on things connected to The Winding Stream so here’s a little update. We’re well into post-production now which means there is a glimmer at the end of the tunnel (not exactly a light yet, but soon). Since last I wrote we’ve received two grants – one from the National Endowment for the Arts and one from the Roy W. Dean Foundation which have helped us considerably and are big honors, needless to say. We’re in the running again for funding from the Independent Television Service and should know in a while if we get that. We’ve started to show excerpts from the film now – once at a fundraiser here in Washington State and more recently at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, MT. Both times the reactions have been very positive which has buoyed our spirits a lot as we move along.

Update #18, April 29, 2012: We’re writing to let you know about some new developments with The Winding Stream. We’re moving into full post-production soon with our pal, editor Greg Snider at the helm. And we’ve found a wonderful animator to do cool photo-animations for us, Mike Olson. I’m at work on the companion book to the film, and we’ve had interest from cable channels, film festivals and theatrical and DVD distributors for when the film is done. Our hope is to wrap it all up by the end of the year.

May 3, 2012: A second round of Kickstarter funding begins.

Update #25, June 21, 2012: In the last 9 years I have amassed a treasure trove of what I consider to be important interviews with people who were witness to some of our most important shared cultural history. The early days of radio, the infancy of the record industry, the growth of interest in what would later be called “country” and “folk” music. People like Johnny Cash, Janette and Joe Carter, Mike Seeger, Charles Wolfe and others knew the Original Carter Family and were among the last living witnesses to the Carters’ role in all this. The people I just named have all passed away in the time we’ve been working on this film. I started to view completion of this film as a sacred trust. These folks had taken the time to share this with me.

This material couldn’t just languish on a shelf. It had to be made into the film I’d promised. So we stuck with it. Through years when everyone turned us down. Through times when we scraped by with tiny amounts of money that would get us one more interview. Through lots and lots of days of colleagues and friends — er, actually, that’s redundant; my colleagues on The Winding Stream are my steadfast friends –donating their time and talent and energy to this. Through many sleepless nights when I did think that I was – indeed – plum crazy to persist.

June 27, 2012: Funding for the second Kickstarter campaign is met.

Update #28: January 7, 2013: Hi everybody! Wanted to let you all know how much progress we’ve made on The Winding Stream! We have a final cut of the film and are now clearing rights for the music and archival images. If all goes well, we should have a completed film very soon. Thanks again for helping us get this far!

Update #29, February 1, 2014: Stopping by to let you know that great things are happening for The Winding Stream. We just recently learned that this labor of love- that’s taken more than a decade and the efforts of numerous talented people to complete – has been chosen for this year’s South by Southwest Festival in Austin.

Update #33, August 7, 2014: Monday’s NYC premiere of The Winding Stream at Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center was a big hit. We had a full-house and the New York audience embraced the film. We’d also like to announce that The Winding Stream won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Woods Hole Film Festival. This is our fourth festival award and we’re very grateful to be recognized this way. Thanks to all of our Kickstarter backers! You helped make this possible.

Updare #37, December 12, 2014: We have a big, exciting challenge! As you may know, we need to finish paying for music and archival footage and rights before we can open the film theatrically, air it on public television, or make it available on platforms like iTunes and cable on demand. We want to make all this happen as soon as possible to build off our festival momentum. We once needed $85,000. But incredibly we have recently received a grant from the Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation for half that!

Update #39, September 2, 2015: Hi Friends – I wanted to let you all know that we’ve entered the next phase of the life of The Winding Stream! Theatrical! Thanks to the efforts of our partners at Argot Pictures, we are now taking the film to art houses across the country. We are also thrilled to say that the good folks at Omnivore Recordings are releasing a soundtrack album from the film! That drops on October 16.

Alright…so as you can tell, I’ve been completely swept away by Beth, her team and this unbelievably enchanting film. On a musical highway that’s ninety years long and still stretches out before us, there are unlimited on and off ramps that this filmmaker could have chosen. With a subtitle that reads ‘The Carters, The Cashes and The Course of Country Music’, she brings to life a family tree with endless branches. By using the voices of those still living and the ones who’ve passed on, and enhancing that experience with film, video, photographs and animation, the music and stories are presented with the delicacy and historical context one could have only hoped for.

There is a tendency to receive and process information in bite-sized pieces in this technologically supercharged world we live in. And I’m sure Beth would agree that it would be a mistake to believe that the tales of this great musical family can be told in a mere ninety-two minutes, despite over a decade in the making. (I’d love to see what didn’t make the final cut.) I think of The Winding Stream as a doorway to discovery, and hope that people will be inspired to seek out not only the music which has endured over the years and is readily available, but also take the time to learn more about the folks who absolutely define any such notion of what you might think the term Americana means. This is a story for the ages. 

For those of you in the New York area, I plan to attend a screening at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville (the most appropriately named town ever) on February 11, and there’ll be some fine live music from the Shovel Ready String Band. Buy your tickets before they sell out and if you happen to see me, please say hi.

When Lemmy Kilmister Met Wanda Jackson

Lemmy and WandaThe last time I saw Lemmy Kilmister, we were sitting in a small room just off the side of the stage at Amoeba Records on Sunset Boulevard. He was holding a bottle of Jack Daniels with one hand while a too-young blonde, who was trying awfully hard to look older, sat on his lap. He was dressed as he usually dressed — black denim and a cowboy hat. Across from us on the couch was Wanda Jackson and her husband, Wendell.

It was January 2006 I think, and Jackson had just released I Remember Elvis. She was known back in the late 1950s as the Queen of Rockabilly, and had toured with — and briefly dated — Presley. He encouraged her to add a rock beat to her traditional country repertoire, and for the next 10 years she scored with a number of hit singles. By 1965, Jackson had transitioned back to country music, toured all over the world, had a TV show, did the Vegas thing, and eventually began to release gospel albums. By the ’80s, she’d returned to rockabilly once again, and toured extensively in England and throughout Europe, including Scandinavia.

On this particular day at Amoeba I was there representing the label and Wanda was going to perform a few songs and sign some albums. Danny B. Harvey (on the right) produced the album, and put together a backing band for her. He and Slim Jim Phantom, along with Lemmy, also had a rockabilly band called Head Cat.

I admit I initially felt a bit protective of Wanda and Wendell, who looked and talked like they stepped out of central casting in the role of Everybody’s Grandparents. I’d first met Lemmy a dozen years earlier and knew he could be a bit rough around the edges, but he spoke softly and clearly had respect and a deep knowledge of Jackson’s work. She seemed utterly charmed and fascinated by him as well, although she admitted to never having heard of Motörhead.

It was a very gentle conversation, and during her set she got cheers and laughter from the audience when she mentioned meeting “Mr. Lemmy,” noting what a lovely young man he was. I remember looking over and seeing him laugh as well and while he was still holding onto the blonde, the bottle was nowhere in sight. Just another day in Hollywood.

Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister died on December 28, 2015, in Los Angeles at age 70.

Wanda Jackson turned 78 last October and resides in Oklahoma City with Wendell. She continues to tour.

Photo Above: Uncredited. Lemmy Kilmister, Wanda Jackson and Danny B. Harvey. Amoeba Records. 2003.

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

The Elvis Costello Immersion

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I’ll admit I’m a bit late to the game as I just recently sat down and watched Mark Kidel’s documentary Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance that was first broadcasted on the BBC television network back in November 2013 and is currently running on America’s Showtime network. Along with all of the press and publicity surrounding Elvis’ autobiography, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink (published Oct. 13, 2015, by Blue Rider Press), and its companion “soundtrack” of the same name, it’s been hard to keep from bobbing and weaving this man. Considering Costello is pretty close in age to me, and was a nine-year-old member of the Beatles’ fan club, his story offers an interesting and compelling, comparative and conflicting musical genealogy chart. I have yet to read the book, but if Mystery Dance is any indication, it will be an exercise in delight and wonder. For all the things Costello is or isn’t, has or hasn’t been … he has lived up to Stephen Thomas Erlwine’s description of him on AllMusic.com as an utterly fascinating “pop encyclopedia.”

There is little need for me to regurgitate Costello’s entire biography and discography since we all know how to leap over to his Wikipedia page with the click of a mouse, trackpad, or finger. But an interesting place to start is with his father, Ross MacManus — a musician and bandleader back in the 1950s. In 1970, he recorded a version of the Beatles’ “Long and Winding Road” under the pseudonym of Day Costello. That’s where that half of Elvis’ name comes from.

While I’m not from England, it seems that if you are, you know the theme song to a commercial for R. White’s Lemonade called “Secret Lemonade Drinker,” in which Ross plays drums and sings background vocals. This is a remake of the ad from 1993, in which Ross plays the starring role in two versions.

https://youtu.be/DnxLjbwmJjM

My own dad was a mechanical engineer who liked big bands, Frank Sinatra, Mario Lanza, and Herb Albert and The Tijuana Brass. Our house was always filled with music from either his Dumont high fidelity system, the older sister’s phonograph with Elvis — that would be Presley — 45s spinning around and around, or my own transistor radio pulling in Jerry “The Geator with the Heater” Blavat on WHAT-AM as he played “songs from the heart, not a playlist.” I’ll tell you, my childhood simply could not have been anywhere near as cool as that Costello house: having a performing musician for a dad. To that point, as Gerard O’Donovan wrote in The Telegraph with regards to Mystery Dance:

Mark Kidel’s film was a deftly constructed trip through a restless, shape-shifting career, allowing Costello to revisit significant moments of his past. But it couldn’t be called a full biography as it only ever touched on the personal in order to shed light on the musical journey. Even so, it was particularly good at bringing out the extent to which Costello was drenched in music from birth, and the enormous influence his musician father Ross (a stalwart of the Joe Loss Orchestra) had not only on his tastes but also his rebellious determination not to sing “other people’s songs” but to write and perform his own.

Forgive me for  the diversion, as I’ve just taken four paragraphs to get to this memory chip from 1977, when My Aim is True was released. A few months later, Costello performed it at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey — which my spellcheck poetically prefers to spell out as “Prosaic, New Jersey.”

At first I really hated that Costello used the name Elvis and that he wore glasses, a sport jacket, and tie to evoke those Buddy Holly publicity shots. Or perhaps he was trying to evoke Peter and Gordon or Chad and Jeremy?

But I laughed at the joke that he was marketed and hyped as punk rock, a now-and-then laughable, antiquated term, right along with the Sex Pistols, Ramones, Clash, Television, Jam, and any other safety pin of the week. Unlike the others, he was pure pop. And although time has shown that he has an incredibly enormous songwriting and performance vocabulary, at the end of the ’70s, Costello was cranking out the cheesiest and most embarrassing videos for TV.

For the next two decades, I think I bought every single Costello album he released, even if I only listened to them once. I never fell in love with any of them at the time, which was my mistake. Most were brilliant, or at least had something on them that was uniquely different from anything else at the time. But the song below is what finally tipped me. It comes from the series of concerts that were later released as The Harry Smith Project: The Anthology of American Folk Music Revisited.

Now, I know you aren’t going to spend 13 minutes watching something amazing; this is the damn internet and nobody has the time. So please just go with me to 9:14 (you’ll foolishly miss Kate and Anna McGarrigle at 5:36, but that’ll be your cross to bear) and behold the first revelation of how I finally “got” Elvis Costello.

In the past two weeks I have loaded onto my iPhone 25 Elvis Costello albums (with the exception of The Juliet Letters, which is an altogether different story). They are squished into a playlist with over 100 original Carter Family songs taken from an XERA border radio transcription as well as some Hank Snow, Patsy Montana, Charlie Louvin, Rose and the Maddox Brothers, Ernest Tubb, Charlie Poole, Skillet Lickers, Norman Blake, Suzie Glaze, Bob Dylan, and Iris DeMent. Costello is a bloke among the folks.

The algorithm of the shuffle feature allows for one in three to be an Elvis Costello track, and each one is like reaching into a bowl of candy and pulling out a dark chocolate covered almond with sea salt and caramel. Delicious. It’s an infused immersion I can hardly get enough of.

This was originally published at No Depression dot com, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.
Photo by James O’Mara

Bringing Mountain Music to the City

LunchmeatLet me tell you about the night my fingers snapped off and fell onto a beer-stained wood floor.

A tremendous rainstorm had its way with the sky as I moved across the Hudson River. I pulled up to a roadhouse about ten miles north of Manhattan. Juggling my guitar case and an umbrella, I brushed past the determined smokers huddled outside by the front door, walked down the length of the bar to a small alcove in the back, and nodded to a couple of folks I recognized. For a few months I’d heard talk about a bluegrass jam in the neighborhood, and this was my first chance to check it out.

Despite having been a finger-style player for over 50 years, with an interest in all sorts of old-time and roots music, I’d never attempted to do any serious flatpickin’ before. Still, I figured it couldn’t be all that hard. Three or four chords, a good capo, and a Fender 451 medium pick would do the trick, right? And after all, this is New York, not the hills of Kentucky. I’d step up, dazzle, and shred.

Right. Can you see where this train wreck is headed?

Tara Linhardt is an award-winning multi-instrumentalist from rural Taylorstown, Virginia, who moved here less than a year ago and has already earned recognition in the relatively small but highly talented New York bluegrass scene. In addition to organizing the monthly jam that attracts a large and talented group of musicians, she also teaches mandolin and guitar, plays in several bands, is an excellent photographer, and has put together a number of festivals and events. She organized and broke the Guinness Book of Records for the world’s largest mandolin group. Tara & The Galax Fiddler’s Convention Mandolin Ensemble featured 389 mandolins that performed four tunes. Including this one:

She’s also a founding and managing member of The Mountain Music Project, which works to preserve, promote, and educate folks about traditional music throughout the world. That project focuses mostly on the Appalachian region of the United States and the traditional music of the Nepali Himalaya.

There’s a film documentary about the project that’s been released on DVD, and a collaborative album that, along with Linhardt, features other American musicians like Sammy Shelor, Tim O’Brien, Curtis Burch, Mark Schatz, Abigail Washburn, Danny Knicely, and Tony Trischka.

That rainy night jam, which I thought would be a piece of cake, ended up serving me a big slice of humble pie.

The 15 musicians who stood in the circle were by and large regulars on the festival and jam circuit, professional performers, parking lot pickers, and other assorted but exceptional players. From the opening notes, which seemed to be going at about 220 beats per minute, it took every ounce of energy in my body to keep up.

I kept my eyes glued to the left hand of singer/guitarist Christian Apuzzo, whom I had met previously when his band opened for Billy Strings and Don Julin. I could strum the chords but felt like I was on a roller coaster with no brakes. My mouth was hanging open most of the time in awe of the musicianship. I thought I did pretty well until about an hour and 45 minutes into it, when Linhardt looked over at me and yelled, “You’re behind the beat … step to the back.” Now I didn’t take that as being mean spiritied at all, but instructive. This jam is a welcoming and friendly place for all players.

Nevertheless, given how easy I expected this to be…cue instant exhalation and deflation.

Two songs later, I called it quits. My fingers were as crispy as fried clams.

I wasn’t quite finished foolin’ around with this bluegrass excursion yet, though. I showed up two weeks later for another shot. This time I swapped the jumbo cutaway for my more traditional dreadnought, put on heavier strings, and grabbed a handful of Dunlop 1.14 mm picks.

I still couldn’t last more than a couple of hours. I apparently, desperately need to lock myself in a room with Tony Rice videos, but as long as Lindhart keeps the door open I’m going to try to walk through it again. Because while it’s great to write about music, it’s even better to make it.

Matheus Verardino, who played harmonica in that first video, and the aforementioned Christian Apuzzo are members of Cole Quest and the City Pickers. They have a new album that’s currently being mixed.  And it might be of interest to know that Cole ‘Quest’ Rotante sings and plays Dobro. His mom’s name is Nora and his uncle is Arlo. You can figure out that lineage.  I like this band.

Linhardt has been touring this year with Shyam Nepali of the Mountain Music Project. At this year’s Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, they played with percussionist Raj Kapoor, Apuzzo (this dude is everywhere), and violinist extraordinaire and fellow jammer Mary Simpson, who was a founding member of Whiskey Rebellion and now tours with Yanni.

Photo of Lunchmeat Larry by Tara.

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

Rethinking American Roots Music in Black and White

772For the past month, my eyes have been glued to a couple of exceptional books; one old, one new. Barry Mazor’s Ralph Peer and The Making of Popular Roots Music was published this past year, and the other was released 13 years ago and focuses exclusively on the Carter Family. That one was written by Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg and carries the title Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? 

If this was a book review, and I’m sorry it’s not, I’d tell you that each is a riveting read if you have any interest in learning about how various styles of regional music were discovered and popularized throughout America in the 1920s and ’30s. With songs released on double-sided 78 rpm discs, you might be surprised to learn that obscure blues, jazz, and hillbilly music routinely sold in the hundreds of thousands each, and occasionally in the millions.

Here’s Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel #9 featuring Louis Armstrong on trumpet and his wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong, on piano.

Within the pages of each book, although neither necessarily focuses particularly on African-American influences and artists, there is a clear thread about how there was a cross-pollination not only foundationally in the music, but also on the business side of things when it came time to sell and market to both rural and urban audiences. What I find so puzzling is how we got to a place in modernroots music that has pretty much marginalized black music and musicians.

This is Uncle John Scruggs performing “Little Log Cabin in The Lane,” filmed in November 1928 for a Fox Movietone News story.

https://youtu.be/8TgIeaGzeLQ

When you ask someone to define what roots music is, what we usually hear are terms like folk, blues, jazz, country, sacred, Cajun and bluegrass. It’s curious that hip-hop isn’t included, but here’s what No Depression editor Kim Ruehl wrote a few years ago in an essay called The History of African-American Folk Music:

“By the 1970s, a new brand of folk music started to solidify in the African-American communities of major cities like Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, and Detroit. Hip-hop borrowed rhythms from across the musical spectrum – from ancient African drum calls to contemporary dance music. Artists used these rhythms and the art of spoken word to communicate the emotions – from celebration to frustration – that characterized their community.

In the 80s, groups like NWA, Public Enemy, LL Cool J, and Run DMC participated in what came to be an explosion in the popularity of hip-hop music. These groups and others brought the folk music of their communities fiercely into the public consciousness, rapping about racism, violence, politics, and poverty.”

When many think of African-American folk musicians, the default usually runs from Harry Belafonte to this guy: Huddie William Ledbetter.

Perhaps the so-called big tent of roots music can be pushed out even further to include artists like Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Flash performing “The Message” below, and to those of color both before and after. Pardon the twist of words on a current social movement, but black musicians matter.

 

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

Image from The Library of Congress

The Week Before Pete Seeger Died

Pete Seeger / Uncredited / Creative Commons 2.0

I wrote this article for No Depression: The Roots Music Journal on January 22, 2014 and it speaks to the events two days earlier, on the national holiday where we honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. My youngest son and I had hoped to spend the day with Pete Seeger and members of a small community church in the town of Beacon New York. Pete had a dream for that day and we wanted to be a part of it. Five days later I got word that Pete had been taken to a hospital in New York City and that the news wasn’t good. In 48 hours on January 26, 2014 he passed. 

PSeeger

When my editor Kim Ruehl from No Depression tipped me off that there was something goin’ on up in Pete Seeger’s town of Beacon New York on the day we acknowledge the life, work, accomplishments and passing  of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I hit the interwebs to dig up the information. In my mind, whenever the ninety-four year old Pete comes out to do something, it’s pretty damn big news. An event. A happening. A gathering. So it was sort of surprising to discover barely any details of what Pete Seeger and the town of Beacon were up to.

Having recently migrated across the country from California, I inquired around town to my new folkie friends here in the Lower Hudson Valley which led nowhere. Talking to all the Brooklyn hipsters I work with in SoHo led to blank stares. If you live in Manhattan south of 14th Street, the Bronx is considered “upstate”, Long Island is just a completely different state and anything above I-287 and the Tappan Zee Bridge might as well be Lower Canada.)

MLK

 

Being resourceful, I soon discovered that Beacon was south of Woodstock and north of Croton-On-Hudson, where Pete and the Clearwater Festival converge each June. That was the last time I saw Pete, leading the crowd in song as he has done for decades in June 2013 when there wasn’t snow on the ground nor a snap in the air. Turns out, it’s just a 75 minute ride from my apartment. A straight shot up the Taconic State Parkway along the Hudson River. My oldest son who lives in the city was busy, but my youngest said he’d be willing to wake up early on his Monday holiday and come with me. That is sacrifice.

With early sixties Bob Dylan tunes coming out of the speakers, my son slept while I drove. I imagined that as we got closer to Beacon the traffic would be backed up for miles. Images of Woodstock 1969 danced in my head. Maybe Pete would need a helicopter to get him to the church on time, although I think the log house is only about ten minutes out.

I shook my boy up as we rolled into town and drove down the main street, which may or may not have also been the name of it. ‘Look for the crowds’, I said. There were none. ‘Keep looking’, I said. There were none. ‘Over there’, he exclaimed.

So I followed the only other moving car on the street, and turned right when they did. A church. A steeple. And now I saw the people. I’ll guesstimate there were about two or three hundred souls who entered the doors and took seats in the chapel of this simple yet beautiful Baptist church.MLKDay

 

Taking to the pulpit, a large and handsome man stood tall and proud. This was his flock. This was his community. These…or rather we…were his congregation. “Dr. King’s and Mr. Seeger’s dream for Beacon has arrived today,” said the Rev. Ronald Perry of Springfield Baptist. “We’re all God’s children and we come together in fellowship … moving forward for a better community and a better world.”

Seeger’s vision was “a community parade in honor of King, to accompany the annual birthday celebration” of which the church has been doing for thirty-five years, said Bonnie Champion, an event organizer and member of Seeger’s Hudson River Sloop Clearwater environmental group. He wanted to make sure that the federal holiday — the only one designated as a national day of service — meant something special to the community. “This is his dream,” Champion said on Sunday evening. “He wants his vision to grow with the children.”

And so, on three separate weeknights, Pete came over to the church to teach the local community the three songs he sang alongside Dr. King on the march from Selma to Montgomery. “We Shall Overcome”. “Oh Wallace”. “If You Miss Me at the Back Of The Bus”.

 

The last time I had a good, hard cry was in the days following 9/11. But sitting in that church, listening to the Reverend, waiting for Pete to come and lead us out to the street where we would march just around the block and raise our voices together…at that moment I felt a tear. And another and another and another. I could feel myself on the balcony of that Memphis motel standing next to Dr. King. In the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel with Bobby. And on the plaza with JFK.

Just as easy as I choke up simply writing these words, my body shook and my son put his hand on top of mine and held it there. I’m sixty-two, and all at once the weight of the past fifty years of life’s events enveloped and rained down on me. My eyes were shut when I heard the room get quiet. While on his way to the church, Pete felt too ill to join us and make the short walk around the block. He had the car turn around and he went back home. The Poughkeepsie Journal reported that the crowd was disappointed. They were not.MLK3

 

The Journal did get this part right:

It was clear that Seeger accomplished his goal; religious and political. “It has drawn such an attraction to the purpose of this day,” Rev. Perry said of the parade, ” and the people are coming out with children, celebrating, singing.”

And that we did. Filing out of the church we raised our voices in song. So proud to be here in this moment we marched, or in reality it was more as if we walked slowly. I don’t think anyone wanted to rush through this. Six short blocks. In a small town in upstate New York, south of Canada.

At the end, as we all filed back into the church one more time for a brief slide show on the history of slavery and the civil rights movement, along with food and more music. Someone with a guitar started to sing a song. A song that just came out of that cold Beacon air into the warmth of community. You probably know it, and perhaps sang it yourself sometime in your life.

This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
Oh, this little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
Hallelujah
This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

Ev’ry where I go
I’m going to let it shine
Oh, ev’ry where I go
I’m going to let it shine
Hallelujah
Ev’ry where I go
I’m going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

All in my house
I’m going to let it shine
Oh, all in my house
I’m going to let it shine
Hallelujah
All in my house
I’m going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

I’m not going to make it shine
I’m just going to let it shine
I’m not going to make it shine
I’m just going to let it shine
Hallelujah
I’m not going to make it shine
I’m just going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

Out in the dark
I’m going to let it shine
Oh, out in the dark
I’m going to let it shine
Hallelujah
Out in the dark
I’m going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

A week later, on Monday the 27th of January 2014, a small paper from upstate New York reported his death. The story was posted on their website and then pulled down. And then the entire site shut down. Credit goes to The Fretboard Journal as one of the very first that reported the news, quickly followed by Variety and the New York Times. At the same time, there were several people who posted on social media that perhaps it was just a hoax. I knew it wasn’t. Pete Seeger had indeed passed on, but his music, accomplishments and memory lives on forever. 

The photos for this article were taken by me, with the exception of the one at the top. 

Make Americana Great Again: Why We Cherish Those Amazing Polls

donald-trump-neil-young-rockin-free-worldThat is one helluva picture. You might recall that it surfaced this past June after Neil Young demanded that Donald Trump stop using “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his campaign events. Utilizing his standard and preferred method of statesmanship, Trump went on the morning news shows, called Young a bad name, and then tweeted this: “A few months ago Neil Young came to my office looking for $$$ on an audio deal and called me last week to go to his concert. Wow!”

Young, no slouch himself when it comes to using social media, seemed to confirm Trump’s assertion of capitalistic hypocrisy when he wrote on Facebook: “It was a photograph taken during a meeting when I was trying to raise funds for Pono, my online high resolution music service.”

That Neil Young would choose Trump to get cozy with as a potential partner is enough to cause the price of flannel futures to tumble. Besides, in the past several months, Young’s digital entree has entered and floundered into the ether of a disinterested marketplace.

Pushing that particular random thought-bubble aside, it’s time to talk about the annual readers and critics polls that focus on one type of music or another. These are soon to occupy much of our collective time and space via traditional and social media, using the skill sets and wisdom of random cubes tossed together in a Yahtzee cup and spilt onto the countertop. Can we all agree that this excercise produces an inaccurate and imperfect list of superlatives? At the very least, I hope it will open up new avenues of exploration for some folks, as well as simply serving to bolster our own opinions based on an album’s popularity.

It is the former that most excites me because, with well over 120,000 new albums being released each year, there is no possible way to see all, know all, or hear all. It’s the depth and diversity of new music that makes scanning these polls so much fun. Nothing beats discovering something that slipped through the cracks.

In late October, the editor of No Depression:The Roots Music Authority requested a list of my favorite titles (I think she used the word “best”), and this is the list I sent her:

Jason Isbell, Daniel Romano, John Moreland, Pharis and Jason Romero, Tom Brosseau, Noah Gundersen, Watkins Family Hour, Joan Shelley, Milk Carton Kids, and an exceptional concert compilation called Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of a Dreadful Film. (Note to self: Going forward, try to be nicer.)

I’m sure y’all can spot the problem. It was way too exclusive. Narrowing my favorite albums of the year down to ten is just plain silly.

I also would have loved to include releases from Calexico, Jessica Pratt, the Westies, Kristin Andreassen, Joe Pug, Shakey Graves, Sufjan Stevens, The Kennedys, Kepi Ghoulie, Leon Bridges, Meg Baird, the Lonesome Trio, the Deslondes, Frazey Ford, the Skylarks, Kacey Musgraves, Ana Egge, Darrell Scott, Nikki Talley, Lindi Ortega, Dave Rawlings Machine, Jill Andrews, Darlingside, Decemberists, Daniel Martin Moore, Susie Glaze and the Hilonesome Band, and my friends Spuyten Duyvil.

I really like the duos and duets too. Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield, Anna and Elizabeth, the Lowest Pair, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. Not to mention the Honey Dewdrops, Iron and Wine and Ben Bridwell, Dave and Phil Alvin, and both the Wainwright and Chapin Sisters.

Don’t forget compilations with really long names that may or may not have been released this year, that I’ve been enjoying regardless: Arkansas at 78 RPM: Corn Dodgers & Hoss Hair Pullers, The Brighter Side: A 25th Anniversary Tribute to Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression, Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs By Karen Dalton, and Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music On the Mason-Dixon Line.

And then there are the names you already know: Iris Dement, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Leonard Cohen, Jesse Winchester, Dwight Yoakam, Mark Knopfler, Fairport Convention, and Bob Dylan (the old new stuff, not the new old stuff).

I haven’t counted them up, but this longer list of mine can’t be more than 50 or 60 albums — a pitiful, sickly and puny little list. Seriously, I’m ashamed. There are at least 119,940 or more to choose from and I know that you can do better than me. Whether you participate in the No Depression poll or any of the thousands of others that lurk out there, relax and enjoy. Have fun, don’t stress, don’t argue. It’s all about exploration.

Postscript: For the record, Americana is a radio format and an association, not a genre.