Author Archives: Easy Ed

A Walkabout, the Night after Paris

Driving home from work on Friday night, I had yet to hear the news from Paris. I instead had new music from the Chapin Sisters filling the space in my car, and I was looking forward to seeing them play the following evening. My fingers were tapping the wheel as I glided through light traffic toward home. Their songs drained the workday tension from my body and lightened my soul. It was a good, crisp autumn night.

After saying hello to the cat and hanging up my jacket, I pulled one of the guitars off the wall for a few minutes of pickin’ before putting together a quick dinner. I took my plate and a glass of sparkling water, sat down on the couch, and turned on CNN. The world turned black. Again.

I was glued to the tube until one in the morning, zipping and zapping the remote to catch the latest sick detail and twisted image. Any time one of the newscasters hauled out a politician or expert on terrorism to explain to us the meaning of what happened and share their opinion, I’d change the channel. It was too early for such an intrusion. Sometimes you need to just sit alone with your own thoughts and neither deny nor define the pain.

Le Bataclan. That hall reminds me of every single show that I’ve ever been to — small club or large venue, inside or out. They were just people coming together for a few hours of a shared musical experience. Suddenly all I could think about were the words “soft targets” and “new normal.”

The Walkabout Clearwater Chorus was founded by Pete Seeger back in 1984 and is made up of people who simply love to sing together. Their mission is to promote environmental awareness and social action through song, education, and other activities. They meet and practice at a Methodist church about 15 minutes from my apartment, and they perform at festivals and events throughout the Hudson Valley and beyond. They also run a coffee house once a month, from October to May, where you can show up and sing with them before the show starts. On Saturday after the attack, they presented the Chapin Sistersand Kristen Graves.

I came in late, missing the sing-along. There were a couple hundred people in the auditorium, and as the lights went down I took my seat and felt my body get tense. I was in the last row, sitting alone, my back to the door. I recalled the shootings at the Unitarian congregation in Kentucky, and the church in South Carolina. Soft targets. New normal.

Lily and Abigail Chapin took the stage and were both radiant and glowing — flashing guitar, banjo, and smiles. They grew up here, and have been back for awhile. They left Los Angeles after eight years of making music, and now they are making babies. Each is pregnant.

There is a certain indescribable joy I feel when hearing close sibling harmony. From their opening notes, these sisters took the audience through a repertoire of songs for duos from the Louvins and Everlys, as well as original music from their past albums and the new Today’s Not Yesterday. And one from Uncle Harry.

Graves joined them for the closing song and there was a short intermission, complete with herbal teas and homemade cakes and cookies. My son called me from his place in Brooklyn to say hi, and we chatted for a few minutes. I told him I needed to be with people and listening to music, and I wondered if he also planned to go out. He wasn’t. I was relieved, but didn’t tell him.

For those who ask where have all the folksingers gone, long time passing, I recommend they seek out Kristen Graves. She walks it and talks it and sings it and lives it. In addition to performing and recording, each year she spends months working to build homes in Mexico, and she brings music to the people on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation in South Dakota during the summer. Her voice is an amazing instrument. She closed her set by bringing back the Chapin Sisters and the entire Walkabout Clearwater Chorus. We all sang together.

In the spirit of Seeger, in the Valley of Pete, while the night could have been one of mourning and anger, it was not. There was music, there was laughter. There was talk about activism and the environment. There were songs of healing, and a few songs of sorrow. And there was light in the darkness. It’s what I came for, and what I left with.

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

Illustration by Jean Jullien on the night of the attacks, which he posted to his Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Five Strings Down in Rockville: The Patuxent Banjo Project

Hats off to the astute reader who will glance at the headline, look at the accompanying picture, and come to the conclusion that the writer is confusing his stringband string-ology. He is not. The man in the hat is Tom Mindte — a bluegrass musician and the founder/owner of Patuxent Music, home to both a record label and studio. Ignore for a moment the mandolin he’s holding, because last year his label released a sweet collection of banjo-based performances that I keep coming back to like a bowl of peanuts on a bar.

Produced by Mark Delaney and Randy Barrett, both noted players in their own right, The Patuxent Banjo Project brings together 40 regional players from the Baltimore-Washington corridor, an area rich in bluegrass history and tradition.

Rockville is the county seat and home to over 60,000 people. It has the state’s largest Chinese population and is the area’s center for Jewish culture and religion. I’ll also mention that the town has two women’s flat track roller derby teams: the Black-Eyed Suzies and the Rock Villains.

More to the point, back in the mid-1940s, the entire area became a destination for the rural folks who lived in the Appalachian and Piedmont regions of the Virginias, Carolinas, and Tennessee. Attracted by job opportunities, the people brought the music from the hills with them.

Country music historian Ivan Tribes has written detailed notes for the banjo project, attesting to how the “barroom bluegrass” scene came about, and citing the ease of travel north to Philadelphia and south to Richmond to play at country music parks, festivals, and quite a number of bars and venues. Tribes notes key players such as “Buzz Busby, Benny and Vallie Cain, Bill Harrell, and Earl Taylor. Others,” he writes, “were known by collective names such as the Bluegrass Champs, Rocky Mountain Boys, Shady Valley Boys, Pike County Boys, and — perhaps best known of all from 1957 forward — the Country Gentlemen.”

In a 2010 article by Geoffrey Himes in the Baltimore City Paper, Mindte spoke about the bluegrass scene back in the ’60s and ’70s, and the clubs where the music went down:

These were tough places full of tough people. I remember going to those bluegrass bars in East Baltimore–the Sandpiper Inn, Club Ranchero, Cub Hill Inn, the 79 Club. When you walked in the door, you walked onto a floor of sticky beer and into a cloud of cigarette smoke. I thought it was great–this was how it was supposed to be. Bluegrass wasn’t meant to be sterile and healthy. It was meant for working-class, beer-and-shot joints.

Patuxent Music began back in 1995 when Mindte recorded fiddler Joe Meadows, who worked with the Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe, and brought the record out himself the following year. Next up was a blues record in the Piedmont style and his catalog soon expanded to include jazz, old time, swing, and country. With string bands being his primary interest, he has focused both on musicians with long careers, such as members of the Stoneman family and Frank Wakefield, as well as the younger players. Nate Leath from Old School Freight Train has released a number of albums on Patuxent; his Rockville Pike album features a 16-year-old Sarah Jarosz and 14-year-old Tatiana Hargreaves.

The Patuxent Banjo Project, which led me down this path of discovery, is a two-disc set with 40 tracks and a 40-page booklet. Some of the Baltimore/Washington musicians you might already know include Bill Emerson, Eddie Adcock, Walt Hensley, Chris Warner, Tom Adams, Dick Smith, Keith Arneson, Murphy Henry, Kevin Church, Roni Stoneman, and Mike Munford. Richard Thompson (not that one, the other one) from Bluegrass Today breaks down what you can expect to hear.

Not only are there variations of three-finger banjo playing, old-time, there are two banjo/fiddle duets, a classical piece and a couple of twin banjo numbers, one of which features cello-banjo. All of which adds up to a major audio documentation of a versatile instrument.

Back on Father’s Day in 2013, I bought a five string banjo in Beacon, New York, the home of Pete Seeger. It seemed like the right thing to do, given his recent passing earlier that year. I got it from David Bernz, who produced of some of Pete’s last albums and who also runs Main Street Music with his son. Trying to teach myself how to either clawhammer or three-finger roll the darn thing was useless, and I’ve since settled on a two-finger early fingerstyle method from the 19th century. Most of the time it hangs on my wall, but The Patuxent Banjo Project has been inspiring me to try a little harder. More importantly, it’s carrying on an American roots music tradition to a new generation of players. Five strings down in Rockville. Hallelujah.

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

Photo by Michael G. Stewart

Music USA: Finding This Book Might Be Rough

The local library was holding their annual used book sale, and although I’m trying to thin my own herd of paper and ink, it seemed like it might be a good way to kill a little time. My hope was that it would be a hodgepodge of mass market paperbacks and hardbacks with busted spines and missing pages — which would not have tempted me — but no such luck. The volunteers who ran this thing knew what they were doing: books were culled, categorized, arranged neatly on tables, and priced to sell. Since it was the last day of a four-day event, I figured there wouldn’t be much of interest left, despite the large handwritten sign written with urgency that everything was half-price.

To be honest, people-watching at a used-books-priced-very-low sale was much more interesting than browsing. Elbows flew, kids screamed, bodies slithered on the floor as folks looked under the tables for missed bargains, and the overall mood was one of frenzy. It seemed that everyone except me was carrying huge piles of books, but I was determined not to bring anything home.

And then I saw it. On the cover was a guy wearing a cowboy hat, walking down the street, holding a boom box. Damn. It got my attention.

Music USA:The Rough Guide was released back in 1999 by the travel and reference publishers, and is probably the best American big-tent roots music resource book of it’s kind that I’ve ever come across. It was written by Richie Unterberger, who is well known for his extensive contributions to the All Music Guide, plus articles in almost every single music publication that you can think of. Unterberger is also the author of ten other books on subjects including the Beatles, the Who, Hendrix, and Velvet Underground. He wrote two volumes on the Byrds and the folk-rock genre, and the magnificently titled Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of ’60s Rock.

The back cover describes the book as “a tour through the best of the country’s popular music, giving you the story behind the sounds of more than twenty regions.” That should give you a hint that this is approached from a travel guide perspective. But rather than putting music inside a geographic box, it’s written in such a smooth and concise stye that you can either choose to read it end-to-end, or randomly poke around.

The book’s claim of “critical overviews of the crucial performers and styles, from Appalachian bluegrass to New Orleans jazz, from New York klezmer to San Francisco psychedelia” is actually spot on. And despite being Sweet 16, the book’s sections on festivals, local venues, radio stations, record stores, and publications in some cases are either still relevant or warm and fuzzy nostalgia.

So what makes this book so hard to find? Along with the Rough Guide‘s other music titles that were made in this series, Music USA appears to be out of print. A damn national tragedy if you ask me.

Fortunately, the internet is the great equalizer, and as I write this you can find copies — one as low as 67 cents — at Amazon US and UK. For more information about Richie, visit his website. He also blogs at Folkrocks about travel and music, offering great information and tips on both.

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

I took the picture of the book. My cat helped.

The Handsome Family Have Over 17,000,000 Fans

First heard on the Handsome Family’s Singing Bones album back in 2003, “Far from Any Road” was picked by the producers of HBO TV show True Detective two years ago to be used for a 30-second scene, and ended up — without Brett and Rennie Sparks knowing it was going to happen — becoming the theme song. The show became a huge hit and it took the song along with it.

Do you know what constitutes having a hit single these days? It’s not being number one on Billboard magazine’s Top 100 chart, nor is it selling a million copies and having your picture taken surrounded by record label people while holding up a plastic gold or platinum record with shit-eating grins on your faces. No. If you want to know if you have achieved some career milestone, go to YouTube.

Back to the Handsome Family, though. Would you care to guess how many times “Far from Any Road” has been heard on YouTube? That’s actually a trick question, because it’s not just one audio/video clip that we’re talking about, but an infinite number of uploads. Before I give you the numbers, here’s the band’s “official lyric video,” by Jason Creps.

So far, there are 248,470 views of this version. Of all the uploads of that song, it’s ranked at number seven. Pretty impressive for any Americana/Gothic/alt-whatever band. But here’s the rub: the most-watched clip comes in at over ten and a half million views. No typo, no video, just audio. In the credits, it links to some Russian gaming website.

The next six uploads come from I don’t know where, but combined they equal over five and a half million views. Add to that a couple of dozen smaller uploads, and my cocktail napkin mathematical estimate is that on YouTube alone — we’ll skip Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Pandora, and whomever else — the Handsome Family’s 13-year-old song has been heard over 17 million times.

But it hardly stops there. No ma’am, no sirree. We live in a world of portable devices that allows everyone access and ability to cover, remix, and re-write melody and lyrics. You can mash it and smash it and turn it into something new. Or you can take the original and add your own pet pics or family photos. I could hardly believe that this is even possible, but when I used the search terms ‘The Handsome Family” and “Far from Any Road” on YouTube, it yielded 52,200 results.

Kim Boyko’s version above has been seen 222,787 times. For this song, it’s the biggest cover of the bunch. Admittedly, I’d never heard of her before today, and I almost wrote her off when I saw her Facebook page had only 891 followers. But her YouTube channel, SingingWithKim, is full of her versions of songs, from Stevie Wonder to Patsy Cline. And while nothing is quite as popular as this one, she regularly gets anywhere from 5 to 20 thousand views per song.

After Boyko, there are versions by James Liddle, the Virgin May, and Karilene that each exceed 50 thousand views. But this next one is a mystery. There is no credit other than the name of the person who uploaded it: ORACLEPAGER1029. A few other songs he’s done have only been seen in the double digits, yet this one is already at 26,232.

That’s a pretty darn good cover, despite a crooked camera angle in front of a fireplace. But is it performer or the song that is getting the interest?

Clearly, it’s the song. If it wasn’t such a hauntingly beautiful, lyrically dense song, why would so many people want to hear not only the original version, but these other ones?

I’m curious as to what Brett and Rennie think about all of this interest and exposure, and wonder if they are getting compensated fairly. Hopefully they are, since 22 years in the indie music trenches ain’t all peaches and cream. Last month, while on their European tour, they received some news that might put all this success and attention in perspective. Brett posted on their Facebook page:

Hang on folks, this is big. The Simpsons will be using our song, “Far From Any Road”, in episode 2 of season 27 — “Cue Detective.” Oct 4. Words cannot describe how I feel about this. I am a huge fan. To me the Simpsons are the ultimate compendium of pop culture. I’m freakin out.

Gabriel Blanco. 331 views.

The Handsome Family are home and in the studio. A new album is coming. Seventeen million new fans await. And Bart, too.

Image: “The alchemical formula for the Handsome Family,” by Rennie Sparks. For more information visit www.handsomefamily.com/

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

The Tower Records Employee Reunion Of 2015

On a bright and sunny Sunday morning I enjoyed a sea of tunes while behind the wheel of my car on a drive around Manhattan. I cruised south along the Hudson, circled around Lincoln Center and turned north on Central Park West. The Dakota was barely recognizable at 72nd. It’s wrapped in scaffolding in the midst of a masonry rehab, but still attracts the selfie-sticked tourists who want a photographic memory of the spot where John Lennon was murdered, 35 years ago this coming December.

If he were still alive, Lennon would have recently turned 75, and I’d imagine there are many people who’ve taken a moment to ponder or write about what sort of man he might be today. Would he be involved in social justice issues of one sort or another, live in New York City, and be seen around town and in the Hamptons with Yoko while hobnobbing with other celebrities and the elite? Or would he have perhaps taken a different path altogether?

I’ve always fantasized that he would have grown into a songwriter and performer whose work would fit somewhere between that of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Perhaps he’d have a sprinkle of a journeyman like Steve Earle, and the wisdom and spirit of Pete Seeger. He wouldn’t be appearing as host on Saturday Night Live and participating in witless skits, nor strolling onstage at either a Taylor Swift or U2 concert, as if on a whim, for a “surprise” duet. He wouldn’t be a judge on American Idol, nor would he need to have a Broadway musical based on his life and music. He would be neither cloistered nor idolized, but respected and beloved. This is simply a speculative daydream of course, and should these words be written on paper as opposed to being read on a screen, no doubt we wouldn’t have bothered to kill the tree.

https://youtu.be/WB0vN1qGKCU

Depending on when you are reading this, about 500 former employees of Tower Records — with some friends and associates — have come or gone from an October 2015 reunion in Sacramento, California. There, from 1960 through 2006, was the home base of the world’s finest music retail chain. Put together by a handful of people, fueled by warm memories and enduring friendships, and with the assistance of social media, it is or was a couple of days celebrating a different time and place, when music consumption was driven by human interaction rather than solitary clicks; when businesses were built on relationships and shared goals. I’m also guessing, having read through the weekend’s agenda, there might be time for a few drinks, a couple of smokes, and a safe and sane rekindling of relationships. How’s that for political correctness?

One highlight will be the screening of All Things Must Pass, a film by Colin Hanks that documents the unique connection so many of us had with Russ Solomon’s Tower Records, and how it all came to an end. The expected tagline of course is that it was “The Internet” that killed it off, but the story really runs far beyond that.

The film debuted at SXSW earlier this year and is currently in limited release. Although I have yet to see it myself, as a vendor and partner of Tower Records for over 20 years I was an eyewitness to what many business writers at the time called the “perfect storm” of events. It was such a despicable, sad, and ugly ending, that I recall walking out of one of the L.A. stores on their last day open, feeling as if someone shot a hole in my heart. Here’s a clip … and an imaginary toast to all the friendships I made along the way that still live on.

From all accounts, everybody returned home safely and a helluva good time was had by all.

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.

Have You Heard Any Good Music Lately?

A few decades ago, when I ran a record store in California, I must have been asked that question a few hundred times a day. They weren’t usually the first words spoken by a new customer, since ascertaining the whereabouts and accessibility of our bathroom and confirming if we would accept personal checks were the top two. But after a cursory look at the waterfalls and end caps with the signage advertising sales and new releases, and a flip or two through the bins, most people would work up the courage to come to the counter, or engage some employee who was restocking the shelves out on the floor, and pop the question.

Anybody who has ever worked in a record store will tell you it was the best moment of the day. That question meant we got to do what we loved to do best: talk about music we knew about, that you’d never heard of. Of course there was a trick to getting it right. You didn’t want to pitch Ralph Stanley to the guy who was holding a dozen used classical albums by a specific Hungarian composer, nor make a rookie mistake like I once did when I handed Mike Love’s solo album of cover songs to Brian Wilson, who smacked it hard, grumbled, and stormed out. If you were going to discuss or suggest something, you needed to know your audience, have some idea of what you were talking about, and be able to stand your ground two days later when they brought it back and you had to lay the “no refund/no exchange” policy on them. A thankless job it was, indeed.

These days, when I want to find out about new music or even older titles that I’ve skipped over, there aren’t many places left to go nor many people to talk to. There are about a half-dozen websites in addition to this one that I visit regularly, to pick up threads of news about new artists and releases. I use You Tube and Spotify more than any other streaming services, wandering about usually late at night, like a prospector panning for gold. Living in a big city allows me access to a number of college and public radio stations, where left-of-center music is served up. And hitting just three festivals per summer exposes me to about a hundred acts over the course of a couple of weekends.

But there is something quite sad to this mission of a mostly singular search and discovery, and it makes me recall that there was once a forum over at No Depression dot com that endured for years. It was probably the most popular community forum topic and it asked the simple question about what you were listening to. People responded and shared almost daily. I thought it was a great service to the roots music community, but things change and it’s now hard to find. It was just sort of an old fashioned notion — an online bulletin board that went the way of AOL dial-up. Still, I sort of miss it.

So in the spirit and memory of that old fashioned community forum, where I met many good people, learned an awful lot, and expanded my musical horizons, here’s a brief list of what I’ve been listening to in the past couple of weeks. There’s some old, some new. Some borrowed, some blues. Should the spirit move you, head over to No Depression where this is posted, share your own list in the comments box, and you’ll get notified when others do the same. Then you too can answer the question: Have you heard any good music lately?

Joan Shelley – Over and Even: I loved her earlier collaboration with Daniel Martin Moore, and he engineered this one. Nathan Salsburg plays guitar. Will Oldham and Glen Detinger provide harmonies. It’s a Louisville thing.

Ola Belle Reed: Dust-To-Digital’s August-released book about her life comes with a two-disc sampler. Unbelievable.

Daniel Romano – If I’ve Only One Time Askin’: If you love your late-1950s, early-’60s classic country shaken and stirred with a touch of Gram Parsons, this is for you.

Nikki Talley – Out from the Harbor: I know, there are seven million singer-songwriters out on the road these days, but this woman delivers the type of North Carolina country you wished your local radio station played.

Meg Baird – Don’t Weigh Down the Light: A Philadelphian moves to San Francisco and mixes her Appalachian-style roots guitar work with ethereal vocals and an electric collaborator to create a post-Espers flashback.

The Kennedys – West: Pete and Maura bring out this duo album as well as two solo efforts. Expect more Byrds-like jingle-jangle guitar and their great, close harmonies. Catch them live if you can.

Los Lobos: I’m immersed in their entire catalog, which could take several years to get through. I’ve got acoustic En Vivo, Kiko, and the new Gates of Gold in heavy rotation now. And a tip of the sombrero to Los Super Seven — a great side project.

Oxford American Southern Music Samplers: Blessings to my friend in England who sent me his complete collection, going back to 1999. Most are sold out, but head over to the OA website and sign up to reserve this year’s sampler, which focuses on the music of Georgia. While you’re there, you can grab the few others still in print.

Okay, you’re it.

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

Image by Joe Haupt/Creative Commons License

A Prairie Home Companion: From Panic Attack to Paradigm Shift

I awoke when it was still dark outside, a good hour before my alarm was set to go off. At a slow and deliberate pace, with my eyes shut tight and my arms stretched out in front of me waving around like a zombie as if I actually needed to feel my way through the six feet of empty space between the edge of my bed and the door to the bathroom, I tried hard to think of nothing. It is usually at this precise moment, as my body is responding to its natural calling, that my brain either chooses to stay in it’s restful state or begins to come alive, like a chick breaking through an eggshell. It is mighty rare that I’ll manage to climb back into the bed, pull the covers up past my chin, and slip back to my safe place.

On most days I lose the battle, as my thoughts and anxieties will surface from the deep and pull me from sleep. And it was indeed such a morning this past week, that I stood naked doing what I was doing when, in a flash, my eyes opened wide, a cold breeze caused my body to shudder, goosebumps popped up, and a buried memory of Garrison Keillor standing on the edge of the stage at St. Paul’s Fitzgerald Theater singing an Elvis Presley medley came barreling toward me. Forsaking the flush, I jumped onto my bed, reached for the MacBook, and with credit card numbers dancing in my head I searched for tickets to the three upcoming A Prairie Home Companion shows at New York City’s Town Hall. Sold out. A cold sweat and anxiety ensued.

Most readers of this column are likely well aware of Keillor’s live radio variety show, which features musical guests of almost every genre (but in particular, traditional folk, blues, jazz, and gospel), devastating comedy skits, old fashioned radio drama themes, commercials from fictitious products, and the storytelling skills of Keillor, its host.

A Prairie Home Companion‘s first show took place in 1974 with an audience of 12 people, and after a couple of shifts in venues and a two-year hiatus in the late 1980s, over four million people tune in every Saturday evening on over 500 public radio stations in the United States. The show is also broadcast in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Europe, on the Armed Forces Radio Network, Sirius Satellite Radio, and an online stream.

While I’m sure there is a humongous group of fans who plan their Saturday nights around the broadcast and have never missed a single show, my own listening patterns are probably the norm for many. If I’m in the car and I know it’s on, I’ll find a station on the left side of the dial so I that can listen. Occasionally, but not too often, I’ll tune in while at home. I’ve also been in the audience on several occasions in St. Paul and New York, and screened Robert Altman’s film of the same name about 50 times.

There are also about ten or so albums that my two kids grew up listening to. Any car trip lasting an hour or more would always be an opportunity to hear some “News from Lake Wobegone” or an episode of “Guy Noir, Private Detective.” We liked to listen to the the Hopeful Gospel Quartet, the Duets and anniversary albums, and the three-disc Comedy Theater set that also includes many of the great commercials. I like to think that we were an A Prairie Home Companion family, despite periods of diversion with Radio Disney and Weird Al.

When Keillor announced his retirement this past June, and named Nickel Creek co-founder and Punch Brothers founder Chris Thile as host, I had a hard time imagining how the program could continue with a musician at the helm instead of a storyteller and humorist of Keillor’s magnitude, style, and wit. It was only this week that I realized that, as we head into the 2016-2017 season, things on this show are going to change. That realization gave me an overwhelming feeling of the loss of a trusty old friend, who’s there when you need them. It made me scramble to grab tickets to the New York City road shows before it all goes away … and it triggered a panic attack of sorts.

In a recent interview with the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Keillor noted he’ll be around all of this season. He will do some co-hosting with Thile, and he’ll continue as executive producer next season. He also spoke a bit about Thile, who made his first appearance on the show 19 years ago at the age of 15.

“He’s a brilliant musician. He’s just an amazing musician. Beyond that, he’s a good-hearted, outgoing person, much more than I. The show will have a solid musical foundation. We started out as a music show and then other things were added to it. And this new incarnation will evolve in the same way. We’re looking for writers to create some new serial business and we’ll see. The door is open to all kinds of comedians, sketch writers — interesting, dorky people who write comedy.”

For his part, Thile told the Burlington Free Press that he’s still formulating ideas on how A Prairie Home Companion will change once he settles into the host role, but he expects it will reflect a musician is in charge. “He’s [Keillor] created something that will stand the test of time,” he told that paper. “I look forward to taking that and running with it. Since I’m a musician there will probably be more music, but as an ardent admirer of the show I will strive not to mess it up for anyone.”

All this talk about music, specifically, is pretty exciting, and it goes far beyond the weekly radio performance platform. Look around at most roots music gigs — festivals, house concerts, clubs, church basements, parks, wherever, whatever — and you’ll notice a sea of us with gray hair, who buy the tickets and crowd around the merch tables. We are the aging fan base, and while Thile represents hundreds of younger performers who are carrying forward and building on the traditional music, there also needs to be a generational change in the audience. Putting my trust in Keillor and Thile, I’m starting to feel as if A Prairie Home Companion could be the starting point of a significant musical paradigm shift. And with that, my panic attack is subsiding.

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

Photo credit: Claudia Danielson