Last week I was sitting in a chilly room with about a dozen guitar pickers and as is the protocol for this particular song circle, each person took their turn at presenting a tune and leading the group through it. There were traditional songs, some blues and the now-standard Sixties folk-rock repertoire. Really…just shoot me if I have to play “The Circle Game” one more time. But when the fellow sitting next to me said he wanted us to do “Shaving Cream”, I almost fell off my stool. A novelty song!
Benny Bell was an American singer-songwriter born at the turn of the last century, and he got his start in vaudeville singing in English, Yiddish and Hebrew. An early adopter of the DYI ideal, he founded his own record company and he sang and wrote in many styles: ethnic music, hot jazz arrangements with risque lyrics for juke box operators only, radio jingles (including the one for Lemke’s cockroach powder) and mainstream comedy records. In 1946 he released what would be his three best-selling songs, and for the next three decades he was a minor player in the New York Borscht Belt circuit of Jewish singers and comedians who performed in the popular Catskill Mountain resorts.
In 1970 a young ethnomusicologist from Minnesota by the name of Barry Hansen took his love for comedy, novelty and simply weird music to the airwaves in Los Angeles, and within a few years the radio persona of Dr. Demento was in syndication on FM stations throughout the United States, usually late on Sunday nights. The list of artists that he brought to the attention of his audience is pretty amazing in it’s depth and it still lives on through his compilation albums released on Rhino Records. When he began to regularly play ‘Shaving Cream’ in 1975, Vanguard Records rushed to release it and was an out and out smash. I found this video posted by a fan, and it seems to hit the high points.
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines the novelty song as such: ‘A popular song that is either written and performed as a novelty or that becomes a novelty when removed from its original context. Regardless of which of these two categories applies, the assumption is that the song is popular because of its novelty, because it sounds different from everything else being played on the radio or jukebox. It follows that novelty hits are unique; the second time around, the sound is no longer novel.”
Leave it to the British to make things clear as mud. I’ll describe it simply as a funny song; the style comes out of Tin Pan Alley, was popular in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and can be satiric, political, nonsensical, a parody and just plain weird. This one here qualifies for the latter.
Putting aside Allan Sherman’s My Son The Folk Singer album for the moment, when I think about roots music and novelty songs, “Alice’s Restaurant” is one of the first that come to mind. And maybe Arlo’s “Motorcycle Song” as well. But then I recalled Larry Groce, now of Mountain Stage fame, and the classic “Junk Food Junkie”.
You’ve got to mention Joe Dolce in this context. The Ohio-born singer-songwriter-poet -actor emigrated to Australia in 1978 and two years later recorded “Shaddup You Face” which became a multi-million-selling worldwide hit. He seemed to ride the ‘one hit wonder’ life for a few years and then settled into a more serious music career along with his wife Lin Van Heck. In the past decade he has become a well-published poet and essayist, winning awards along the way. I forgot how good this song was until I found it for this piece.
Somebody has said that there is hardly anything that John Prine has recorded that won’t either bring you to your knees in hysterical laughter or make you cry. I’ll close this out with one of my favorite Prine tunes. Should the spirit move you, feel free to add to the thread anything else that comes to your mind. Novelty music might not be the most important footnote to American culture, but I think it’s an interesting one and maybe it’s still out there, waiting to be found. The doctor will see you now.
This was originally published at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website. March 2015.
Surfing in the digital stream and scouring YouTube for new music, old tunes and whatever I can find of interest. Here’s a few things that caught my eyes and ears this season.
I’d like to kick it off with the trailer for The Winding Stream, a great film first presented at SXSW. Subtitled ‘The Carters, The Cashes and The Course of Country Music’. Catch it if you can.
Two of my favorite artists, Jordie Lane from Australia and the US string band trio Stray Birds have recently come together and performed ‘Black Diamond’ for the Folk Alley Sessions. Both acts will have their own showcases in KC.
John Moreland
Before I leave this planet, I will one day see the great Oklahoma folksinger John Moreland. Performing since the early 2000’s, he came out of the punk and hardcore scene while in high school, and over the years he has matured into a great songwriter and captivating artist.
I Draw Slow
This bluegrass band made it on my list of favorite bands from last year, and this clip from last summer is why.
Dom Flemons
This seems to be the year that folks that formed the Carolina Chocolate Drops are stepping out on their own and breaking through to a wider audience.
The HillBenders
The HillBenders have announced that their new album will be a complete bluegrass tribute to the The Who’s Tommy album. This is a teaser they just posted.
Two old guys and a kid. Hey…that’s what I probably should have named this article. But I’ve been reading up on how to build your online audience and it seems if you actually use names of famous people in the title you get more page views. So let’s give it a whirl….my Weekly Broadside column has been in the doldrums of late anyway, with only several hundred pairs of eyes each week. Could be I’ve just lost my edge, or my words are no longer as insightful, amusing, or interesting as once upon a time. And if this doesn’t pan out, maybe next week I’ll try to pair Gram Parsons with Bruce Jenner. At the very least I’m sure I’ll be trending, whatever the hell that means.
Dylan…oh how I love this new album. Admittedly early on I fell into the hole of pre-release hype that got it all wrong. They said it was a tribute to Sinatra. It ain’t. They paired it with what Rod Stewart, Linda Rondstadt and Molly Ringwald have done before…this Great American Songbook redux. It ain’t. And they said that Dylan’s voice is shot and this is merely some sort of joke, like his Christmas album. It ain’t.
There’s already too many reviews on Shadows In The Night, so you don’t need another one. But I’d like to throw out something new that I’ve yet to read, and that’s when I play these songs it reminds me of strong coffee from a Jersey diner, a bowl of high fiber cereal and a couple of tangerines. If you didn’t know where these songs came from, and most of you probably don’t, they could be his own. And if it was just served up simply as a new Dylan album, we’d be saying it’s the best thing he’s done since Blood On The Tracks. Because it’s really that good.
Citrus fruit aside, although the acidity often causes some folks a problem, both coffee and high fiber takes some time getting used to. As does sushi and refried beans I suppose. If you’re expecting Blonde on Blonde or thinking he’s going to sound like he does when he’s on his never ending tour where he deconstructs everything sounding like ‘Captain Beefheart meets Tom Waits’, you’ll be surprised, delighted or just pissed off. Because like the old Beach Boy’s promo campaign of the seventies that announced that “Brian is Back”…which he wasn’t… this time somebody got it right. Bob is back with a great folk music album.
Steve Earle…there is nobody else who has made music that I’ve loved and longed to hear more then him. He is my touchstone, occasional spiritual guide and my favorite performer and songwriter. I dig that he’s a survivor and an inspiration to many who’ve stumbled, fallen and picked themselves up. And like the imperfect hero he is, I’ve seen him when he’s right on the money and completely off the mark.
I’m about five days into listening to his newest album Terraplane. Like the Dylan release, people are going to love it or feel disappointed. While each artist has decided to dip back into time, while one has reinvented and produced something special, I’m not overly enchanted by this reworking of the blues that Earle recorded with the Mastersons. There are some really great songs, and some really annoying ones.
Now I remember that I once wrote that ‘there’s too much good stuff to write about…no need to dwell on the not so good’. And a writer…or music critic…replied that it was his responsibility to write honestly from his heart, and perhaps I didn’t understand the nature of critcism. He was right, I don’t. But I’m not so stuck within my own self-imposed rules to admit I don’t like this Terraplane (but the cover is groovy), and besides, Steve Earle is going survive my two cents just fine. The better news for his fans is that he’s got a memoir coming out this year, and a new country release.
Since we’re talkin’ blues, that box set released this year on Jack White’s label that features old 78s from Paramount Records out of Wisconsin won a Grammy award for best liner notes. Here’s something I think you might like even better than if I post one of Earle’s new tracks. Hell, he might like it better too.
Justin Townes Earle…the rising son. The third album playing on my digital jukebox this past week or two has been Absent Fathers, the second this year that follows Single Mothers. A few years ago I thought Justin might not make it. Not as a musician, because he’s exceptional at that; but as a walking, talking, functioning adult who could overcome addiction and immaturity. He is probably the first person on Facebook I de-liked because I couldn’t stand to witness his self destruction. But somehow, maybe like his dad or despite of him, he’s become to me of late the more interesting of the two Earles.
While the voice does not yet carry the physical weight and depth of dad, his songwriting and playing style has developed at a fast pace to a point where I frankly would prefer spending the night seeing him onstage than hearing “Copperhead Road” one more time. Sorry, for I’m sure I have just sinned, but at least his dad should be proud of his boy’s achievments and growth. I’m sure his mom is.
Two old guys and a kid. This time around I’ll take just one of each.
The horses are in the barn, the chickens in the coop, the cat is laying on my toes and the glow of the fireplace makes this room seem like an old time moving picture as the shadow of the flames dance across the walls and ceilings. While the talking heads spent the last several days whipping up everyone into a frenzy with their warnings of the impending blizzard, here in the Hudson Valley we awoke this morning to find maybe a foot of snow dusting the meadows…merely a freckle on the face of a red headed girl. Oh it’s indeed cold and windy as promised, which makes me feel not too guilty as I do some inside chores while listening to both old and new music, and taking the time to let my thoughts and memories spill out across this electric screen.
The year was 1975, and I was a twenty three year old purveyor of recorded music in the form of singles, albums and eight tracks. In my light blue VW Super Beetle I traversed the turnpikes and back roads throughout Eastern Pennsylvania, going from town to town with a thick binder of catalogs that offered for sale roughly thirty-five per cent of all recorded music. It was a time when independent distributors ruled the airwaves and sales charts, unknowingly just four years away from the shift to a corporate controlled American art form.
Allentown, Scranton, Williamsport, Lock Haven, Lancaster, Reading. These were coal and steel towns standing on the edge of the cliff, still surviving on their last gasp of breath. Tom Russell from California wrote a song about those days, and I often find myself listening to it at times like these.
In the little town of Bethlehem along the banks of Monocacy Creek in the Lehigh Valley, there was a record store called Renaissance Music and a fellow who ran it named John helped me get a handle on the Flying Fish and Rounder titles I was selling. Even forty years ago both of these labels offered a large repertoire of traditional American music and it was John who helped guide me through a world of great bluegrass and string bands, Delta blues musicians, the hammered dulcimer players and Welsh folk music. Being a guitar player transitioning from electric to acoustic music, John thought I might like this new fellow who had just released one or two albums by the name of Norman Blake.
If you’re reading this you probably don’t need me to tell you about Norman, nor his spouse and musical partner Nancy. If you’d like some education, just enter his name into “The Google” and you can spend a day or two reading his credits and sampling his work. I remember seeing these two perform at an outdoor venue in Ambler, and sitting on the lawn at his feet just staring at his left hand. With fingers that flew effortlessly across the fretboard, and vocals that took me back to some nineteenth century porch in Georgia, I thought he was the most amazing guitarist I’d ever seen.
In 2006 when he and Nancy released Back Home to Sulphur Springs a publicist whispered in my ear an ominous message that “this will be the last record they’ll ever make”. Hardly. At least five more have come out since then, and most recently Devon over at Hearth Music sent me Norman’s latest recording of all self-written songs. His first of such in thirty years.The voice has grown tired and at times a bit shaky, but the guitar playing is simply as traditionally-innovative as always. Guess I could drop in a sample here if I was trying to sell it to you, but frankly I’m partial to this older clip with Nancy.
Since it seems as if today I’m stuck in this time bubble of forty years ago, let us take a moment to talk about Bruce. There was a disc jockey back in Philadelphia by the name of Ed Sciaky who worked at a number of local radio stations, but is mostly known from his time (twice actually) at WMMR-FM. Along with promoting the hell out of Billy Joel’s Cold Spring Harbor album, his real legacy is the role he played in exposing Springsteen to an audience beyond just Freehold and Asbury.
A man schooled in mathematics and self taught in musicology, his shows were like doctoral thesis on the origin of the songs and artists we listened to back then. I can still hear his deep voice that he kept soft as it worked its way through the speakers of my car radio late at night. The sadness came when diabetes caused his right foot to be amputated in 2002. Two years later while in Manhattan with his wife, he collapsed while on the sidewalk outside Penn Station and died at age fifty-five from a massive heart attack.
He and Bruce come to mind because the other day I found myself in possession of a digitized soundboard recording (we used to call these bootlegs) from Philly’s Tower Theater on December 31, 1975. It was the last of a multi-night run, and although for decades the tapes have been reproduced, sold and traded among fans, a different mix from Sciaky’s collection is now in circulation. I like the name of this album…Last Tango in Philly…and you can find more than one version from start to finish on You Tube.
While during this time frame Bruce was in the midst of his Born to Run tour, the track list includes a few oddities, including the oft-bootlegged “Mountain of Love” and “Does The Bus Stop At 82nd Street”. Seeing that it’s the official beginning of our New York winter, here’s a 1978 version of one of my favorite tracks, “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out”. Until we meet again…
Although he thanked me, when I saw him slightly push Amanda’s book to the edge of the table I suspected he had already read it. And he had. Which was fine with me, since I was going to borrow it anyway. I loved her previous book, a road trip journal which obviously laid the groundwork for the author’s long- title fetish, “It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways and the Search for American Music”. It’s a great read for any roots music fan, and they are both available from Amazon, along with her first inappropriately short-titled Nick Drake book “Pink Moon”.
Yesterday I read the first chapter of Do Not Sell, and I’m already hooked on the storyline and her observations. A veteran music writer with an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia and currently a teacher at NYU’s Gallatin University, Amanda has a way of articulating feelings and thoughts on music that resonate with my own connection to consumption.
Like many people in the business of music, my own background in distribution, retail, working with labels and as a serial-blogger has allowed me virtually unlimited free music for most of my adult life. It’s been great to have access. But it also messes with your head. These days, with just a little skill in technology and web-surfing, everyone can find a song or album that can be “acquired and judged in the time it takes to eat a cheese sandwich”.
Amanda speaks to the acquisition of free music, in terms of the perception and value of it, like this:
“It’s reductive to suggest that the availability of free or nearly free music-and the concurrent switch, for most of the population, from music as object to music as code-has inexorably altered our relationship with sound, and I don’t actually believe that the emotional circuitry that allows us to love and require a bit of music is dependent on what it feels like in our hands. But I do think that the ways in which we attain art at least partially dictate the ways in which we ultimately allow ourselves to own it.”
With such unlimited and easy access to music, and especially with new releases flooding the marketplace (if you can still call it that) to the tune of well over 100,000 albums per year, I’ve experienced my own listening habits change from when I was a kid who visited ten record stores every Saturday and came home juggling bags of 45’s and albums. For the next week I’d sit alone in my bedroom and listen to everything, staring at the cover art and reading the liner notes…a term soon to be as extinct as a tyrannosaurus rex. And it took me someplace that I have long ago left. It was that obsessive compulsion to seek out and discover the new and unknown that gave me the passion to want more. Once I could just have it, I became a little bored, and jaded. Fast forward to 2015.
In describing her own transition from consumer-collector to critic, Amanda nails it:
“Unless I was being paid to professionally render my opinion, I listened to everything for three or seven or nine minutes and moved on. I was overwhelmed and underinvested. Some days, music itself seemed like a nasty postmodern experiment in which public discussion eclipsed everything else, and art was measured only by the amount of chatter it incited. Writing and publishing felt futile, like tossing a meticulously prepared pork chop to a bulldog, then watching him devour it, throw it up and start eating something else.”
Overwhelmed and underinvested. And this, my friends, is only page three. What follows is the story of those who still hunt, stalk and collect…in this case, the most elusive 78 rpm recordings ever released. Leafing through the pages, I can’t wait to read this book. And so I won’t.
Visit Amanda’s website for some great music and links to other writing.
This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.
As this year begins, America has lost Miller Williams. The husband of Jordan, and father to Karyn, Robert and Lucinda, he was a poet, editor, critic and translator with over thirty books to his credit. In his biography published on the Poetry Foundation website, they posted that his work was known ‘for its gritty realism as much as for its musicality. Equally comfortable in formal and free verse, Williams wrote poems grounded in the material of American life, frequently using dialogue and dramatic monologue to capture the pitch and tone of American voices.’
For someone who spent his life in academia, teaching at several institutions before joining the faculty at the University of Arkansas in 1970, he seemed most comfortable writing in a style that was both accessible and captured a rhythmic quality. This unattributed quote about himself is one he seemed to enjoy: ‘Miller Williams is the Hank Williams of American poetry. While his poetry is taught at Princeton and Harvard, it’s read and understood by squirrel hunters and taxi drivers.’
Miller passed away on January 1. It was the same date that Hank died fifty-two years earlier, and what I find most interesting is the story of how the two men met. In March 2013, Oxford American published an interview with Miller by Jackson Meazle, and this is an excerpt:
Q: You have written somewhat extensively in argument for rhyme and meter in poetry. How has music informed your work? Arkansas, like many Southern states, has such a rich musical heritage. Has music always been of interest to you and your work?
MW: I do believe that poetry is more satisfying when it has a pattern similar to those of songs. I wish that I could sing well, as I’m sure you know my daughter Lucinda does, and writes her own songs. Hank Williams (no kinship there) told me that since he often wrote his lyrics months before he set them to music, they spent those months as sort-of poems. I think the kinship is real.
Q: Did you ever meet Hank Williams in person?
MW: Yes, [in 1952] I was on the faculty of McNeese State College in Lake Charles, Louisiana, when he had a concert there. I stepped onstage when he and his band were putting their instruments away and when he glanced at me I said, “Mr. Williams, my name is Williams and I’d be honored to buy you a beer.”
To my surprise, he asked me where we could get one. I said there was a gas station about a block away where we could sit and drink a couple. (You may not be aware that gas stations used to have bars.) He asked me to tell his bus driver exactly where it was and then he joined me.
When he ordered his beer, I ordered a glass of wine, because this was my first year on a college faculty and it seemed the appropriate thing to do. We sat and chatted for a little over an hour. When he ordered another beer he asked me about my family. I told him that I was married and that we were looking forward to the birth of our first child in about a month.
He asked me what I did with my days and I told him that I taught biology at McNeese and that when I was home I wrote poems. He smiled and told me that he had written lots of poems. When I said, “Hey—you write songs!” he said, “Yeah, but it usually takes me a long time. I might write the words in January and the music six or eight months later; until I do, what I’ve got is a poem.”
Then his driver showed up, and as he stood up to leave he leaned over, put his palm on my shoulder, and said, “You ought to drink beer, Williams, ’cause you got a beer-drinkin’ soul.”
He died the first day of the following year. When Lucinda was born I wanted to tell her about our meeting, but I waited until she was onstage herself. Not very long ago, she was asked to set to music words that he had left to themselves when he died. This almost redefines coincidence.
“Compassion” is a poem by Miller that was published in 1997. Should the words be familiar, it might be from the song of the same name that Lucinda released this year. The poem is rather short, and the song speaks volumes.
Earlier this year Devon Leger over at Hearth Music sent out an email blast touting a new release he was working. It was the debut album from an old-time music duo by the name of Billy Strings and Don Julin from somewhere other than Seattle, Austin or Brooklyn. I really liked the album, and was quite impressed with some of the videos I found on the internet. In fact, I ended up sharing one recently in my highly anticipated annual (ok…this was the first year) Lazy Man’s Guide to My Favorite Albums of 2014.
In early November I got a chance to see these guys open for David Grisman and Del McCoury at the City Winery in New York. From the opening notes, their set decimated the room and left the audience dazed and staggering. And not from over-consumption of the white Zinfandel. While many of their videos seem a bit laid back, in front of an audience Billy channels some alternative world version of Doc Watson and Don attacks his instrument like the fury unleashed from a metal band but with the delicate hand of a fine line artist.
The energy these two men bring to the stage, never mind the mastery of their craft and a catalog of songs that seems as if it comes up from a bottomless well, makes the heart race and the brain freeze. I think on several occasions I had to make a point to lift up my chin to shut my mouth, because it was a jaw dropping set. Although I knew Billy was young with Don being the older of the two, at times it was hard to tell which was which. I even developed this little theory that the duo was really a ‘put on’…that Don was really in his twenties but wearing makeup, fake beard and a costume, and Billy had one of those rubber masks to hide his true age and identity.
The day after the show I reached out to Don and asked if I he wouldn’t mind doing a new fangled type of interview. Meaning, we traded emails and finally settled on some questions that I’d be able to ask and he’d write a reply to. Cut and paste journalism. Below is the outcome, and I think the story of the two men coming together, along with Don’s personal journey, makes for a very interesting read.
Q. Far from Appalachia and based in upper-Michigan, how did you discover the mandolin and eventually get into the bluegrass/old-time world? Or less politely, where the hell did Don Julin come from? And were you able earn a living while raising a family by staying local, or did you need to get out on the road?
A: I started playing mandolin in 1979 at the age of 19 after hearing the first DGQ (David Grisman Quintet) album. I started playing a few open mics and coffee house type gigs and realized that I really liked playing live music in front of an audience. At the same time, I was enrolled in the local community college studying music theory. I became friends with a couple classmates and we started jamming a bit in our free time. In Traverse City Michigan we had, and still do have this great college radio station (WNMC) that at that time featured a variety of new music including reggae, ska, punk, avant-garde jazz, etc. We were all attracted to that sound so we started a band called the Microtones. It realized that my favorite instrument may not be well suited for this music so I went to the local music store and bought a Fender Stratocaster. We played some dances and benefits and eventually got good enough to record two 45’s and take the band on the road playing college bars around the Midwest for a few years.
Around 1988 I decided to settle down, get married, and start a family; which meant playing gigs close to home, running a small demo recording studio, doing some live mixing for other bands and any other form of music related activity that could generate some income. Remember, I was about to become a daddy and them diapers can be expensive. It was that same time, that I put down the Strat and picked the mandolin back up. I started gigging around town playing any type of music I could on the mandolin, eventually getting into electric mandolins so I could play with louder electric bands and jazz combos with drums and horns. I started giving mandolin lessons at a local music store to help make ends meet and found that I enjoyed it quite a bit. For the most part I stayed pretty close to home for 24 years while my kids were growing up.
A few years ago William Apostol (AKA Billy Strings) moved to Traverse City and started getting some attention. He has a large repertoire of traditional bluegrass songs and knows the Doc Watson style better than anyone I had ever played with. This gave me a chance to play some of the music that first attracted me to the mandolin. I have had a great time making the transformation from the eclectic mandolin guy that could be seen playing Bob Marley, Frank Zappa, Antonio Carlos Jobim or Miles Davis, to a bluegrass mandolin player trying to incorporate the styles of Bill Monroe, Frank Wakefield, David Grisman, and all of the great bluegrass mandolin players. What I found is that not only is the mandolin built for bluegrass, but bluegrass is built for the mandolin.
Q: When I plugged your name into a Google search, it came up with what seems like a million hits for a book called Mandolins for Dummies, which came out in 2012 and has great reviews. I also found a You Tube video shot at some festival of you performing with David Grisman, and the two of you together are pretty captivating. Had you met before that, and can you share about about your book?
A: The video of Dawg and I was actually shot at the 2011 Mandolin Symposium in Santa Cruz California. I first attended the Mandolin Symposium in 2009 as a student and was invited back in 2011 to assist by leading the swing/jazz jam sessions held nightly after the faculty concerts. That is where I became friends with many of my mandolin heroes including Dawg, Mike Marshall, Andy Statman, Don Stiernberg, and others.
In 2011 I was approached by Wiley publishing about the possibility of authoring Mandolin For Dummies. After a fairly long qualifying process they offered me a contract on the book. Apparently I had the skill set they were looking for. I could play a variety of music on the mandolin, had some teaching experience, could produce standard notation and tablature, had a small studio in my basement were the audio tracks could be recorded, and knew a lot of top level pros that I could go to for specific techniques or advice if needed. I actually ended up reaching out to many of the worlds best mandolin players for specific techniques.
There is a chapter on Dawg music which David personally proof read and approved, a chapter on blues mandolin which Rich DelGrosso contributed, a chapter on Irish mandolin which has some great tips and techniques as shown by Marla Fibish, and a bluegrass chapter with some exercises from Mike Compton. The book has been successful enough for Wiley to offer a contract on a second, book entitled Mandolin Exercises For Dummies, which was finished and released earlier this year.
Q: When I got to see you onstage with Billy Strange, whom I believe is in his early twenties, the first thought I seriously had was that you both might be acting…or playing roles in a play. He sounds older than his age, and you seem younger than your bio. Can you clear that up…just how old are you guys and how did you hook up as a duo?
A: I am 54 years old and Billy is 22, which proves that music is really a global language that transcends things like age. We do have different interests off stage but we both share the same intense love of music. We met simply because we live in the same town. Billy is an amazing musician and can play many years beyond is age, but offstage he is clearly a young guy having all the fun that he should be having at that age. His youthful energy most likely does keep me a bit younger and maybe my experience mellows him out a bit. It seems to be a good match on and off the stage.
Q: Based on the audience reaction and some glowing reviews I’ve read for the album, it feels like the two of you are about to really take off. Is this something you guys did as a one-off project, or are you committed to riding it out as duo? I see you’ve signed with a booking agent, which indicates to me you’re in for the long haul. If so, is this the first time for you to commit to traveling on the circuit, or have you done it previously in another incarnation?
A: We are both committed to taking this as far as we can. We recently signed with a great booking agency and are currently talking to several managers. It started out as a local project to play a few gigs around town and has turned into a full time touring operation. Before I had kids I was traveling on the road with the Microtones but we stayed primarily in the Midwest. Now that my kids are grown, I am free to travel more so this opportunity came at the perfect time for me.
Q: From my observation sitting in the audience, you and Billy offered up energy and intensity that really connected from the first note. I love duos, and yours is one of the better I’ve come across. How has the reaction been on your other gigs?
A: You saw it! It is like that night after night. We feel very lucky and sometimes even question the enthusiasm. We just go up on stage and do what comes naturally.
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 Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email is easyed@therealeasyed.com
