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Americana and Roots Music Videos: December 2014

Pixabay License

I was reminded this morning as I went out to shop at our local market that the year is winding down. How did I know? Because there was a lonely trombonist standing outside the door playing a dirge-like version of “O Come All Ye Faithful” in one/one time, and he managed to hit every single note about a half-tone flat. It made me want to write a check for a thousand dollars and drop it into the red kettle just to get him to stop.

The second thought I had was a reminder to myself…it is damn hard to make good music. I’ve not seen the stats from the past year but if they’re close to the year before, musicians have released about 120,000 albums….or about a million new songs. Only about a thousand albums will be heard (via stream or purchase) more than a thousand times, and with the exception of Taylor Swift and a handful of others who will get a couple million of listens, the rest will likely be distributed to friends and families and house concert attendes…making for a wonderful memory in a couple of decades.

I am not your everyday music consumer, and don’t pretend to be. I’ll rarely write a review, tend to wiggle-waggle back and forth between seeking out something new, or spending months pursuing 78s of long forgotten string bands or jazz bands that came and went in a blink of an eye. One night every two weeks I’ll Spotify a couple dozen new releases, maybe hop on over to You Tube, purchase and download something of interest or more likely than not, just go to sleep.

And so it is against that backdrop that I offer up my before-the-end-of-the-year fast and easy look at what albums caught my ears this year. There is no numerical list, no ranking, no convoluted point system nor any claim that this is any way or shape definitive. In fact, before I’ve even finished posting a track or video  from each of the albums that struck something special inside me, I’m sure I’ll realize that I’ve forgotten one, or two, or three.

I’m going to kick it off with a duo from Traverse City Michigan who are getting ready to blow up in a huge way judging from a recent sighting I had of them opening for Del and Dawg. Billy Strings is only in his early twenties, and Don Julin is in his fifties. And we’re off…

Rosanne Cash’s album came out last January, and lets hope that is isn’t lost or forgotten to the real-deal reviewers’ lists. Here she is with her husband doing a ‘one mic, one take’ at the Capitol Record’s studio.

I know very little about the album that came out earlier in the year from the Abramson Singers, and this video was shot in 2013;  but the song was on the disc and is one of my favorites.

A string band trio whom I’ve seen a few times now, that also are beginning to break big on the touring circuit. I love the Stray Birds.

We shared a bucket of naked chicken wings a few weeks ago and talked about Gene Autry. I’ve seen John perform five times in the last six months, and have taken to calling him (although not to his face) Billy Joel Elton John Fullbright. He is the New Piano Man.

Best blues album hands down from two brothers that used to be in a band called the Blasters. If you get a chance to see them live, they’ve got some great stories about growing up in Downey California and cruising over to Whittier Boulevard to hang with some of the old masters.

Somebody told me that this new double album from Lucinda somehow didn’t make the American Songwriter end of the year list. Really? This album is so rich and deep with amazing lyrics and music that I gotta put on one of those rubber overalls that fly fisherman wear just to listen to it.

In all candor, I have no idea who this next band is. But I sure liked their album. I Draw Slow. Like me. I Move Slow.

And finally, if either Scientology scared you off or you have some notion that Beck isn’t one of the best artists making music today, think again. “Morning Phase” is…get ready…I never admit to things like this…my favorite album of the year. And I’ve chosen the least Americana/roots song to share with you. Trust me…go listen to the whole enchilada.

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.

 

Tryin’ to Find a Hero in a Haystack

Haystack_-_geograph.org.uk_-_462934You should know that this first paragraph was written after I wrote what follows below. So that you don’t scratch your head and wonder what the hell I may be thinking about posting this on a website devoted to the topic of roots music, the idea for this piece actually began to germinate two weeks ago as I sat beside my ninety-three year old mother and watched a local bluegrass band perform. If you can just bare with me, I’ll get back to the topic of music shortly.

Growing old seems often be paired up with the notion of wisdom, as if simply making it through another day and another year will give you greater insight and context. Forgive me for not putting some of these quotations in quotes, or bothering to cite their source, but generally this is how it’s been described by those who have a way with words:

Wisdom begins at the end. He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty. The years teach much which the days never knew. The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions. How can you be a sage if you’re pretty? You can’t get your wizard papers without wrinkles.

For myself as the years have tumbled by, wisdom seems to have eluded me. In it’s place has crept cynicism. And it’s something that I work hard to chase away every single moment, because I don’t think it’s a very healthy state to live in. But truth be told, it’s hard to escape.

As I watched on my television the town of Ferguson Missouri begin to burn and saw the tear gas canisters being hurled back and forth between the crowd and the police as if they were simply having a friendly game of catch, my first thought was of a smiling Bill Cosby. Out of the headlines in time for the holidays, his past misdeeds slithering back under the rock that they had crawled out from the week before. Hey hey hey. Hello cynicism. Hello in there.

I’ve been thinking recently about this notion of heroes; a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities. Our initial thoughts when we talk about such people are often tied into some sort of celebrity or accomplishment. And when I was younger, it seemed that they were easier to find. Or at the very least, their status endured over time.

Today we are able to lift the veil in record time, discovering the lies and deception behind the myths we create. From Pee Wee Herman to Tiger Woods, OJ Simpson to Oscar Pistorius, Gary Hart to Larry Craig…and it’s not only people that have disappointed us. I used to trust the newsmen and the newspapers, like Walter Cronkite and the New York Times. But today we have Fox News, which has begat a new CNN…twenty four hours of non-stop babble from experts and pundits who know nothing more than you or me, but who are simply there to incite, titillate and entertain. After centuries, we seem no more wiser…the story of feeding lions (be it real or imagined) comes to mind.

If you’ve stayed with me this far, let me share a more upbeat thought I had recently.

When people grow older and become unable to take care of themselves for whatever the reasons, a nursing home (or some euphemism that seems much more palatable to their family) often becomes the last stop. My own mother is now living in such a place; a ‘home for the aged’ they call it. There are residents who are alert and active, and those who are not. It sits on the banks of the Hudson River, with a beautiful view of Manhattan to the south, and there is a huge lawn with benches that sits empty most of the year.

The minutes and hours and days roll along slowly. Meals seem to be the high points of the day. Much of the conversation centers around what was last eaten, and what will be served next. And there are activities for those who choose to partake. Bingo is the mainstay, but you can go to the library to hear a lecture, the art center to paint, make jewelery or do some sort of craft, check your email in the computer room, exercise or just watch television.

Every Sunday at two there is a concert.

Recently while visiting, I tagged along downstairs with my mom to see a local bluegrass band. They were probably about my age, and I’d venture to guess that they don’t have a record deal, aren’t heard on the radio and rarely perform outside of venues such as this. But they were talented and entertaining, and it made me wonder. How many musicians are there who live in our communities do this sort of thing? The answer is…more than I could ever have imagined.

I plugged this into a Google search: ‘local musicians who play at nursing homes’...and got 31,300,000 results. Sifting though the pages, I found news stories and profiles of so many musicians that I was astounded. Many are people you might know of, having seen them perform or heard them on records from another time. Most are unknown; from that local bluegrass band I enjoyed to wannabe rock n’ rollers, jazz players, dinner theater singers, symphonic and classical musicians. And there is a common theme among all of them.

Meet Barry Dye from Bowling Green Kentucky.

Out in California, there is a fellow by the name of Gary Gamponia who heads up a group of musicians under the name of Pay It Forward Volunteer Band. They’ve been around almost five years, playing exclusively in skilled nursing homes. With a rotating roster of 140 musicians in Los Angeles alone, they’ve got branches in other cities as well.

In an article I found on a website called McKnight’s, Gamponia told the reporter that ‘We’re out there for that 90-year-old lady who’s been living there for three years, whose husband is dead and has very little to live for. These are people who built this country after the Great Depression, the people who defeated fascism and kept this country a democracy. When we do a show, we say that this is our way of saying thank you to that generation. We want to thank all the people who came before us.’

Keeping that in mind, this particular organization focuses their music on the thirties through the fifties. For the ‘younger residents’, maybe they’ll throw in a Sinatra classic. In twenty years, if you or I are the ones sitting there on a Sunday afternoon, wonder what we’ll want to hear?

Should you be a musician yourself, and think that maybe you’d like to donate some time to play for a nursing home or hospital, there is no shortage of groups that can help you connect. Musicians On Call has branches in fifteen cities, many of the websites that hook people up for jams feature a volunteer section, and local musician unions often are involved within the community.

In a world where it’s easy to become enveloped in cynicism, and where heroes seem hard to find, I’m glad to have discovered something I didn’t know about, or maybe just took for granted. To the thousands of musicians out there who take the time to share their talents to those who are easily forgotten…you are all heroes in my book.

To close it out, the Merry Musicians of Caloundra in Queensland are an amazing group of talented older Australians with an average age of 79. They play at nursing homes, retirement villages, and seniors events. They are “young at heart” and they will perform wherever there is a “free cup of tea and a willing audience.” Stella, the leader of the group is nearing 90 and as piano player Ted says “we’re just spring chickens”.

That Garth Brooks’ Video

GARTHOn the cell phone video, shot in Minneapolis and seen by over five million people in just five days, you first get a glimpse of the woman holding up the sign projected on a huge screen behind the drummer. It can be seen exactly at the 1:16 mark, and the words are written all in upper case letters. The crowd cheers. At 1:55 she is seen standing at the edge of the stage. After that…well…I posted it at the bottom. You can go watch it to see what happens.

Her name is Teresa Shaw. She has stage three breast cancer.

‘CHEMO THIS MORNING. GARTH TONIGHT. ENJOYING THE DANCE.’

I first met Garth Brooks in a nondescript three-story glass office building in Burbank California, maybe eight or nine months after his first album had been released in April 1989. Outside of the fact he was wearing Wranglers instead of Levis, he looked and talked like any other twenty nine year old musician trying to to catch a break in the music business. But from that first meeting, you knew he was different.

Very interested in what we did in that office, he wandered around, introduced himself to everybody and asked a lot of questions. We were the unit of Capitol-EMI Music that made sure his albums were on the shelves, displayed, advertised, promoted and available for purchase. For most musicians, this part of the music industry was a drag, best left to the bean counters. But not for this marketing major from Oklahoma. He soaked it up.

Although his first single had landed in the top ten on the country charts, and another was making it’s way to number one, we’re talking about country music twenty-five years ago. Which is to say, outside of certain pockets in the South and Texas, and small rural towns where a discount retailer named Walmart was starting to build these giant buildings that would soon devastate Main Street, country music was small potatoes. Except for a few cowboys like George Strait and mostly crossover pop artists, country meant low sales and little interest.

‘CHEMO THIS MORNING. GARTH TONIGHT. ENJOYING THE DANCE.’

By the Spring of 1990, Garth was riding high on country radio with his third charting single and in the midst of it all, Capitol-Nashville fired all of their executives and replaced them with the team who had run MCA Records. I don’t know whether or not it was already in the works or if it was the new folks’ idea, but someone decided to put out a fourth single accompanied by a video. It was called “The Dance”.

The last track on the album, Garth had heard it sung by the co-author, Tony Arcata at an open mic a year or so earlier in Nashville. He told Tony that if he ever got a label deal, he’d record it. Garth was working at a store selling boots at the time, and Tony loaded trucks for UPS.

Inspired by the movie Peggy Sue Gets Married…yeah, really…I’ve always thought it is a beautifully crafted song…but it was the video featuring Martin Luther King, Jr., JFK, the astronauts from the space shuttle Challenger , John Wayne and others who lost their lives that broke it wide open and propelled Garth and as a by-product, modern country music itself, to where it is today. For better or worse.

‘CHEMO THIS MORNING. GARTH TONIGHT. ENJOYING THE DANCE.’

For a moment, let’s put aside all the negative feelings that the entire Nashville corporate music machine stirs up, especially for people like us who prefer something we call roots music. But there is truth in that for almost everything wrong with country music today, you can point the finger at Garth Brooks.

He replaced the importance of recorded music with grand scripted and choreographed concert performances on a scale not ever seen by country music fans. (Not surprising, his favorite band growing up was Kiss.) The sales and marketing of his music are tied deeply with the growth of Walmart, up to the point where eventually they became the only place you could buy his music. And as he developed into a shrewd businessman, he became a ruthless negotiator that caused many to bristle, and others to lose their jobs.

Yet…and always…there is another side.

‘CHEMO THIS MORNING. GARTH TONIGHT. ENJOYING THE DANCE.’

Throughout my time when I would get to work with and see him on occasion, which stretched into 1996 and was prior to the infamous Chris Gaines experiment, I got to know a man of extraordinary talent and generosity who genuinely cared for people. Not just limited to those who could help him climb the ladder, but he’d talk to people….fans, friends, business folks, everyone…for hours and hours about themselves, their dreams, their families, fears and love. Looking into their eyes and connecting on a human level? It’s a quality that rarely will accompany celebrity and fame.

For me, it wasn’t very surprising when he decided to pack up the tent and move back to Oklahoma in order to spend time raising his kids. I’d been with him in the days right after the birth of his first and second daughters, and there was a sense of love and pride and responsibility that just seemed to pour out of him. People change, but core values are ingrained. And such has been the way I’ve tried to see Garth. The man retired for a dozen years, and now he’s back; embarking on a world tour and ready to release new music.

‘CHEMO THIS MORNING. GARTH TONIGHT. ENJOYING THE DANCE.’

I cry easily. Seriously, it doesn’t take very much for me to choke up. It could be the ending of a film, a song lyric, a passage in a book, a news story on television, old memories, thoughts about the future or even something as crazy as a scene from a reality show like Dog the Bounty Hunter or Jerseylicious. The lyrics to “The Dance” have always made me cry. Just the opening piano piece is enough to get my body to shake…but it’s the chorus that gets me every time:

And now I’m glad I didn’t know

The way it all would end, the way it all would go.

Our lives are better left to chance

I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.

‘CHEMO THIS MORNING. GARTH TONIGHT. ENJOYING THE DANCE.’

Go ahead….if you haven’t yet, just do it. Make it full-screen so you can see what happens as he sits down on the edge of the stage. Hear what he says as he gets ready to leave the hall. Just so you know, Garth lost his mother and sister to cancer. As he pointed to and screamed at Teresa Shaw in front of the thousands of people…‘you go and kick cancer’s ass.”

I’ve cried every time I watch this. Maybe you will too. Maybe not.

The Long Road To Wilco

Wilco 2011/commons.wikimedia.org

I should warn you in advance: take the title to this piece seriously. I’m gonna talk about Wilco, but it’s going to take me a while to get there.

Getting Rid Of Books

Books. It’s a weakness. While sometimes I can nurse one for a week or two, at other times I devour them by the handful as if they were M&Ms. They do tend to take up a lot of room, especially since I prefer the weight and heft of a hardcover, and it’s possibly the only media format that I want and hope to keep off of an electronic device. So I have some bookshelves, and I use crates and plastic bins to hold the rest.

This week I decided to thin the herd. A bunch. Lots. Have you tried to do that lately? When I carted a few hundred downtown last summer to The Strand, one of Manhattan’s largest, oldest and best bookstores, they sniffed through them and plucked out three for the keeping. Feeling generous, I told them with a smile that I’d be pleased to donate the rest. They laughed. I left with them.

Not wanting to suffer the same humiliation, this time I called my local library. Almost every library these days have “friends”…folks who take in ‘gently used’ books and sell them at the occasional book fair or in small dark and musty rooms…all in hope of raising money so they can buy new ones, or it goes to local community programs. I like that idea.

We have lots of libraries in our area. The first one I called told me that they were booked up…try again next year. The second said I was two weeks too late, but offered a list of other possible candidates. It became clear after a few calls that the friends of libraries didn’t need nor want my books. The friends have too many friends. But on a much happier note, I discovered a local women’s club that accepts and distributes them throughout the county, to homeless shelters, safe houses and halfway homes. Places where people don’t have many resources, and might enjoy the intellectual stimulation that words on paper can offer.

As I pulled up to the drop off zone, I was greeted by a large sign that talked a bit about what the organization did, and then they added this note: Please Leave Only Recent Fiction And No Text Books. Now that was a line that stumped me. Describe ‘recent’. One could assume that Capote, Hemingway, Kerouac and Twain were recent, compared to Cavendish, Defoe or Malory. Or perhaps they were inundated with too many books by those mass paperback authors such as James Patterson or Stephen King, who seem to release new books every month. It boggled my mind.

So I left everything there. Figured they would sort it out. I’ll do another run next week.

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy

I’ve been enjoying the latest release from Bonnie “Prince” Billy called Singer’s Grave – A Sea of Tongues. Turns out that it’s not new at all, as it features a reworking of nine tunes that appeared on his Wolfroy Goes To Town album from a few years back. However, for those of you who enjoy the more country side of (what do you call him…Bonnie, Prince, Billy or Will), especially when he was doing all those Palace albums, this will likely be a treat. With the addition of gospel singers the McCrary Sisters and Earl’s nephew Chris Scruggs on mandolin and uke, it’s a solid offering from one of the more strange but talented men I’ve come across. Whatever you call him.

The Young Sinclairs

Another interesting album comes out on a UK label called Ample Play Records and is titled This Is The Young Sinclairs. Hailing from the Blue Ridge Mountains’ community of Roanoke Virginia, YS comes out of the Magic Twig Community; like-minded musicians operating their own recording studio, deep in the woods where they have produced and engineered all their recordings. A sort of sixties-garage/jingle-jangle band sound, often with a twelve string guitar at the center of the mix, this sextet has been releasing CD-Rs, cassettes and vinyl since 2005. This particular release, via download and vinyl, is a compilation and sample of odds and ends.

The Road To WIlco Ends Here

Although it’s been twenty years or so since they’ve been around, I’ve only seen Wilco twice. The first time was this past summer at the Newport Festival where they failed to hold my attention beyond a few songs, and last week in the middle of a three-night run at the famed Capitol Theater in Port Chester. It was a much more captivating experience, but less so for the music and more for the spectacle and smell of money in the air. Wilco is one, well-oiled machine.

Although I own almost everything Wilco has released minus the Roadcase stuff, here’s a little secret: I don’t listen to most of their music. I gravitate to stuff like the Mermaid Avenue sessions with Billy Bragg, the quieter songs like I’m featuring here, and sometimes the audio download from Tweedy’s mostly-solo DVD Sunken Treasure. When the band gets too loud, I shut down.

If you liked Uncle Tupelo, read No Depression and told people you were into alt-country, didn’t you also have to worship Jeff Tweedy as well? Had I been wiser back in 1996, I might not have missed a Peter Blackstock article/interview he published in Issue #5 that would have explained it all for me.

Here’s an excerpt:”In the back of my mind, I was still wanting Uncle Tupelo fans to like me,” Tweedy says of the days that followed the UT split in June 1994. “That wasn’t a thought that I allowed myself to say out loud; I just kind of recognized it later. And that’s not really me. I never dug that whole somber approach to making music. I think it’s bullshit. I think it should be fun. Music is entertainment. It can be serious, it can be sad, but for the most part, I want to feel better, and I want to feel good when I’m doing it.”

Twenty years later, entertainment is exactly what Wilco shows are about.

A mostly-male audience of thirty and forty-somethings, they seem to know every song, every lyric and respond as you would expect a well-schooled classic rock audience to behave…cheering in the right places, laughing at the stage patter, holding up lighters or cell phones. (A personal note to Nels and Jeff: Changing out your guitars for every single song was really annoying. Buy a Snark tuner for $12.95, fire the guitar techs, and stick to one or two per show.)

While they now gross in excess of ten million a year in ticket sales, they also have a kick ass website that creates community involvement with their fan base, and they sell merchandise that varies from the usual apparel and posters to dog collars, baby stuff and beverage coasters.

And Tweedy has zero issues with licensing music as often and whenever he can. Last year in a Chicago Sun Times post, he said :“I think about telling my dad, who worked for 46 years on the railroad, ‘Somebody offered me $100,000 to put my song in a movie, and I said no because it’s a stupid movie.’ He would want to kill me,” Tweedy says. “The idea of selling out is only understandable to people of privilege.”

So you not get the wrong idea, all of this is simpatico with me. In fact, I think it’s damn smart to run your art like a business, because it is. There’s some lessons to be learned here. And with all the baggage the man might carry, I’m guessing that these days Tweedy’s retirement portfolio is looking just fine.

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.

 

Bruce Molsky: From Beacon to Brooklyn

Bruce MolskyLots of live music, a few highs and a couple of rough spots defined this past week. Before I get on topic, I want to mention a book I found at the local library, where ink and paper still give me a thrill. Whispering Pines by Jason Schneider is subtitled ‘The Northern Roots of American Music…From Hank Snow to The Band’. Just about a third of the way through, I can already tell you its a great read about the Canadian musical heritage. Paul Cantin reviewed it for No Depression a few years ago and it’s probably still up online if you want to check it out.

On a Saturday afternoon in the last weekend of October, about a dozen of us sat inside a small cold room with cinderblock walls. In the basement of the local bowling alley here in the Hudson Valley, it serves as the home of the Beacon Music Factory. A great facility where both kids and adults can come to take lessons and enjoy the benefits of many events and programs. These type of places are important community centers, especially during an era where art and music programs are too often stripped out of the budgets of local public school systems.

We’d come on this particular day to hear folklorist and master musician Bruce Molsky talk a little about Appalachian fiddle and banjo music from the early 20th century. He held a fiddle workshop earlier that morning, but since I only fiddle around with a guitar, dulcimer and banjo, it was this second session that was more to my interest.

Sitting in a semi-circle around Bruce, with fiddle and banjos at his feet, he took us through the styles of mountain music from Virginia and North Carolina, over to Eastern Kentucky and down to the plains of Texas. His playing and singing are extraordinary, and his knowledge of the people and places where this music comes from is absolutely staggering.

Should you not be familiar with him, I can count at least a dozen albums available featuring both his solo work and with various groups. A great entry point would be the 2013 release of If It Ain’t Here When I Get Back, which is described as “an aural autobiography, paying tribute to the people he has lived his musical life with over the past 45 years, and incorporating the sounds of his travels”. Here’s a video from 2012 that I really like.

The following day I got to cross over the East River for the first time and set foot in the urban hills of downtown Brooklyn. It was the Third Annual Brooklyn Bluegrass Bash at The Bell House, a benefit concert series that helps raise money for the restoration of the Old First Reformed Church. Established by Peter Stuyvesant in 1654, it serves as a homeless shelter, a day-care facility, and a magnificent performance space for local arts groups.

Why this particular borough of the city has become the center for roots music of all sorts, I can’t really explain. But the pool of talented musicians who have settled down and made their homes here is exceptional, and they’ve developed a strong and vibrant community. Whether it’s old-time traditional, bluegrass, blues or more contemporary excursions, the audience and players are mostly of a younger generation, and they easily mix with those of us wih a touch of grey.

On this day we got to hear a wide range of sets of acoustic music from a diverse group…let me give you the list: David Bromberg with Mark Cosgrove, Darol Anger, Joe K. Walsh and Grant Gordy, Haas/Kowert/Tice, the Calamity Janes, Kristen Andreassen and Cricket Tell The Weather…love that band and their name. The emcee was actor Peter Sarsgaard, another neighborhood local. Closing the show was Bruce Molsky once again on fiddle and vocals, collaborating with legendary banjo picker Tony Trischka and guitarist-singer Michael Daves. This was the second time I’ve gotten to see this trio play, as they were the afternoon headliner at this summer’s American Roots Music Festival at the Caramoor Center for Music and Performing Arts.

Just to put an exclamation point on the day, Daves called out everyone to join a finale to end all finales. Imagine three bass players, three fiddlers, two each on mandolin and banjo, and five or six guitarists all on one stage. And it seemed like everybody took a turn vocalizing at the mic. I left feeling that I got to cross that old river more often.

Here to close it out this week is two-thirds of that trio…Michael and Tony…at this this year’s FreshGrass festival.

 

The Crackle of 78s and Record Store Memories

DREAM ARE MADE OF

 

Last week I struggled a bit with a post-operative pain-reduction opiate-derived haze, but now I’m sitting up, walking, talking, thinking, moving, rehabilitating, writing, interviewing, plotting, scheming, making music, listening to lots of it, and sitting up straight as an arrow on a sturdy chair with some lumbar support. Today I bought a bagel, got a haircut, found a lightbulb, ate an apple, and have been listening to that great eight-disc set from Yazoo Records called Times Ain’t Like They Used to Be. It features music of the 1920s and ’30s. Fiddle tunes, banjo songs, rags, jigs, stomps, religious selections, blues, and some of the best traditional American music culled from 78s. They got lots more too, like that R. Crumb collection pictured here. A great record label indeed.

The other night I visited the website of an old friend from England that I’ve not checked in on for quite a while. I guess you could say it lives on the edge, as it’s a music collector’s site where hundreds of fans come to talk about any and every type of musical fetish one can have, and they upload their record collections to share. Records. Vinyl. Plastic. Most everything is pretty damn old. And ranges from the very popular to the absolute obscure.

Reading through all the notes and stories that people write reminded me of the customers we used to get at the record store I worked at about thirty years ago in Santa Monica. Straight out of High Fidelity (the film, not the magazine). The guys who wanted Japanese pressings of all of the Johnny Otis Savoy recordings, who talked about Jam singles and EPs, needed the German mono version of the Fantastic Baggys’ album, bought picture discs and colored vinyl, would argue about who was the best or who was the worst, and would come in with lists of songs that Carol Kaye played bass on.

What ever happened to those guys? I’ll tell ya. They live on my friends website. And there’s got to be hundreds more just like it and thousands of people still into it. Some folks sit around and reminisce about the old days and ask whatever happened to the neighborhood record shop. And others have used technology to recreate a virtual experience of it. Like I said, it lives on the edge. But it’s out there.

I’m not even gonna get into all the television shows and films I’ve been watching during this recuperation thing, but I will mention a documentary called The Last Mogul which is about the life of Lew Wasserman, the man who, along with founder Jules Stein, helped build MCA (Music Corporation of America…now Universal) into the giant media company that it eventually became. From the Jewish ghetto of Cleveland, to Chicago and New York City, and eventually Hollywood, although it focuses mostly on the film industry, there is plenty about how the music industry was built from the ground up. MCA booked almost all of the early big band acts, from Jelly Roll Morton to King Oliver to Kay Keyser, into the speakeasies during Prohibition, and are credited with creating the modern touring industry that we have today. Mobsters, molls and musicians. A great book when I read it years ago, but an even more interesting visual and audio history. Netflix it.

I had to skip seeing Lucinda Williams twice last week, and also Dom Flemons. He played a free show down in the city at Madison Square Park on a threatening damp but ultimately dry Saturday afternoon. It might have been some of his videos I watched or the reading of an extensive interview he did a few years back, but he got me into this “back to the past” funk that I’m in. Tell you what, next time he comes rollin’ around, I’ll not miss it. He’s a helluva performer. 

How’s you email inbox? Mine overflows every day, and for the past three weeks I’ve been unsubscribing each morning to all sorts of newsletters and companies and charities and whatever. Publicists and marketing companies? For the most part, gone. Hey musicians — save your money. If you need to turn someone like me onto your music or promote a new album or tour, just find me here and hit the contact button.

Here’s one giant exception to that rule. Hearth Music. When Devon Leger sends me a message talking about someone his company represents, I listen. Because it comes straight from his heart. Or hearth. The man has great ears, is an accomplished musician himself, and has built a marketing firm (the big tent version, that can cover soup to nuts) that represents some of the finest traditional, folk, bluegrass, and Americana music being made today.

Case in point: Meet the Locust Honey String Band. Based in Asheville North Carolina, the band features singers Chloe Edmonstone on fiddle and Meredith Watson on guitar, with the banjo pickin’ of Brooklyn New York’s Hilary Hawke, from the duo Dubl Handi. Their new album is in heavy rotation here in the Hudson Valley farmhouse, fitting in right along with all those killer 78’s from Yazoo, with the early string bands and Southern musicians. Grab a copy of Never Let Me Cross Your Mind and put on your dancin’ shoes.  

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

When Paul Revere Died…An Americana Memory

October, 2014 – I heard that Paul Revere had passed on at 76. Made a note to check on his website this morning, and maybe watch a video or two. Just a small personal tribute to an American footnote to the 1960s, a guy with a band that seemed to be everywhere for a few years, and than nowhere. Along with his Raiders, they had a bunch of hit singles, a lot of cover songs, a spot on Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is, a record deal with Columbia, and always a ton of non-stop gigs played in a band of ever changing members.

My memories, beyond the silly costumes that made no sense in a generation of costumes, were of their faces often on the covers of magazines like 16 and Teen Life and other similar pre-teen TMZ/Entertainment Tonight bullcrap. Maybe they were manufactured; maybe they were just as real as any other band of that era. Didn’t really matter. They were a fixture of the middle of the road. Not your Dylan folkie or your Byrds cool… more Frankie and Annette. Or the Monkees, I suppose.

I remeber Mark Lindsay was the lead singer and poster boy. Good looking dude. Phil Volk… he played that famous Vox teardrop guitar or bass. Can’t recall. I think he was nicknamed Fang. The rest I don’t remmeber at all.

Lots of news stories today about Paul’s cancer and his stamina. And there will be the usual canned obit we’ve come to expect, pulled from some obit app or factory. I was going to put up Roger Hart’s words this morning, but then I found this from Paul, written fairly recently I think.

By the way. Americana? A band in a garage, a band on the road, a band on the run, a band that lasted forever. Yeah. Paul Revere and the Raiders were as Americana as they come.

Hey gang, Paul Revere here!

You know, 2014 has been just a great year for the band so far, thanks to you guys. We’ve played killer shows to great audiences all over America, and we’re having a blast – Disney, Busch Gardens, the “Where The Action Is” cruise, Las Vegas and every supermarket opening and pie eating contest along the way.

Even though I’ve had some health issues, nothing can stop the old man. I’m like the Energizer Bunny! I jump on my tour bus and go from city to city, packing a trunk full of great Raider songs, tight pants and bad jokes – all against doctor’s orders, by the way!

I’ve been the worst patient these guys have ever seen, and they’ve been on me to take a break all year. So, we finally did take a break, and recorded two new singles (due out in September), but that’s not good enough for them. They want a longer break. I told them, “Hey, I’ve got to hit the road, I’m booked! And I’m bored!!”

Well, you can’t ignore doctor’s orders forever, and I have to give in this time or these wonderful men and women might stop trying to help me. It breaks my heart to have to stay home while the band goes out without me to our next block of dates. You don’t even know how much it kills me. But the truth is, The Raiders kick major butt with or without me. We’ve designed this show to run like a Ferrari, even if it’s only firing on 11 cylinders. It’s built for speed from the ground up. High energy and fun is what a Paul Revere and The Raiders show is all about, and that’s always the same, no matter which one of us shows up in a body cast.

So come out and see my boys, and tell them how much you miss me. We have the absolute best fans. I love you all and will see you soon.

The show must always go on!

Love, Paul