Category Archives: My Back Pages

Bill Browning and The Grateful Dead: 60 Years of ‘Dark Hollow’

Back in 1958 a young singer-songwriter from West Virginia named Bill Browning recorded for a small regional record label. After one of his tunes – “Borned With The Blues” – was released, the song on the flip side of the record was quickly noticed and re-recorded by two other artists with better distribution: Luke Gordon and Jimmie Skinner. While Browning and His Echo Valley Boys’ version was cut in the rockabilly style, Gordon and Skinner’s versions are heavily influenced by Hank Williams. The song was called “Dark Hollow.”

For a song recorded dozens of times by numerous artists and that has become a staple at bluegrass jams, there is very little known about Bill Browning. He was born in 1931 in Wayne County, West Virginia, and actively recorded for three years on several labels including Island, Alta, Enola, Quality, and Starday. During that time period up until 1960, he also performed on WWVA’s Jamboree radio show, and he played gigs in both his home state and Ohio. Sometime in the early 1970s he moved to Hurricane, a small town in West Virginia, and opened up a recording studio while also running Alta Records, which he did until he passed away from cancer in 1977, just shy of his 46th birthday.

Jimmie Skinner was born in Berea, Kentucky, and his family rode that “hillbilly highway” to Hamilton, Ohio, in the early ’30s. Although his recording career had several false starts and didn’t take off until 1949, he managed to write a song that charted for Ernest Tubb and another for Johnny Cash. Throughout the ’50s, Skinner was based in Cincinnati and recorded for Capitol, Decca, and Mercury, where he took “Dark Hollow” to #7 on the country charts.

Luke Gordon’s family also migrated from Kentucky, but headed east to Falls Church, Virginia. He performed in the Washington, DC, area, often entertaining for the wounded military men at Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda and became well known in the Northern Virginia area. His version of “Dark Hollow” also charted, and in 1966 he created his own record label called World Artist.

How the song morphed into a bluegrass standard isn’t clear, although it appears that both Mac Wiseman as well as Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys featuring Larry Sparks started playing it around the same time, in the mid- to late ’60s.

There’s some interesting theories on how the song finally came to the Grateful Dead, with some folks giving Bob Weir credit and others pointing to Jerry Garcia, which seems to make more sense to me. In 1963 Jerry met his first wife, Sara Ruppenthal, and as a duo they played folk and bluegrass at local clubs around Palo Alto. The following year he started up the Black Mountain Boys, a bluegrass band with him playing banjo, Eric Thompson on guitar, future NRPS member David Nelson on mandolin and the Dead’s lyricist Robert Hunter doing bass. There’s a great long recording of them here. Garcia was so into bluegrass that he traveled to Bill Monroe’s annual festival with the hope of auditioning for him but lost his nerve.

In March of 1967, Garcia had gone electric and was down in Los Angeles. Visiting the Ash Grove, a famed local club of the time, he introduced a set of Clarence and Roland White’s band and it included this version of “Dark Hollow,” which is close to the style that the Dead eventually recorded acoustically around 1970 and released on the Bear’s Choice album in 1973.

Folks who keep track of such things note that the Dead performed the song over 30 times over a 10-year period, with at least a few electric versions. In 1973, David Grisman, Peter Rowan, and John Khan were in Muleskinner, a bluegrass band with Bill Keith and Clarence White, releasing  one album that featured “Dark Hollow.” When the three left and formed Old and In The Way along with Garcia and Vassar Clements, the song was again included in their repertoire.

The list of bands who have continued performing this American folk song is extensive and includes the following: J.D. Crowe and The New South, Larry Sparks and The Lonesome Ramblers, Kentucky Colonels, Seldom Scene, Country Gazette, David Bromberg, Tony Rice, String Cheese Incident, Bill Monroe, Del McCoury, Dwight Yoakum, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and a few dozen more.

We’ll close this one out with not one … not two … but three different versions from the Dead and friends. The first is from 1970 with Jerry playing pedal steel guitar, followed by an acoustic version from the  October 1980 Radio City Music Hall series, and the last features just Jerry and Bob with Joan Baez at a benefit concert in 1987.

Happy 60th and hats off to Bill Browning.

The Milk Carton Kids Are Missing! (But They Came Back)

Just a note of clarification before you read this: Within a few months after I posted this article, the Milk Carton Kids released a new album titled All The Things I Did & All The Things That I Didn’t Do. It was a departure from their previous pure duo format, with a full contingent of backing musicians. The guys went out on the road to support it and although perhaps not as acclaimed as their past work, it is a fabulous album that shows both enormous growth and potential.

Last week I remembered to check the humidity level in the room where I store some of my guitars in the winter months, and when I opened the case of my Martin 000-15M the smell of mahogany filled the room and triggered a memory. My one and only visit to the Newport Folk Festival was back in 2013, and among the highlights was an amazing afternoon set by Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale. They looked a lot like Chad and Jeremy, sounded harmonically close to Paul and Artie, and used humor not unlike a dry-witted version of the Smothers Brothers. Joey plays the Gibson J-45 and Kenneth picks his runs with a 1954 Martin 0-15, also made of mahogany like my own but with a white handkerchief tied around the neck, hence my momentary olfactory recollection.

In May it’ll mark three years since the “kids” released their fourth album, Monterey, and it feels like they’re long overdue. From their first release back in early 2011 through 2016, they have been hardcore road warriors playing concerts and festival dates around the globe. And so it was a bit surprising when I checked their website the other day and read this:

For the first time in seven years, The Milk Carton Kids have no upcoming performances.

After playing hundreds of gigs they actually slowed it down quite a bit in 2017 with only 14 dates that came to an end on Nov. 7 at the Taft Theater in Cincinnati. A week later they were featured on a special episode of Austin City Limits along with Graham Nash as part of the Americana Honors and Award night. And then poof … gone.

After checking Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for both the band and individual members, all is quiet with the exception of a couple retweets here and there. Being the internet sleuth that I am, a couple of breadcrumbs popped up on the trail. Woodstock musician Ed Romanoff is releasing his new album The Orphan King on Feb. 23, and Kenneth is a guest player. And this month in an interview with the LA Review of Books, producer Joe Henry mentioned that he’s currently working with the duo.

For the first time in seven years, The Milk Carton Kids have no upcoming performances.

Three years isn’t that long of a stretch between albums, and taking it easy on the road last year compared to their previous nonstop travel makes pretty good sense, both physically and spiritually. Of course, on the other hand, would it kill them to do a least a small tour? Maybe a few dates here and there? After all, it’s just two guys, two guitars, a couple of suits, some extra picks and handkerchiefs, and their iPhones. Low key and easy, unlike some bands. For example, when the Rolling Stones go out on tour they travel with 20 18-wheelers, six tour buses, gourmet chefs, physical therapists, personal trainers, doctors, nurses, accountants, social media assistants, makeup artists, hair stylists, wig makers, costume people, filmmakers, archivists, an acupuncturist, nine wives, 15 grandkids, three girlfriends younger than their grandkids, one cryogenic tube, a blood transfusion van, and portable microbrewery.

Alright guys … I wish you were here too, but you’re still young with lots of creative juice, and I expect you’ll be around for far longer than I will. So take a break, get your houses in order, do some side projects, hang out at the Largo, eat pie at DuPars, maybe go to Disneyland, get a little ink on your arms, and catch some Dodger games. But just know that I miss you guys and can’t wait for y’all to get back to work. Just to give you a little push, if you’re reading this: While four albums in four years might seem like a lot, Japanese “noise” artist Masami Akita, aka Merzbow, has averaged one album per month for over 35 years. Now that’s a lot of noise.

For the first time in seven years, The Milk Carton Kids have no upcoming performances.

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

Photo Credit: Chicago 2017 / Photo by @megandoodlebaker

Harry Smith’s Anthology Of American Folk Music

Several months ago when I transitioned from an owner of music to a renter via streaming, the first selection I imported into my cloud-based digital library was a collection of folk music I first heard when I was just a little sprout. I was introduced to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music by an aunt who also taught me how to make chords and strum her guitar. She allowed me take her well-worn vinyl disc box set home, and for weeks I devoured this music. I couldn’t have been more than 11 or 12 years old, and along with having an older sister who endlessly played Joan Baez’s early albums as often as she’d listen to doo wop, rockabilly, and Elvis records, this early life genre convergence and musical immersion set my plate for life.

In the midst of reading a book about the life of Bill Monroe, I was recently reminded that both the Anthology and I will turn 66 this year. While much has been written about this compilation, it seems a good time to both rekindle the memories of older roots music fans and introduce this work to a younger generation.

Harry Smith was a man with diverse interests. He has been described as an experimental filmmaker, visual artist, mystic, bohemian, self-taught anthropologist, and collector of string figures, paper airplanes, Seminole textiles, Ukrainian Easter eggs, and out-of-print commercially released 78 RPM recordings from 1927 through 1935. After moving to New York in 1950, he found himself in need of money when his Guggenheim grant for an abstract film ran out, and he offered to sell his entire music collection to Moe Asch, the owner of Folkways Records. With the introduction of the long-playing album format, Asch instead encouraged Smith to create a compilation of these songs, and he provided him with office space and equipment. What resulted were three two-disc sets titled Ballads, Social Music, and Songs.

In 2014, author Amanda Petrusich published her book Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records and devoted an entire chapter to the Anthology, which was reprinted and is still viewable online at Pitchfork. It is easily the finest and most interesting account of Smith’s assembly of songs, and I love this particular description:

“Previously, these tracks were islands, isolated platters of shellac that existed independently of anything else: even flipping over a 78 required disruptive action. Shifting the medium from the one-song-per-side 78 to the long-playing vinyl album allowed, finally, for songs to be juxtaposed in deliberate ways. It’s possible now, of course, to dump all eighty-four tracks onto one digital playlist and experience the entire Anthology uninterrupted, but I still prefer to acknowledge the demarcations between its three sections — to play it as Smith did.”

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the benefactor and guardian of Moe Asch’s wonderful record label, re-released the Anthology on six compact discs in 1997, and all of the songs are available to listen to for free on their website. The box set includes a 96-page book featuring Smith’s original liner notes and various essays by writers, scholars, and musicians. Here are two brief excerpts:

“The Anthology was our bible … . We all knew every word of every song on it, including the ones we hated. They say that in the 19th-century British Parliament, when a member would begin to quote a classical author in Latin, the entire House would rise in a body and finish the quote along with him. It was like that.” – Dave Van Ronk

“First hearing the Harry Smith Anthology of American FoIk Music is like discovering the secret script of so many familiar musical dramas. Many of these actually turn out to be cousins two or three times removed, some of whom were probably created in ignorance of these original riches. It also occurred to me that as we are listening at a greater distance in time to a man or woman singing of their fairly recent past of the 1880s, we are fortunate that someone collected these performances of such wildness, straightforward beauty, and humanity.” – Elvis Costello

The collection offers something for everyone – folk, blues, Cajun, gospel, stringbands, Hawaiian and more – and is less historic and more the progenitor of modern day mix-tapes and curated playlists. Inspirational and influential, if you’re looking for the starting gate of both  yesterday’s traditional old-time roots music and today’s popular Americana-branded genre, this is it.

Postscript: Producer Hal Willner paid tribute to the Anthology with a revisionist version called The Harry Smith Project, which included a two-CD set and DVD that were culled from a series of concerts in London, New York, and Los Angeles in 1999 and 2001. Featuring a wide variety of musicians from Steve Earle to Lou Reed, Sonic Youth to The McGarrigle Sisters, it is a loving interpretation that you may have missed. Here’s a taste with Richard Thompson, Eliza Carthy, and Garth Hudson covering Clarence Ashby’s “The Coo Coo Bird.”

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

Andy Griffith’s Mayberry: Americana Lost And Found

When most people think back to the ’60s, some things that might come to mind could be the social, cultural, and political changes; exploration of recreational drugs; the sexual revolution; and otherwise turbulent times. And yet, as the world was caught up in Sputniks and satellites and a rapid rush toward modernization and suburbia, one of the most popular television shows of that era was The Andy Griffith Show, which took place in the fictional town of Mayberry in North Carolina. Multiple generations of city dwellers made this a perennial top-ten rated show from its debut in 1960 until the end in 1968, using it as a 30-minute escape into a time gone by. It was both nostalgic and contemporary, featuring an ensemble of actors who found their way into our hearts, from Opie to Aunt Bee, Barney Fife to Floyd the barber, Ernest T. Bass to Gomer Pyle.

The original country-bumpkin-hillbilly Sheriff Andy Taylor, played by Griffith, developed into to what author Richard Kelley describes as “rock-solid … stepping in as problem solver, mediator, advisor, disciplinarian and counselor.” He was the steady hand in the small Southern rural town with hardly any crime, barely any African-Americans and a cast of characters who created comedic chaos on a weekly basis with the good sheriff making it all better. And in addition to the philosophical country wisdom and tender moments, Griffith – himself a professional musician – brought us some great old-time music.

Making their first of eight appearances beginning in 1963 through the 1966 season, the Darlings were a trouble-making Appalachian clan with actor Denver Pyle playing the jug-playing patriarch Briscoe Darling and Maggie Peterson as his daughter Charlene. The four sons were played by the real-life bluegrass group the Dillards, featuring Doug Dillard on banjo, his brother Rodney on guitar and dobro, mandolinist Dean Webb, and Mitch Jayne on double bass. Along with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, who had recurring roles on The Beverly Hillbillies during the same time period, this was likely most of the country’s urban and suburban introduction to old time music.

As a kid from Philadelphia who would tune into the Wheeling Jamboree on Saturday nights when I could pick up the WWVA radio signal and who had access to my aunt’s Anthology of American Folk Music albums, the music wasn’t foreign to me, but I’d never seen it actually being played. Watching Griffith and the Dillards/Darlings simulate it on a television soundstage was as much a musical awakening as the first time I saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Sometime in the mid-’60s, the Dillards decided to electrify themselves, and in 1968 Doug left the group to join ex-Byrds member Gene Clark. Their first album was The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark,and some of the backing musicians included the Byrds’ Chris Hillman, Eagles founding member Bernie Leadon, and fiddler Byron Berline, who would eventually form Country Gazette. Another Byrd, Michael Clarke, was their touring drummer.

The Dillards weren’t the only people making music in Mayberry. In the third episode of the first season, Andy is happy to once again arrest wayward guitar player Jim Lindsey (played by actor James Best) on a charge of disturbing the peace, because it means he and Jim can play duets while Jim sits behind bars. After hearing a stellar performance of “New River Train,” Andy wonders if the young prodigy isn’t squandering his gifts and reasons that Jim could be bigger than “that fella we see every now and then on television, shakin’ and screamin’. (IMDB)

There is also a connection to another future Byrd: Clarence White, who joined the band in July 1968 as Gram Parsons’ replacement. The episode was filmed either in the first or second year of the show, and Andy auditions for a man who comes to Mayberry looking to record authentic folk singers for a new album. This was when the band was still called The Country Boys and right before they changed their name to The Kentucky Colonels. Here you have all three White brothers: Clarence, Roland, and Eric along with Billy Ray Lathum and LeRoy MacNees.

Griffith had his hand in music throughout his long career, including a 1959 release called Shouts the Blues and Old Timey Songs which featured guest appearances by Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. And while most people will remember him as Sheriff Andy Taylor or his later acting role as Matlock, Griffith was a serious musician who won the Grammy in 1997 for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album, beating out Willie Nelson, Charlie Daniels, Doyle Lawson, and Ricky Van Shelton.

I’m going to close this out with one more trip back to Mayberry and a tip of the hat to a man who gets little credit for his contribution to roots music and latter-day Americana.

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

Jules Shear Keeps His Guitar In The Case

I was driving down the highway for my first listen of One More Crooked Dance and barely made it through the second song when I could sense something was very different. By the second note of the third song I screamed out “John Sebastian!” and slammed the steering wheel. Right … but that wasn’t it. A few songs later I had a breakthrough and realized that the right-handed guitar played upside down by the left-handed singer-songwriter was missing and six strings were replaced by 88 keys. The man unplugged himself.

These days when you rely on streaming to get your fix, there is no 12 by 12 album cover to stare at or liner notes to read. You either just don’t care about the credits or lyrics, or you hope a trip to the artist’s website will take care of that. Except Jules Shear doesn’t really have an active website that promotes his latest release, and his record label is uniquely mellow in their marketing approach. The thing is, unless you’re one of a few thousand people who follow his Facebook page, you might not even know that this past November he stealthily released his 13th solo album, with 13 new songs sprinkled with his special magic dust.

That video was created by visual artist Sherry Wallace, a fellow Jules fan who has posted dozens of interpretations of both his solo work and collaborations, many with his wife Pal Shazar. You may recognize her name from her own band Slow Children, or for her beautiful artwork. She is a warm and gracious woman, and over the years we’ve met twice and emailed often, and it was through her efforts I managed to get a few words about the album from Jules. Before I get to that, here’s the basic background on One More Crooked Dance that you’ll find repeated verbatim at places such as Amazon, Spotify, and Apple Music:

Jules Shear isn’t being cagy when he insists he doesn’t know what the songs on his 13th studio album, One More Crooked Dance and first since 2013’s Longer to Get to Yesterday are about. He really doesn’t, at least without being able to consult a lyric sheet, which is nowhere in sight at the moment. With nary a guitar, bass or drum in earshot, Shear didn’t have to wander far from his longtime Woodstock, N.Y., home, corralling locals Pepe (piano), touring partner Molly Farley (vocals) and the legendary John Sebastian (harp) at his neighborhood health food store and somehow cajoling them to join him at his friend’s nearby home studio. (Spotify)

Obviously we know Sebastian, and his Woodstock neighbor Happy Traum filled me in that Pepe was a local who played around town. Jules wrote to me that “Molly has gone on the road with me singing background vocals. That’s everybody on the album, except for Lee Danziger. He engineered and we worked in his studio, which is just five minutes from my place. I just wrote the songs until I gave up, and then we recorded them. Lee was very cool with recording everything. Pepe wailed. It gave it a vibe.” When I asked about his lack of internet presence and promotion, and whether he had a sense of himself at either being semi-retired or the reclusive musician living in the mountains, he replied “I guess, at this point, I don’t have a self-image. I just wrote a bunch of songs.”

Molly Farley owns Rock City Vintage, formerly called Sew Woodstock, a clothing boutique featuring a curated collection of one-of-a-kind vintage, designer, and original pieces. When I asked her about the album, she wrote, “It has been such an honor to work with Jules on this album. He is one of my all time favorite songwriters. I love the simplicity of piano and voices. I hope it gets heard by the world! Pep and I have worked together for many years and yet he remains kind of a mystery man. I know he was raised in Forrest Hills in Queens and is a self taught pianist. His knowledge of all types of music is profound. Perhaps he could fill in the blanks for you.”

Pepe responded to my email quickly with his phone number, but as the holidays came and went I got tangled up with the day job and put it off. But he did share this: “Call me and I’ll explain everything. Love to talk to you about it. Jules just put an obscure collection of chords in front of me on a piece of paper. No vocal…no melody….no guitar…no piano…..no nothing… and said “Play”. So I did.” When I asked for more information about himself, like his full name, he replied “Don’t need a surname… just Pep.” I called him when I sat down and started writing this column but we didn’t connect.

For those of you who may not know Shear’s backstory and history, head over to Wikipedia for a more detailed bio. But the short story is that he’s been on my radar since 1976, when he was a member of the Funky Kings, who released one album on Arista Records. Clive Davis was too busy with Barry Manilow and the Bay City Rollers, so the Funky Kings were soon dropped. (T Bone Burnett’s Alpha Band were also on the label around the same time, and they managed to squeak out three obscure albums that were dead on arrival.) Jules and the Polar Bears came next, followed by a few hit singles he wrote for Cyndi Lauper and the Bangles. He helped create the concept for MTV Unplugged and hosted the first 13 episodes. Along with his solo records and various side projects, Shear must hold the record for being on more record labels than any other artist I know. The current count is at least 14. The arrangements on One More Crooked Dance might be considered sparse, but it’s those spaces in-between the notes that bring together the vocals, keys, and harp. Pep’s style recalls jazz innovator Vince Guaraldi, Shear’s songwriting has those subconscious historical reference points that only a musicologist could articulate, and Farley’s vocals are layered, harmonic, and a perfected counterpoint to Shear’s unique melody lines, tone and phrasing. John Sebastian’s harp is used sparingly on only several songs, yet every breath he takes brings a symphonic quality to the album. As a shamelessly admitted fanatical fanboy, I welcome every new Shear song collection as much as a hot cup tea with honey on a cold Woodstock night beneath a blanket of twinkling stars.

Postscript: I was curious how Shear is consuming music these days. We were each born only weeks apart in early 1952 and grew up swimming in the same musical pool, and I’ve given up on ownership in exchange for streaming. “I’m still buying CDs,” he told me. “That’s what I like. I guess that I’m old fashioned, but I like getting the package along with the music. I believe that it’s stupid to not get what the artist wants you to have.” And while it troubles me that much of his catalog remains out of print and hasn’t managed to find a digital home for people to discover, Shear has moved on. “I’m just not thinking about old stuff right now.” And doing that crooked dance.

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

No Depression Magazine: Number 43

It’s the night after Christmas in 2017, and I’m sitting on my bed surrounded by a pile of old No Depression magazines. I pulled them down off the top shelf in my bedroom closet because I have a deadline looming for my weekly Broadside column and, since readership tends to dip low pretty during the holidays, I don’t really want to invest all that much time into writing this week. What I really want to do is go into the kitchen to make a strawberry-coconut smoothie with almond milk, chia seeds, and protein powder, and them binge-watch season four of Shameless. So I’m leafing through issue #43 for quick inspiration, since it was published exactly 15 years ago.

The cover is still in good shape, the print on the pages hasn’t faded all that much and the tagline under the name still sounds crisp: The New Favorite Alt. Country (Whatever That Is) Bimonthly. All uppercase. It cost $4.95 in the US and $7 in Canada, and there’s a barcode in the lower left-hand corner that must have driven Grant Alden crazy each month since it was obvious he put a lot of work into the magazine’s design and layout, choosing the photographs and typeface with obvious care and pride. Mark Montgomery provided the shots of Alison Krauss at the Ryman for both the cover and the feature story inside, which was written by Roy Kasten.

I’d forgotten how many ads there used to be. Kyla Fairchild handled that area (along with distribution) and tonight it’s as if I’m sifting sand and finding ancient artifacts. Tower Records. Borders Books, Music and Cafe. Miles of Music. Binky Records. There are a lot of quarter-page ads for new albums from names long forgotten and in many cases, never known nor heard from again. There are full-page ads for that year’s MerleFest and SXSW, and on the back cover is a beautiful color ad for Lucero’s Tennessee on Madjack Records. Can’t find a video of the band from that long ago, but this captures the vibe.

Peter Blackstock broke the news on a couple of marriages: Greg Brown and Iris DeMent, Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis. He gave a heads up on a number of new releases and reissues including Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell, Drive-By Truckers, Lucinda Williams, Jayhawks, the Minus 5 and Uncle Tupelo. He also wrote about the No Depression Alt-Country Radio Show – yes, there was such a thing – and the 14-member panel who voted on the Top 20 of 2002. I’m not going to give you the entire list, but Buddy Miller topped it with Midnight and Lonesome, followed by Mike Ireland and Holler, Caitlin Cary’s solo album, Dixie Chicks, and Bobby Bare Jr.

While some of my favorite and frequently contributing journalists included Barry Mazor, Paul Cantin, and Don McLeese, it really strikes me as I go through the pages that there were literally dozens of contributors to each issue of the magazine. The number of reviews for both live concerts and recorded music was really staggering, and I can’t think any other magazine that even came close. The feature stories and interviews always were always deep dives, and the music genres covered not only went far beyond the alt-country tagline, but also was highly diverse in comparison to today’s insipid Americana playlists.

When Kyla took control of the website, one of the first things she embarked on was archiving each issue of No Depression into a searchable database. When she sold it and the lunatics took over the asylum, the web platform transfer brought the archives over in a non-formatted jumble of words, that are as difficult to discover as they are to read. Our new editor comes over from Paste magazine, and despite their penchant for endless lists as opposed to occasional music journalism (I did find Lee Zimmerman’s The 10 Best Singing Drummers in Rock History quite interesting), they get high marks from me for bringing back to digital-life a number of articles from Crawdaddy!, one of the first rock music publications. So is there any chance that the No Depression archives can be repaired and given a new lease on life as well, or will they soon fade away? Time will tell, and in the meantime …

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

The Smithereens: In Memory of Pat DiNizio

It was late summer of 1990 and several hundred music distribution and record label weasels had gathered in Dallas at the Grand Kapinski Hotel for our annual sales convention. The last night of three days of meetings and artist showcases was held in the big ballroom, and by the time the salads were served most of us were severely ripped. A couple of bands that I can’t recall played short sets, and after a rubber chicken dinner, a few speeches were made and some awards were passed out. And then the Smithereens took the stage.

Thirty seconds into “A Girl Like You,” about 20 of us who worked in the Los Angeles sales office spontaneously jumped up and swarmed the stage. Half-dancing and totally drunk off our asses, by the time the chorus came around, we had grabbed the mics and joined the band. I found myself at center stage standing alone next to lead singer and guitarist Pat DiNizio and harmonized with him. It was a music junkie’s fantasy come true. Seven years later, when I had lunch with Pat in Minneapolis while he was promoting his solo Songs and Soundsalbum, he remembered it a different way: “Dude … you totally sucked.”

Today we mourn the loss of our friend, brother and bandmate Pat DiNizio. Pat had the magic touch. He channeled the essence of joy and heartbreak into hook-laden three minute pop songs infused with a lifelong passion for rock & roll. Our journey with Pat was long, storied and a hell of a lot of fun. We grew up together. Little did we know that we wouldn’t grow old together.
Goodbye Pat. Seems like yesterday.
Jimmy, Mike, Dennis
December 12, 2017 

Goldmine Magazine’s contributing editor Chris M. Junior wrote an article in 2011 that’s become the band’s official bio, and he tells the story of Pat and the Smithereens, which might resonate with many of us who grew up in the post-Elvis generation.

Pat DiNizio became hooked on The Beatles after seeing them in 1964 on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and he subsequently kept his radio dial set to WABC so he could hear the Fab Four’s latest hook-filled hit singles. By the early 1970s, DiNizio had taken a shine to the heavy gloom of Black Sabbath, and when he saw the metal band perform at, of all places, a Catholic high school in his hometown of Scotch Plains, N.J., he couldn’t believe how loud it was inside the auditorium.

“Listening to it, I realized this was what I wanted to do,” DiNizio says. “It turned my head around completely in terms of the music I had been listening to and what I thought I wanted to do with my life.”

Meanwhile, over in Carteret, N.J., Dennis Diken and Jim Babjak had their own musical heroes. While attending Carteret High School in 1971, Diken noticed Babjak had a notebook plastered with pictures of The Who, one of his favorite bands, so he introduced himself. Soon drummer Diken and guitarist Babjak were jamming together on songs by The Who, The Kinks and others.

A classified ad in a Jersey music publication put DiNizio in touch with Diken in the late 1970s, and they formed a New Wave cover band called The Like. But after just one gig, the group called it a day. When DiNizio wanted to record demos of some original songs and needed a drummer, he called Diken. And it was only natural that Diken would eventually bring his buddy Babjak along to a Smithereens practice, and soon he was part of the band, too.

The Smithereens made their live debut in March 1980 at a place called Englander’s in Hillside, N.J. A lineup change soon followed when bassist Ken Jones was moved to guitar in favor of Mike Mesaros, a Diken friend since grade school. But after some gigs as a five piece, it was clear that another shakeup was needed, and this time Jones was ousted.

During the next five years, DiNizio, Diken, Babjak and Mesaros gigged near home and abroad whenever they could, released the EPs Girls About Town (1980) and Beauty and Sadness (1983) and for a brief time served as the backing band for acclaimed songwriter Otis Blackwell.

In reflecting on the band’s longevity — new dates for 2018 had recently been announced — in a 2013 interview Pat explained the ups and downs of their career:

We’d had a great, 10 year, non-stop run of activity and non-stop touring, playing 300 gigs a year, living on the bus, having hit record after hit record after hit record. And then grunge hit and the bottom fell out of our career and we had to hold on, and we held on, and we held on, and eventually our audience came back.

With the record industry in disarray, the effects of Napster and the terrible idea that music should be free and not paid for, unlike your groceries and the car you drive; after all, it is the composer and the band’s intellectual property. No one wanted to pay a band to make a record unless you were 20 years old, but we’d had a long walk in the sun and we stayed with it. I went to the last label we’d had a record with and presented an idea for the Smithereens doing the Beatles which turned into a re-imaging of the Beatles first album. It was really successful – it broke download records on iTunes – and it put us on the front page of the New York Time’s Sunday leisure section.

It was late in the night when I learned that Pat had passed on. A friend who had been onstage with us that long ago night in Dallas broke the news to me and it literally felt like a gut punch. Pat represented each of us who grew up wanting to live out our rock-and-roll dreams. We bought guitars or drums, practiced endlessly in our basements or garages, spent hours in the record stores flipping through albums, laid in bed late at night with the transistor radios pressed against our ears and the music surged through our veins like blood. Pat DiNizio was just a guy like you, and may he now rest in peace.

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