Category Archives: My Back Pages

Easy Ed’s Broadside Outtakes #4

Chevy in Air

Easy Ed’s Broadside weekly column is found at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

New Music Rising: Brennen Leigh Sings Lefty Frizzell

And when I say ‘new’ I mean new to me. There’s also good chance it might be new to you too. Seems like on any given week there are hundreds of websites all talking about the same three or four titles. I could follow that path, but it seems pointless. Sometimes I’d rather just offer up music that might have slipped through the cracks or is far from the beaten path.

This week I want to talk about an album that was released last November. Brennen Leigh Sings Lefty Frizzell is a project from an Austin-based musician and songwriter whom I admittedly had never had heard of until recently. Check this out.

A founding member of the band High Plains Jamboree, she tours throughout Texas and across America often with her frequent writing and touring partner, guitarist Noel McKay. In her travels and tours in Europe, Scandinavia and South America, she has slid into that cult status zone. Her songs have been recorded by Sunny Sweeney, The Carper Family, Norway’s Liv Marit Wedvik, and Lee Ann Womack. She has also collaborated with Jim Lauderdale, John Scott Sherrill and David Olney.

My friend, writer Terry Roland, did a story on her for No Depression last year, so I’ll let him do the heavy lifting:

Brennen Leigh is not a household name. Her 2009 solo album, The Box, stands as a classic of the form, with original songs that are as close to the bone of traditional country music as you’re likely to find east or west of the Mason-Dixon Line. It is among the best Americana albums of the decade, an overlooked gem.

In 2013, she released the critically successful Before the World Was Made with singer-songwriter Noel McKay. This album was compared by the Chicago Tribune with the duets of John Prine and Iris Dement and George Jones and Melba Montgomery.

Leigh’s new album demonstrates an unbroken line of the influence of Lefty Frizzell on this young, innovative artist. Here’s how she came to his music:

“Before this, I wasn’t that familiar with the bigger part of his work. I got a copy of his box set and I also stumbled onto a compilation on vinyl from the ’60s. I’ve imitated him vocally in a superficial way for years. There is just something in his delivery. He was able to express what was going on in his brain. He must have worked at it for years. It’s not only his voice, but in his approach. He changed the way I sing.”

I’ve dropped in a couple of audio samples here from the album, and below is from a concert she did with Noel. You can find this album to stream or buy from all the major digital platforms, but I’d bet Brennen would appreciate it if you head over to her Bandcamp page and do it there.

Every Picture Tells A Story

Sandy The image at the top of this page was shot by my long-time-we’ve-only-met-online friend Sandy Dyas, who is a visual artist based in Iowa City that I’ve written about often. You can visit her website here and check out her work, books (buy them…really) and blog. And more of her images can be found on this site….including this one originally published back in January 2014 at No Depression dot com.

A Ray Charles Primer: 25 Great Tracks and Photo Gallery

Ray Charles

Martin Chilton, who is the Culture Editor for The Telegraph website, put together a list of his favorite tracks accompanied with really striking images from the collection of Joe Adams, Charles’ long time friend and manager. Taken from the book/DVD collection Ray Charles Yes Indeed! that came out in 2009, it features a forward by Bill Wyman and thoughts from Ray’s closest friends – including Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jones and Willie Nelson.

Here’s the link to Chilton’s list. And here’s Ray with Johnny Cash doing a Harlan Howard song y’all know.

A Few Words About Merle Haggard

As I was getting ready to hit the button and publish this week’s update, I heard the news that Merle had passed on. I recall seeing him at The Spectrum in Philadelphia around 1972, and we long-hairs got hassled first by the police and then jostled a little in the crowd when he broke into ‘Okie from Muskogee’. The Grateful Dead had released a version of ‘Mama Tried’ and that was my on-ramp to his music. Had a chance to meet him in Las Vegas about fifteen years ago give or take, but he was in a foul mood that night. He was struggling with his voice, and I think he just wanted to be anywhere but in the desert.

About a month or two ago, he was interviewed by Rolling Stone Country about politics and Donald Trump. Thought it might be of interest to share his thoughts:

He’s not a politician. I don’t think he understands the way things work in Washington, that’s what worries me about him. I don’t think he realizes he can’t just tell somebody to do something and have it done, you know. I think he’s dealing from a strange deck.

What a great line. I think he’s dealing from a strange deck.

I wanted to include an appropriate song or video of his, and came across this track from an album he did with his band The Strangers, Bonnie Owens and The Carter Family. The Land of Many Churches was released in 1971 as a double lalbum and collects four live performances: two are in churches proper, one at San Quentin’s Garden Chapel inside the prison, and one at Nashville’s Union Rescue Mission. The music offers a mix of country gospel and traditional hymns with preachers introducing some of the songs.

This is a favorite of mine and it sure fits this day.

Dori Freeman Melts My Heart With A Hank Williams’ Song

Last month when the Teddy Thompson-produced debut album from Dori Freeman was released, it was one of those titles that seemed to get picked up and reviewed by every media outlet who covers this type of music. Here’s just a few examples of:

The purity of Dori Freeman’s voice and the directness of her songwriting reflect not only her Appalachian hometown — Galax, Va. — but also a determined classicism, a rejection of the ways modern country punches itself up for radio and arenas. (Jon Pareles, New York Times)

It’s startling to hear such a fully formed singing and songwriting voice come out of nowhere. (NPR‘s ‘Songs We Love’)

A strong contender for Americana debut of the year. (Rolling Stone Country)

This week John over at Free Dirt Records invited me to see Dori at the City Winery NYC, where she opened up for her producer and Kelly Jones…whose new duets’ album I featured in RPM1. As Dori stood on that stage all alone with her guitar, I must admit I wasn’t expecting to hear a voice with such incredible strength and clarity that would soar above the din of the diners and drinkers. The crowd surely responded to her, and it seemed to me that this is a woman exceeds the accolades she’s been receiving and just exudes poise and potential.

Kelly McCartney did an interesting and short ‘Q and A’ with Dori for Folk Alley that ran last week, and you can click here to read it. And here she is doing Hank Williams’ “Cold Cold Heart” wayyyyy back from 2012 at the Henderson Festival in Mt. Royal, Virginia. You should hear how she does it now…it’ll melt your heart too.

Guitar Town (Or You Never Know When You’ll Bump Into Steve Earle)

Just as Teddy Thompson and Kelly Jones stepped out onto the stage for their set, I looked up from my phone to find Steve Earle standing next to me checking out the gear on stage. I’m pretty sure Jones was using a Martin D-15M but I couldn’t recognize Thompson’s guitar, but I suspect it could have been a Lowden which his dad seems to favor. I was about to ask Steve but the lights went down and later in the evening I had to run out to catch a train before the encore was over.

A few days before I was on Bleeker Street and stopped at Matt Umanov’s guitar shop to buy some strings. Several years ago I stood there with Steve and Matt as I considered buying the Martin M-21 that they had designed together. It was one of the last ones for sale, but after counting my pennies I went for the much lower priced 000-15M. I still like playing it a lot, but I sure do regret my decision.

While Steve was touring Australia in March, he did an interview on The Music Shop with Andrew Ford and you can read it here or download the podcast.

Videos You Wouldn’t Know Existed, Unless You Found Them By Mistake.

Does It Matter That Loretta Lynn Supports Donald Trump?

loretta-lynn-donald-trump-getty-640x480 I can’t recall a single time that a celebrity endorsement, whether for a politician or commercial product, influenced my decision to vote or buy. I come to my opinions and choices based on my own experiences, research, and conversations with other folks, and while there’s always more to learn that could make me change course, adding a celebrity’s opinion into the mix is probably the lowest factor on my totem pole.

During the current election season in America, political endorsements range from the obvious to humorous. For example, Neil Young and Lucinda Williams have spoken out in support of Bernie Sanders. George Clooney is a Hillary supporter, and he joins a star-studded list that includes Britney Spears, Kendall Jenner (her parent, Caitlyn, likes Ted Cruz), and Snoop Dogg. I can’t find any celebrity speaking out on behalf of John Kasich, but Donald Trump has quite a long list of supporters including Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin, Kirstie Alley, Tom Brady … and Loretta Lynn.

Last January, Lynn gave an interview to Reuters where she said, “Trump has sold me – what more can I say?” Here’s the rest, in case you missed it:

Lynn, 83, who penned and recorded country hits like “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “The Pill” and “Rated X,” still performs between eight and 10 shows a month. She said she has been stumping for Trump at the end of each show, and declared her support for him at an awards dinner in New York in early December.

She said her audiences generally respond warmly to her cheers for Trump, and that’s unusual.

“When you get up there and try to say you want to see Hillary Clinton win, that wouldn’t go over so big,” she said.

Other Republicans can’t live up to the real estate mogul, Lynn said, but Texas Senator Ted Cruz would be her second choice. However, she said: “When you’re advertising for the best, forget the rest!”

Lynn added that she wants to campaign for him.“I just think he’s the only one who’s going to turn this country around,” she said, but added she had no plans to try to contact Trump herself. “I’m going to let him call me.”

For the past month, I’ve been thinking a lot about Loretta Lynn. Her first new album in a dozen years is high on the charts, generating a lot of interest. Media on every possible front — from Pitchfork to AARP’s monthly magazine — are paying attention. There’s her staggering duet and video with Willie Nelson that has made the rounds on social media, and the PBS American Masters documentary Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl. It’s almost impossible to escape the majesty of her talent and achievements. This seems to be her moment.

Since 2007 Lynn has been working in the studio with John Carter Cash and her daughter Patsy Lynn Russell. They’ve already recorded 93 songs and she hopes to keep going. As she told The New York Times last month, she is thinking about her legacy.

“I wanted the kids to have ’em,” Ms. Lynn said. “I thought, everybody, they don’t think about what they’re leaving. So I went in and I thought, I’m going to cut every song I’ve ever had out. I started with my first hits and I cut the Top 5s and then the Top 10s. And then I just started cutting some that I wrote and some that I’ve always wanted to sing.”

Mr. Cash said Ms. Lynn has finished full albums’ worth of gospel, Appalachian and Christmas songs, along with favorites from her own repertoire and cover songs. “It was like filling in an encyclopedia,” Mr. Cash said in an interview at the Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, Tenn.

A few weeks after that was printed, she seemed to offer a different viewpoint for this Garden and Gun article:

Legacy don’t mean a thing to me. I’m just glad people like me. I don’t need to go out and charge a lot of money to do a show. I am proud that people feel that way toward me and I love them for it. I get a bang out of being out there. I don’t think that ever changes, the feeling you get when you’re out there onstage. Some people think they’re better than what they are. Ain’t none of them that good.

Merriam-Webster defines legacy as “a gift by will, especially of money or other personal property, or something transmitted or received from an ancestor or from the past.” I tend to think that Lynn is interested in what people will remember her for, which the dictionary explains as “recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms.” And music is one helluva mechanism.

Politics? That could be another.

I don’t like Donald Trump. I think he has a black heart full of rage, anger, and intolerance. The thought that he could become the leader of my country strikes intense fear in me, and I honestly can’t understand why other people can’t see or feel what I do. When Loretta Lynn, a person I have enormous respect and admiration for, comes out and says she supports him … I’m just damn conflicted.

But during these times of such sharp divide between people, I find solace in these words from Pete Seeger, who reminded us, “It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.”

While I doubt that Loretta and I will get a chance to meet at Starbucks for a cup of coffee and conversation, I’d like to imagine that if we did there might be a possibility we’d each come away with a better understanding of why we’re standing at opposite points on the political spectrum today. Perhaps we could find a path to move closer. (There is some hope — she’s said that she likes Barack and Michelle Obama, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton.)

It might seem easy to simply condemn Lynn for her support of Trump, but it’s a soft target. If you believe in free will and free speech, then you have to recognize that she has every right to stand on the stage and say whatever she wants. While I won’t pay to hear her say it, I also won’t stop listening to her music and thinking respectfully of the trails she’s blazed for women, and the progressive issues she’s spoken out about, through her music.

But celebrity endorsements? I couldn’t care less.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed Broadside column on the No Depression website.

Easy Ed’s Broadside Outtakes #3

SDD5

Easy Ed’s Broadside weekly column has been a fixture at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music for over ten years. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

New Music Rising

By using the term ‘roots music’ as a description of what I listen to and wax about, you might come to think that I spend all my days listening to stuff like the Fruit Jar Guzzlers, Jelly Jaw Short, Wade Maniner…with a little Bull Moose Jackson and H-Bomb Ferguson thrown in for good measure. And while those musicians were indeed on this morning’s playlist, my taste runs deep, wide and inclusive…a tent so far and wide that I can barely see end to end.

Five years ago this week I published an interview…it was actually the first one I had ever done…on No Depression‘s post-print online website, my home away from home where I contribute a column called Easy Ed’s Broadside. I’d first seen and heard Massachusetts-based musician and artist Marissa Nadler on a few videos that she had uploaded to the Couch By Couch West online anti-festival that ran concurrent to that thing in Austin. Her music captivated and mesmerized me. It was right before her thirtieth birthday, and she’d already released five albums along with several side projects, amassing a highly-engaged international fan base that kept her on the road.

In my article and our conversation, which I do hope you can find the time to read or at the very least watch some of her videos that I’ve included, The Demystification of Marissa Nadler starts out with the words of others who’ve tried too hard to come up with a genre-box to explain who she is and what she does.

“The indie-folk pinup girl and mistress of the murder ballad.”

“She’s hacked away the art school whimsy, tossed out the crystals and burned the floaty headscarfs.”

“Simple, melancholic fingerpicked folk ballads that take advantage of her sonorous, spine-tingling vocals, narrating tales of damsels in distress or lovers absent or dead.”

“Compelling medieval twang.”

My take? I think Marissa makes incredible folk music. Maybe not your parents folk music, but it comes from a place where an eighteen-year-old Marissa would sometimes leaf through those early No Depression magazines and as she describes… ‘spend my awkward adolescence copying master paintings in my basement and listening to music on the boombox. A lot of this music was prog rock and classic rock. A lot of it was folk and Americana. I loved Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams and they really spoke to me. Also, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels. Elizabeth Cotton.’

On May 20th Marissa will release her seventh full-length album titled Strangers, and she’ll be doing April dates on the USA West Coast, followed in May and June with dates in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland and Denmark. Here’s the link to her site.

This week she released the new video which she shot, directed and animated herself. I’ll let her own words set it up for you.

“With ‘All the Colors of the Dark’ I wanted to marry my love for the moving image with the song in a compelling visual that pulsated with the same rhythm. I’ve been inspired by the beautiful phantasmagoric worlds created by Svankmejer and Francesca Woodman, The Brothers Quay, among others. In the video, everyday objects move on their own, representing a lingering presence in my life.

Every Picture Tells a Story

Sandy The image at the top of this page was shot by my long-time-we’ve-only-met-online friend Sandy Dyas, who is a visual artist based in Iowa City that I’ve written about often. You can visit her website here and check out her work, books (buy them…really) and blog. And more of her images can be found on this site….including this one I originally published back in January 2014 at No Depression dot com.

From The Pages of Kithfolk: The Howard Rains Pictorial

HR1

There’s a marketing and publicity company that works out of the Shoreline Washington home of the Leger family called Hearth Music. They are musicians, wordsmiths and designers, with a passion for traditional music and art that goes beyond simply running a business.

KITHFOLK is their digital roots music magazine of long-form interviews, engaging articles, video and audio streaming premieres, album reviews, and columns from guest writers. Most of the time they don’t write about the artists that they are currently working with, but the people and places and sounds that catch their attention.

Wandering around the site the other night, I happened to come across a gallery of paintings from a gentleman by the name of Howard Rains that really jumped out at me. Here’s a small sampling of Howard’s work along with his thoughts…the full story will take you to the gallery.

HR2

I have painted since I was a kid, but for many years I have been painting old time fiddlers, drawing only from life and documenting living traditional musicians as they played. These portraits go through the filter of my style and I have often been told they look nothing like the individual I am painting; other times I have been told they look exactly like them. I have done this because I love to do it. Because I am obsessed with traditional music and the incredible people I meet through the music. Click here for the full story.

From The New Yorker: The Awkward, Enduring Influence of Hank William’s Jr.

AMHWJr There seems to be an avalanche of press focus on the music and life of Hank Williams Sr. with the release of the biopic I Saw The Light, but David Cantrell has written an expansive and absolutely fascinating piece on his son.

Here’s just a little taste, but you should most definitely click here for the full story.

Hank Williams, Jr., was raised to be an echo, not an influence. His mother, Audrey Williams, pushed him to perform as Hank Williams, Jr., (his given name is Randall) and to play songs pulled almost exclusively from the catalogue of his father, who died when Hank, Jr., was three. He made his stage début, warbling his father’s first hit, “Lovesick Blues,” when he was only eight years old; he débuted on the Grand Ole Opry at eleven. He released his first album, “Hank Williams Jr. Sings the Songs of Hank Williams,” for his father’s old record label, M.G.M., just after turning fourteen, in 1964.

His father remains the genre’s key repository of myth and tradition (though he’s lately moved it on over a bit to make room for Johnny Cash). But listen closely to country radio’s defining sounds and points of view at almost any moment over the last four decades and Hank Williams, Jr., is right there—often, he was there first. When it comes to anticipating the direction of country music, Jr. has mattered more than Sr. for a long, long time.

In that picture above, which is from an old copy of Billboard Magazine, Junior is standing next to my cousin, the late Arnold Maxin. He was a true music man…playing horn in the big bands when he was fifteen, selling records for a Philadelphia distributor after the war, working A&R at Okeh Records, producing a number of hits including Screaming Jay Hawkins’ ‘I Put A Spell On You’ and pretty much every Connie Francis album, and ending up as head of MGM Records in the sixties.

Lucinda Williams Takes Me Far Beyond The Blue

On a Tuesday morning, Lucinda Williams’ husband Tom sent me a message asking how far I was from Tarrytown. I punched out “ten minutes” although it’s probably closer to twenty, and hit the send button. She was playing at the old theater there on Saturday night, and up until the day before, I held out hope that I could arise and attend, but it wouldn’t happen. I sent my apologies on Friday afternoon and said “Another time, for sure.”

My column this past week at No Depression is mostly about me and some trouble I’ve had, but also about how Lucinda and her music moved my needle last June on a stormy night. Click here to check it out.

On the day you fly away, far beyond the blue
When you’re done, and your run is finally through
I’m forced to let go, there’ll be no greater sorrow
On that day you fly away, far beyond the blue

OH NO…A FACEBOOK FRIEND SUPPORTS DONALD TRUMP…WHAT WOULD PETE SEEGER DO?

I’ll make this quick. I used to be a serial-social-media -politicalized-poster. You know…that guy. The friend on Facebook who links every left (or right) leaning story on the internet because they think YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS!!! It’s ok….I’m in recovery. Here’s my story about what I now ask myself before I hit the button. What Would Pete Seeger Do?

Videos You Wouldn’t Know Existed, Unless You Found Them By Mistake.

Oh No…A Facebook Friend Supports Donald Trump…What Would Pete Seeger Do?

Once upon a time I collected Facebook friends as if they were baseball cards. The more the merrier it seemed, drawing together a large community and network of people from my past, present and future. Childhood friends, high school girlfriends, long lost co-workers, fellow travelers and even the friends of other Facebook friends who I’d meet only via comments and online chats. I linked them on Linkedin and connected with them on Twitter, put their email addresses in a contact file and stayed in touch such as it was by watching their lives move across the magic screen in an endless parade of family and pet pictures, status updates that ranged from silly to sad and of course news, views and opinions. Lots of those.

Like many, I fell into the trap. With too much time on my hands and a sense of self-righteousness, and indignation, I used Facebook as a means to communicate political rants and anger by finding articles with similar viewpoints as my own and sharing them along with my wonderfully witty and sarcastic personal observations. It seemed like the right thing to do…quickly reaching a few hundred folks with a cut, paste and post. And when my friends responded by hitting the ‘LIKE’ button, it only fueled that addictive rush of confirmation and acceptance.

Look ma….they like me, they really do.

A couple of years ago I recognized that I didn’t much like the ‘social media Ed’ anymore. He’d grown jaded and isolated and snarky and petty. And I wasn’t alone. So I took a break, stopped posting anything for a few months, quietly watched what others were using social media for and went through my list of Facebook friends…silently deleting more than half of them. The next thing I did was to create a new Facebook identity, one that only reflects my passion and interest in particular forms of American vernacular music and serves as a place where I can share my published work. It seems healthier for mind and spirit. (If you care…here it is.)

The other night a gentleman named Ian from Minneapolis who I once worked with about fifteen years ago and remains on my list of Facebook friends posted this…which I am slightly editing to cut to the essence of his thoughts:

I find myself stepping away from Facebook as I’m appalled by the endless, vile and petty posts that serially savage political candidates on an hourly basis. I understand that people are passionate but endless repetition changes nobody’s mind. Maybe going for a walk and screaming obscenities is a better plan. I prefer to remember my Facebook friends as they were before this endless political cycle.

Yes…I could feel my head nod in agreement to that. But wait…he can’t possibly be talking about me, could he? Haven’t I been a good Facebook citizen these past years? Wasn’t I a recovered and reformed serial poster who walked through social media with better judgement than in my past?

I ran to my personal page…a few pictures of my kids, a couple of links to recent music-related articles I’ve written, shameless self-promotion of my other Facebook page, my personal website and…oh no…almost a dozen anti-Donald Trump stories mostly from Huffington Post or Politico going back to last July. Where they hell did those come from? What was I thinking?

In ten minutes they were all deleted. Without even realizing it, I had became the angry Ed again on a mission to share my political feelings to friends. And to be clear, sharing thoughts and having conversation is not only important but essential…and I am extremely angry and pissed off and scared about the rise in popularity of a man I consider to be exactly what the Huffington Post calls him out on every single day:

Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

But the dilemma is how does one express and communicate emotion and passion about any issue on a slash and burn media platform that is in reality not conversational in any way, shape or form. Whether you post an update or leave a comment, you are pushing out and not pulling in. It may give you satisfaction and inner-bliss, but it does nothing to connect you to another person and you’re left shouting words over the roar of an ocean.

It was at this moment I should have shut off my computer, turned off the lights and went to bed. But I decided I needed to respond to my old friend. This is in part what I wrote:

Everyone has access to whatever news media they choose, everybody can read, discover and come to their own opinions, everybody carries their own experiences and views. Does anybody think that posting yet another HuffPo or NYTimes piece about some politician saying something outrageous will move the needle? No. I imagine we think it portrays us as witty or clever, or we have this delusion that we can change peoples views with a simple cut and paste or worse yet….our very own ‘on the fly’ observations.

So anyway, I’m sort of going to start moving forward with the WWPD approach. What’s that you ask? What Would Pete (Seeger) Do?

From what I’ve been told by friends of his, and I won’t pretend to know for sure if this is the truth or a tale, in his later years when something happened that Pete felt he needed to speak out on, he’d write it down on a piece of cardboard, go stand on a corner in his hometown of Beacon New York, and hold it up for people to see. I can imagine some folks would drive past and ignore him, and some might pull over and ask ‘What’s up Pete’?’

If you are the person who wants to work toward a goal, or make a change in someones life, do it one to one. Person to person. In conversation, not a meme. Leave social media for cat videos, signposts of life and passing, new restaurants, trips, friends, promoting your products or services and the very very very very occasional moment when you can connect again with someone you’ve thought you lost.

Lights off. Sleep came.

Yesterday I took a few hours and looked over my current list of Facebook friends. There are just 305 of them now, down from what once was over a thousand. I have found two who are very vocal about supporting Donald Trump and one who used to like Marco Rubio but now is pushing Ted Cruz. All three individuals are professional colleagues from over two decades ago, but they’ve remained on my friends list because I liked them when we worked together and we created a connection that is unexplainably still there at the very least with good memories.

I won’t lie…for a moment my finger hovered over the delete button…the kill switch. Is it possible to actually have a friend in my life…online or real…whose views run polar opposite of my own? And it’s not like we talk or see each other or likely ever will. I should just cut and run. They’re still there.

I recall this quote from Pete Seeger, and it has helped untangle my thoughts.

It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.

The next few months are likely to get more turbulent and divisive. The shouting will get louder, the rhetoric more heated, the lines further divided. While I have not been one who actively campaigns or takes to the streets in protest as I did in my youth, neither apathy and inaction…nor hiding behind a keyboard…can be the acceptable default position. I will raise my voice, but I will speak to people and not at them.

I’m not completely in touch with why Pete Seeger’s spirit and voice have long resonated within me, but they do. He’s the closest thing to what I would call a hero, and I wish he was still here with us today. His presence would comfort. What would Pete do?

He’d make us sing together of course.

Easy Ed’s Broadside Outtakes #2

Photo by Sandy Dyas

Easy Ed’s Broadside weekly column has been a fixture at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music for over ten years. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

New Music Rising

It doesn’t seem all that long ago when hardy music buyers and fans would get in line late on a Monday night outside their local record store. At midnight the doors would be unlocked and the Tuesday new releases were put out for sale. The bigger titles would have been advertised in the Sunday papers, there would likely have already been reviews printed in magazines or other print media, you may have heard a tune or two on the radio and for at least that week you’d get a reduction off the regular price.

These days, the ‘official release date’ that the music industry uses is Friday, but that has little meaning anymore to most consumers who hear about new music online at infinite points of origin. A click here, a click there…and you can pretty much learn about new stuff and hear anything at anytime. There are exceptions, but not often.

So with that, there seems to be a revised definition to this term ‘new release’. With an annual pipeline of almost a couple hundred thousand albums released, something is new when you first hear about it. Yeah…there is still this mini-factory assembly line that a lot of musicians follow trying to get the word out in a short burst for maximum impact…but that makes sense for the one percenters, not necessarily every single title.

With that in mind, here’s something new to me that was released back in February from Alligator Records. I love me a good tribute and anthology, and God Don’t Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson fills the bill.

blindwillie-compressed

The project originally began as a Kickstarter campaign, and features crazy-great performances from Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Sinéad O’Connor, the Blind Boys Of Alabama, Cowboy Junkies, and more. Listen to the full stream via Pitchfork and here’s the man himself, filmed in 1927.

Every Picture Tells a Story

Sandy The image at the top of this page was shot by my long-time-we’ve-only-met-online friend Sandy Dyas, who is a visual artist based in Iowa City that I’ve written about often. You can visit her website here and check out her work, books (buy them…really) and blog. And more of her images can be found on this site….including this one I originally published back in January 2014 at No Depression dot com.

Long Before N.W.A. There Was Country Music Straight Outta Compton

Back in 1951 a weekly country radio show was broadcasted live from Town Hall in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton. Within two years it had been picked up as a TV program by NBC and local station KTTV, there were 39 syndicated shows taped for Screen Gems and it had a damngood run, with it’s final show in January 1961. Had a few different names, but mostly it was either the Town Hall Party or The Ranch Party. There’s a good wiki page here on details.

Hosted by Tex Ritter, the list of weekly guest stars included pretty much anybody you might think of back in those times…Lefty Frizzell Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Patsy Cline, Merle Travis, Gene Autry, Sons of The Pioneers, The Collins Kids, Johnny Bond, Smiley Burnette. To our good fortune, many of the shows and individual performances are available on You Tube. Try this search link if you want a shortcut.

The 10-piece Town Hall Party band featured Joe Maphis, Merle Travis, the superb female steel guitarist Marian Hall, Billy Hill and Fiddlin’ Kate on violins, PeeWee Adams on drums, Jimmy Pruitt on piano, and other excellent musicians who created a Town Hall Party sound also heard on many country sessions produced by Columbia Records in Hollywood in the 1950s. Thought I’d share this one with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXmNdRJ1E_Q

What Exactly Did Tony Visconti Say at SXSW Music 2016?

Acclaimed American record producer Tony Visconti, famous for his many records with David Bowie (including his final album, “Darkstar”), Marc Bolan, Paul McCartney, Badfinger, Iggy Pop, Morrissey and others, briefly choked up onstage last week during his South by Southwest keynote talk at the Austin Convention Center as he finished reading a fictionalized account of the grim future of the record industry. (Story here.)

The story ended with a jaded record executive jumping from the balcony of his skyscraper residence to his death. The dapper 71-year-old producer threw down his prepared notes and had to compose himself afterward.

Couple of thoughts from Tony:

-The vast amount of music being uploaded on to YouTube is “clogging the arteries” of the music business; unmediated and unfocused.

-“With the population doubling how come we can’t sell records? The record labels now are not giving you quality, that’s why you’re disenchanted, that’s why you don’t buy records.”

-Fans “used to put a vinyl record on a turntable” and play it hundreds of times. “None of that goes on today. There are great people all around us – the next David Bowie lives somewhere in the world, the next Beatles, the next Springsteen but they’re not getting a shot, they’re not being financed.”

-Our music industry is one “where singles all sound the same, where sales aren’t that great, where people are streaming and if you get 20 million [plays], you get enough for a nice steak dinner”.

-“I’ve always had black kimonos. I’ve always loved black kimonos. I know I’m rambling on. I’ll get to the point where I met David Bowie.”

Mixed reviews, but Vulture wrote: “By catering to cultural curiosity, excavating his early career, and using both his platform and the room’s rapt attention to strike while the iron was hot with a cautionary tale, Visconti did better than a sentimental speech. He casually played with prophecy, a move his much-missed friend would certainly appreciate.”

Bob Dylan’s 25 Musical Heroes

This list was assembled and published a few weeks ago over at The Telegraph and I found it a quick interesting read. Here’s just a couple of my fave quotes, but do go take a look for yourself at the whole enchilada.

Boy, I love them . . . the Flying Burrito Brothers, unh-huh. I’ve always known Chris Hillman, you know, from when he was in the Byrds, who had a distinctive sound. And he’s always been a fine musician. The Brothers’ records knocked me out.

John Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about Sam Stone the soldier junky daddy and Donald and Lydia, where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be Lake Marie. I don’t remember what album that’s on.

Karen Dalton is my favourite singer. Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday’s and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed and went all the way with it.

I Just Sold My Newport Folk Festival Ticket and Won’t See Joan Shelley.

It ain’t easy to get a 3-day pass to Newport because they do this email notification thing through Ticketmaster, and you gotta act fast. I did, and bought mine a couple months ago. It was just around $200, which I think is a bargain for what you know will be an amazing musical weekend of exploration and discovery. You don’t even know yet who’ll be on the program, as only about a dozen folks have been announced, but its hardly a leap of faith to know it’ll be great. Joan Shelley will be there…knowing I’ll miss her is a disappointment. Her music speaks to me.

My one and only time at Newport was in 2014, and although I held tickets for last summer a ‘life happens’ moment forced a pullout. I was pretty sure I would be good-to-go this year until I sat down and worked on the details. A sad-assed vertigo sufferer, the train seemed like a better mode of transport than my Civic, and there would be some ground transportation needed to get to town from the station. Once there, moving around is pretty easy. Walking, boat shuttle, taxis. But where to stay…oh my. With an average lodging cost of about $300 per day…camping not an option…that’s what did me in. I couldn’t find a way to make the whole thing come in at much less than a thousand bucks, and although I love music, I’m a man with a budgetary restriction. So not this year…sorry.

By the way, Ticketmaster has a pretty neat way for you to take a ticket, put it up for sale through them, and in less than a week it was sold to someone else and my dough was re-deposited into my account. I think I lost twenty bucks or so in fees, but its an easy way out.

On Sharon Jones: A Favorite Story from Oxford American

Homecoming Queen by Maxwell George was published on January 19, 2015.

North Augusta Baptist Church is a humble house of God, steepleless and cast in brick, with a pair of squat towers flanking the stained-glass black Messiah on its façade. Last summer, I got my picture taken next to the marquee out front, which advertised an upcoming Youth Revival weekend—fitting enough, since my being there related to a former young congregant. In the mid-1960s, soul singer Sharon Jones gave her first public performance here, as a singing angel in the Christmas pageant when she was in the third grade. (Click here to continue.)

Videos You Wouldn’t Know Existed, Unless You Found Them By Mistake.

I aggregate and post daily on my Twitter feed:@therealeasyed and Facebook page:The Real Easy Ed: Roots Music and Random Thoughts. My every other week Broadside column is published at No Depression.

Easy Ed’s Outtakes #1

Photo by Sandy Dyas

Easy Ed’s Broadside weekly column has been a fixture at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music for over ten years. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

Killer Duets: Teddy Thompson and Kelly Jones

Almost two months ago RS Country reported on a new project from Teddy Thompson and Kelly Jones. They wrote: ‘Little Windows, the first collaborative album from singer-songwriters Teddy Thompson and Kelly Jones, packs a whole career’s worth of sparkling pop gems and sobering country ballads into a collection that runs just short of 26 minutes. What’s more remarkable, however, is that the LP represents a relatively new partnership, and every one of the songs is original to the project, although any of the album’s 10 tracks could be mistaken for some long-lost sonic nugget from the Fifties or Sixties’. Read more here.

Bars of Allman Joy

The first time I laid eyes on the Allman Brothers was inside a beer and clams bar on the boardwalk of Atlantic City on July 4th 1971. It was a way too early too early Sunday morning and residue from the previous nights activities could still be felt and smelled. I was there with a blonde haired girl named Karen who was pregnant and running away from her boyfriend Bobby. He later married my cousin, and then they broke up. I recognized Duane among the seven or eight guys who sat across the stick from us, and I recall we traded some laughs about weed and the condensation dripping down the outside of the pitchers of beer that sat before us. They were finishing up a week long run at The Steel Pier. I may have seen then that week, or not. Hard to remember, but I know I went to one of their shows sometime that year. Duane was gone by October.

Garden and Gun has published a slideshow of photos that appear in a new book by Kirk West. This is one of my favorites, and here’s the link to it and the overview: Back in the 1970s, photographer Kirk West was just a self-described “hippie with a camera” and a diehard Allman Brothers Band fan who traveled to see his favorite Southern rock group whenever he could. He became such a fixture that the band invited him backstage and to studio sessions, and in 1989, West joined the crew as an assistant tour manager. “I was only supposed to work for three weeks,” he says, “and it ended up being twenty-one years.”

Over at Oxford American, my favorite music journalist and author Amanda Petrusich…whose books you should add to your reading list asap if you somehow missed them…has published The Road Goes on Forever, a beautifully crafted article on the band. You can read it here, but if you’re super-smart you’ll also buy the OA Georgia Music Issue before it sells out. It includes their annual sampler CD that is indeed exceptional. (Read more about Amanda and her books at My Back Pages.)

Radio is a sound salvation. Radio is cleaning up the nation. Radio, Radio

Somewhere along the way, despite my early adaption of digital music files over shiny discs of plastic, I missed the podcast thing. In a recent article over at No Depression from Sloane Spencer, her recap of the past year caught my eyes.

Top-notch programs from media powerhouses and coalitions of their expatriates have brought the medium to general recognition in America. Many of the early, grassroots, or DIY programs, though, went on permanent hiatus or completely ended their runs. A lot of this churn is normal attrition, but a lot of it is due to the success of podcasting itself. Superstars exploded from the top echelons while those bubbling up from below saw downloads stay flat or vastly decrease while streaming took over. For indie podcasts, streaming is not even monetized by the content maker, as most of it is via apps that pick up the RSS feed and redistribute thousands of programs.

As we all muddle along trying to figure out what is happening and will happen with “new media,” change is gonna come. Change is opportunity.

While I still figure out for myself if I have the time and inclination, my friend Carter recently shared with me how he finds so much (free) old-time music on the web using a couple of podcast apps. So as I was on the Smithsonian Folkways site today looking for something other than this, when I happened to discover that they have a series of 24 one-hour shows called The Folkways Collection. You could spend an entire day listening to this.

On Roy Zimmerman, Donald Drumpf, Kylie Jenner and the kitchen sink.

Every other week my Easy Ed’s Broadside column is published on the No Depression website, and my most recent one is a meandering walk through the current state of how hashtags have usurped the sixties protest music movement that used to ‘spread the word’ back in the day. Actually, I contradicted that thought when I noted the last song ever written that galvanized a generation to actually do something was Ray Steven’s “The Streak”. Anyway…you can read the article here and I’m putting up one of Roy’s videos for your amusement and joy.

https://youtu.be/Ege_RBhh37A

Every Picture Tells a Story

Sandy The image at the top of this page was shot by my long-time-we’ve-only-met-online friend Sandy Dyas, who is a visual artist based in Iowa City that I’ve written about often. You can visit her website here and check out her work, books and blog. And more of her images can be seen on this site too.

Videos You Wouldn’t Know Existed, Unless You Found Them By Mistake.

A List of Performers at SXSW 2016 That I Found.

Happened to notice this on Untitled Magazine‘s site, and it just seemed such a strong image of randomness, not that I didn’t immediately recognize that it was simply arranged alphabetical. I choose to think that simply staring at the letters is particularly intellectually satisfying if you’re not planning to take the trip to Austin. And I’m not.

3ballMty, Abjects, Barry Adamson, Adée, Alex G, Alice on the roof, Aloa Input, Altimet & the Kawan Band, Anamanaguchi, And The Kids, Autobahn, Avec Sans,The Ballroom Thieves, The Band of Heathens, Bee’s Knees, Better Person, Beverly, Big Phony,Bird Dog, Bombino,Boulevards,Brass Bed, Bye Bye Badman, Laura Carbone,Rosie Carney, Caveman, Ceasetone, Chirkutt, Cirkus Funk, Cóndor Jet, The Crookes, Crystal Castles, Dash Rip Rock, David Wax Museum, Demob Happy, Dolce,Downtown Boys, Dubioza Kolektiv, Eau Rouge, EMUFUCKA, Expert Alterations, Lena Fayre, Fear of Men, Few Bits, Ian Fisher, The Foreign Resort, Andy Frasco & the U.N., A Giant Dog, Matt Gilmour’s Patient Wolf, Gold Class, Jon Dee Graham, William Harries Graham & the Painted Redstarts, Guerilla Toss, HÆLOS, Haihm, Har Mar Superstar, Hinds, Howardian,S ilvana Imam, Imran Aziz Mian Qawwal, Into It. Over it., Jahkoy, Jambinai, John GRVY, Judah & the Lion, KAO=S, Marina Kaye, The Kickback, La Banda Morisca, Lazyeyes, Lois, Demi Louise, Love X Stereo, Lushes, Mai Nimani, Mamamoo, MC Lars, Methyl Ethel, Mise en Scene, Missi & Mister Baker, Moving Panoramas, Mumiy Troll, The National Parks, Oil Boom, OKRAA, Paul Oscher, Overload, The Parrots, PHASES, Platonick Dive, The Pocket Rockets, Ron Pope, Prince Rama, Pure Bathing Culture, Quebe Sisters, Self Defense Family,S kyline, Sleepers’ Reign, Southern Hospitality, The Spook School, Suboi, Summer Heart, Sunflower Bean, Sur du monde, Tarmac, The Nightowls, Throwing Shade, Vaadat Charigim, Victim Mentality, Victoria+Jean, Waco Brothers, Wahid Allan Faqir, The Wet Secrets, Wildhoney, Marlon Williams & The Yarra Benders, Womps, Wordburglar, XYLØ, Yuck

I should note the passing of the SXSW music festival co-counder Louis Meyers who was part of the original team that started this back in 1987. He left it in 1994 citing the stress of the conference. Meyers was also a musician, playing banjo and recording, touring, producing or performing with Bill & Bonnie Hearne, Bob Schneider, Killbilly, The Killer Bees, Mojo Nixon, Fastball, Willis Alan Ramsey, Tommy Ramone, and Jello Biafra, among many others.

And In The End…A Song I Love That Sir George Martin Produced. RIP.

Updated: Trouble in Texas for The Black Lillies

Grace Flower On the morning of Sunday, Jan. 24, Tennessee-based roots rockers the Black Lillies were finishing up their final day in Texas. They sent out a message on their Facebook page to let folks know that, in the afternoon, they’d be doing an in-store appearance and playing a set at Cactus Music in Houston. That night, they woud be playing at Conroe’s Dosey Doe Music Cafe. After the gig at the Dosey Doe, they went back to the Quality Inn near the airport, parked their van and trailer under the lights out in front, locked it all down, and went to sleep. At six the next morning, as the band got ready to roll out, they discovered an empty space on the blacktop.

When the Houston police pulled the video from the security cameras, they discovered that sometime around 2:30 a.m., a black SUV pulled up, someone jumped out, and in about two minutes the van and trailer were driven off. The band’s manager, Chyna Brackeen, wrote about the damage done:

Instruments – many vintage and irreplaceable, like Cruz Contreras’ iconic guitar – were in the trailer. Most of the band’s merchandise stock was in the trailer. Boxes of CDs and vinyl records … personal items … clothing. So far we estimate that there was around $70k worth of stuff (besides the van and trailer) taken.

The band does have insurance on the van, and an instrument policy. The band’s policy does not cover their merchandise, members’ personal items and clothing, and certain gear. There’s a big gap between what was lost and what will be covered.

The staff at the Quality Inn has been extremely helpful. Houston-area media is responding in droves and helping us get the word out. And you guys have been a tremendous help by sharing our posts and of course by contributing here.

This is every band’s worst nightmare. The one silver lining is that the Black Lillies have one of the best groups of fans and support systems in the world.

That’s an understatement.

Quickly establishing a place where friends and fans could help, they chose Rally.org. When I first checked at that link on Monday afternoon, there was $12,000 pledged. Six hours later, they had more than doubled that amount. And today as I write this (it’s Tuesday afternoon, the 26th) there is $36,896 committed from fans, friends and strangers. I’ll let the narrative continue with another update from Chyna:

It appears at this point that we will likely be able to pay off what is owed on the van (which isn’t the same thing as replacing it, but at least it’s a good start). As for the instruments, the policy – if paid in full – will likely only cover about 60% of the losses there. One major issue is that a vintage instrument doesn’t have the same value to an insurance adjustor as it does to a musician. The insurance adjustor wants to replace things at the lowest cost – so if your Dremel cordless drill is stolen, they’ll find the best price for a new Dremel cordless drill and give you that amount (adjusted, of course, for depreciation).

But when you have a 1952 guitar that’s one of a kind, that has a soul and a sound that you can’t just go out and buy, that sounds the way it does because of how it has been played over the years and how it has worn through and cracked and been put back together again … well, you can’t just find the cheapest price and replace it.

So, we both had more gear in the trailer than was insured (a couple of instruments had just been purchased), AND we had a lot of vintage stuff that the insurance company doesn’t understand how to value.

Plus, there’s other stuff – the merchandise, the personal clothing items, the stage banners/backdrops – that aren’t covered at all.

Anyway, all of that is to say that the gap is big. BUT, we are feeling so much more prepared to handle things because of your tremendous support.

On Monday night the band posted this to their Facebook page:

It has been a long, hard day. But in the midst of the stress and uncertainty, we’ve been shown so much love and support. From venues who are calling to offer us gigs, to musicians calling to offer us gear, to people literally offering us the clothes off of their backs, to members of the media from all over the country who are calling to ask what more they can do to spread the word, to friends, fans, strangers donating money to help with the gap between what the insurance will cover and what was lost … every email, tweet, call, post, smoke signal is showing us the beauty that is out there. We will never be able to tell you what it means to us. Just know that you’re getting us through this, and we love you for it. Thank you.

And on Tuesday afternoon:

Update! The van has been retrieved by a towing company in Houston after being abandoned by the side of the road. Trailer and instruments still missing.

For any bands who are slugging it out day after day, going from gig to gig and trying hard to just eke out a living, this loss is a devastating blow. It has been perhaps softened by so many people willing to contribute something so that this talented, beloved band can quickly get back on their feet.

While the Black Lillies have suffered a terrible loss, I suspect that they’ve also got something in return that will feel very special over time. To have met people along the way who’ve been touched by your music — who will extend a helping hand in time of need — is something nobody can ever take from them.

Lets hope that in the days ahead their trailer or contents are found. Here’s a link to a list of their stolen instruments with serial numbers. And if you’d like to make a contribution, here’s the link to their Rally page.

Update from The Black Lillies via Facebook/February 26 2016: A few people have asked, so a quick update on our stolen gear: besides the van itself, nothing has been recovered yet. The trailer, instruments, merchandise, music and personal items are still missing. We’ve bought a few new things, borrowed some others, and we’re back out on the road doing what we love. We couldn’t be doing that without the tremendous support you gave us. Thank you for keeping us pushing forward!

March 6, 2016: While we’re incredibly grateful to everyone who has shown us support (financial and otherwise) after the theft of our instruments, we were especially thankful for a $5 contribution and beautiful picture from our friend Grace. (Image credit: Grace.)

Grace Black Lillies

The original article was published at No Depression dot com, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.