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.

I Used To Be A Disc Junkie But I’m Alright Now

While the topic here is often about the music we listen to, it got me thinking about how we listen to it. Those who have read my Broadside columns at No Depression:The Roots Music Journal over these past nine years already know that I went all-digital just about the same time the magazine became a website. And I spend most of my listening time in motion … walking, riding a train or subway, driving a car, or pedaling an exercise bike. On the rare occasions that I want to listen to something in my home, my laptops and iPhone can plug into either an old-school big-ass rack system with JBL floor speakers the size of an elephant or a smaller cassette-CD-radio combo player with small but upgraded speakers. And when I say “rare occasion,” I should note that the last time either was turned on, Obama was still in his first term.

In the past year I have been having a conversation with myself about minimization, a fancy term for throwing out all the crap in my life that I no longer need. Anything printed on paper, stamped in vinyl, or shiny discs stuffed inside plastic cases are in my line of sight, along with furniture, jackets, coats, ties, pants too tight, shorts too loose, and some hideous shirts I once bought while suffering from a case of temporary blindness. When I was younger I made fun of old people who wore a mish-mash of clothes from white belts and plaid pants to frumpy floral housecoats and they seemed to ignore any and all fashion trends, but now I get that it’s a combination of not having the money to buy new stuff along with the realization that there’s nobody you need to impress anymore. My own closet is so full of stuff that all I want to do is get down to the basics. Fortunately, my wardrobe is timeless (I think): jeans, solid color tees, sweatshirts, five sweaters, one sports jacket, a “funeral and wedding” suit, and several pairs of boots.

On Thanksgiving we went to my nephew’s house and after dinner everyone sat around the cylindrical Amazon Echo while a girl named Alexa followed a verbal command to play “Alice’s Restaurant.” It was placed on a table beneath a television bigger than my car in a rather large room, and frankly the sound quality was quite good. Growing up with right and left channel speakers, and now listening with ear buds or headphones, I was rather enchanted about how this one black round thing produced such fine clarity with bass, midrange, and the top end all intact, while somehow creating a “stereo-surround” effect. And if that wasn’t enough, the darn thing told me the weather for the next week.

Now I happen to know a thing or two about products like voice-controlled smart speakers and all sorts of other wireless devices for either your home or head. And on Cyber Monday my email inbox was jammed with tantalizing offers of deals and discounts for everything under the sun: handmade beeswax candles, beaded bracelets, packages of 48-count toilet paper, clothes, food, gift cards, and even automobiles. But what caught my eye, and by most accounts the number one seasonal gift category, was the electronics. Holy moly … who could resist saving up to 66% off of last year’s Beats Studio 2 wireless over-the-ear cans, or at half-price the Ultimate Ears BOOM 2 Phantom Wireless Mobile Bluetooth Speaker that’s waterproof AND shockproof that can daisy-chain with 49 (!!!) other UE BOOM 2s? It can survive both an earthquake and tsunami at the same time and you know what?

I bought it. Amazon Prime with free two-day shipping sucked me in again. And I think it could be a game changer in my life. It’s not quite the sophisticated and sleek device with Alexa whispering today’s temperature in my ear when I wake up, but it’s going to let me toss out one of the two old-school hi-fi systems that clutter my space and I might start listening to music again in the sanctity of my home. And in the whirlwind and frenzy of the Cyber Monday sales extravaganza, I also ordered a couple of real books printed on paper, a box of a thousand packets of Splenda, one pair of shoes, three Brita water filters, and 12 tins of Altoids Peppermints. I may never leave home again.

Postscript: After two weeks I dumped the Ultimate Ears BOOM 2 Phantom Wireless Mobile Bluetooth Speaker that’s waterproof AND shockproof that can daisy-chain with 49 (!!!) other UE BOOM 2s UE Boom 2 and upgraded to a pair of Sonos Play:1. Wi-fi enabled music connected to my streaming provider beat out Bluetooth, and these babies were half price too. 

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

My Favorite Un-Americana Music of 2017

Photo by Oliver Zühlke/Creative Commons

This is the season that I try to be the first kid on the block to beat out the barrage of those end-of-the-year lists from critics and pundits. At No Depression, and other like-minded music websites and magazines, the official music polls from readers, contributors, and reviewers will be coming in December. Had I been born a betting man, I’d lay down a few hundred bucks that there’ll be little variation or surprises between any of them. Ever since the term roots music has morphed into a more definable mainstream “Americana” tagline, diversity has seemed to have left the building. While you won’t get much disagreement from me on the quality and depth of music that has been released so far this year, it seems that I continue to find myself taking the road less traveled.

This year it feels as if I’ve been walking down the dark side of the street, whether we’re talking about  art, culture, politics, or simply life in general. There were health issues to deal with and the loss of a parent. I’ve found myself constantly concerned for my children that a madman lives in Washington who is one button away from annihilating the planet when he’s not chipping away at the fabric of our society by normalizing the abnormal. From the racist cries of “blood and soil” to an unjust justice system that tips to white skin and wealth to revelations of what we already know … that bad men do bad things to women and children … and to all the other natural and human disasters we’ve lived through so far, I’m only finding shelter by cocooning with music, books, and video.

So with that bright and shiny preamble, here’s some of my favorite aural oddities and mainstays for the year. As always, I use a different yardstick to measure and compile my list. This is what I have either discovered or gravitated to, undefined by such things as release dates. Whether it was brand new this year or merely recycled from the past, who cares?

The Entire Ry Cooder Catalog

I wish he would have titled one of his albums Pastrami on Ry, and I’m sorry that for most of his career I’ve largely ignored his solo work. Aside from a seemingly infinite number of songs he’s done session work on for others, the only albums I’ve really known inside out have been two from the ’70s: The Gabby Pahinui Band Volume 1 and his solo Bop Til You Drop. So now, thanks to the magic of touch and click streaming, I’m making my way through everything else. While skipping around and sampling from this era and that, I’m spending most of my time with Paradise and Lunch, Into The Purple Valley and Chicken Skin Music.

A Prairie Home Companion

While I know he’s trying his hardest and still growing into his role, Chris Thile’s voice reminds me of Opie Taylor and he’s yet to hone his comedic skills with timing and inflection. But on the other hand, he’s doing an amazing job at making great music with that killer band he’s assembled and presenting exceptional guests week after week. He’s going down the right path but one suggestion would be to please stop referring to Sarah Jarosz as “inimitable.” Why continually state the obvious? Finally, a note about Garrison Keillor. Over the years he’s entertained millions of us and his wit, humor and his support of musicians won’t be forgotten. And while it was sad to witness his termination played out in counterpoint to rapists and serial harassers , he had to go.

David Rawlings

I got a chance to see David and Gillian right before the release of Poor David’s Almanack, and it was the first time I’d ever seen them live in concert. Tickets have always seemed to get swallowed up the minute they go on sale and my budget doesn’t include StubHub. After 21 years of being a devout fan of their partnership, each and every note, song, and harmonic moment gave me a night of multi-orgasmic goosebumps.The album is simply perfect.

Freakwater and The Mekons

In September these two bands reunited as The Freakons and performed two nights in Chicago. Monica Kendrick for The Reader broke the news about a new album they’re now recording. She wrote that it’ll consist of “traditional songs about an industry that links the English Midlands, the Welsh valleys, and the ‘dark and bloody ground’ of Appalachia: coal mining. Haunting tunes in that vein came from both sides of the pond, and the Freakons take them on in the high-lonesome, rabble-rousing tradition of late West Virginian labor singer Hazel Dickens. Proceeds from the album, when it’s finished, will benefit Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a grassroots organization that promotes voting rights and opposes mountaintop-removal mining.”

Rodrigo Amarante

Gotcha … right? A Brazilian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Amarante is a member of Los Hermanos, a band that still plays live but hasn’t recorded since 2005. He partnered with The Strokes drummmer Fabrizio Moretti and American musician Binki Shapiro, who in 2008 released an album on Rough Trade as Little Joy. In 2015 he wrote and recorded “Tuyo,” which has been used as the theme song for the Netflix series Narcos. It’s an earworm.

Tom Brosseau

The ten songs on Treasures Untold were recorded live at a private event in Cologne, Germany. The album features six American folksongs and four originals. Brosseau was born and raised in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where in 2007 the mayor awarded him the key to the city. I think about that often. Since 2003 he’s lived in Los Angeles, has recorded a bunch of albums, and toured Iceland. Well … other places too.

 

Valerie June

I don’t pretend to understand her and I don’t listen to her albums. But I’ve seen her perform twice and she is the modern-day Nina Simone. Undefinable and undeniable.

Tom Russell

He celebrated his 68th birthday last March and has released 29 albums, two of which came just this year. The first was his tribute to his old friends Ian and Sylvia, and now he is out on tour supporting Folk Hotel, a collection of originals. Two shots here: Tom playing with Max De Bernardi “The Last Time I Saw Hank” at Knuckleheads Saloon in Kansas City, Missouri in  September 2017. And while I’ve been enjoying both new albums, I also want to share the song that was my first introduction to Russell and remains my favorite.

 

And to those who passed…

Down that dark side of the street we’ve lost too many folks this past year. I’m not going to list them all here, but we’ll close it out with this … a tribute to them all.

 

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

The Everly Brothers Watch Good Love Go Bad

 

In 1960 I was an eight year old boy with a teenage sister who watched American Bandstand every day after school and had a Tele-Tone 45 rpm portable record player in her bedroom. With a big fat plastic spindle, she would stack up to about a dozen records and it would automatically drop and play them one at a time. I was entranced by the whole concept – the music, the machine, the grooves on the disc, and especially the labels, which I would spend hours reading and memorizing. Composers, arrangers, song titles, publishers, ASCAP or BMI, selection numbers, running times, and especially the stylized fonts for the label’s logos.

One reason I took an interest in music at such an early age was because my cousin Arnold was a hot-shot producer and the whole family followed his many successes. His first big hit was in 1956 with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put A Spell On You” for Okeh Records, and four years later he moved on to MGM, where he scored big with Connie Francis’ “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” and eventually was promoted to president of the label.

On Billboard magazine’s chart for the Top Hits of 1960, Francis had three songs versus Elvis Presley’s two. And while Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” begat a national dance phenomenon and a Percy Faith instrumental was the number one single, only Bobby Rydell, Brenda Lee, and The Everly Brothers rivaled Miss Francis. Don and Phil’s biggest records that year were “Cathy’s Clown” and “Let It Be Me,” but this is the one I dropped the needle on most often and to this day it remains stuck inside my head.

Written by Don Everly and the first track on their Warner Bros. debut album It’s Everly Time, “So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad)” stayed on the American charts for 12 weeks and has been covered at least a dozen times. The biggest sellers of those all were country versions, starting with a duet by Hank Williams Jr. and Lois Johnson in 1970, followed by Connie Smith in 1976 and Emmylou Harris in 1983. When John Prine decided to include it on his classic In Spite of Ourselves duets album, he tapped Connie Smith as his partner on the song.

While I don’t know why I am so attached to this song, it turns out that there’s likely a scientific reason for it. Dr. Vicky Williamson is a music psychologist and memory expert at Goldsmith’s College in London, and several years ago she began studying earworms, otherwise known as stuck-song syndrome, sticky music, and cognitive itch. In a 2012 article I found on the BBC website, she suggests that “earworms may be part of a larger phenomenon called ‘involuntary memory,’ a category which also includes the desire to eat something after the idea of it has popped into your head. ‘A sudden desire to have sardines for dinner, for example,’” as she put it.

Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra and Traveling Wilburys covered “So Sad” on his 2012 solo release, along with other songs of that era, and described it this way: “These songs take me back to that feeling of freedom in those days and summon up the feeling of first hearing those powerful waves of music coming in on my old crystal set. My dad also had the radio on all the time, so some of these songs have been stuck in my head for 50 years. You can only imagine how great it felt to finally get them out of my head after all these years.”

In 2013, Will Oldham (as Bonnie “Prince” Billy) and Faun Fables’ Dawn McCarthy released what has become one of my all-time favorite albums, titled What The Brothers Sang. An Everlys’ tribute album, it jumps over their entire Cadence Records catalog of hits from the ’50s, and dives deeper into the more obscure catalog tunes. In Pitchfork’s review, Stephen Deusner wrote: “ ‘Devoted to You’ and ‘So Sad’ are all the more powerful for being so spare in their arrangements, as though illustrating the power of a small country bar band.” One of the highlights of the year was having the chance to see them perform the album from end to end at Town Hall in NYC.

We used to have good times together
But now I feel them slip away
It makes me cry to see love die
So sad to watch good love go bad

Remember how you used to feel dear?
You said nothing could change your mind
It breaks my heart to see us part
So sad to watch good love go bad

Is it any wonder
That I feel so blue
When I know for certain
That I’m losing you

Remember how you used to feel dear?
You said nothing could change your mind
It breaks my heart to see us part
So sad to watch good love go bad
So sad to watch good love go bad

How an 8-year-old boy can latch onto a song such as this and hold it close for 47 years is almost unexplainable. The above-mentioned Dr. Williamson has been working on a “cure” for earworms, suggesting tips such as finding another song to replace it with, going for a run, or doing a crossword puzzle. But for myself, I think I’ll pop open a tin of sardines for dinner and give y’all a vertical stacking of some cover versions I’ve found. Bon appetit.

 

 

 

 

 

In 1973 Don Everly showed up drunk to a show. He kept screwing up the lyrics until Phil smashed a guitar over his head and stormed out. The only time the brothers spoke during the next decade was at their father’s funeral. The brothers patched things up in 1983 enough to embark on a lucrative nostalgia tour that yielded a double album and was captured and released on video.

 

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