Moby Grape Is Still Afloat

Moby Grape / Sony Legacy Records

If you’ve followed my articles and columns at No Depression through the past ten-plus years, you likely know that I have a special place in my heart for Moby Grape. When an argument breaks out about the genesis of Americana music, among those of us who argue about such things, after we shout out The Dillards, Youngbloods, Lovin’ Spoonful, Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Flying Burrito Brothers, the two 1970 Grateful Dead albums, Townes, Gram, and whomever else I’ve just failed to mention, it’s usually me who brings up Skip Spence, Bob Mosley, Jerry Miller, Don Stevenson, and Peter Lewis.

There has been so much written about this band and its legacy that there’s probably no need to rehash their quick rise and fall, mental health problems, the lawsuit that lasted for over 30 years, or the many times they’ve reunited and reconstituted. You’re either are old enough to know the story or young enough to know how to search for it.

Perhaps one of the most unique aspects of the group was their ability to pull together multiple elements of American roots music, including blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, introspective folk, and country. With three guitarists standing out front and five vocalists and songwriters, they presented themselves as a solid and cohesive band both onstage and in the studio. Their discography is filled with early Americana nuggets, and the last studio album of original material, Legendary Grape, is now 30 years old.

While Skip Spence was probably best known for his short time with Jefferson Airplane, his struggles with schizophrenia, and his critically acclaimed solo album, Oar, his career had already ended when he passed on from lung cancer in 1999. And now, 52 years after their self-titled debut was released, Moby Grape’s surviving members are still active in making music as they approach their mid- to late-70s.

This past summer Peter Lewis released The Road to Zion, his third solo recording in over five decades. His backstory before the Grape is probably the most interesting: He was the son of the famous actress Loretta Young, was raised in Los Angeles, is the cousin of master musician and Jackson Browne collaborator David Lindsey, and was an Air Force veteran who worked as a pilot until he caught the Byrds opening for the Stones and decided to form a band.

Many of Lewis’ songs in the Grape’s catalog featured fingerstyle guitar and leaned toward country and folk, and The Road to Zion offers up similar fare. Some of the songs sound as if they could have been outtakes of Moby Grape ’69 or Truly Fine Citizen.

Drummer and vocalist Don Stevenson came out of the Pacific Northwest with guitarist Jerry Miller in a band called The Frantics. Through the decades he’s continued to drop in and out of the various incarnations of the band, but his main gig was as a highly successful salesman for a resort timeshare. Several years ago he moved to Toronto to be closer to his grandchildren, and he began a second life as a subway busker. As a participant in the Toronto Transit Commission’s Subway Musicians Program, he’s one of 75 musicians who fan out to stations throughout the city. Here’s a feature story on him from a few years ago.

Miller — often confused with the other Jerry Miller who has played with Eilen Jewell’s band — is based in Tacoma, Washington, and has never stopped performing and touring. Miller is one of the finest “white boy” blues guitarists of the 1960s, often throwing in jazz chording and country twang to enhance his distinctive sound. He’s participated in every version of the Grape, including the one from a couple of years ago with Skip Spence’s son Omar sitting in for dad and playing at SXSW.

Bass player and soulful singer Bob Mosley has been a bit harder for me to get a recent update on. He quit the band in 1969, joined the Marines, and was discharged after several months for medical reasons. He and Spence rejoined the other three in 1971 for 20 Granite Creek and played a few gigs together. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s Mosley played off and on with the Grape, was in a band called Fine Wine, and for a short time in 1977 he played in The Ducks with Neil Young.

In 1991 the band called it quits (again), and Mosley’s deteriorating emotional state due to paranoid schizophrenia eventually left him homeless and living on the streets of San Diego. Peter Lewis is credited with finding him in 1999 and moving him up to Santa Cruz to get treatment and begin playing again. He rejoined a new version of the Grape and did weekly gigs for years with veteran country artist Larry Hosford, and later with Dale Ockerman of the Doobie Brothers. He continued to write songs; his last release was an album titled True Blue in 2005.

To add a footnote, Lewis’ daughter Arwen released a mostly acoustic tribute to the Grape in 2015 that is worth tracking down. Closing out this column, here’s Mosley playing with members of Buddy Holly’s Crickets and Elvis’ backup band.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com

Still Listening To Music On Your Radio?

Photo by Alex Loban/Pixabay

Is there anybody else out there that recalls listening to music on your radio? I’m talkin’ late-night listening, twirling the dial and discovering stuff you’ve never heard before? Well, you can’t much variety anymore, especially when it comes to Americana or roots music. I’ve become a sophisticated streamer who zigs and zags through curated playlists, still reads the last of the music blogs, and tries to find good music to share. Hopefully, some of these clips I’ve posted below will turn you on to something new.

The summer music festival season has now come and gone, many of us have watched and discussed ad nauseam Ken Burns’ 16-hour Country Music series, and the annual awards for both Americana and bluegrass music have been handed out. But before you curl up and pretend you’re a hibernating bear, I thought I’d bring your attention to some recent releases that may have slipped past you in the sweltering heat of the summer.

And by the way, I’d like to mention that I think Greta Thunberg is one awesome young woman, and we’re damn lucky to have her and a new generation rising up and challenging the old men with their power grips on our planet. Global warming ain’t a hoax.

Let’s get to the music.

Luther Dickinson and Sisters of the Strawberry Moon – Solstice

The North Mississippi Allstar just wanted a producer credit but the label chose to slap his name on it for whatever reasons labels choose to do such things. The collective of musicians and singers includes Amy Helm, Amy LaVere, Sharde Thomas, Birds of Chicago, and the Como Mamas. Recorded over four days at the Dickinson family’s Zebra Ranch Studio down in Independence, there was no ability to take this project out on the road given everyone’s various commitments. But it’s a helluva record that you might want to check out.

Joan Shelley – Like the River Loves the Sea

I have a particular fondness for the musical genre of “soft-spoken women playing acoustic guitar,” and my favorite Port Royal, Kentucky export has released her latest solo album, traveling to Iceland in order to lay down the tracks. I’ve lost count of how many albums she has out now, but it’s close to a half dozen and if you look hard enough you’ll also find her on several other projects.

Audie Blaylock and Redline – Originalist

As a teenager in the early ’80s, Audie Blaylock played mandolin with Jimmy Martin & The Sunny Mountain Boys and stayed with them for over a decade. After playing in Rhonda Vincent’s band, he formed Redline about 15 years ago. While they play in the traditional bluegrass style, they also add new tunes to keep the music relevant.

Dori Freeman – Every Single Star

Recorded last winter in Brooklyn with Teddy Thompson producing, as he did for her last two albums, this one features 10 new original songs from the pride of Galax, Virginia. As Appalachian music is generally considered a family tradition, Freeman also plays with the Willard Gayheart Family Band, featuring her grandfather, her own father Scott Freeman, and husband Nick Falk.

Ana Egge – Is It the Kiss

I believe this marks Egge’s 12th album in 22 years, and it’s another Brooklyn-recorded project. She is a songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist who defies being pigeonholed into one genre or another, but every project she’s done is its own unique gift for the listener. This one swings into both country and soul territory, and Alec Spiegelman gets kudos for his production and arrangements. Love that Iris DeMent is a guest as well.

The Small Glories – Assinboine & The Red

Based in Winnipeg, this duo features Cara Luft, an original member of the Wailin’ Jennys, on clawhammer banjo and guitarist/singer JD Edwards. Known for their unique stage banter as well as their music, this is their second full album and they have also put out two EPs.

Emily Scott Robinson – Traveling Mercies

If you’re a regular reader of my column you already know about Emily Scott Robinson, as I can’t stop writing about her. Traveling Mercies is my favorite album of the year, and this storyteller and vocalist touches me deeply with her lyrics. This first song is the one that has given her much press, as it speaks in very personal terms of her own sexual assault.

I’ll leave you with one more from Robinson, because I’m in a very sharing mood. And that’s the way it is on a hot day in autumn.

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

How-dee-eee: Country Hokum and Humor

Grandpa Jones and Minnie Pearl/Grand Ole Opry

Every week when I go to my local Trader Joe’s market, I pick up a pack or two of small grape tomatoes, which some clever employee has chosen to brand as Mini Pearls. It never fails to amuse me, and I’m sure others have noticed my grin almost every time I put them into the cart. It’s an unusual connection point for this city boy’s appreciation of country music and culture, yet one that serves as a reminder of a time that’s come and gone.

I am old enough to have seen the late Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon perform countless times on television in character as Minnie Pearl from Grinder’s Switch in the late ’50s on Ozark Jubilee, then for years on Hee Haw and countless appearances on variety and game shows. Always wearing that hat with a price tag dangling from it and a gingham dress, she debuted on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry in 1940 and was an instant hit. Fears that her country-bumpkin comedy would offend the audience quickly evaporated as she used wit and humor that was often directed at herself. “A feller told me I look like a breath of spring,” Pearl would say. “Well, he didn’t use them words. He said I look like the end of a hard winter.”

While watching Ken Burns’ Country Music series, I was pleased that it included not only a feature on Minnie Pearl, but also spoke of the use of humor and comedy within the country music genre. And the connection to Garrison Keillor’s visit to the Opry at its final broadcast from the Ryman Auditorium was something I didn’t know. His Prairie Home Companion monologues about a fictional Lake Wobegon seem to owe a debt to Pearl’s Grinder’s Switch.

The term “hokum” came out of the minstrel and vaudeville shows, and it represented a “low comedy” style that included gags, routines, and songs using bawdy and risqué innuendo along with social and racial insults. Early blues musicians, jug bands, and string bands popularized thinly veiled sexual songs that were recorded and released in the ’20s. Here’s an example from Bo Carter of the Mississippi Sheiks that includes the lyrics:

Some men like lunch meat
And some they likes cold tongue
Some men don’t care for biscuits
They likes a dog gone big fat bun
But baby don’t put no more baking powder in your bread you see
‘Cause your two biscuits plenty big enough for me

Early in his career, Bill Monroe had appeared in blackface at minstrel shows, and he incorporated hokum into his bluegrass shows. The tradition was carried over with performers in blackface at the barn dances, radio shows, and early days of the Grand Ole Opry. Lee Roy “Lasses” White and his partner, Lee Davis “Honey” Wilds, were the first of such comedians who joined the Opry in 1932, and eventually “Lasses” was replaced with a new partner named “Jam-Up.”

Wilds was given permission to do tent shows during the week throughout the South before having to return to Nashville for the Saturday night broadcasts and was often accompanied by other Opry celebrities such as Uncle Dave Macon, Roy Acuff, Stringbean, and Monroe. In an interview with Wild’s son David by No Depression co-founder Grant Alden that appeared in the original print magazine in 1996, he shared what his dad and partner brought to the Opry:

“Music was a part of their act, but they were comedians. They would sing comedic songs, a la Homer and Jethro. They would add odd lyrics to existing songs, or write songs that were intended to be comedic. They were out there to come onstage, do five minutes of jokes, sing a song, do five minutes of jokes, sing another song and say ‘Thank you, good night’ as their segment of the Opry. Almost every country band during that time had some guy who dressed funny, wore a goofy hat, and typically played slide guitar.”

Through the years there has been a long tradition of hokum-style, comedic, and just plain silly country songs that have been released. Some, from writers such as Ray Stevens, Shel Silverstein, and Tom T. Hall, have placed high on the charts, while others remain simply a footnote in history. You probably have noticed I’m staying away from the most popular and longest-running series that traded on endless hokum, and that’s Hee Haw. I loved the music but hated the humor on many levels, so I’ll leave it at that.

A woman named Barbra Mies Waterman recently pointed me to a list of modern-day country hokum and humor originally compiled by Southern Living magazine. Check out the list here. Some are almost as sentimental as my Trader Joe’s Mini Pearls grape tomatoes.

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

Country Music and Your Cheatin’ Heart

Hank and Audrey Williams and The Drifting Cowboys/WikiCommons

After watching the Ken Burns’ Country Music film documentary, the one constant that stands out is that long before Elvis or any other rock musician packed their sexuality into a marketing rocket ship, male and female country musicians could barely keep their hands away from each other. Out on the road poppin’ pills and drinkin’ whiskey, and living in tight quarters away from the family, there were plenty of cheatin’ hearts and endless highways of opportunity.

On Aug. 26, 1977, a single was released on Stiff Records in England by Ian Dury and The Blockheads with the title printed on the label “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.” If any song reflected the loose life of a particular style of music, this was it. I was 25 years old and working in the music business when it was released, and although it was in equal measure both accurate and fantasy, all I could think of when listening to it was modifying the lyrics to “Sex & Drugs & Orthodontia.” Allow me to explain.

I was somewhere around 12 or 13 when my parents decided I needed to put braces on my teeth. While I can recall that there was indeed an overbite and a bit of crooked imperfection, it seemed that nearly every newly middle-class Jewish kid living in the suburbs endured the pain and torture of metal wires inside their mouth to symbolize status as much as the need for cosmetic enhancement and future health.

My orthodontist’s office was a 25-minute bus ride from my school, and every six weeks or so I’d make the trip to have another adjustment. Just when the pain of the last visit would have subsided, he would tighten the wires once again, which would send me to the medicine cabinet in search of a Bayer or Bufferin tablet. That was likely my entry ramp to decades of seeking a level of joy and happiness through chemistry.

The office was in the basement of the orthodontist’s home, and he had three exam rooms that he rotated through with incredible speed, spending only a few minutes with each boy or girl for a fleeting infliction of pain and encouragement. “Looking good, little princess,” or “What a handsome cowboy you’ll make” was part of his standard patter. “Keep up the good work, don’t forget to brush and no chewing gum,” were the last words you’d hear as he dashed to the next patient.

Working alongside the man, whose wife and kids lived upstairs above the office, I might mention, was a beautiful dark-haired woman in her 30s, with a wedding band on her finger, and, even more important to a boy my age, a curvaceous figure that would occasionally brush up against me and send me home with lewd and lascivious thoughts late into the night. She was an object of my young desire and I learned I was hardly the only one.

One day as I sat in the chair holding a mirror to view the progress my shifting teeth were making, I heard movement behind me. Shifting the reflection a bit, I witnessed the orthodontist in a passionate embrace with his assistant, his hands sliding over her tight white uniform and moving south. I had feelings of jealousy, envy, and betrayal all at once and learned a life lesson. Regardless of marriage, commitment, and any sense of social or religious morality and values, nothing transcends raw sexual desire.

Ken Burns, Country Music, and Sex

For a genre originally sold to the public on the bedrock of religion and family values, country music stars have not escaped the same lifestyle of hedonism and decadence we’ve come to associate with rock and roll in the 1950s through present day. Some examples of the latter that come to mind are Jerry Lee Lewis’s 13-year-old wife and cousin, Keith Richards’ notorious drug and alcohol use, partying upstairs at Studio 54, and the film archives of R. Kelly. So if we’re gonna tell the story of three chords and the truth, shouldn’t we be at least a little truthful?

What is lacking in Burns’ documentary or most books I’ve read over the years is the darker side of country life, with its hidden secrets and contradictions. Nashville is not unlike Hollywood with its casting couches and “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” culture that, as we’ve discovered in the past few years, are far worse than imagined. Do you think that there weren’t or aren’t Harvey Weinstein/ #metoo equivalents in country music? Please … just start with Spade Cooley and go from there.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Burns will do a fine job elevating and bringing attention to a new generation of the great music of our American musical heritage. That he weaves into the story the presence and influence of African American musicians is a big step forward from past storytellers. His description of Hank Williams’ early death due to drugs and alcohol is rightly unromanticized. He also shares with great detail the adulterous realities and accusations of many of the early musicians and doesn’t shy away from the attraction and union of Johnny Cash and June Carter, who were each married to others. But none of these stories are new, nor do they shine a light on the seedier side of 16th Avenue.

This notion that “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll” is simply about one particular career choice is laughable. You can substitute an auto plant assembly line, real estate office, your local police department, any athletic entity from youth sports to the pros, the college campus or whatever else you can think of. For me, it was the goings-on at the orthodontist that come to mind.

Maybe Ken Burns will cover that topic next.

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

All Roads Do Not Lead to Nashville

Creative Commons

I’ve never attended AmericanaFest down in Nashville. If you’re curious to know why, there’s a multitude of reasons: Buddy and Julie have never offered me their guest room and it costs too much to stay at a hotel. You’ve got to pay dues and register with an organization that’ll likely spam you for the rest of your life just like the Unitarian congregation I joined seven years ago does. The lines are too way long at the Pancake Pantry and I’m gluten-free. I can’t stand the smell of smoke, have quit drinking and hate to fly on commercial airlines because of a severe peanut allergy.

But 2019 was different. On a whim at the last possible moment, I had a change of heart. There was no time to submit a vacation request at work so I called my boss and explained I was taking an unexpected spiritual trip to my homeland. Our company is quite progressive, with a mission statement of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion, so I was not challenged by my request but simply blessed with a Tibetan prayer.

I threw some clothes into my duffel and chose to bring the vintage Martin with the medium gauge strings just in case somebody needed a guitarist for a last-minute showcase or jam. From what I’ve heard, all thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville have been booked far in advance, so one never knows and it’s best to be prepared. I plugged the cell phone into the dash on my car, opened up the Waze app, and told the lady to get me to Nashville by the fastest route.

Leaving New York City by dawn’s early light, I absorbed myself in listening to No Depression‘s roots music playlist while occasionally munching on raw nuts and drinking kombucha tea. I didn’t need to stop once, and in about six hours I pulled into Nashville. Boy … that seemed so damn fast. Not spotting any Waffle Houses or long-haired hipsters carrying banjos, I tapped the map and discovered I was just east of Niagara Falls in Nashville, New York.

I found a small group of friendly people walking together and fell in behind them. In a few minutes, we entered the home of Pastor Fred Holdridge and his wife, Joanne. They graciously were hosting the 49th reunion for past and present Nashville residents, and after we shared a hearty laugh on my GPS error, I was asked to join the party. Everyone had brought a dish to the potluck, and I had a bag of baby carrots in my pocket to contribute so I didn’t feel out of place. Meat and rolls were provided by the hosts.

As the sun dipped down I was back in the car and heading south. I knew this was the right direction and I wasn’t fooled when I saw the road signs for Nashville, Pennsylvania, as I hopped onto the turnpike. By morning I felt my stomach rumble as I parked in front of the Buckeye Deli and Grocery. Knew I was in the right place when I saw a flyer near the for the Mohican Bluegrass Festival later in the week. Hell yeah — AmericanaFest, we have arrived.

I guess Buckeye should have been the tipoff: This was Nashville, Ohio. Damn. I begged Waze to please get me to the real Nashville and not the ones in Wisconsin, Michigan, Vermont, Missouri, Oregon, or Nevada.

By lunchtime I stopped for a quick bite at a food truck parked near the Maquoketa Municipal Airport, just east of Nashville, Iowa. I didn’t even bother to stop in town for a second. Fool me once, as they say. Knowing I was getting close to AmericanaFest, I kept driving. Since it would be late when I would arrive, I called ahead to book a room at the lovely Cornerstone Inn. The website advertised it as just a “few steps from Nashville’s treasured shopping and dining experiences, art galleries, and entertainment.”

It was dark when I got into town and drove past a restaurant named in honor of Neil Young: Harvest Moon Pizzeria. It finally felt las if I had arrived in Music City. Couldn’t wait to throw my stuff in the room and see some of these showcases I’ve always heard about. Over three hundred artists would be playing this year! When the hotel desk clerk told me that I had missed the weekly Monday Line Dance and mentioned that the Little Nashville Opry burned down ten years ago, I felt a little queasy.

I’m back home now. I decided to stay at the Cornerstone Inn for a few days and explore the sights around Nashville, Indiana. Turns out it is home to the Brown County Art Colony, and the town is quite the tourist magnet. There is a nice park to hike around, lots of galleries and antique shops, wineries, and restaurants. Not quite the fest I was hoping for, but as Americana as one might imagine.

Next year I plan on visiting Nashville in North Carolina, Kansas, Arkansas, and Georgia. I also heard there might be a town by that name in Tennessee.

Just to be clear, this is a work of fiction. Not the song, but the column.

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

That Warren Zevon Song

Photo by Easy Ed

After getting the call about my uncle’s death, I took a moment to cry a little and instinctively went through my music library looking for a song. The one that Warren Zevon wrote.

Early in the morning my sister and I drove south for about 90 minutes, picking up I-95 in New Jersey and eventually turning west. We pulled off the freeway and onto the surface streets of the Philadelphia neighborhood once touted as the Greater Northeast by the builders and realtors. Tract housing and endless shopping centers, built in the late ’50s into the early ’60s and sold mostly to first-born Americans. Fifty years later and the area is an example of urban zoning that went off the rails, with more dollar stores, used car lots, and fast food chains than one can imagine. For the most part the homes have fared pretty well as new families have moved in and the old ones either moved out or died off. Mom sold our house a couple of years after dad died in 1988, and then she moved up to New York and waited 29 years to join him.

We slowly rolled past the old house and took a good look, talked a bit about some of the neighbors, and shared a few memories. In 10 minutes we pulled into the old Jewish cemetery with thousands of headstones that stretch endlessly across the gently rolling acreage. It spans generations, with many born in the 1800s and others who’ve died within the past few days. Outside of a few laborers speaking Spanish in the distance, it was quiet and still. Many of our relatives are found in the small square plot of land that has two columns at the top of the path and a sign that announces it belongs to The Love Brothers. We have surmised that it was some sort of fraternal organization back in the ’20s that pooled its money to buy the space that accommodates maybe two hundred souls, give or take.

After unspeaking our silent greetings to the folks, we strolled the rows and visited our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. There are no flowers or decorations in this cemetery, though we’ve paid for what they call perpetual care, but I think all that means is they put the memorial stones back in position and pick up the beer bottles and condoms after kids and vandals come to visit at night.

This was an unscheduled visit. Our mother’s brother died the day before at his home in Princeton, just two weeks until he would have turned 91, and we were going to take one last look at him before his cremation. We chose to couple that mission with this one, as it’s a trip that we don’t often take. The memories and love for our family resides in our hearts and minds, not in the stones chiseled with their names and dates of arrival and departure. At least that how it works for me.

Two hours later we met our cousins at the funeral home and my uncle was laying on a gurney, covered with a blanket. Since he would be cremated within the hour, there was no need for a fancy casket or the wax and cosmetics that are used at most viewings. He was a generous man with a big heart, and a very funny man as well. More bawdy jokes have passed through his lips to my ears than from anyone else I’ve ever known. He’s the last of a generation, the ones who bought into and lived the American Dream. School, military, job, families, houses, vacations, retirement. Shit … those days are fading for most of us.

One of my cousins read the obituary aloud to the dozen of us in the small room, and then we just casually talked about him and my aunt. In a few days some of us from New York will go back down to witness the burying of the ashes and have lunch with the cousins, and that’ll be it. After getting the call about his death, I took a moment to cry a little and instinctively went through my music library looking for a song. This is it, and if anybody wants to play it for me when I pass, I’d be much obliged.

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

American and Roots Music Videos: RPM 8

Pixabay License

An occasional series of Americana and roots music videos. Sharing new discoveries, and revisiting old friends.

Next February will mark the 15th anniversary of YouTube, though it seems as if it’s been around forever. Owned and operated by Google, it is second only to its parent company’s search site as the most visited on the web. The statistics are staggering, and while I’m much more interested in the incredible access to music and its impact to modern culture than reciting a bunch of numbers about YouTube, there are a few that deserve to be shared. While there appears to be no single source of information about the company, sites such as Techjury, BiographOn, BrandWatch, and Wikipediaaggregate from many data sources in an attempt to give us the freshest information. I scanned all of the above in order to share just a few facts and figures with y’all.

Almost 5 billion videos are watched every day, although 20% are usually abandoned in the first ten seconds. Four hundred new videos are uploaded every minute. Last year 95% of the most watched clips were music videos, and the all-time champion clip that sweeps all categories is the song “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi, featuring Daddy Yankee, with over 6.6 billion views as of August 2019. Don’t be too concerned if you’ve never heard of it before (neither had I), because we Americana and roots music fans are simply a demographical blip. And while all age groups regularly visit the site, those between the ages of 18-44 dominate the audience. Finally, the gender gap has leveled out over the years, with an almost 50-50 split now, which might explain the popularity of topics such as makeup and video games.

For those of you who have been reading my columns through the years here at No Depression or follow my Americana and Roots Music Daily page on Facebook, you know that I use YouTube to hunt down and share music videos on a regular basis. It’s also become a regular Broadside feature to post my favorite new music videos each season, but this summer I’m feeling challenged to do so. In all candor, there just haven’t been many new albums that have knocked me over in the past few months. That said, I’ve decided to share a few recent discoveries that might be best described as old, new, borrowed, and blue. Happy listening.

John Prine and Poor Little Pluto

Just days after announcing the cancellation of summer tour dates due to dealing with some health issues, Prine released a new video from Tiago Majuelos, produced by the Spanish animation production company Bliss. As of this writing, the tour dates scheduled to begin in September are still on.

That Other Americana-Outlaw ‘Supergroup’

There is much press, publicity, hype, and anticipation for the upcoming release from The Highwomen — Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby. They’ve put out a video, played at Newport Folk Festival, covered Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show and are being hailed as the all-female update of The Highwaymen, the supergroup launched in 1985 by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. I’ve listened to four of the songs that they’ve released so far, and my ears must be broken because it’s not working for me. Sorry.

On the other hand, I recently came across this performance that was filmed at the Country Music Hall of Fame back in 2017. Featuring Jason Isbell, the above-mentioned Shires, Gillian Welch, and Dave Rawlings, it strikes me as the perfect union of both the not-that-old and new guard of the genre. If these four ever joined forces on an extended project they would most definitely and organically take the title of “supergroup.”

The Great Lonnie Johnson in Germany

Filmed in a Baden-Baden, Germany, studio with sets designed to reflect the realities of the urban blues, this clip is from the early ’60s, as it appears on the first of three volumes from the DVD set titled American Folk-Blues Festival. I believe that’s Sonny Boy Williamson doing the intro, and the band features Otis Spann paying piano, Willie Dixon on bass, and Fred Below on drums.

Lonnie Johnson was born in New Orleans in 1899 and as a child he studied piano, violin, and guitar. In the early 1920s he recorded for Okeh Records and has been acknowledged as a pioneer of the single-string guitar solo style. He recorded and performed through the late ’50s, and for a time he worked in a steel factory and as a janitor until being “rediscovered.” He toured throughout the ’60s and passed in 1970. Most of his recordings were done with an acoustic guitar, which is why I treasure this clip so much.

The Doctor Makes a House Call

I was searching for a Dr. John performance that wasn’t simply him playing the same three songs that he’s most famous for and came across this gem. I believe it’s from the TV show Sunday Night, later changed to Night Music.Jools Holland hosted the first season in 1988, and then David Sanborn took over. The show featured an eclectic list of musicians from across many genres, and you can still find some of the performances posted on YouTube. This is simply the best.

Has Mexico Sent Us the Check Yet for the Wall? LOL.

Tom Russell put a song out back in 2007 that could have been written yesterday: “Who’s Gonna Build Your Wall?” Russell, who lives in the El Paso-Juarez area, explained to NPR: “The danger in the song was thinking I was taking a cheap shot at the government, which isn’t where I’m at. I want to be honest about it — I don’t have any politics one way or another. That just doesn’t interest me. I turn my gun barrels on the people I dislike, which are white developers who have used these people and then are the first to jump on the bandwagon and say, ‘Yeah, we gotta get rid of them now.’”

And One More for the Road

This video has probably received more views, likes, and comments on my Facebook page than any other. I had no idea how beloved and respected Junior Brown is in the roots music community since he’s never really had a huge album throughout his career despite releasing 12 great ones. The 67-year-old musician who plays a double-neck guitar he invented is one of the best performers I’ve ever seen, and his shows are high-energy affairs that show off both his virtuoso playing and songs with whimsical lyrics. This one is from his 1998 appearance on Austin City Limits.

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

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard nd Facebook as he Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com