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

New Release Spotlight

This week Steve Earle releases his tribute to mentor Guy Clark and Rolling Stone Country has published an interview. (Photo by Tom Bejgrowicz) Heres the intro but click this link to get to the full story:

Earle has been closely linked to Clark since 1974, when they first crossed paths in Nashville. The following year, he contributed backing vocals to Clark’s debut masterpiece Old No. 1 — singing on “Desperados Waiting for a Train” with Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris and Sammi Smith — and joined his touring band as a bass player. When Earle recorded his first-ever demo to shop around Nashville, he did so in the kitchen of Clark’s modest home in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, where Guy’s wife Susanna was busy frying bacon.

And here’s a video of three songs and an interview that he did at Paste Studio  this week.

The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore

Sad news that Scott Walker has passed on. An American-born 60’s hitmaker who found much greater fame and respect in Britain through the decades, he’s remembered in this article from Amanda Petrusich for the New Yorker. Titled “The Weird and Vast and Periodically Devastating Music of Scott Walker”, I’ll start you off but do click this link to read it in full:

There are a handful of niche artists whom I love to play for friends who have never heard them before. Music critics are infamous for these sorts of overbearing displays—smugly dropping a needle to a record and then staring, expectantly. It’s awful! Yet the first time that a person hears the singer Scott Walker—who died on Friday, in London, at the age of seventy-six—a palpable transformation occurs, and it’s extraordinary to witness.

Praise The Lord…Here Comes Julie and Buddy Miller Again

NPR broke the news that there’s a new album and within the article they share two new songs. Here’s an excerpt but y’all need to click this link to get all the news and hear the tunes:

The public absence of the Miller’s singular, beloved dynamic — she the mischievous empath, he the soulful stoic — has been felt acutely, but their influence on multiple generations of artists in the Americana scene remains profound; it’s evident in never-ending new interpretations of songs from their catalog; in vocal harmonizing that generates warmly affectionate friction rather than a seamless blend; in repertoires that make room for rawboned strains of Appalachian folk and honky-tonk, unguarded, diaristic singer-songwriter confession and the lurching, rhythmic looseness of early R&B and rock and roll.

And just in case you’ve forgotten…

Do You Know What This Is?

It’s the Keaton Music Typewriter, patented in 1936, later updated in 1953 and marketed for under $300. If you’d like to learn more, click this link.

From Tejano To Polkas: Americana Lost and Found

Note: Shameless self-promotion. This is an article I wrote and published a while back for No Depression, and it’s right here on my site now should you care to read it. 

Back in the fifties when I was just a little squirt, most Saturday nights were spent at my grandparents’ house, where we ate boiled chicken, played endless card games, and watched television on a small Dumont black and white. It was always the same routine: Lawrence Welk, Jackie Gleason, Gunsmoke, a bowl of cherry Jell-O and then off to bed. Not sure how my older sister escaped these tortuous nights, but while she was out at sock hops dancing with her friends and cruising the parking lot at Bob’s Big Boy on the boulevard, part of my musical DNA was being formed by the sound of Myron Floren’s accordion playing, an Amercan-ized, white-bread version of polka music.

The Story of Bonnie Guitar

Paul Sexton has written an excellent article on the late Bonnie Guitar for uDiscoverMusic and I suggest you go read it here. I’ll kick you off with this:

The woman born Bonnie Buckingham in Seattle on 25 March 1923 is remarkable not only for a recording career that took her into the Billboard pop top ten in 1957 with ‘Dark Moon’ but then into the country top ten on three occasions; then for a parallel executive career in which she co-founded the Dolton label, who made national and international stars of vocal trio the Fleetwoods and instrumental group the Ventures. What’s more, Bonnie was still occasionally playing live into her 90s (as you’ll see from the video at the bottom of the story), before her passing at the age of 95 on 12 January 2019.

The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily

You probably found this article on my Facebook page with the above name, but if not…please come over and follow me. Throughout each day I try and find interesting articles to post and at the close it’s always a video clip. This was one of the most popular over the last few weeks. Enjoy, and maybe I’ll try and keep this format going.

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.