Tag Archives: COVID-19

Help! There’s An Elephant In My Music Room!

Illustration/ Pixabay License

I’m not sure where it’s hiding at the moment, but there’s an elephant in the room where I do most of my writing, as well as the day job, snacking, sleeping, music making and listening. Please note that I purposely avoided using any gender pronouns, as we’ve not yet had that conversation.

There are three guitars each tuned differently resting on their stands, a dulcimer, banjo, five harps in various keys, lots of capos, and a couple of high-priced speakers that I stream my music through. I’m using a MacBook Pro 13-inch at the moment, which sits next to an iMac 27-inch desktop, and somewhere on the floor is an iPad on which I might one day record one of the greatest albums of music ever written. Or not. Got an iPhone sitting on a wireless charger, about a dozen books are scattered about, almost every issue of the original No Depression magazine (from when it was published by Peter, Grant and Kyla) which are neatly stacked in a wooden crate on the floor, and I’m staring at a large brown plastic bottle of Xanax.

When you write a music column each week it really helps to be passionate about your subject matter, or at the very least appear mildly curious to your readers. But since the Great New York Lockdown of 2020 began on March 12, I am struggling month after month with the elephant in the room to remain focused on music. And while I’m averaging 10 hours a day of listening, and exploring a wide range of new, old, lost, and found songs, my random crazy thoughts are beginning to take over. I don’t know if this will make it into the column on not, but maybe if I make a list of some of the stuff in my head it’ll be helpful, like therapy. As it’ll be totally random, don’t try to put too much thought into it.

For the past six weeks I’ve been working with my attorneys on my will, and writing letters to my kids about how much I love them and what they will need to do when I pass. I have converted the small amount of stock I own into cash just in case the banks fail, and I’m attempting to learn at least one Hawaiian slack-key song in taro patch tuning from beginning to end. I also watch quite a lot of Scandinavian crime dramas and wonder if there will be enough time left to view at least four or five Frederick Wiseman documentaries. Each one usually runs three to four hours. Doing stuff like that is good and keeps you busy, right?

If one day in the future somebody finds this article in some digital trashcan, please make note that this was written during the week when the total number of Americans who died from COVID-19 passed 150,000, and it was absolutely and totally avoidable. Our country went to hell in a handbasket when millions of y’all thought it made perfect sense to put a psychopath with a personality disorder and learning disability in charge of making decisions on your behalf. Reap what ye sow.

It seems to me that many professional musicians and other performers, including athletes, will need to find new jobs and learn new skillsets. Especially if you’re older, I doubt you’ll soon be able to safely go back to playing in front of an audience. How’s that Cayamo cruise sound to you right about now if you’re over 65, with a touch of emphysema from smoking too much weed and tobacco back in the day? I’m not making light of it, as it’s a tragic situation we find ourselves in, and I know so many people who earn a living playing, presenting, marketing, selling, and recording. Thinking of their pain and anguish is consuming. And hell, it ain’t just the arts, it’s our entire civilization.

Maybe this isn’t quite a top five problem, but a lot of people I talk to complain about not getting enough sleep and exercise. And if they have kids, they’re worrying that sending them back to school may not be a smart idea. Then there’s this mask vs. no mask tug-of-war between the sane folks and the crazy-as-a-loon Republicans and Libertarians who see absolutely no harm to society by strapping on a hand gun and slinging a semi-automatic rifle on their backs when they need to run down to Walmart and pick up some of that hydroxychloroquine. You people actually believe a guy whose top medical expert is a woman who has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches? She also has said that the government is run in part not by humans, but by “reptilians” and other aliens, according to The Daily Beast. She might be right about that last part. This should clear up any questions about why I keep on hand the previously mentioned large brown bottle of Xanax.

On March 8 of this year, I took my last train and subway ride into Manhattan to see Coal Country. A play by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, with original music written and performed by Steve Earle, it’s the story of the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia that killed 29 men and tore a hole in the lives of countless others. It’s probably one of the finest and moving theater performances I’ve seen, and within a few days it closed up and Earle and his youngest son left town for his house in Nashville. I didn’t know until this week that this project took four years to write, produce, and get onstage. And unless something happens, fewer than 1,500 people in the whole world will have had the chance to hear and see And that is a tragedy about a play about a tragedy.

I think this is a good place to stop. You probably have got the gist of it, that my mind is running around in circles and I need to take a vacation. I’m too late for heading to Florida’s beaches, I suppose, and I hear they are cracking down on boat parties on the Lake of the Ozarks. I really can’t fly anywhere, and buses, taxis, Uber, subways, and trains are all out of the question. Checked on some nice local bed and breakfasts up in the Catskills, but I can’t find any that will let me bring my elephant.

So I’ve decided that I’m just going to chill a bit for the rest of this long hot summer, until I get this pachyderm out of here. In closing, I’d like to leave you with a couple of musical thoughts, tips, and tricks. Ready?

I love Taylor Swift’s new album, recommend you check out what Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams are doing on their Facebook page, I want you to listen to the latest album by Tessy Lou Williams (no relation to Teresa) and agree with me that it’s the best country album of the year, make sure you are registered to vote and request an absentee ballot, skip getting tear gassed by the leader’s secret army, and please consider a donation to the Equal Justice Initiative. Stay safe!

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

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here and 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.

Musical Possibilities and Innovations

Used With Pixabay License

Y’all remember the Black Death? It was also known as the Plague and the Pestilence, and that particular pandemic peaked between 1347 and 1352, killing anywhere between 75 million and 200 million people. Not having the scientific tools that we have today, there were no means for coming up with an accurate number of those who caught it and passed away, but the US Census Bureau maintains an historical estimate of the world population over the centuries based on various sources, and in that time period, which also includes the Great Famine, it appears that the population dipped from 475 million to 350 million people in just one hundred years.

As pandemics go — and please don’t take this the wrong way or consider me insensitive — our COVID-19 is a cakewalk compared to what those poor souls went through. Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio wrote, “At the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits … waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils.” According to The History Channel, “Blood and pus seeped out of these strange swellings, which were followed by a host of other unpleasant symptoms — fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains — and then, in short order, death.” As neither Clorox injections nor tanning beds had yet to be invented then, physicians used bloodletting, boil-lancing, superstitious practices such as burning aromatic herbs, and bathing in rosewater or vinegar to treat their patients.

That lovely piece was written by the French poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut, who went into isolation during the plague and began experimenting with new sounds and rhythms.

While clearly affected by what was happening in the world around him, he refused to let the Black Death seep into his work. “Music is a science which asks that one laugh, and sing, and dance. It does not care for melancholy, nor for the man who is melancholy.” I read that quote in an article from The Guardian, which speaks of music surviving for 2,700 years through all sorts of catastrophic events. Dr. Chris Macklin, a former professor of musicology at Mercer University and an authority on plague music — yes there is such a term — has written “Music was not a luxury in times of epidemic uncertainty — it was a necessity.”

As we fast forward to 2020, an entire community of musicians and those who support them must feel as if they are in free fall. As social media is bursting at the seams with home-based concerts and larger platform streaming, and with new music continuing to be released with no option to tour, sell, and earn a return on investment, let alone a profit to pay for basic needs, it’s no wonder we see daily headlines of doom and gloom. But is there something on the other side, something that when we do come out of this is even better than what we had before?

English singer-songwriter Laura Marling’s latest album, Song for Our Daughter, had been scheduled for release next August. Changing course and with only a week’s notice, she decided to release it immediately. “In light of the change to all our circumstances, I saw no reason to hold back on something that, at the very least, might entertain, and at its best, provide some sense of union. … An album, stripped of everything that modernity and ownership does to it, is essentially a piece of me, and I’d like for you to have it.”

During her time in isolation, Marling has been very active on her social media account. Not only does she perform songs from home, but her guitar lessons are exceptional. As someone who has been playing for many decades, I am surprised that I never explored DADDAD tuning, and it’s allowed me to pass hours lost in my own creativity. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, Marling announced the first major geo-blocked concert of this year and sold it out within days. Ticket holders will watch the show via YouTube, using a private link they’re receive just before showtime. According to a Variety writeup, a small number of staff and crew will help produce the show. Out of despair, comes opportunity.

For more thoughts on that, look no further than right here at No Depression, with musician and The Long Haul columnist Rachel Baiman’s latest piece, titled “Stepping Back, Taking Stock.” I think it’s a must read for any touring musician who may be pondering a path forward. Her words really struck me, and I shall leave you by sharing her final paragraph.

“I heard once that an interruption of routine is the best path to innovation, and never have I felt that to be the case more than now. Touring being canceled for the foreseeable future may just be the tipping point we musicians need when it comes to realizing how much we’ve been cheating ourselves financially this past decade. I still love live performance above all, and I will be thrilled when I can hit the road again. But I’m going to make sure I do it on my terms this time — when and how I want to, and in a safe and sane way.”

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

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, herealeasyed.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.

Larkin Poe and Other Online Finds (But Mostly Larkin Poe)

Photo from Larkin Poe Instagram

Sometime during my first week of our pandemic lockdown I was mindlessly surfing through Facebook, as one does, when I came across two women playing and singing in a casual setting with minimal production value but pretty good audio quality. Larkin Poe. Name sounded familiar, but I don’t think I’d ever heard them play before. They were doing this cover version of a ZZ Top song that I’ve never really liked, so I moved on. Thirty seconds later I went back to watch them finish it. And then I watched it again.

Since March 12, I have listened to what seems like several thousand hours of music; watched Scandinavian television shows; sampled films from South Korea; did the Tiger King boogie in one sitting; started, stopped, and started again to binge Ozark; read three different books simultaneously; and have tried hard to play guitar at least an hour a day. I’ve risked my life for a dozen bagels and a bag of Oreos. Stood in line for over an hour to buy a dozen bottles of sparkling water and a carton of almond milk that did not feature the faces of any missing children on the side. Once, I repeatedly refreshed the Costco app on my iPhone over a 36-hour period without any sleep until it finally allowed me order a case of Bounty paper towels, which I patiently waited four weeks to receive. I’ve bought two black handmade face masks from a woman in Latvia named Veronika who posted them on Etsy, and she has sworn to me that they were sent to me over a month ago. And I believe her.

Have you ever heard of a band called Severe Tire Damage? Me neither. On June 24, 1993, they were the first band to perform live on the internet, beating out The Rolling Stones by a year. In 1995, RealNetworks streamed the first baseball game: the New York Yankees versus the Seattle Mariners. And in 1998 Dale Ficken and Lorrie Scarangella stood in a Pennsylvania church as the Rev. Jerry Falwell sat in his office in Lynchburg, Virginia, and officiated their wedding over the web. It wasn’t until 10 years later that YouTube hosted its first livestream and opened up a new media format for live music, sporting events, original programming, gaming, pornography, and things we’ve never imagined and are still evolving.

Two months after watching that first Larkin Poe livestream, which has since been viewed over one million times on Facebook, I am still enchanted by this sister duo. I’ve watched Megan Lovell play a duet with her musician husband, and watched her DIY slide guitar lessons. I have seen Rebecca Lovell’s kitchen and grabbed my guitar while she taught us a blues riff from one of their new songs. I’ve heard them cover Black Sabbath and sing a Bill Withers song when he passed, and they’ve talked about their new album, Self Made Man, that comes out June 12 and the worldwide tour that was planned and is obviously in pause mode.

It was only when I followed the trail to Larkin Poe’s Wikipedia page that I realized I had once known them as The Lovell Sisters, an acoustic roots band from Georgia that included their older sister Jessica, who performed together from 2005 through late 2009. I’d heard them on Prairie Home Companion and there’s a hard drive in my apartment that I’m pretty sure contains their two albums. As teenagers they were road warriors, touring in a minivan and playing up to 200 dates a year. When Jessica left the band, the other two formed Larkin Poe in 2010 and their music has since evolved into a hard-charging Southern blues, rock, and roots orientation.

Rebecca and Megan released several projects on their own and played as backing musicians on a number of tours with Elvis Costello, Conor Oberst, Keith Urban, Kristian Bush of Sugarland, and others. They were tapped by T Bone Burnett as players in the band for Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes in 2014 and made their debut at the Glastonbury Festival that summer. Their fourth album, Venom & Faith, reached number one on the Billboard Blues Chart in November 2018 and received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album.

Each of the Larkin Poe videos above were originally streamed on Facebook and Instagram during the lockdown. Both sisters are social media savvy, and for years have built a loyal following around the world by letting their individual personalities shine through the screen and interacting in a very natural way. They have certainly brightened my two months at home, and it feels like I’ve made two new friends who have broken the fourth wall.

Now living in Nashville, the sisters say this is the longest period in 15 years that they have not been on the road. And it comes at a particularly important time in their career, with Self Made Man scheduled for release next month. If you head over to their website, you’ll find links to the weekly livestream concerts they’ll be doing in May and June, along with tour dates – fingers crossed – that follow.

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

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.

Music Without A Trace

Photo by Carol Highsmith/Library of Congress

The old Trace movie theater, refurbished (at least inside) into the Westside Theatre nightclub and meeting place in Port Gibson, Mississippi. The Trace burned twice, in 1948 and 1968 — the latter blaze putting it out of business for good. Abandoned theaters and concert halls, clubs left empty. The photo evoked thoughts of the future in the aftermath of the pandemic of 2020.

It’s week number whatever here in New York and the social isolation experiment seems to be working. They say that thanks to our efforts, we’re flattening the curve. Unfortunately, the death count in this state sadly keeps hovering between seven or eight hundred poor souls each day, so I highly doubt that any friends or family of the departed are experiencing jubilation over this particular flattening episode. People are usually unable to say goodbye to their loved ones, but instead can see a daily video feed of the refrigeration trucks parked outside of hospitals holding the corpses or the mass burials on Hart’s Island.

I’m reminded of a recent Facebook post from a friend of mine that read:

January 1: It’s going to be a great year!!!
March 15: I wiped my butt this morning with a coffee filter.

Despite the spin from a certain somebody who is hawking an unproven COVID-19 miracle drug on his daily infomercial/campaign rally with the slogan of “What have you got to lose?” and receives his consultation from the guys who run wrestling and mixed martial arts extravaganzas, things aren’t looking too good. While some say we’re just days away from reopening the country for business, many government and public health officials are whistling a different tune. For example, this past week both the mayor of Los Angeles and the governor of California have indicated that mass gatherings, such as sporting events and music concerts, are likely not to start up again for at least a year. Let that sink in.

This past month has been a bonanza for livestream and online concerts, with most having no entry cost and a few that offer a virtual tip jar to leave a donation for the performers. I don’t know how that’s working out, but it’s likely not paying anyone’s bills. New albums, which are introduced along with plans for press, publicity, and tour dates, are still being released minus the exposure, support, and revenue. And we still haven’t figured out how the creative participants of the music industry can or will survive the streaming model, let alone with live performance opportunities now taken away.

I keep an eye on Chris Griffy’s biweekly ND column Crowdfunding Radar, and many of the recent projects he’s featured have been hitting their rather modest targets in a pre-COVID-19 world. But the question remains if it’s sustainable, and perhaps more important will be the public’s ability or appetite to commit to a monthly donation through a platform like Patreon. Given that we are on the edge of a full-blown depression, I must admit that I am not hopeful of this model.

Every few weeks I enjoy going to The Strand, one of the oldest and largest indie booksellers in the country. It’s three floors of incredible inventory and selection, and the last time I was there it was just a week before it closed down. It was oddly empty; the city’s fear was just beginning to take hold. The store, on the edge of Union Square and the NYU campus, is always bustling with people and now it stands shuttered. I wonder about its future in the same way that I think of record stores. These are tactile environments where we all touch, hold, and check out the product. I don’t think disinfectant wipes will work well on paper or cardboard.

Guess it might be a good time to offer my apology for wasting your time with all this doom and gloom. As is often the case when writing a weekly column, I try hard to seek out a topic of interest that may help expose new musical avenues for y’all to explore. That was my goal when I sat down and flipped open the Mac, but I’ve lost both my will and the way forward.

So here’s what I’m going to do. No Depression is a nonprofit entity and for my services, or lack thereof, I receive a small salary. (I’m reminded that ND’s co-founder Peter Blackstock once said that I was lucky to even be making a cent. Non-working music writers can be found for nearly a dime a dozen.) Anyway, when I get my check this month I’m going to drop it all into a few of those virtual tip jars, or perhaps support a project or two. It’s just a tiny drop in a big bucket, but I don’t know what else to do. I guess I’m helplessly hoping for better days ahead.

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

In The Days Before His Passing

Official Press Photo from johnprine.com

John Prine passed on April 7, 2020. He died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee of complications from the COVID-19 coronavirus. He is survived by his wife, Fiona, two sons Jack and Tommy, his stepson Jody and three grandchildren. I never felt the need to write an obituary or put my thoughts down, as it would have been redundant. I can’t think of many people who were so universally loved and cherished as John, and we each felt his loss in our own way, with our own memories. I wrote this five days before he left us, and it stands as my tribute to the man.

Perhaps if my kids were a few years younger they might be asking their old man if he’s ever seen anything like this in his lifetime. The daily death count; world shutdown; deserted streets in Manhattan, Paris, and Rome; refrigerated trucks parked outside hospitals; panic buying of toilet paper; the complete failure and incompetency of the American government; and all that other crazy stuff we’ve been experiencing. “Nope,” I would reply, “this is all new to me.” All I have is a vivid memory of standing in line with hundreds of other kids to receive the polio vaccine on top of a sugar cube back in the ’50s, but maybe it was just an injection and I’m mixing things up with a different decade.

Today we are grateful to all the people who are still working each day to deliver us pizza; fill our prescriptions; sell necessities such as food, liquor, cigarettes, and guns; keep us alive; telecommute so the economic wheels don’t fall off; teach the kids; and whatever needs to be done. For many of us, we’re sitting home and looking for stuff to keep us busy. Knock out that to-do list, read a book, find a movie, binge watch Tiger King, stare and share at social media, organize the sock drawer, and if you get totally bonkers you can take a solitary walk outside with your hands in gloves and face covered up. I’m personally switching off using two cowboy-style bandanas, one red and the other blue, so that on any given day I’m either a target for the Crips or the Bloods.

Over the last week a new type of Candy Crush-style mania has taken hold on Facebook that involves challenging people to post what concerts they’ve attended from A to Z. You’d have to be an online hermit to miss this fad, and I personally found it only mildly interesting for about two and a half minutes. It’s boring enough to try and remember my own concert history let alone to get excited that somebody has seen both Queen and X.

Some have taken this challenge to new heights, like the friend who not only listed the musicians alphabetically, but added the venues as well. But after posting it he had second thoughts when he realized it looked so “white.” So he created a second one using only those of color, and failed to complete D, I, N, U, V, X, and Z. He wrote “I’m not terribly proud of what it reveals, and am tempted to come up with a third list limited only to female performers.” Well, he did that too. It was indeed an impressive list, missing only I and Q before he threw in the towel after choosing Lucinda Williams for W.

For my part I’ve been lurking online enjoying those impromptu concerts that so many musicians have been posting. I’ve learned that Larkin Poe do some of the best guitar playing I’ve ever heard, wished that Rufus Wainwright would keep his robe closed a bit more, and never knew that Garth Brooks’ “Thunder Rolls” was originally meant to be recorded by Trisha Yearwood. I’ve also been on the hunt for both new and old music to listen to and sharing it with friends.

Which brings me to John Prine. As I write this on Thursday, April 2, at 7 p.m. — hours past my deadline — I don’t know whether he will live or die. Since his wife, Fiona, shared that he’d been hospitalized with COVID-19 symptoms and was not doing well, social media has brought together his legion of fans and friends. I cannot recall this many people touched by a man and his music in such a tsunami-like outpouring of emotion since perhaps when John Lennon left us. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, I have been revisiting many of his performances and interviews. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, and I am sitting here in both hope and fear. A world without this John will never be the same.