Tag Archives: Easy Ed’s Broadside

The Return of Easy Ed’s Broadside – February 2022

Photo by Easy Ed

A local and respected concert series has been going strong for years, and while they’ve maintained their home base at the local Unitarian congregation which was sadly unused for most of the pandemic, the building was severely damaged this past year in a storm.Now there’s a new home to hear music at a nearby church, albeit with a pandemic-era slimmed down roster of events. I’ve been both a patron and volunteer over the past ten years, and I admit that I much prefer being a paying audience member as opposed to selling at the merch table, seating guests or working the door.

The photo above was obviously taken from the stage a few minutes before a show was about to begin, probably sometime in 2015. Can’t recall who was playing, nor why I hopped onstage to take a snap of the waiting audience, because a photographer I am not. I actually enjoy taking pictures, but I just forget to do it most of the time. But this one has been sitting around in my library for too long not to share, so here it is for better or worse

A few years ago I submitted this image to No Depression to use for my then-weekly Broadside column and my editor rejected it. I think the main issue was that there was a child at the center, but there was a larger question of did I have permission of the other people in the frame to use it. Of course I didn’t, and it was not a huge issue for me to just pick something else. But II’ve always wanted to share it beyond the fleeting Instagram post, so here it is. I’m sorry that almost everyone in that one moment looks sad, but life isn’t all about smiling selfies.

For this concert, a one-off  venue was utilized. It was a once grand old building at the edge of the Hudson River, mostly abandoned and not in very good shape, The electricity and plumbing worked, and I’m sure there was an elevator, but the facilities were rather rough. We were using a room on the second or third floor, with maybe a hundred seats. With raw cement walls and an open ceiling exposing pipes, it seemed better suited for a hardcore show from the 70s or 80s instead of whatever folk or blues musician was headlining that night.

If not mistaken, it was a very successful evening. While I can’t recall who or what was presented, I have a vivid memory of the intermission where coffee and tea were sold, along with these really delicious brownies. There was quite a bit of conversation taking place, as this was a community event, and many people knew each other. It strikes me of something that we once had but has disappeared over the past two years. Small concerts, traveling musicians, a time for people to get out of their homes and into a crowd to interact in whatever way they choose, and an escape for a couple hours of the pressures of life that we endure.

I know that all around the world there are small to mid-size community venues that have brought so much joy to people in showcasing art, films and music, and it’s gotten away from us. The impact shows up in the latest conversations about the inability of earning an income in a digital world which pays a pittance for artistic creation. And for most musicians, they aren’t complaining much because they only got a check for $1.79 from Spotify last month, but that they aren’t able to safely put together a tour from town to town where they can earn money by selling tickets and merchandise. They can’t see the audience’s faces from the stage, or feel the energy. That’s the real loss.

So, that brings me back to the picture. I think it is a pretty good representation of life in early 2022. It feels to me that we are simply waiting, which as the man once sang, “is the hardest part”.

All The News You Already Know, Might Have Missed or Even Forgotten If You’re As Old As Me

American Songwriter reported that Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder have announced their new collaborative album, Get On Board: The Songs of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. The new LP, which is set for release on April 22, is the duo’s first collaboration in more than a half-century.

The two musicians have released a new live video for the song, “Hooray Hooray,” which y’all can watch below. “They were so solid. They meant what they said, they did what they did … here’s two guys, a guitar player, and a harmonica player, and they could make it sound like a whole orchestra,” Mahal said in a statement about his connection with Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. Added Cooder, “It was perfect. What else can you say?”

Don Wilson, the last remaining original member of The Ventures, passed away in January of 88. Along with guitarist/bassist Bob Bogle, they formed the Ventures in 1958 when they were both Seattle-area construction workers moonlighting as musicians; just two years later, their electric guitar-led rendition of Johnny Smith’s “Walk, Don’t Run” rose to Number Two on the Hot 100. A quartet for most of its existence, they helped to popularize the electric guitar in the United States and across the world during the 1960s.

They were among the first to employ and popularize fuzz and flanging guitar effects, concept albums and twelve-string guitars in rock music. Their instrumental virtuosity, innovation, and unique sound influenced many musicians and bands, earning the group the moniker “The Band that Launched a Thousand Bands”. And one could argue that surf music was not a product of Southern California as much as it originated in the Pacific Northwest.

While their popularity in the United States waned in the 1970s, the group remains especially revered in Japan, where a reconstitued band tour regularly to this day. The classic lineup of the band consisted of Wilson on rhythm guitar,  Bogle (initially lead guitar but he switched to bass), Nokie Edwards (initially bass, switched to lead guitar), and drummer Mel Taylor.

From Getty Images/The Ventures, 1960. Don is second from the left.

Singer-guitarist Molly Tuttle has moved to Nonesuch Records, and will be releasing her new album “Crooked Tree” on April 1. No fooling. Rolling Stone reports that “The new album explores Tuttle’s bluegrass roots, which stretch back to her banjo-playing grandfather and music-teacher father.

Helping Tuttle craft those sounds are her new band Golden Highway (Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Dominick Leslie, Shelby Means, and Kyle Tuttle) and an all-star group of guests. In addition to Price, Strings, and Hull, contributors to Crooked Tree include Old Crow Medicine Show, Dan Tyminski, and Gillian Welch, along with co-producer Jerry Douglas.”

Here’s a video of the title track. This woman can shred.

That’s it for this month. Remember, I post multiple times every day at Facebook on The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily page.

And for even more stories, I am constantly updating my e-magazine on Flipboard, Americana and Roots Music Daily

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Return of Easy Ed’s Broadside – January 2022

Sort of. Maybe. Possible. Wishful thinking. We’ll see.

The fact is, to those of you who followed my dozen or so years of writing a weekly column for No Depression’s website, I just burned out about six months deep into the pandemic in 2020 and quit. Recently I saw a quote that summed it up well: there was no more toothpaste left in the tube. I tried to switch over to here, the website, whenever I got the urge to write but as you probably can tell, that hasn’t worked out too well.

Where my efforts have been largely focused are on the The Real Easy Ed American and Roots Music Daily page over on Facebook, now exceeding 3,400 followers in what I had anticipated to be only a few hundred when I began it. I aggregate music news, videos, reviews, history and humor, with occasionally breaking off for a whirlwind of words on topics excluding those mentioned. Call it political or cultural, social or whatever is on my mind, simply for laziness I title these A Daily Broadside. A more apt description might be therapy, or a release of the thoughts and ideas from a troubled mind.

I’d ask how y’all have been, but there’s no place to reply because the comment section here was deactivated long ago when I first started the site. Instead, you can share over on the FB page until your heart’s content, often receiving an acknowledgement or dialog from me or fellow followers. It’s become a nice little community of music fans which needs little water and feeding. The garden is mostly self-tended, although I tend to sometimes toss out any cult members who might offend me with their 45-isms. And emails are welcome as well, but stop asking me to write reviews for your music at No Depression….that’ll get you nowhere.

Here’s A Daily Broadside you may have missed from January 1, 2020:

 

So here’s a bit of family history I’ll share with y’all.

This album on the left was released in 1972, and included actual test sheets that you’d fill out after listening, to see what your score was. It was co-written by my cousin Arnold Maxin, who served as president of MGM Records throughout much of the 60s, and previously did A&R for Okeh in the 50s. His production credits include Screaming Jay Hawkins’ ‘I Put A Spell On You’, about half of everything Connie Francis ever recorded, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

He got the parent company MGM Studios in California to let him prove to them there was a market for soundtracks, and he also turned several films into Broadway shows. He was there signing deals for groups like the Animals, Cowsills and Ultimate Spinach, and was featured in a piece for Billboard that stated Dylan had created a new genre for singer-songwriters that would be the future, and one of his final acts as prez was picking up distribution for a label called Poppy Records in 1966. Soon after he left MGM, Poppy released the first Townes Van Zandt album.

Between then and the release of this first and only album on his own label, I guess he may have been busy doing the research. After that he was involved in a number of projects, both in and out of music. And that’s pretty much the end of the story, as he passed on a few decades ago. On the right he’s with Hank Williams Jr. In defense of Arnold on how MGM milked Hank Sr.’s catalog after his death with endless schlock releases of albums with added strings and duets with Jr., that all came out of the Nashville office which wielded their own power and decisions. Our family legacy remains intact.

Spencer Williams, Jr.was an actor and director who entered the film business at a time when “race movies” were being made alongside the Hollywood versions. Race movies were low-budgeted and mostly aimed at black audiences in segregated movie-houses of the South and where large city black populations lived in the North.

What might make this interesting to American roots music fans is his continual juxtaposition between the gospel of Sunday mornings versus the blues and jazz of Saturday nights in many of his storylines. I got a chance to watch a montage of film scenes last night, and discovered today that many of his films are available on YouTube.

Most film historians consider The Blood of Jesus to be Williams’ crowning achievement as a filmmaker. Dave Kehr of The New York Times called the film “magnificent” and Time magazine counted it among its “25 Most Important Films on Race.” In 1991, The Blood of Jesus became the first race film to be added to the U.S. National Film Registry.

I should also mention that many of his films have also been the subject of criticism. Richard Corliss for Time wrote:

“Aesthetically, much of Williams’ work vacillates between inert and abysmal. The rural comedy of Juke Joint is logy, as if the heat had gotten to the movie; even the musical scenes, featuring North Texas jazzman Red Calhoun, move at the turtle tempo of Hollywood’s favorite black of the period, Stepin Fetchit.” 

He had a long career as an actor, writer, director, and producer in motion pictures before becoming known to general audiences for his role as Andy in the television version of The Amos ‘n Andy Show (1951).

Let’s take a moment or two and talk about albums that were released in 2021. As those who’ve followed me know, I absolutely abhor those ridiculous end of the year lists whether from reader polls, reviewers or hacks like me. There are no arbiters of what one’s treasure versus trash is, and at best all we can do is perhaps share some things we’ve enjoyed and maybe you might want to explore it yourself. Rankings, and words like best and greatest, are an affront to the hard work that all artists put into their work. Same reason I hate negative reviews: if you have nothing good to say, why say it? The only benefit to any list is that there really is too much music being released, and it’s impossible to sort out on one’s own.

So this year on the FB page I gave everybody a chance to list one and only one favorite album, with the rule being no duplicates. So you needed to read ’em before adding your own. Turned out pretty interesting, with about 75 responses.

But then, knowing that there are those who have suffer from OCD and have a desperate need to share their own lists, I created the above. Here’s some – but not all, sorry – responses. Represents a really wide spectrum of taste, and not quite looking like all the other cookie cutter Americana lists out there in the internet ether.

From Matthew Bashioum, who gave me the idea:

1. Mercy – Cole Chaney
2. Blood Sweat and Beers – Rob Leines
3. Vincent Neil Emerson – Vincent Neil Emerson
4. The Ballad of Dood and Juanita – Sturgill Simpson
5. Renewal – Billy Strings
6. Dark Side of the Mountain – Addison Johnson
7. Depreciated – John R. Miller
8. One to Grow On – Mike and the Moonpies
9. Back Down Home – Tony Kamel
10. All of Your Stones – The Steel Woods
11. Music City Joke – Mac Leaphart
12. Blood, Water, Coal – Matt Heckler
13. The Willie Nelson Family – Willie Nelson
14. To the Passage of Time – Jason Eady
15. You Hear Georgia – Blackberry Smoke
16. 29: Written in Stone – Carly Pearce
17. The Marfa Tapes – Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, and Jon Randall
18. Broken Hearst & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine Vol. 2 – Various Artists
19. Big Country – RC & the Ambers
20. The Rain – Dallas Moore
Richard Parkison: 
Buck Meek – Two Saviours
Kiwi Jr -Cooler Returns
Julien Baker – Little Oblivion
Sara Petite – Rare Bird
Valerie June – The Moon And Stars
Rhiannon Giddens/Francesco Turrisi – They’re Calling me Home
Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagano – Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagano
London Grammar – California Soul
Ingham, Lambert, Conell – The Marfa Tapes
St Vincent – Daddy’s Home
Holly MacVe – Not The Girl
Allison Russell – Outside Child
Rising Appalachia – The Lost Art Of being In The Know
GreenTea Peng – Man Made
Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee
Tristen – Aquatic Flowers
Amythyst Kiah -Wary – Strange
Hiss Golden Messenger – Quietly Blowing It
Squirrel Flower – Planet (i)
Maple Glider – To Enjoy Is The Only Thing
Anya Hinkle – Eden and the Borderlands
Mega Bog – Life An Another
Leah Blevins – First Time Feeling
Susanna and David Wallmund – Live
Sierra Ferrell – Long Time Coming
Little Simz – Sometime I Might Be Introvert
Bela Fleck – My Bluegrass Heart
Heartless Bastards – A Beautiful Life
Della Mae – Family Reunion
Felice Brothers – From Dreams To Dust
Billy Strings – Renewal
Adia Lea – One Hand on The Steering Wheel The Other Sewing A Garden
Colleen Green – Cool
Pond – 9
Strand Of Oaks – In Heaven
Jackson & Sellers – Breaking Point
The War On Drugs – I Don’t Live Here Anymore
Weakened Friends – Quitter
Jason Isbell – Georgia Blue
Anders Nystrum:
In These Silent Days – Brandi Carlile
How the Mighty Fall – Charles Wesley Godwin
All of Your Stones – The Steel Woods
You Hear Georgia – Blackberry Smoke
Calico Jim – Pony Bradshaw
The Battle at Garden’s Gate – Greta Van Fleet
Free Country – Ward Hayden & The Outliers
Set in Stone – Travis Tritt
Lance Rogers – Lance Rogers
Bones Owens – Bones Owens
Gar Saeger:
1. David Gray – Skellig
2. Amethyst Kiah – Wary & Strange
3. Hiss Golden Messenger – Quietly Blowing It
4. Lucero – When You Found Me
5. Allison Russell – Outside Child
6. The Wallflowers – Exit Wounds
7. Strand Of Oaks – In Heaven
8. Yola – Stand For Myself
9. Robert Plant & Alison Krause – Raise The Roof
10. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – The Future
Josh Korean wrote: I think I figured out a top ten, but there was a ton of excellent music this year. I’m still finding great stuff that I missed like Mac Leaphart & Margo Cilker this past week.
1. Charlie Parr – Last of the Better Days Ahead
2. Sierra Ferrell – Long Time Coming
3. Amigo the Devil – Born Against
4. The Bridge City Sinners – Unholy Hymns
5. Ryan Curtis – Rust Belt Broken Heart
6. Charley Crockett – Music City USA
7. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – Carnage
8. Taylor McCall – Black Powder Soul
9. Black Country, New Road – For the First Time
10. Sturgill Simpson – The Ballad of Dood & Juanita
Cole Chaney – Mercy
Converge & Chelsea Wolfe – Bloodmoon: I
Jason Eady – To the Passage of Time
The Gallows Dance – Songs for the Godless
Rod Gator – For Louisiana
Charles Wesley Godwin – How the Mighty Fall
JP Harris – Don’t You Marry No Railroad Man
Matt Heckler – Blood, Water, Coal
Joe Johnson – Dark Horse Pale Rider
Ayron Jones – Child of the State
The Joy Formidable – Into the Blue
Ka – A Martyr’s Reward
Jordan Robert Kirk – Western Holler
Adam Lee – The Wilderness Years
Zachary Lucky – Songs for Hard Times
David Olney & Anana Kaye – Whispers and Sighs
Shame – Drunk Tank Pink
Soo Line Loons – Self-Titled
Springtime – Self-Titled (Gareth Liddiard on guitar, Jim White on drums & Chris Abrahams on piano)
Billy Strings – Renewal
Those Poor Bastards – Old Time Suffering
TK & The Holy Know-Nothings – The Incredible Heat Machine
Tylor & The Train Robbers – Non-Typical Find
Viva Le Vox – Where Class Meets Economy
Joshua Ray Walker – See You Next Time

No Depression at 25: A Time to Come, A Time to Go

Photo by Arifur Rahman Tushar via Pixabay

All good things must end, and after a dozen years as a contributor to No Depression, the Journal of Roots Music’s website, I decided to step back from the grind of the weekly deadline. Rather than just fade off into the sunset, I wanted to thank those who have followed me through the years, reminisce a bit, tell you what my plans are and how to keep up with my ramblin’ thoughts and writing. Easy Ed’s Broadside is now right here, at therealeasyed.com.

In the winter of 1993 I traveled from Los Angeles to Tahiti and for the trip I jammed a couple dozen CDs into my backpack along with my Sony Discman. It’s hard to recall everything I was listening to back then, but there are two albums that remain stuck in my memories because I played them over and over: The Breeders’ Last Splash and Uncle Tupelo’s Anodyne. While some might think they were worlds apart in tone and texture, I felt the connection. It was no different from the days when I was making mixtapes; dropping in Al Jolson or Dean Martin tunes along with the Fabulous Baggys, Lefty Frizzell, and Gong. Or listening to the Burritos while lighting up that first joint, and moving on to early Gil Scott-Heron on Flying Dutchman for the second one. Music was always just music. Genres were how you promoted it to radio stations and marketed it with little plastic signs at retail. Rock, jazz, country, folk, blues, soul, oldies, vocals, easy listening, classical, whatever.

A few years later I was at a record store somewhere in America waiting to take the manager out to lunch, and I wandered over to the long magazine rack against the back wall. Moving from left to right I scanned the covers as if they were candy bar wrappers at a movie theater concession stand, and when I got to the section where the music rags were displayed, I picked up No Depression. The tagline under the title wasn’t what longtime readers may recall, because it changed from issue to issue. This one said: “We Could Always Call It The Alternative Country Bimonthly.” The paper they used felt different than other magazines, the graphics reminded me of Crawdaddy, and it kicked off with a column by Grant Alden called “Hello, Stranger” and ended with “Screen Door” by Peter Blackstock. One guy lived in Nashville, the other in Seattle. Kyla Fairchild handled advertising and distribution, and their email address was “nodepress” at America Online.

I was a maniacal reader, going from front to back, back to front, reading every word, studying every ad. And there were lots of those. I’d been working in indie distribution for over 25 years at that point and somehow Kyla discovered labels that nobody ever heard of. Outside of the occasional full- or half-page major record label ad, and Miles of Music, a pre-Amazon mail order record company, there were dozens of quarter-page ads from new acts I’d never heard of, and they were DIY to the max. Since No Depression came out only every other month, each issue was on the table next to my bed for two months and I never got tired of reading the same stories over and over again. It helped to open me up to greater exploration and home in on discovering my passion for American roots music.

Skipping over a dozen years, give or take, technology eventually steamrolled the paradigm and record companies no longer needed, nor could afford, print advertising. If you’re reading this column today, it’s because No Depression stopped the presses, shifted to the internet, made adjustments, changed out people, changed out ownership, and eventually became part of a larger nonprofit organization that has a multiple tentacles, like a baby octopus. And although it’s not even close to being what it started out as, it nevertheless will be celebrating 25 years of survival and growth.

My career in the music industry peaked as vice president of sales at a small indie label and it coincided with the end of No Depression as we had known it. Living in California at the time, I began to actively comment and post stories to the new website. Most were not that good and were completely unedited. Peter had left for Austin, Kyla was paying the bills and scrambling for ads in Seattle, and Grant hung around and tried his hand at writing in a different medium, where people give you instant feedback and draw you into conversations. He wrote some amazing articles back then, before going off and doing full-time chicken farming or something like that, and becoming a bookstore owner in Kentucky.

Easy Ed is a pen name I have been using for 50 years. In high school I started my own alternative monthly printed on a mimeograph machine, and in college I was the senior editor and columnist for the school newspaper as well as a musician in a band that played psychedelic country rock at events including the Communist Workers’ May Day celebration. Throw in the stories I wrote about Nixon, Vietnam, and hints on where to get high on campus, and it all earned me a wiretap on my parents’ phone, surveillance by guys in black suits, and somewhere in Washington today there is probably a microfiche file stored inside a dusty box about a Jewish kid from the white suburbs of Philadelphia who was dangerous only to himself.

Kim Ruehl worked with Kyla to re-form No Depression into a community website that anyone could post stories to. And there were comment sections, from which many online communities were organically created, with threads that were often dozens of pages longer than the stories that started them out. For several years, it was a helluva lot of fun if you were a music freak who was seeking out like-minded people. Almost everybody had been original magazine subscribers in the beginning, and it was an early experiment in social media that was not financially sustainable. Kyla sold it, Kim did the day-to-day, some new folks joined management, people left, people came, the site was redesigned once, and redesigned twice.

I’d like to think that over time my writing got a little better or at least more interesting to read, and eventually I became a featured contributor, an occasional social media moderator, and for the past five or six years a weekly columnist who actually gets paid for what I do. I came up with “Easy Ed’s Broadside,” using the name of a small defunct magazine that printed lyrics from writers and folkies such as Dylan, Ochs, Rush, Paxton, Seeger, Guthrie, Reynolds, and so many others. It was named out of respect to the founders, Sis Cunningham and her husband, Gordon Friessen, and their daughters, who helped them put it together. A joint autobiography, Red Dust and Broadsides, is out of print but you can track it down. If you’re interested in the history of American folk music, protest, and change, it is essential reading.

Several years ago, soon after the website dropped the comments feature, I started up a Facebook page for lost and lonely No Depression folks who still wanted to continue connecting and conversing. I played around with the format, and realized I enjoyed aggregating music stories and features from all over the web and curating music videos. I also created my own website as a companion, along with a Flipboard e-magazine, and it’s all just a non-commercial home for musical beings. It’s simply a hobby, yet a rewarding one I will continue.

And so that brings us up to today.

If you’ve been following me over the years, you know I stand to the left of center. Having to live these past three years under a mentally ill autocrat, racist, womanizer, and pathological liar who is set on destroying American democracy and the rule of law is a bitter pill to swallow every day. Now in the midst of social awakening and a deadly pandemic running through our country with no leadership or resources, no empathy or care, I’ve had enough. And so I’m stepping down from my weekly column to put more of my efforts toward a better tomorrow. I’ve got a vote and a voice, and I need to use them.

It’s become hard to watch musicians and their support systems lose their livelihoods, with no way back at this point. I still plan to stay in that game and help where and when I can, but the weekly grind of creating a palatable word salad that offers nourishment is wearing thin and needs to be put aside. Y’all know where to find me — all of my columns here feature my various points of contact — so please feel free to reach out.

I have loved working for No Depression over the years and congratulate the current team on keeping it alive for a quarter century. Stacy Chandler has been a most outstanding keeper of the website, who has challenged me to reach higher, and kindly has proofed and edited my columns each week. And I thank her for her friendship as well. And also Kim Ruehl, who I credit with encouraging me to do what I do, whatever that is. Finally, I am most grateful to Grant Alden, Peter Blackstock, and Kyla Fairchild for their vision and working long and hard days to publish an amazing magazine, which I keep next to my desk. Thank you all for making my life brighter. No Depression has inspired and supported an incredible musical ecosystem that one day will come roaring back. I can’t wait for live music again!

Peace be with you, over and out.

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

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.