Tag Archives: Jason Isbell

Easy Ed’s Broadside Outtakes #10

Photo by Nathan Copely/Pixabay License

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.

How Many Times Can You Write Isbell In Two Paragraphs?

The 2017 Americana Music Awards‘ nominees announcement ceremony included special performances from the Milk Carton Kids, the Jerry Douglas Band, Caitlin Canty and more — but it also featured one particularly special moment: Jason Isbell and the Drive-By Truckers‘ Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley coming together for an acoustic performance.

Isbell, Hood and Cooley sing “Outfit,” originally from the Truckers’ 2003 album Decoration Day. Written by Isbell alone, the song is one of two songs that the then-24-year-old penned for the album; the other, also written solo, is the record’s title track. Earlier this year, in late January, Isbell — now, of course, a solo artist — reunited with his former bandmates during a Drive-By Truckers show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. (From theboot.com)

https://youtu.be/2aoopYxLlyM

Speaking of the AMA awards, I was taken aback by the announcement of Van Morrison receiving a lifetime achievement award for songwriting. No disrespect: Van is indeed The Man, and we know that the organization loves to recognize those from the UK (Richard Thompson and Robert Plant were past recipients), but I just don’t get it. Although I know this guy probably doesn’t give a damn and wouldn’t show up anyway, I think he might be deserving of anything with the tagline ‘Americana’ in it.

When In Doubt, Turn Your Lovelights On

The folks over at Pitchfork have published a User Guide to The Grateful Dead that focuses not on their studio work but rather the gazillion of live tracks that are out there. Which reminds me…Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter…a songwriting team that deserves acknowledgement from the Americana cabal. You know, since the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame people are often slapped around for missing folks like Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers, the AMA might be moving into their elitist territory. Sad…to quote the POTUS.

Rest In Peace: Jimmy LaFave

By now you’ve heard about the sad passing of Austin singer-songwriter Jimmy LaFave. Local radio station KOKE-FM published the statement from his label and family, and you can find it here. And No Depression co-founder Peter Blackstock covered LaFave’s Songwriters Rendezvous for the Austin American-Statesman, and I think it’s a beautiful piece of writing. Click here to get there. This video was recorded at SXSW in 2011. Rest in peace.

How Many Ways Can One Love Pete Seeger?

“Every day, every minute, someone in the world is singing a Pete Seeger song. The songs he wrote, including the antiwar tunes, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and those he popularized, including “This Land Is Your Land” and “We Shall Overcome,” have been recorded by hundreds of artists in many languages and have become global anthems for people fighting for freedom.” So begins a story of Pete, and how we keep his spirit alive.

Writer Susanna Reich and illustrator Adam Gustavson have produced a book dedicated to that objective. In 38 pages of text, paintings and drawings, Stand Up and Sing! Pete Seeger, Folk Music, and the Path to Justice provides a wonderful portrait of Seeger, focusing on how his strongly-held beliefs motivated his music and his activism. The book introduces children to the notion that music can be a powerful tool for change. As Reich notes, Seeger saw himself as a link in “a chain in which music and social responsibility are intertwined.”

Read more about Pete and his music in this wonderful article posted at Common Dreams.

Otis Down In Monterey

This year marks 50 years since Otis Redding died. He’d ignited the crowd at the Monterey Pop Festival in the summer of 1967; later that year, he and his band were en route to a show in Madison, Wisc., when their plane hit rough weather and crashed in an icy lake. Redding was 26 years old. Half a century later, Redding’s influence as a singer and spirit of soul music remains. Author Jonathan Gould, who’s written a new biography called Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life and you can read more about it here.

https://youtu.be/xcOfz21MbMA

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 .

Make Americana Great Again: Why We Cherish Those Amazing Polls

That is one helluva picture. You might recall that it surfaced this past June after Neil Young demanded that Donald Trump stop using “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his campaign events. Utilizing his standard and preferred method of statesmanship, Trump went on the morning news shows, called Young a bad name, and then tweeted this: “A few months ago Neil Young came to my office looking for $$$ on an audio deal and called me last week to go to his concert. Wow!”

Young, no slouch himself when it comes to using social media, seemed to confirm Trump’s assertion of capitalistic hypocrisy when he wrote on Facebook: “It was a photograph taken during a meeting when I was trying to raise funds for Pono, my online high resolution music service.”

That Neil Young would choose Trump to get cozy with as a potential partner is enough to cause the price of flannel futures to tumble. Besides, in the past several months, Young’s digital entree has entered and floundered into the ether of a disinterested marketplace.

Pushing that particular random thought-bubble aside, it’s time to talk about the annual readers and critics polls that focus on one type of music or another. These are soon to occupy much of our collective time and space via traditional and social media, using the skill sets and wisdom of random cubes tossed together in a Yahtzee cup and spilt onto the countertop. Can we all agree that this excercise produces an inaccurate and imperfect list of superlatives? At the very least, I hope it will open up new avenues of exploration for some folks, as well as simply serving to bolster our own opinions based on an album’s popularity.

It is the former that most excites me because, with well over 120,000 new albums being released each year, there is no possible way to see all, know all, or hear all. It’s the depth and diversity of new music that makes scanning these polls so much fun. Nothing beats discovering something that slipped through the cracks.

In late October, the editor of No Depression:The Roots Music Authority requested a list of my favorite titles (I think she used the word “best”), and this is the list I sent her:

Jason Isbell, Daniel Romano, John Moreland, Pharis and Jason Romero, Tom Brosseau, Noah Gundersen, Watkins Family Hour, Joan Shelley, Milk Carton Kids, and an exceptional concert compilation called Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of a Dreadful Film. (Note to self: Going forward, try to be nicer.)

I’m sure y’all can spot the problem. It was way too exclusive. Narrowing my favorite albums of the year down to ten is just plain silly.

I also would have loved to include releases from Calexico, Jessica Pratt, the Westies, Kristin Andreassen, Joe Pug, Shakey Graves, Sufjan Stevens, The Kennedys, Kepi Ghoulie, Leon Bridges, Meg Baird, the Lonesome Trio, the Deslondes, Frazey Ford, the Skylarks, Kacey Musgraves, Ana Egge, Darrell Scott, Nikki Talley, Lindi Ortega, Dave Rawlings Machine, Jill Andrews, Darlingside, Decemberists, Daniel Martin Moore, Susie Glaze and the Hilonesome Band, and my friends Spuyten Duyvil.

I really like the duos and duets too. Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield, Anna and Elizabeth, the Lowest Pair, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. Not to mention the Honey Dewdrops, Iron and Wine and Ben Bridwell, Dave and Phil Alvin, and both the Wainwright and Chapin Sisters.

Don’t forget compilations with really long names that may or may not have been released this year, that I’ve been enjoying regardless: Arkansas at 78 RPM: Corn Dodgers & Hoss Hair Pullers, The Brighter Side: A 25th Anniversary Tribute to Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression, Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs By Karen Dalton, and Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music On the Mason-Dixon Line.

And then there are the names you already know: Iris Dement, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Leonard Cohen, Jesse Winchester, Dwight Yoakam, Mark Knopfler, Fairport Convention, and Bob Dylan (the old new stuff, not the new old stuff).

I haven’t counted them up, but this longer list of mine can’t be more than 50 or 60 albums — a pitiful, sickly and puny little list. Seriously, I’m ashamed. There are at least 119,940 or more to choose from and I know that you can do better than me. Whether you participate in the No Depression poll or any of the thousands of others that lurk out there, relax and enjoy. Have fun, don’t stress, don’t argue. It’s all about exploration.

Postscript: For the record, Americana is a radio format and an association, not a genre.

Jason Isbell’s Feat of Tweets

Ignore all the press that his new album is getting. Disregard the four-star reviews. Don’t give a thought that he is sitting on top of the Americana Music Association’s radio airplay chart this week. And forget that he’s making some of the best music of his career, touring like a madman and, along with his wife Amanda Shires, is expecting a baby in September. The really big story that the mainstream music press seems to be missing out on is that Jason Isbell has one of the more prolific and engaging feeds on Twitter.

Musicians using social media to promote themselves can be a real slippery slope. On one hand, it’s a great way to let people know what you’re up to, where you’re playing, and when you’ve got a new project to talk about. But since so many people are doing it, most of us become numb to the endless pseudo-advertisements that scream “buy buy buy” whatever it is they’re selling.

There are folks who try a little too hard to come up with the creative and offbeat observations that read like a long-bearded millennial post-hipster Hallmark card, and there are professional Twitter ghostwriters you can pay by the word to enhance and elevate your wonderfully witty image. Record labels, management, and marketing companies often take the reins from an artist to keep the feed on point. If you follow all five of the Kardashian sisters like I do, you’ll realize that there is a lot of auto-script programs that unleash the same stories simultaneously for maximum exposure.

In the case of Isbell, unless he’s fooled me and there is a 17-year-old intern sitting behind a MacBook Air somewhere in Nebraska pretending to be him, he has found a way to connect with his fans by just being himself. On June 20 and 21, he hit his stride when he began to take questions from his 86,000 followers on topics far and wide. I’ve got no idea how it all began, but when you put them all together, it was a helluvan interview.

It began slowly…

Q. What’s your favorite song?
A. I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (to stop now)

Q. What’s your favorite album?
A. Sticky Fingers

Q. More importantly, what’s your favorite Michael Bolton song?
A. To Love Somebody

Q. Favorite venue?
A The Ryman

Q. Favorite movie?
A. Magnolia

Moved to things more personal…

Q. Favorite thing about being sober?
A. No more shame

Q. Favorite thing about being Jason Isbell?
A. @amandashires, of course

And morphed into a random call and response…

Q. Favorite Pixar film, excluding Toy Story 1, 2, and 3?
A. Wall-E

Q. Favorite Tom T. Hall song?
A. Mama Bake A Pie

Q. Best cure for writer’s block?
A. Realize that it doesn’t exist

Q. What’s your favorite vegetable?
A. Onion

Q. What would you choose for your last meal?
A. Heroin

Q. Okay, once and for all, who was the best guitar player in the Rolling Stones? Mick Taylor? Keith Richards? Brian Jones?
A. Wayne Damn Perkins

Q. Favorite place to eat in Nashville?
A. Husk

Q. Favorite nut?
A. Pecan. Duh.

Q. Favorite Seinfeld episode?
A. The Parking Garage

Q. One word of advice from your current self to the 18 year old you?
A. Nonsmoker

Q. Favorite chore?
A. Hedge trimming

Q. Setup for that solo on Live Oak?
A. ’59 Gretsch Duo Jet + Dumble

Q. Best car chase scene in a movie?
A. Come on. Blues Brothers.

Q. Favorite way to conclude a Q&A with total strangers on Twitter?
A. {5 emojis of a girl waving goodbye}

And, his last tweet of the day on June 21 was: If I was female and single, I’d be texting Happy Father’s Day to any recent exes. Just to freak them out.

Well played, sir.

This was originally published by No Depression, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.

Maybe You’re Listening To The Wrong Music

Photo by Loubos Houska / Creative Commons 1.0

Do you think you might be suffering from the boogie woogie flu? It’s an affliction that causes you to become totally bored with your record collection or digital library, much of which is populated with either new music or old favorites. It happens to me sometimes. The best medicine is often digging deeper.

If I’m driving down the road and a track pops up from The Okeh Blues Story 1949-1957 collection, my toes start to tap and my heart skips a beat. The Complete King Recordings of Wade Manier makes me pull my banjo off the wall for some two-finger pickin’. If you haven’t lately listened to the Cotton Top Mountain Sanctified Singers or Da Costa Woltz’s Southern Broadcasters or Fruit Jar Guzzlers, run out now and get yourself Yazoo’s Times Ain’t What They Used to Be. There’s something about those old dusty 78s.

Last week I was in the car and I tried to get my mojo back by twirling the dial up and down the FM band looking for inspiration. Of course “twirl” is a euphemism for pressing buttons on a digital readout, and “inspiration” was perhaps too much to hope for. But with millions of people from every nook and cranny in this whole wide world living in the city of New York, I knew I’d find something to whet the whistle.

What I found was a small station broadcasting from New Rochelle, a suburb not far from Queens and the Bronx. It caught my ear with Caribbean music, blasting in a style that blended old school rhythm and blues, a reggae back beat, hip-hop, dancehall, and toasting. Weird electronic sounds, songs shifting effortlessly in and out of each other, and a steady commentary in a thick Jamaican accent that made it impossible to know if it was part of the music, an informercial, or a news flash. I think it might have been all three.

WVIP-FM is owned by David ‘Squeeze’ Annakie’s Linkup Media Group, and some of the other businesses they own and advertise almost continually on the station include JAMROCK Magazine, Saige Skin Care, SqueezeCard, AAA Service Protection, BioLife Energy Systems Solutions, Vitaways, Value Health Network, USA Credit Repair, Fiction (a Jamaican club), and Immigration Link. Squeeze takes to the air himself and promotes like Reverend Ike on speed. And, as a special bonus to the island music (between all the ads), there is the option for anybody to buy a 30-minute block of time for their own show. I’m considering it.

While my reggae vocabulary mostly consists of Bob Marley and that “Bad Boy” theme song from COPS, I have to tell you that whatever the hell this station is playing, I want more of it. Although not Americana nor alt-anything I know about, it’s roots music of the stems and seeds variety. Ain’t no such thing as wrong music.

https://youtu.be/bZLjEs2GeIM

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