Tag Archives: No Depression

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

Easy Ed’s American Roots Music Broadside: March 2021

Used by Pixabay License

The Return of Easy Ed’s Broadside?

Indeed. Get ready for a more consistent monthly dose of new releases, music that’s been lost and found, philosophical rambling, cultural insights, news, views, videos, humor and more.

How Was Your 2020?

So yeah….this was supposed to be a monthly column after I retired from doing my weekly gig at No Depression’s website last August. But life got in the way of that idea. Between the stress and anxiety of working from home, isolation save the weekly trip to Trader Joe’s, the rhetorical political theater – spewing angst and hatred to a divided nation – I simply lost interest. Not in music, for it’s been a period of intense exploration and discovery, but in doing anything that involved much thinking or an attempt at creativity. I’ve fallen into a long season of passivity, satisfied with endless hours of watching films from Scandinavia to Korea, Germany to Hollywood. And those television mysteries from the BBC that seem to use the same actors like secondhand retreaded tires, and fascinating but soon forgotten documentaries about this, that and whatever. No comedy specials though. I lost my will to laugh. But the penlight is getting brighter and yesterday I was actually accused of sounding chipper. A first time for everything.

Please God…I Never Want To See Another Livestream Concert Again!

As I sit here punching above my weight, certain states that look more red than blue are tossing the masks and reopening the bars, restaurants, gyms and theaters. Down in Austin and Nashville where there are more unemployed musicians than grains of sand on a wide Hawaiian beach, a majority of club owners are not yet rushing to begin booking concerts. Optimism easily obscures reality and we’re likely another few months away from live entertainment. So at least for a little while longer we’re left with these sometimes interesting yet hardly satisfying live sets from empty stages and living rooms. I know it’s gotten bad when a favorite artist with hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook only managed forty-two viewers on their recent weekly broadcast.

Got Any New Music You Can Share?

Sure. I’ve been trolling along with the last of the great music bloggers, seeking out those albums and songs that I have never known of, and scouring the rolling waves of new releases that came out in the wind and left in a whisper throughout these past months. When you put everything you got into an album with the hope of touring and getting noticed, it’s been a friggin’ heartbreak after heartbreak. A hundred years from now some ethnomusicologist will no doubt write a successful book on the lost music of 2020.

I know…it’s not a live performance and what does it have to do with roots music? Whatever. I like the song and the whole album and I like this guy even though I am one of the last people on Earth who seems to know of him. His album Songs for The Drunk and Broken Hearted is his thirteenth. I got myself the bonus recording where he does a whole band thing followed by an acoustic version. Brilliant music. And he does a lot of livestreams. Passenger is the name he records under, but he’s Mark David Rosenberg.

Dirk Powell is – damn, it’s a lot easier if I just quote his allmusic.com biography:

Dirk is considered one of the world’s leading experts on traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo styles, along with carrying on the traditions of his late and legendary father-in-law Dewey Balfa, as well as the accordion player in the Cajun group Balfa Toujours.

As you can hear above, the new album When I Wait For You is much more in the singer-songwriter category than his band work and it’s truly a beautiful work.

This is The Kit’s fifth album Off Off On is in heavy rotation here at my abode. Fronted by English singer and songwriter Kate Stables, who is based in Paris, her exceptional musical exploration includes whomever joins her in the moment. She’s often playing a banjo, and reviewers just can’t seem to put a tag or genre on her.

Cordova’s Destiny Hotel was a great find from this Tennessee-based band that features vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Joe Firstman, keyboardist Sevans Henderson, guitarist/vocalist Lucca Soria and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Toby Weaver. They sound and look like a throwback to the Sixties that seems to be brought up in every article and review written, which probably pisses them off to no end. I feel for these folks since they are road hogs who have established themselves a large fanbase with nonstop touring. Morton

Morton Valance is simply indescribable and irresistible. A London-based duo who’ve released eight albums in fifteen years, I have never heard them until Bob & Veronica’s Great Escape was released. Th3e video is sort of an outlier on the album, but it truly shows their creativity and ability to step out, as the majority of the songs are slow tempo with tight and intricate harmonies. The duo features Ann Gilpin and songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Robert ‘Hacker’ Jessett. Along with this album, in 2020 they wrote and directed an autobiographical film documentary entitled ‘This Is A Film About A Band’ that was premiered at the Doc’N Roll Film Festival in London. Can’t wait to find it.

Australian singer-songwriter Emma Swift released an amazing – one more time – amazing album of Dylan cover songs titled Blonde On The Tracks. Based in Nashville and recorded with her partner Robyn Hitchcock and featuring Wilco’s Patrick Sansone, it’s pretty hard to believe this is her first full length album. Before becoming a musician, she was a radio broadcaster in Australia, hosting an Americana music show In the Pines.

Almost At The End…..Shameless Self-Promotion

Well that was fun. So here’s the deal: As most of you may know, I run a Facebook page and a Flipboard e-magazine that are linked here on my website. Every single day I scour the internet for music news and articles of interest, so you don’t have to. Every night on FB I also post a video to close it out. (This moth I’ve dedicated myself to finding 31 John Prine performances.) If you haven’t visited, please do. I should mention the Flipboard has over 3,000 articles including many that don’t get posted on Facebook, and is a great way to pass the time. Download the app or visit on your computer or tablet.

One More Thing…March is Women’s History Month!

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history.

Easy Ed’s American Roots Music Broadside: September 2020

Used Via Pixabay License.

Greetings…I’m back after a few weeks of getting my head cleared and I’m ready to share some of my latest favorite Americana and roots music songs and videos, news, events and whatever other stuff pops into my head. As many of you know, I have left No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music to get off the treadmill of having a weekly column deadline, and to allow myself to focus on other areas of interest. Without going into some rant you don’t need to hear, we’ll leave it that I am very fearful of the future not only in America, but throughout the world. From climate to pandemic, politics to racism, divisiveness to income inequality…we are not living in the best of times. And so we escape into a world of comfort and familiarity, riding it out as best one can. Music, sweet sweet music.

Nashville’s Sunday Someday

The gracious and excellent guitarist/singer Annie McCue reached out to me late last night to share something she helped put together. Sunday Someday is a jam band that was formed by a very busy group of side-musicians and singer-songwriters who under normal times have played Sunday brunch gigs at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in Nashville. They played monthly and often asked special guests to play and sit in with them, covering artists such as Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, Fleetwood Mac, Mississippi John Hurt, also dipping into the original songs they had all been writing over the years. It was a Sunday kind of thing.

A couple months into the quarantine with Dee’s still closed, McCue suggested they start working on a song. She sent out a basic track with guitar and vocals and everyone passed it around a few times, adding parts and harmonies until they decided one day it was finished. McCue then compiled video footage and pulled it all together and here they give you their version of George Harrison’s Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth). The other musicians are Megan Palmer, Jason Quicksall, Bob Lewis, Erin Nelson and Johnathan Beam.

‘This beautiful song is of this time,’ says Annie. ‘It’s exactly what we all need right now.’ I agree.

People We’ve Lost: Justin Townes Earle and Toots Hibbert

You’ve likely read the news, and know they’re gone. Justin’s loss hit me hard, for not only that we share the disease of addiction, but because the music he could have, should have, and would have given to us will never be heard. Cole Louison published a remembrance of Justin circa 2010, titled It’s As Hard As You Make It: The Legacy of Justin Townes Earle. An interesting read; it made me shudder to think that by twenty-eight he had made thirteen trips to rehab and overdosed five times. Otis Gibbs has put up a video eulogy that I’d like to share with y’all, and a song if you don’t mind.

And from NYC/2010:

Frederick “Toots” Hibbert, the lead singer and songwriter of Toots and the Maytals and one of reggae’s foundational figures, was seventy-seven when he passed. A few weeks earlier he had just released his first new album in over a decade. His NPR obituary offers a brief but notable survey of his life and career, and he left a huge body of work for us to have. Two days after the release of Got To Be Tough, Hibbert was admitted to Kingston’s University Hospital of the West Indies. If you have the time, the BBC did a documentary on Toots and the band and you can watch it here.

Live at the Winterland, San Francisco, CA on November 15, 1975.

Toots performing “Pressure Drop” on Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny-2010/2011, backed by the Rhythm & Blues Orchestra

New Music….Or At Least New To Me

This first one comes with a giant thank you from one of my Broadside followers. Rob Oakie is the executive director of Music Prince Edward Island, and he sent me a note sharing that I may have missed an album from the past year titled Coyote, the seventh studio recording by the award winning folk musician Catherine MacClellan. He was right, and although I knew her name I honestly didn’t know her music. So I’ve been exploring all of her work and fallen in love.

There’s a bit of Canadian musical legacy in her family, as her father was legendary Canadian songwriter Gene MacClellan, who wrote the megahit “Snowbird” that was covered by everyone from Anne Murray to Elvis Presley. Catherine has followed in her father’s musical footsteps, winning the 2015 Juno Award for Roots & Traditional Album.

Not on the album, I found this song which appears to have been recorded less than a month ago. I would imagine even on Prince Edward Island they are feeling the impact of the pandemic, and musicians are sadly shuttered down from the road.

The Avett Brothers‘ album The Third Gleam is in rotation on my main playlist. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Seth shared this about the songs:

“We touch on historical prejudice, faith, economic disparity, gun violence, incarceration, redemption, and as is increasingly standard with our records, stark mortality. This is by no means a record defined by any specific social or cultural goal, nor is it informed by a singular challenge posed to humanity. It is merely the sound of my brother and I in a room, singing about what is on our minds and in our hearts at the time…sharing it now is about what sharing art is always about: another chance that we may partake in connecting with our brothers and sisters of this world, and hopefully joining you in noticing a speck of light gleaming in what appears to be a relatively long and dark night.”

Transmigration Blues is singer-songwriter Ryan Gustafson’s fourth album as The Dead Tongues, and it was recorded back in 2019 but only came out earlier this past summer. Living in Western North Carolina, he’s been making music for almost twenty years under different names or with various collaborators, spending time on the road with Hiss Golden Messenger and Phil Cook. This is a video from the album, followed by one of Louden Wainwright III’s best, “The Swimming Song” along with Mandarin Orange.

The Most Important Thing You Will Do In Your Lifetime

Over on The Real Easy Ed Facebook page, I often sprinkle in politics and satire with the music. Here, I’m not going to preach or holler. But I will share that I believe we not only must exercise our right to vote, but that we need to preserve the health and welfare of our children. A deranged autocrat running a racist and facist state with a cult-like band of gunslinging disciples does not make for an open and safe society. So I know many of you might have second thoughts about Biden/Harris and will either sit it out or look for Kanye or someone else to register a vote of protest. No. It will will not help your cause. You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution, so suck it up and vote this piece of garbage out of office. Here’s how to register or check to see if you already are: CLICK HERE!

A Daily Broadside From 9/11/20

Sunrise Between Twin Towers, World Trade Center, New York City, NY,designed by Minoru Yamasaki, International Style

Here in NYC today the local TV stations have, as they do every year on this date, suspended programming and are broadcasting the reading of the names of all who perished on 9/11. It’s usually done live, but this year the audio track was prerecorded. There’s another tragedy playing out this year in the form of a virus that has changed up the day’s usual memorial ceremonies. Nevertheless, it is a solemn day here as the memories of that horror come flooding back. And the loss of human life beyond that day have continued, as thousands of first responders have developed ravaging diseases that have left a long train of continuous pain, suffering and death.

You might think the country would take care of the men and women who put their lives on the line not only on that day but in the months that followed to search for survivors and clean the pile of rubble left in the wake. Yet the Victims Compensation Fund has always been a thorn in the side of Republicans and three times they’ve tried to eliminate it. Imagine. They have expressed concern over their fiscal responsibility and the cost. Famously, just last year Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee blocked the latest funding extension.

Luis Alvarez, a first responder, came to Congress to plead for help. “I will not stand by and watch as my friends with cancer from 9/11 like me are valued less than anyone else because of when they get sick. You made me come here the day before my 69th round of chemo. I’m going to make sure that you never forget to take care of the 9/11 responders.” Three weeks later he died, at age 53. The Senate ultimately passed the bill, that now guarantees funding through 2092.

On this date it is often pointed out as a point in time in our nation’s history when we all united together in our anger, rage and mourning. And It did seem like that for a month or two, but eventually the fractures in that myth rose back to the surface. And nineteen years later the country should collectively look at itself in the mirror today and recall that moment of unity, when for a brief time we each came together in our loss. It will likely never repeat itself. Some believe that the wars that began soon after 9/11 and still continue today were payback, yet I think most of us now know that it was built on a lie, as most wars are.

What 9/11 has left us with is a nation in pieces, torn apart by political divisiveness, racial injustice, corruption of power, an inequality of wealth and a pandemic that has traded the lives of almost 200,000 people for the benefit of an autocrat and his disciples. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures or cartoons of a man with a sandwich sign board over his shoulders that reads “the end is near”. Most of us take that as being humorous, but here on 9/11/2020 it is closer to the truth than ever before. I’ll leave it at that

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.

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.

The Loneliest Roots Music Festival of 2020

This was published at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website, on my first day of self-isolation or whatever y’all want to call it. As you’ll see below, my area had 98 cases on March 13 2020, and as of today, sixty-one days later, there are 32,673 cases with 1,313 deaths. Knowing that “One day in April it will just disappear…it’ll be a miracle” was just another lie, I suspected we would all be craving live music. Putting together this video music festival was an idea behind the times, as a week or two later musicians began to livestream on social media. Now, mammoth events are taking place and people are spending a lot of time watching and hearing some great content. In any event, I still like my choices, and thought you might enjoy them as well. What do you have to lose?

As I sit in my apartment a few miles north of New York City, and only a few minutes away from what we’re now calling The Containment Area, I wait for the pandemic to land at my doorstep. In our little corner of Westchester County there are now officially 98 cases of the coronavirus reported, schools are closed, the National Guard has been dispatched, I witnessed a fight over toilet paper at the local Costco this morning, and, God help us, they’ve sold out of frozen pizza at Trader Joe’s.

With millions of people living in the tri-state area you might think that a few hundred confirmed cases doesn’t sound all that threatening, but all the public health officials are warning it’s only the beginning. The World Health Organization‘s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced that “We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction.” (The Washington Post — or #fakenews as some call it.)

While Tedros could be right, he’s probably not heard that here in America we’ve already developed an antidote to the virus. It seems that a weekend of playing golf at Mar-a-Lago and shaking hands with possibly infected ass-kissing conservative politicians and donors will make you immune to all future illness. And if for some reason that fails, we’ll be arming every doctor and nurse with automatic weapons and orders to shoot the germs on sight while we begin building walls around hospitals.

If you think I’m making light of this human tragedy, it’s only because I’m anxious and nervous, and humor is a form of relief. You see, at my age with an underlying medical condition and being a Democratic Socialist who likely conspired with the Chinese to cause this to happen, my odds of beating this virus if it lands at my doorstep aren’t all that great. And so here I am, acting like a young Brian Wilson: in my room.

Sadly, you’ve likely heard that music festivals and tours are being canceled in rapid succession. Musicians, record labels, and fans have lost money that they probably barely scraped together to attend SXSW in Austin. Marketing and launch plans have turned to dust, and the organization will not be issuing any refunds. To add insult to injury, any national economic relief plan that the DC superstars put together will exclude participants in the arts.

For almost six years up until 2016, Couch By Couchwest was a great way for musicians to share their music. Running concurrently with SXSW, the online video festival let anybody upload a clip to their site and you could tune in whenever you wanted and catch both pros and amateurs. I heard a lot of great music, made lifelong friends, and it beat the inconvenience, heat, and cost of any outdoor festival. If you guys are still out there, this would be a great time for a revival.

Lacking that effort, I’ve put together my own mini-fest of some recent (mostly) live videos for your enjoyment. Please wash your hands for 20 seconds before watching and try not to breathe. And please, stay safe.

For more information on finding sources for online concert streaming, check out this article from the San Francisco Chronicle. And for news on the financial impact the virus is having on the music industry, here’s an overview from Fortune.

Milk Carton Kids and Rose Cousins – “Wild World”

Nathaniel Rateliff – “And It’s Still Alright”

The Reckless Drifters – “Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin”

Dori Freeman – “Walls of Me and You”

The Mastersons – “Eyes Wide Open”

Honey Harper – “Tomorrow Never Comes”

Nora Jane Struthers – “Nice to Be Back Home”

Bonny Light Horseman – “Jane Jane”

John Moreland – “East October”

Tré Burt – “Caught It from the Rye”

Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band – “Abandonitis”

Charles Wesley Godwin – “Coal Country”

Courtney Barnett – “So Long, Marianne”

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

The Porter Wagoner Show

Photo via The Country Music Hall of Fame

Like a lot of other families back in the 1950s, we owned a black-and-white television that sat in our parlor in front of the old red couch. It had a tiny little screen built into a large walnut cabinet and it was where I watched my favorite cowboy and Western shows that were popular back then. Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Have Gun – Will Travel, Kit Carson, The Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, The Rifleman, Davy Crockett, and all the rest. In the afternoons my sister watched and danced to American Bandstand, and after we went to sleep my folks would tune in adult shows like M Squad, Perry Mason, or The Naked City.

I was probably about 10 or 11 when my dad decided to step up our game by purchasing a 19-inch Zenith “portable” TV that weighed about a thousand pounds and was placed on a wheeled cart in my parents’ bedroom. It had a built-in rabbit-ears antenna and came with a small box that sat on the top with a round wire antenna screwed in. Although we wouldn’t have color until sometime after Apollo 11 and the moonwalk, we were one of the first on the block to get the low-budget UHF stations. Along with the three regular network stations, we now doubled our pleasure. Roller Derby, wrestling, and reruns of old shows were standard fare for these new stations, but it was The Porter Wagoner Show that I fell in love with.

“The Thin Man from West Plains” got his start in Missouri when his band The Blue Ridge Boys got their own radio show, and they broadcasted from the butcher shop where Wagoner worked. In 1951 he signed with RCA Victor, but it wasn’t until four years later that he got his first number one single, “A Satisfied Mind.” A featured performer on ABC-TV’s Ozark Jubilee, he and his musical and business partner Don Warden relocated to Nashville in 1957 and joined the Grand Ole Opry. Over the next 25 years, Wagoner’s singles charted 81 times.

In 1960, with the Chattanooga Medicine Company as his sponsor, The Porter Wagoner Show made its debut. The 30-minute syndicated show broadcasted for an amazing 21 years. There were 686 episodes filmed, with the first 104 filmed in black-and-white. Each show included a couple songs by Wagoner and his band, one by the regular “girl singers” like Norma Jean, above, perhaps a gospel number, comedy from Speck Rhodes or Curly Harris, and the finale, often featuring the entire cast performing.

Tall and thin with a blond pompadour and usually dressed in rhinestone Nudie suits, Wagoner had an easy manner about him, was a congenial host, and throughout his music career pretty much stuck to classic country and spirituals. The first five years of the show featured Norma Jean, followed by Jeannie Seely for one season, and then, in 1966, 21-year-old Dolly Parton joined the cast. Together they released 13 duet albums and had 14 top ten hits, with Wagoner acting as producer and arranger for not only these, but also Parton’s early solo albums.

After seven years of working together, Parton left, prompting Wagoner to file a breach of contract lawsuit against her. They eventually settled out of court and didn’t reconcile again until shortly before his death in 2007. She sat with him on the day he passed away.

Parton explained her reason for leaving in a September 2008 Los Angeles Times article:

“I worked with Porter Wagoner on his show for seven years, and he was very much — I don’t mean this in a bad way, so don’t play it up that way — but he very much was a male chauvinist pig. Certainly a male chauvinist. He was in charge, and it was his show, but he was also very strong-willed. That’s why we fought like crazy, because I wouldn’t put up with a bunch of stuff.

“Out of respect for him, I knew he was the boss, and I would go along to where I felt this was reasonable for me. But once it passed points where it was like, your way or my way, and this is just to control, to prove to you that I can do it, then I would just pitch a damn fit. I wouldn’t care if it killed me. I would just say what I thought. I would do like the Doralee character and say, ‘I would turn you from a rooster to a hen if you don’t stop!’”

Before she left the show, she wrote “I Will Always Love You” for him, and it went on to become one of her most beloved songs.

Wagoner and his band did a promotional appearance at the Cherry Hill Mall in New Jerse, just across the bridge from Philadelphia when I was about fourteen. I got my parents to drop me off there, and I stood at the lip of the stage as they played and just soaked up the Western outfits they all wore, the pedal steel guitar player, and, of course, Dolly.

Over the years, up until it went off the air, I’d check out the show from time to time, but it was the early black-and-white episodes that really left their mark on me. You can check out the list of guests here on Ranker, and if you want to see the full episodes they’re currently broadcasted on RFD-TV in America and the United Kingdom, and you’ll find many on YouTube. Let’s close it out with Willie, without the hair.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column 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