Tag Archives: No Depression

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.

Angela Easterling and My No Depression Friends

From the Angela Easterling Facebook Page

This was originally published at No Depression dot com, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column. Although many fans of the roots music/Americana/alt-country or whatever other genre you want to call it remember the magazine of the same name, it ceased publication back in 2008 and was replaced by an online entity. Shortly after it started up I began to submit articles, reviews, observations and ramblins’. Back then, everything on the website was community content…meaning it was submitted by and for like-minded (sometimes) music fans. In time things changed; the original publisher sold it to FreshGrass and it’s gone through significant transition of design elements, paid content (like my Broadside column) and that old-timey community feel where people of common interests met and exchanged ideas. Angela Easterling is one of those people.

This week many of us will open our mailboxes and receiving the first print edition of No Depression in seven years. And while it may not necessarily replicate the same experience that longtime readers of the magazine’s previous print run had back in the day, I anticipate that it’s likely to be the best reasonable facsimile that one could ever hope for. And when the accolades to all of the people who worked hard to put words back onto paper fades out, and the complaints of “it ain’t the same thing as the old thing” go blowing into the wind, it might be best to stand back for a moment and marvel at the house that Peter, Grant, and Kyla built. For it’s neither simply the ink on paper nor words on a computer screen that have been sown from the seeds of ND’s two decades of existence, but a new generation of musicians, fans, pundits, critics, archivists, writers, readers, videographers, composers, lyricists, creators, aggregators, and networkers that have created a cultural community that seems to endure and thrive.

I met Angela Easterling on this website shortly after it launched in early 2009. Back then there seemed to be just a few hundred of us post-print, zombie-like survivors who bothered to log on, read whatever there was to read, watch videos, post content, and hope that something would come out of it. Peter and Grant were both submitting articles in the beginning, Kyla was focused on building advertising revenue from the embers of a scorched music retail landscape, and Kim Ruehl (who’s now the editor of ND) was scouting for articles and reviews by encouraging both professional writers and amateur hacks such as myself to contribute. Unlike the “letters to the editor” that the old school magazines printed in each edition, these new online articles had a comments section that allowed for immediate feedback, which included expansion of original thoughts, corrections and arguments, raging controversies and, ultimately, friendships. Instant karma.

Angela had recently moved back to South Carolina after spending time in the Los Angeles area attending school, and I think she had already put out her first album in 2007. We had conversations in the comment sections, and when I began to post articles, we connected on Facebook and got to know each other beyond just our musical interests. She was one of the first people to send me a CD (BlackTop Road) and ask if I might like to write about it it, but Michael Bialas beat me to the punch and posted his review in August of 2009.

For the next few years, I watched Angela personify the DIY spirit by traveling on the road from gig to gig, recording and releasing her albums without benefit of a record label or distribution team, competing at festivals, knocking down radio station doors, and using social media to not only gain fans but make friends. When I posted a story in April 2011 about independent musicians and the difficult times they faced while they tried to make a living, she set me straight:

I get a bit tired of people who want to commiserate with me and try to tell me how terrible my life is because I’m an indie musician. ‘Oh it’s sooo hard, you work so long and for so little money etc., etc.’, they say. Yes, it is a lot of work, there are parts of it that aren’t always fun and I’m not always thrilled with the progress I’m making and/or my finances. Rest assured, you are not informing me of something I don’t already know. But nobody tied me down and made me do this. I absolutely love what I do and I feel so lucky and blessed to be living this life.

As the years have rolled on, I’ve watched as Angela fought to keep her family’s farm — where she lives today. I’ve put up with her Boston Red Sox and Mad Men fan-girl rants, read her intimate thoughts posted on Facebook about life, love and family, celebrated birthdays and career highlights, engaged in political and environmental discussions, listened to and loved her music, and got to share in her happiness when she and her guitarist Brandon Turner began a committed relationship. They now have a little boy they each adore, and last week they announced that she was expecting again. With her new album Common Law Wife getting strong airplay on Americana format radio and moving rapidly up the charts, as great reviews are coming in almost every day, I’m guessing that Angela must feel as if she’s won a double header against the Yankees.

I heard “Hammer” back in January 2015 and told Angela that I thought it was one of the best songs she’s ever written. By March, I had the complete album, and it immediately got lost in our apartment until the end of the month. By April I was playing it every day in the car and couldn’t wait to share it. But, considering its August release date, I held off. Over time, I moved on. Until this week. I’ve been thinking about her, the growing family, the music she’s been making and how she has moved through the years with dignity and grace. Like I mentioned, the reviews have been exceptional and with a couple of months of touring in front of her, it feels like it’s her time to break through to a wider audience.

When people think of No Depression, they often reminisce about the magazine and talk about the great articles, reviews, and graphics. They talk about the story of how a musically like-minded community came together for a period of time in the mid-’90s and held on tight for 13 years until the original magazine came to an end and morphed into … whatever this is. And while I am sitting on the edge of my seat in anticipation of the new print edition, its really been the people I’ve met along the way that makes this whole thing so special and unique for me. And my friend Angela Easterling is one of those people.

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

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 Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email is easyed@therealeasyed.com

Bonnie “Prince” Billy: Too Slippery For Such Simple Categorisations

A recent trip into Manhattan and a stop at Strand Books yielded a $6.95 trade paperback edited by Alan Licht and titled Will Oldham on Bonnie “Prince” Billy. It wasn’t hard to miss. There must have been at least 100 or more in stock, sitting on several tables and display racks. It’s either a breakaway bestseller or there was a publisher error. I guess you’d call it simply an interview, with questions asked and answers given, but it reads more like just a conversation, which I imagine sets apart a good interview from a bad one.

Born in 1970, Oldham began acting in his early teens and started making music around the time he was about 22. I’m sorry to have missed his first wave of music that was released in the early ’90s on the Drag City label under various names: Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, and just plain Palace.

If you’re unfamiliar with those Palace records or his later work, I’ll quote Licht in the book’s introduction to give you context:

Emerging from the indie-rock scene of the early 1990’s, Palace was at times lumped in with the ‘No Depression’ alternative country-rock bands like Son Volt or Uncle Tupelo, or with the lo-fi movement identified with Sebadoh, Daniel Johnston, Guided by Voices or Drag City label-mate Smog, and later Bonnie Prince Billy was occasionally held up as a forebear of the ‘freak-folk’ scene of the past decade. Yet the music is too slippery for such simple categorisations. It touches on – refracts, really – rock, pop, folk, country, bluegrass and ethnic music without hybridising any of them.

In 2003 Grant Alden of No Depression the magazine, not the genre, wrote a review of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s latest release Master and Everyone. And he shared some history.

Years ago I reviewed an early Palace release for Spin, and while I can’t remember which record it was, I know the review was a glowing bit of work-for-hire. Little enough had come my way then (say, Mazzy Star, or Mark Lanegan, both of which remain fond memories), that played so elegantly with the roar of silence, and Palace clearly and distinctly drew from a rural, country tradition. Both of which seemed like good ideas.

A while later I lasted half a set in a crowded club, for none of us had heard the like, and we all had to see. Oldham, the lead singer and provocateur of Palace, spent the whole evening dodging a solitary spotlight. Then Allison Stewart interviewed him for these pages, and he spoke at some length of an imaginary dog.

Finally, he said this in a December 1998 edition of Time Out New York: “No Depression seems like a culturalist, racist magazine to me, about a certain kind of white music.” We have not had occasion to write about Mr. Oldham’s varied exploits since.

He’s an odd duck, an ex-actor who keeps adopting new musical personae, aggressively passive aggressive. And I have come not to like him; that is, not to like his work, to feel violated by all the artifice with which he surrounds ostensibly artifice-free music, to mistrust his motives. This is a problem, when the singer’s principal illusion is intimacy, and it is especially a music critic’s problem, separating the artist from the art.

So perhaps I shouldn’t be believed, but Master And Everyone is, as advertised, a beautiful piece of work.

Probably the best thing about Bonnie “Prince” Billy is that I missed all the stuff that Grant spoke of, and was able to experience the music on its own without knowing a lick about where it came from, how or who made it, and what it was supposed to sound like. No expectations. By the time my kid flipped me a flash drive filled with Palace’s music and told me fire up the ‘Pod, it was 2008 and that concept was a decade and a half in the dust. It amazed me. And still does.

Two summers ago, I got a chance to see him and Dawn McCarthy on the stage of New York’s Town Hall with Van Campbell, Emmett Kelly, and Cheyenne Mize. They were at the end of a tour. The album that they played songs from was a tribute to the Everly Brothers called What the Brothers Sang. This is how I described their performance at that time:

Sitting on chairs that looked as if they were bought at a store specializing in selling used office equipment, and while holding blunt instruments in their hands … I witnessed a murder. Note by note, song by song. They killed it. They killed it … meaning it was one of the most memorable, loving, kind, considerate, joyful, musical, harmonious, respectful, caring and beautiful hundred minutes of concert give and take one could hope for.

I’m more than two-thirds of the way through this 329-page interview and I’m finding it hard to put down. Maybe I’m trying to rush to the end, where a 25-page discography awaits, and a seven-page passage called ‘A Cosmological Timeline’. This is a good book to read if you want to learn stuff you didn’t know you needed to know. Admit it: you had not a clue that in 1971 Meatloaf played the role of Ulysses S. Grant in a touring production of Hair. Right?

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

The Thing About Emily Mure

I realize that in this community of old hippies, post-punk latter-day newbie-parental types and the occasional bluegrass traditionalist who stumbles here by mistake because they think we all love to hear the “Orange Blossom Special” covered the same way six thousand times, that I sometimes stand alone. Well maybe not alone, but sort of to the left of the main event. The reason being is that I suck up new music and young(er) musicians like a Dyson on a shag carpet. And despite my posts in the last eleven months about Jules Shear and his wife Pal Shazar (four times), Lou Reed, the Smithereens (just once each) and Grateful Dead (twice)…much of what I listen to is from people in their twenties and thirties, and sometimes even their teens. This year at a Rosh Hashanah dinner I found myself defending Miley Cyrus as being as relevant as Beethoven…or maybe it was Woody or Pete. And Taylor Swift? Dig her. Sort of.

Let me tell you how I listen to new music, no matter who, new, young, old or how established the artist is. Fast. Yes, I admit that while skimming quickly on the iTunes player or Spotify is not very fair or friendly, and devalues the art and hard work that goes into it, its how I roll. If it catches my ear, it’s a keeper. If not, it gets the hook. Gong Show style. The ones I find interesting get placed in a one thousand song playlist and they stay with me for at least three weeks, and get listened to either in a shuffle mode or maybe end to end if I’m really enthralled.

Say hello to Emily Mure, and her latest album Odyssey.

I found her music last July, after reading about her on another website. It went into the aforementioned playlist and has stayed there ever since. And, to be utterly honest, it’s not because I fell in love with it straight off, but because it haunted and challenged me. There was/is something about her songs and voice that made me want to go off into a quiet place and to be sure I captured each and every note. She surprised me too. When I expected the melody to go up the scale, it went down. When you think it’s time for a minor chord transition, she shifts to a major key. And just when you’re pretty sure you’ve got your basic coffee house folky singer-songwriter, she slips into that chamber mojo mode where people like Marissa Nadler and Meg Baird live, and then out of nowhere…I mean like an Ali left jab…you get a pedal steel, oboe and a cello thrown at you. Bam.

She’s a New York City girl who attended a performing arts high school, studied classical music and played the oboe at Carnegie and Avery Fisher Halls while still in her teens. At college she studied Oboe Performance and Psychology…and for the life of me I can’t figure out if that’s one major or two. Some college kids get into dope, drink and sex…she succumbed to folk, bluegrass and the guitar. Falling in love with traditional Irish music, she took off across the Atlantic for a summer studying Celtic music at the University of Limerick. After she came back home to finish her studies at Ithaca College, she moved to Galway and busked in the streets for six months.

“I moved out to Ireland with my best friend from college. At the time I was in need of escape and after spending some time in Ireland a few years before for an Irish/trad summer program, I decided to go back to explore the country further. I didn’t go with the intention of singing on the streets- I wanted to just travel. We got temporary work visas and I was having trouble finding a job. After one afternoon busking, I decided I would try to do this for income- and so I did (for a very modest but livable income) It was challenging which is why it was great. I learned so much about myself and it thickened my skin and gave me confidence.”

By 2009 she was back in New York and recording her first album, while performing on the vibrant folk circuit that we have in this part of the world, from Pennsylvania to Maine. In 2012 she started getting some airtime on television and began recording the current album…which is available at all the usual places like here and here and here and here.

Emily has been touring and doing shows to support the new album, and as all DIY artists do, she has her day job of teaching guitar to help pay the bills. Given her background, I asked her if she was involved in the classical world. “I still play the oboe but mainly for fun. I am thinking about getting back into ensemble playing but for now- it’s mostly just a hobby. I’m enjoying writing for my oboist- Emily DiAngelo. I love the oboe but didn’t love the repertoire or the classical music atmosphere which is why I made the shift once I started playing guitar and writing songs. Felt like folk and songwriting was more me.”

February 5, 2017: As is the case with most of the musicians I’ve written about through the years, Emily and I had never met. We exchanged emails and stayed loosely connected via social media. I knew she had moved to Massachusetts, was playing on the club and coffee house circuit throughout the Northeast, and worked as a music teacher. Last night she did backup singing at folksinger-artist Joe Crookston’s Imagine Nation concert and we spoke at length before the show. She’s living back in Manhattan and working on a new album. Her website is updated, has playlists and videos, lists her tour dates, and contact information if you’re in need of singing, songwriting or guitar lessons.

In the original article that was published, I also mentioned Emily’s grandfather, guitar player Billy Mure. Since then, through the magic window of Google, I’ve decided his story should be told on it’s own. When I write it, I’ll link it here.

In the meantime, here’s a video Emily posted recently and this song is stuck inside my head. Glad we finally met…this is a very special person.

Ameri-tography: Sandy Dyas Captures the Red, White and Blues

Should the name Sandy Dyas sound familiar to you, you might recall seeing some of her work back in the day when the roots music magazine No Depression was printed with ink on paper, or perhaps you’ve read about and viewed her photography in various articles that I’ve posted on the internet over the years. Perhaps you were one of her students, or even a subject in one of her many photo essays. And if you’re truly fortunate, you own her book “Down To The River: Portraits of Iowa Musicians” which still sits on my desk for daily reflection and inspiration.

Grant Alden, founder and co-publisher of No Depression: “One of the many things I miss about no longer publishing a magazine is getting to work with photographers like Sandy. As I type this, it occurs to me that we e-mailed often, never met, and probably never even spoke on the phone. If she knocked on my door, I wouldn’t know what she looked like. And yet seeing her photos always makes my lips twitch upwards.”

Sandy: “Traveled down 80 on Wednesday for a trip to the Iowa State Fair. It was hot. Way too hot for six hours of being at the fair. But I was there and ready to find some photos. An August day at the state fair in Iowa…”

Sandy: “I started taking pictures when I was 8 or 9 years old. My dad gave me an old Brownie camera and then my parents gave me a Polaroid Swinger when I was in 7th grade, and then an Instamatic when I graduated from 8th grade. Back then I didn’t really know what a 35 mm was. My Uncle Bob had one that I saw him use occasionally and I vividly recall his slide shows at my Grandpa Roy’s house. My uncle would invite us over there for the evening when he and my Aunt Lu were visiting. He shot slides—primarily of flowers, trees, and landscapes. I was completely intrigued with these large, colorful images projected on that old screen in the darkened living room. I realize now how much those evenings influenced me.”

There was no state fair in the concrete and asphalt jungle of Philadelphia where I grew up. Not much livestock in our neighborhood. Nobody’s mom canned preserves or made quilts. I never did see a butter sculpture nor ate anything (other than a Popsicle) on a stick, or at least as I can recall. But in sixty-two when Pat Boone, Bobby Darin and Ann-Margret danced their way across the screen of the Mayfair theater over on Frankford Avenue and sang about how their state fair was the best state fair, I developed an interest.

Sandy: “I wear many hats–most are photographic hats. I teach photography at Cornell College part-time, usually 4 or 5 classes per year. Since it is not full-time and my income is about half of full-time professors, I freelance for the rest of my income. Portraiture is one of my skills and weddings have been a big source of income since 1976. I do photograph musicians fairly often but I also am commissioned to photograph non-musicians. I also do magazine and newspaper shoots–I suppose they are more “editorial” in nature but they always involve some portraits.

In a small California desert town and there was a county fair out near the lake every year. One year I drove out there, and played one of those “toss a ring over the neck of a Coke bottle” games and won a goldfish. Not a stuffed one from Taiwan, but a real live fish. I carried it around the fair in a glass bowl and took it back home to Los Angeles. He lived for about five or six years.

The five long winters living in the north country during the mid-late nineties were made a bit more tolerable by looking forward to what they call the Great Minnesota Get-Together at the end of each August through Labor Day. It’s such a huge event that the local television stations broadcast their morning shows and newscasts from the fairgrounds. Bombs may be raining down in the Middle East, an assassination in India or snipers cutting down students in Texas…but “the big news tonight is that our weatherman will be sampling the deep-fried candy bars, the deep-fried oreos, the deep-fried spaghetti and meatballs on a stick, the chocolate covered bacon and the pot roast sundae to give you the best of this year’s gluttony”.

Sandy: “Photography has taught me to pay attention to the little details in the everyday world. Teaching photography has done that too. I find myself talking to my students about getting in the zone, paying attention to the frame, slowing down and really seeing what is in front of you. Photography has taught me a great deal about life.”

Sandy’s Picture This Blog