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

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.