Tag Archives: “Tom Russell”

American and Roots Music Videos: RPM 8

Pixabay License

An occasional series of Americana and roots music videos. Sharing new discoveries, and revisiting old friends.

Next February will mark the 15th anniversary of YouTube, though it seems as if it’s been around forever. Owned and operated by Google, it is second only to its parent company’s search site as the most visited on the web. The statistics are staggering, and while I’m much more interested in the incredible access to music and its impact to modern culture than reciting a bunch of numbers about YouTube, there are a few that deserve to be shared. While there appears to be no single source of information about the company, sites such as Techjury, BiographOn, BrandWatch, and Wikipediaaggregate from many data sources in an attempt to give us the freshest information. I scanned all of the above in order to share just a few facts and figures with y’all.

Almost 5 billion videos are watched every day, although 20% are usually abandoned in the first ten seconds. Four hundred new videos are uploaded every minute. Last year 95% of the most watched clips were music videos, and the all-time champion clip that sweeps all categories is the song “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi, featuring Daddy Yankee, with over 6.6 billion views as of August 2019. Don’t be too concerned if you’ve never heard of it before (neither had I), because we Americana and roots music fans are simply a demographical blip. And while all age groups regularly visit the site, those between the ages of 18-44 dominate the audience. Finally, the gender gap has leveled out over the years, with an almost 50-50 split now, which might explain the popularity of topics such as makeup and video games.

For those of you who have been reading my columns through the years here at No Depression or follow my Americana and Roots Music Daily page on Facebook, you know that I use YouTube to hunt down and share music videos on a regular basis. It’s also become a regular Broadside feature to post my favorite new music videos each season, but this summer I’m feeling challenged to do so. In all candor, there just haven’t been many new albums that have knocked me over in the past few months. That said, I’ve decided to share a few recent discoveries that might be best described as old, new, borrowed, and blue. Happy listening.

John Prine and Poor Little Pluto

Just days after announcing the cancellation of summer tour dates due to dealing with some health issues, Prine released a new video from Tiago Majuelos, produced by the Spanish animation production company Bliss. As of this writing, the tour dates scheduled to begin in September are still on.

 

 

That Other Americana-Outlaw ‘Supergroup’

There is much press, publicity, hype, and anticipation for the upcoming release from The Highwomen — Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby. They’ve put out a video, played at Newport Folk Festival, covered Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show and are being hailed as the all-female update of The Highwaymen, the supergroup launched in 1985 by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. I’ve listened to four of the songs that they’ve released so far, and my ears must be broken because it’s not working for me. Sorry.

On the other hand, I recently came across this performance that was filmed at the Country Music Hall of Fame back in 2017. Featuring Jason Isbell, the above-mentioned Shires, Gillian Welch, and Dave Rawlings, it strikes me as the perfect union of both the not-that-old and new guard of the genre. If these four ever joined forces on an extended project they would most definitely and organically take the title of “supergroup.”

 

 

The Great Lonnie Johnson in Germany

Filmed in a Baden-Baden, Germany, studio with sets designed to reflect the realities of the urban blues, this clip is from the early ’60s, as it appears on the first of three volumes from the DVD set titled American Folk-Blues Festival. I believe that’s Sonny Boy Williamson doing the intro, and the band features Otis Spann paying piano, Willie Dixon on bass, and Fred Below on drums.

Lonnie Johnson was born in New Orleans in 1899 and as a child he studied piano, violin, and guitar. In the early 1920s he recorded for Okeh Records and has been acknowledged as a pioneer of the single-string guitar solo style. He recorded and performed through the late ’50s, and for a time he worked in a steel factory and as a janitor until being “rediscovered.” He toured throughout the ’60s and passed in 1970. Most of his recordings were done with an acoustic guitar, which is why I treasure this clip so much.

 

 

The Doctor Makes a House Call

I was searching for a Dr. John performance that wasn’t simply him playing the same three songs that he’s most famous for and came across this gem. I believe it’s from the TV show Sunday Night, later changed to Night Music.Jools Holland hosted the first season in 1988, and then David Sanborn took over. The show featured an eclectic list of musicians from across many genres, and you can still find some of the performances posted on YouTube. This is simply the best.

 

 

Has Mexico Sent Us the Check Yet for the Wall? LOL.

Tom Russell put a song out back in 2007 that could have been written yesterday: “Who’s Gonna Build Your Wall?” Russell, who lives in the El Paso-Juarez area, explained to NPR: “The danger in the song was thinking I was taking a cheap shot at the government, which isn’t where I’m at. I want to be honest about it — I don’t have any politics one way or another. That just doesn’t interest me. I turn my gun barrels on the people I dislike, which are white developers who have used these people and then are the first to jump on the bandwagon and say, ‘Yeah, we gotta get rid of them now.’”

 

 

 And One More for the Road 

 This video has probably received more views, likes, and comments on my Facebook page than any other. I had no idea how beloved and respected Junior Brown is in the roots music community since he’s never really had a huge album throughout his career despite releasing 12 great ones. The 67-year-old musician who plays a double-neck guitar he invented is one of the best performers I’ve ever seen, and his shows are high-energy affairs that show off both his virtuoso playing and songs with whimsical lyrics. This one is from his 1998 appearance on Austin City Limits.

 

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at the website of 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 nd Facebook as he Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com

Eight Songs That Blow Me Away

Photo by Steven Steigman

This photograph from was shot by Steven Steigman in 1978 and was used in a series of advertisements for Maxell cassette tapes, back in an era when people had use for such things. It crossed my mind the other day while I looked at my old stereo system and albums, wondering how long it would be until I was ready to say goodbye. It’s really a rhetorical question since I haven’t turned it on in years. With the exception of going out and seeing live music, virtually all the tunes I listen to these days are delivered digitally through my iPhone and pumped into earbuds.

According to iconicphotos.org, Steigman achieved the wind-blown positioning of the model, a man named Jack, by putting “tonnes of hairspray on his hair” and using fishing line to tie strands of it to the ceiling. “The lampshade, tie, and martini were also likewise tied to the fishing lines. The photo was instantaneously a hit, a powerful statement that music has power and force to move the mind and the soul. It was so popular that it was expended into a TV ad campaign. In the television versions, either Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries or Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain was the music responsible for those powerful waves.”

Like the man in the picture, I too am a solitary listener, and although I no longer have the hair, I’m still blown away by music. Many years ago, before No Depression morphed into whatever it is these days, there was a fairly large community of people who contributed on an almost a daily basis what music they were currently listening to. It was a great way to discover things you missed or had forgotten. Some of those folks are still kicking around here, and many are long gone. But in the spirit of the day, I thought I’d share a few things that are on my current playlist.

The Secret Sisters – You Don’t Own Me Anymore

 

Rachel Baiman – Shame

 

Tom Russell – Play One More: The Songs of Ian and Sylvia

 

Zoe and Cloyd – Eyes Brand New

 

James Carr – A Man Needs A Woman 

 

Gene Parsons – Kindling

 

Ana Egge and The Sentimentals – Say That Now

 

The Staple Singers – Uncloudy Day: The Vee Jay Years 1955-1962

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

Memories of 1975…Tom Russell, Norman Blake and Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen 75

The horses are in the barn, the chickens in the coop, the cat is laying on my toes and the glow of the fireplace makes this room seem like an old time moving picture as the shadow of the flames dance across the walls and ceilings. While the talking heads spent the last several days whipping up everyone into a frenzy with their warnings of the impending blizzard, here in the Hudson Valley we awoke this morning to find maybe a foot of snow dusting the meadows…merely a freckle on the face of a red headed girl. Oh it’s indeed cold and windy as promised, which makes me feel not too guilty as I do some inside chores while listening to both old and new music, and taking the time to let my thoughts and memories spill out across this electric screen.

The year was 1975, and I was a twenty three year old purveyor of recorded music in the form of singles, albums and eight tracks. In my light blue VW Super Beetle I traversed the turnpikes and back roads throughout Eastern Pennsylvania, going from town to town with a thick binder of catalogs that offered for sale roughly thirty-five per cent of all recorded music. It was a time when independent distributors ruled the airwaves and sales charts, unknowingly just four years away from the shift to a corporate controlled American art form.

Allentown, Scranton, Williamsport, Lock Haven, Lancaster, Reading. These were coal and steel towns standing on the edge of the cliff, still surviving on their last gasp of breath. Tom Russell from California wrote a song about those days, and I often find myself listening to it at times like these.

In the little town of Bethlehem along the banks of Monocacy Creek in the Lehigh Valley, there was a record store called Renaissance Music and a fellow who ran it named John helped me get a handle on the Flying Fish and Rounder titles I was selling. Even forty years ago both of these labels offered a large repertoire of traditional American music and it was John who helped guide me through a world of great bluegrass and string bands, Delta blues musicians, the hammered dulcimer players and Welsh folk music. Being a guitar player transitioning from electric to acoustic music, John thought I might like this new fellow who had just released one or two albums by the name of Norman Blake.

If you’re reading this you probably don’t need me to tell you about Norman, nor his spouse and musical partner Nancy. If you’d like some education, just enter his name into “The Google” and you can spend a day or two reading his credits and sampling his work. I remember seeing these two perform at an outdoor venue in Ambler, and sitting on the lawn at his feet just staring at his left hand. With fingers that flew effortlessly across the fretboard, and vocals that took me back to some nineteenth century porch in Georgia, I thought he was the most amazing guitarist I’d ever seen.

In 2006 when he and Nancy released Back Home to Sulphur Springs a publicist whispered in my ear an ominous message that “this will be the last record they’ll ever make”. Hardly. At least five more have come out since then, and most recently Devon over at Hearth Music sent me Norman’s latest recording of all self-written songs. His first of such in thirty years.The voice has grown tired and at times a bit shaky, but the guitar playing is simply as traditionally-innovative as always. Guess I could drop in a sample here if I was trying to sell it to you, but frankly I’m partial to this older clip with Nancy.

Since it seems as if today I’m stuck in this time bubble of forty years ago, let us take a moment to talk about Bruce. There was a disc jockey back in Philadelphia by the name of Ed Sciaky who worked at a number of local radio stations, but is mostly known from his time (twice actually) at WMMR-FM. Along with promoting the hell out of Billy Joel’s Cold Spring Harbor album, his real legacy is the role he played in exposing Springsteen to an audience beyond just Freehold and Asbury.

A man schooled in mathematics and self taught in musicology, his shows were like doctoral thesis on the origin of the songs and artists we listened to back then. I can still hear his deep voice that he kept soft as it worked its way through the speakers of my car radio late at night. The sadness came when diabetes caused his right foot to be amputated in 2002. Two years later while in Manhattan with his wife, he collapsed while on the sidewalk outside Penn Station and died at age fifty-five from a massive heart attack.

He and Bruce come to mind because the other day I found myself in possession of a digitized soundboard recording (we used to call these bootlegs) from Philly’s Tower Theater on December 31, 1975. It was the last of a multi-night run, and although for decades the tapes have been reproduced, sold and traded among fans, a different mix from Sciaky’s collection is now in circulation. I like the name of this album…Last Tango in Philly…and you can find more than one version from start to finish on You Tube.

While during this time frame Bruce was in the midst of his Born to Run tour, the track list includes a few oddities, including the oft-bootlegged “Mountain of Love” and “Does The Bus Stop At 82nd Street”. Seeing that it’s the official beginning of our New York winter, here’s a 1978 version of one of my favorite tracks, “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out”. Until we meet again…