TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, October 2, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
It's Money That I Love by Randy Newman
Money (That's What I Want) by Jerry Lee Lewis
Brother Can You Spare a Dime by Dr. John & Odetta
Money Money Money by ThaMuseMeant
Money Like Water by kevin Coyne
Money is King by Growling Tiger
It's Money That Matters by Randy Newman

Wake Me When September Comes by Green Day
Jackie Dressed in Cobras by The New Pornographers
Your Time Has Come by Audio Slave
Two Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer) by Roky Erickson
The Nurse by The White Stripes
Underdog by The Dirtbombs
My Baby Loves the Secret Agent by The Detroit Cobras
Dirty Water by The Standells

Didn't Know Much About Education by Otis Taylor
In My Time of Dying by Alvin Youngblood Hart
You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover by Bo Diddley
Keep Mediocrity at Bay by Van Morrison
Have You Ever Had the Blues by Howard Tate
Fef Ka Efe by Fela Kuti

If You Can't Give Me Everything by The Reigning Sound
Leslie Anne Levine by The Decemberists
Hijack by Paul Kanter & The Jefferson Starship
Ashes on the Ground by Yo La Tengo
Row Boys Row by Richard Thompson
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

GUITARS UNDER THE STARS AT VILLANUEVA

It was a night of good food, good music and good company out at the Villanueva home of my friends Steve and Sherry (formerly known as "Steve Scott & Denise DeLeon" of the late lamented radio show The Real Deal on KFUN in Las Vegas, N.M.

Memphis country singer Nancy Apple and Mark Autry -- the inspiration for Nancy's song "My Boyfriend" (which I played on The Santa Fe Opry last night) -- were there, so naturally a campfire guitar pull was on the agenda. (Pictured above are Nancy on harmonica, two Steves, and Mark. Anton is standing in the shadows. Photos by Helen.)

Nancy says she considers her annual trip to New Mexico as work rather than vacation, because she uses the time to write songs. She wrote four on Saturday and Mark says he likes three of them. I sure liked the ones she played for us last night.

She's got a new duet album with Rob McNurlin coming out pretty soon. Hopefully I'll be playing it real soon on The Opry. Nancy and Rob will be touring soon and a Santa Fe gig is a possibility.

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, September 30, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Four Leaf Clover by The Old 97s
The Dishwasher's Dream by Marah
Endless War by Son Volt
I Want to Live and Love Always by Junior Brown
The Meanest Jukebox in Town by Alvin Youngblood Hart
Me and My Uncle by The Grateful Dead
Drinkin' & Cheatin' & Death by The Waco Brothers
My Own Kind of Hat by Rosie Flores

My Boyfriend by Nancy Apple
Shopping For Dresses by Steve Young
Third Rate Romance by Russell Smith
Rain Keeps A-Fallin' by Josh Lederman y Los Diablos
Goin' Up to 'Burque by Bayou Seco
Funky Butt by Mark Weber
Down in The Flood by Bob Dylan
Satisfied Mind by Jonathan Richman

Boozoo That's Who by NRBQ
Oh Black Girl by Boozoo Chavis
My Toot Toot by Fats Domino & Doug Kershaw
Half a Boy and Half a Man by Queen Ida
Malinda by BeauSoleil
Saturday Night Special by Lesa Cormier & The Sundown Playboys
Tear-Stained Letter by Jo-El Sonier
The Whole Thing Stinks by Rico Bell & The Snake Handlers
Jole Blon by Vin Bruce

I Still Believe That You're Gone by Willie Nelson
Say Goodbye by Eleni Mandell
Gabriel's Call by Hazel & Alice
Heaven by Joe West
Shelter From the Storm by Rodney Crowell with Emmylou Harris
Until the Day I Die by Steve Earle
In My Hour of Darkness by Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

PAOLO SHOW CANCELLED

The Hurricane Katrina benefit concert with Los Mocosos I posted about yesterday has been cancelled --ironically due to weather.

New Mexico Music Commission director Nancy Laughlin said Friday because of this week’s rains, the ground around Paolo Soleri was so muddy trucks couldn’t get in to unload equipment.

The Music Commission has another hurricane relief benefit featuring New Mexico performers scheduled for Oct. 7 at Albuquerque’s Kimo Theater.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: OTIS & ALVIN

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
September 30, 2005

Otis Taylor has to be the most eccentric blues stylist working today. His new album Below the Fold, is a sonic wonder and — par for the course for Taylor — an intense listen.

You know you’re going to be in for a ride in the opening stains of the first song, “Feel Like Lightning.” A plunking banjo is joined by a screaming guitar, a crazed fiddle drums and bass, as Otis shouts “Oh Yeah!” It’s a joyful one-chord acoustic cacophony -- and there’s a cello in there too.

And to illustrate Taylor’s bizarre sense of arrangements, the song “Boy Plays Mandolin” indeed features Taylor picking that instrument. But when he sings, “When I was a boy, I played, I played the mandolin …” he’s answered by Ron Miles’ cool trumpet.

And while Greg Anton’s martial drumming on “Right Side of Heaven” suggests an Otha Turner-like fife and drum number, there’s no fife to be found. Just a dangerous showdown between Miles’ trumpet and Taylor’s harmonica.

Speaking of drums, this is the first time Taylor has employed them since reviving his music career in the late ‘90s. Anton only appears on about half the songs on Below the Fold, but the addition is welcome. Drums certainly don’t make this music sound conventional.

Taylor’s songs are portraits drawn from historical injustices -- often little-known stories -- and shadowy corners of the singer’s personal history.

“Your Children Sleep Good Tonight” is about the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in which Colorado National Guard troops shot at and set fire to a tent community of striking miners, killing 11 children northwest of Trinidad. None of the Guard members were ever prosecuted. “Hey hey, Mr. Rockefeller, I know your children sleeps good tonight,” Taylor taunts. (The Rockefeller Family controlled Colorado Fuel & Iron, the major coal operator in the region.)

“Government Lied” tells the story of German soldiers in World War II shooting American soldiers. According to Taylor’s liner notes, “At the end of the war, the responsible Germans were hanged for killing the white soldiers, but the U.S. government said that the black soldiers were missing to they wouldn’t have to account for them.”

Taylor has to write the darkest “Mama” songs in all of popular music. His last record had a ditty called “Mama’s Selling Heroin.” On this CD there’s “Mama’s Got a Friend,” an autobiographical story of a boy with two mommies. He never says exactly how he feels about the situation, but the tension of music -- the repeated minor-key acoustic guitar riff, droning cello, edgy fiddle, sinister trumpet -- paints the emotional landscape as “Every time I go to school, people ask me about my sister,” Taylor moans.

Below the Fold is a powerful testament to Taylor’s strange vision of the blues. It’s an album that somehow manages to be jolting as well as hypnotic.

Also Recommended:

*Motivational Speaker by Alvin Youngblood Hart. If Otis Taylor is blues’ great eccentric, Hart is the great eclectic.

His musical interests cover a wide field of musical styles that touch on the blues. Following his 2002 effort Down in the Alley — which was basically an acoustic collection of songs by ascended masters like Charlie Patton. Skip James and Sleepy John Estes — on his latest CD the gruff-voiced Hart returns to his high-voltage electric — and far more varied — sound.

There’s a couple of tunes here that are juiced-up, fiery versions of tunes Hart had previously recorded in acoustic versions -- “Big Mama’s Door” (subtitled “Might Return” in this version) and “How Long Before I Change My Clothes.” Blues purists probably prefer the original versions, but I bet the electric versions here would make Howlin’ Wolf smile.

On several cuts on Motivational Speaker, Hart tips his hat to the psychedelic blues of Cream and Jimi Hendrix.

There’s “Stomp Dance,” which starts out with what sounds like tribal drums, soon joined by a fuzzy bass before building up to a “Crosstown Traffic” frenzy and “Shoot Me a Grin,” which sounds like an invocation to prehistoric guitar gods.

“The Worm,” (written by Paul Rodgers in his days with Free), is slow and heavy with a hint of wah-wah in the guitar. Meanwhile the six-minute “Shootout on I-55” is a frantic jam.

Hart tries straight-ahead soul -- complete with a rag-tag horn section and a female backup singer (Susan Marshall) -- with his cover of Otis Redding’s “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”

And he’s no stranger to country music. One of the greatest delights on his 1998 album Territory was a lap steel-heavy tune called “Tallacatcha,” which, though written by Hart himself, sounded like a lost treasure from the Hank Williams song book.

On Motivational Speaker Hart goes hardcore honky tonk on a Johnny Paycheck stomper called “The Meanest Jukebox in Town,” then shows his latent cosmic cowboy tendencies on a Haight Ashbury-era Doug Sahm song, “Lawd I’m Just a Country Boy in This Great Big Freaky City.” (Hart has included this one in his live repertoire for years.)

But perhaps the strongest number here is a traditional tune called “In My Time of Dying.” Hart plays it slow with dreamy guitars -- including an inspiring slide played by Audley Freed.