Friday, March 23, 2018 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens
Back in the Saddle Again by Gene Autry
See Willy Fly By by The Waco Brothers
Driftwood 40-23 by The Hickoids
Crazy Date by T-Tex Edwards
Be Real by Freda & The Firedogs
Little White Trash Boy by The Starkweathers
Parting Words by Sarah Shook & The Disarmers
Like a Rolling Stone by Flatt & Scruggs
(Background Music: Dirt Road #24 by Clothesline Revival)
I Don't Give a Shit by Shinyribs
Harbor Lights by Jerry Lee Lewis
Take Me Back to Tulsa by Merle Haggard
Old Man from the Mountain by Bryan & The Haggards with Eugener Chadbourne
I Heard You Been Layin' My Old Lady by New Riders of the Purple Sage
Liquored Up by Southern Culture on the Skids
Austin Pickers by Gary P. Nunn
They'll Never Play My Songs in Nashville by Jonathan Parker
Country My Ass by Dale Watson
(Background Music: Downtown Wagon by Clothesline Revival)
Billy the Kid & Geronimo by Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore
That's All it Took by Gram Parsons
Riverboat Dishwashing Song by The Tillers
Cheap Mike by Del McCoury
Cool and Dark Inside by Kell Robertson
You'll Lose a Good Thing by Dad Horse Experience
Corrina Corrina by Tex Rubinowitz & Bob Newscaster
(Background Music: Snakebite Magicians by Clothesline Revival)
Marie Mouri by The Dead Brothers
Another Night to Cry by Eilen Jewell
Defrost Your Heart by Charlie Feathers
I Threw Away the Key by Zane Campbell
Yup by David Rawlings
Crossing Muddy Waters by John Hiatt
Sam Stone by Swamp Dogg CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page
Want to keep this hoedown going after I sign off at midnight? Check out The Big Enchilada Podcast Hillbilly Episode Archive where there are hours of shows where I play music like you hear on the SF Opry.
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican March 23, 2018
I just got back from the South by Southwest music festival in Austin. People are correct when they say that the festival has grown way too big, the traffic is impossible, and the parking is even worse. But despite all this, I managed to see a lot of good music.
Here are some of my favorites.
[Note: The videos embedded are not from this year's SXSW, except maybe the one for Nobunny. However that one was posted a few days before I saw Nobunny, so it's obviously not the same gig.]
* The Ghost Wolves at the 720 Club: Barely a year ago, I’d never heard of this Austin-based band. But after seeing them tear up this Red River Street dive with their unique brand of punk/blues/garage sounds, I feel like an overzealous cult member bent on spreading the word. Singer-guitarist Carley Wolf and her husband, drummer Jonathan Wolf, rock wild. Their lyrics and song titles seem to seethe with anger. And yet, somehow, listening to them only makes me grin. Indeed, I was grinning like a fool at the 720. But the cool thing was that Carley was grinning even more. The lady has an infectious smile that serves to fortify her monster guitar playing. And she doesn’t even need all six strings to make her magic. On the last several songs, Carley played an electric guitar with only one string — the low E string, I think. Pure primitive power.
* Nobunny at Hotel Vegas. I saw Wolves and I saw bunnies. If he were more famous, singer-guitarist Justin Champlin would do for shopping mall Easter bunnies what John Wayne Gacy did for clowns. And he should be more famous. Behind that ratty rabbit mask is a master of irresistible, hooky pop-punk songs.
* Shinyribs at The Dogwood. I was a huge fan of The Gourds, perhaps the greatest group to come out of Austin during the great alt-country scare of the late ’90s. I’m not sure what happened to them, but singer Kevin Russell has carried on with a new band, Shinyribs, and done quite well. In 2016, they released a fine New Orleans-flavored album called I Got Your Medicine (the band's fourth since 2010). Just recently, Shinyribs was named Best Austin Band by The Austin Chronicle.
Backed by a band that includes a sax and trumpet and two female backup singers, Russell, dressed in a loud yellow suit, did a medley of tunes including “Hey Pocky Way” and “Shotgun Willie.” At other points in the show, he started singing “Helter Skelter” during an unrelated number. And at least a couple of times, he made incongruous references to Roky Erickson’s “Cold Night for Alligators.”
*Count Vaseline at Hotel Vegas. Born Stefan Murphy, Vaseline is an Irish guy with a Beatle Bob hairdo who adopts the onstage persona of a deranged man standing on a soapbox and demanding that his crackpot warnings be heard. He started off slow. A growling guitar and ominous drums created the atmosphere as the Count went into a Jim Morrison-style vamp like some beatnik shaman. There is more than a little Mark E. Smith, the late frontman of The Fall, in Vaseline’s heady stew. He sounded like he was trying to stave off doomsday by prodding the audience to dance. Count Vaseline’s SXSW performance was much different than his recent release, Tales From the Megaplex, which is far poppier. I like that record, especially his Velvet-esque song called “Hail, Hail, John Cale” (“Lou Reed died wishing he could be John Cale ...”). But I like the weird live version of the Count even more.
* Yamantaka // Sonic Titan at Hotel Vegas. This was my major music discovery at SXSW 2018. It’s an avant-garde experimental noise group from Canada that calls its style “Noh-Wave” — a sly reference to Noh theater, a Japanese musical theater that’s been around since the 14th century. The band has two female singers, one of whom plays guitar, the other playing percussion instruments, including a large round drum and cymbals. Yamantaka did one number with serious Native American overtones. My first thought was that it sounded like Yoko Ono had produced a powwow record.
* The Waco Brothers at the Yard Dog Gallery. I’ve been going to see this band, led by Jon Langford of The Mekons, play the annual Bloodshot Records party during SXSW for more than 20 years now. I guess you could call it a ritual — a Dionysian ritual, where the frenzy becomes enlightenment — or something like that. The shows have all been high-energy, irreverent, frequently chaotic, and almost always inspiring.
This year, they played their classic songs — “See Willy Fly By,” “Red Brick Wall,” and “Plenty Tough, Union Made,” including some of their most inspired covers like George Jones’ “White Lightnin’,” Johnny Cash’s “Big River,” and Neil Young’s “Revolution Blues.” My favorite moment came after their performance of “Walking on Hell’s Roof.” In the middle of the song, Langford announced a fiddle solo from Jean Cook. However, her microphone wasn’t working, so the solo went unheard. You could tell this irked Langford. So, after the song was done and the mike problem was solved, the band decided to play that part again so Cook could have her solo heard. It was short but amazing.
* The Hickoids at Voodoo Doughnuts. This cowpunk/scuzz-country outfit is another band I make a point of seeing every time I go to SXSW. I’m pretty sure this set is the first time I’ve ever seen them during daylight hours — so now I can attest that it’s not the dark of night that makes The Hickoids maniacal. Singer Jeff Smith had an extra-long microphone cable and he used that to go out into the audience and harass — in the nicest possible way — law-abiding doughnut customers, getting in their faces, singing directly to individuals, and even going out onto Sixth Street and menacing passersby. He dragged at least one stranger into the shop, and he even sat on my lap for a few seconds.
History.com calls it "history's first rock concert." The poster called it "The most terrible ball of them all."
Alan Freed
The fire marshal called Alan Freed's Moondog Coronation Ball a threat to public safety and, with the help of the Cleveland police, shut it down shortly after it started.
Helped along by massive ticket counterfeiting and possibly by overbooking on the part of the event’s sponsors, an estimated 20,000-25,000 fans turned out for an event being held in an arena with a capacity of only 10,000. Less than an hour into the show, the massive overflow crowd broke through the gates that were keeping them outside, and police quickly moved in to stop the show almost as soon as it began.
This show did not have the star power of DJ Freed's later rock 'n' roll package shows. But it was a pretty amazing line-up of R&B acts. So in honor of that ill-fated ball, which took place -- or would have taken place -- 66 years ago this week here are a bunch of songs from those stars of the Coronation Ball.
The most famous name on the bill was The Dominos, a group led by Billy Ward and which included future soul star Jackie Wilson. The Dominos were best known for their hit "60 Minute Man" but I've always loved this bizarre little tune called "The Bells."
Tiny Grimes & The Rockin' Highlanders were known for wearing kilts onstage. I think this live jazzy Grimes clip is from a few years before
Danny Cobb's "My Isabella" was full of bongo fury
Varetta Dillard cried "Mercy, Mr. Percy"! (Enlightened lyric of the day: "I don't care if you hit me / Long as you don't quit me ...")
Finally, Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams reportedly was the only act who actually got to play a song at the Moondog Coronation Ball before it got halted by the law. Maybe it was this one.
God said it. The Tennessee State Legislature believes it. That settles it.
On this day in 1925, a piece of legislation called The Butler Act was signed into law by Tennessee Gov, Austin Peay.
This law made it illegal for any teacher in the state to teach the blasphemous theory, espoused by a British ne'er-do-well named Charles Darwin that the human race descended from "lower animals."
The Butler Act was what prompted the infamous Scopes trial -- in which high school science teacher John Scopes was convicted of violating the law by teaching forbidden science in his classroom.
The law actually stayed on the books until 1967 after another Tennessee teacher was actually fired for violating it.
This issue, which remains a real one in some fundamentalist circles, naturally has sparked some songs during the years.
The best one was "The Bible's True" by hillbilly music titan Uncle Dave Macon.
Here is a more contemporary update of Uncle Dave's song. I'm not even sure who the artist is. But he's sure that Darwin and his theory is a bunch of bunk and hooey. How could tadpole turn in to a monkey?
Louisiana jazzman Clarence Williams had some fun with whole evolution thing with this tune. Western-swing master Milton Brown, country singer Hank Penny, zydeco giant Boozoo Chavis and many others have done versions.
Of course, in the late '70s, Devo took the evolution battle to a whole new level, playing with the real possibility that someday, somewhere, people will take their gospel of De-Evolution literally.
OnceA version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican March 16, 2018 Once again,Barrence Whitfield and his savage band, The Savages, have hit another one out of the park. His new album, Soul Flowers of Titan, hits — seemingly effortlessly — that sweet spot between garage rock, R&B, soul, blues, and who-cares-what-you-call-it.
This is his fourth album since Whitfield reunited with original Savages Peter Greenberg (a New Mexico resident for nearly a decade) and Phil Lenker. And, even though the frontman is pushing sixty-three, there doesn’t seem to be any sign he’s slowing down. And, most important: This sound never gets old.
For those unfamiliar, the Florida-born Whitfield was working in a Boston record store in the early ’80s when he met up with guitarist Greenberg, a veteran of garage-punk bands like Lyres and DMZ. Barrence Whitfield and the Savages’ self-titled album was released in 1984. After a second record, the band broke up.
Whitfield kept recording until the mid-’90s (including a couple of country-folk flavored albums with Tom Russell). Then came the reunion with Greenberg and Lenker circa 2010 (the first reunion concerts were in Taos, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque). And the rest is — ongoing — history.
Hardcore Whitfield fans will notice some tweaks to the basic Savages sound — the band’s added a keyboard player, Brian Olive. And a couple of tracks feature a trumpet alongside regular sax man Tom Quartulli. But the additions seem natural. And the sound is still savage.
The album kicks off with a strong rocker called “Slowly Losing My Mind,” originally done by an obscure R&B group called Willie Wright & His Sparklers, who recorded it for the Federal label in 1960. I bet if Eric Burdon heard this, he’d say, “Damn, The Animals should have done this!” And there’s another Sparklers song on Soul Flowers, the nearly-as-raucous “I’m Going to Leave You.”
I liked the carefree “Let’s Go to Mars” when I first heard it. But I liked it about 10 times more after seeing the goofy, almost surreal video the group did for the song, which was written by Greenberg and Lenker. I won’t describe the whole thing, but I’ll just say the best part is when Greenberg performs a guitar solo inside Whitfield’s mouth. (You’d think it would be dark in there, but Greenberg’s wearing his sunglasses.)
Other highlights on Soul Flowers include “Adorable” (“I’m gonna get a gun/Just to shoot it at the sky”); “I Can’t Get No Ride,” originally done by Memphis soulman Finley Brown (and originally recorded by Whitfield on his 2009 solo album Raw, Raw, Rough); and “I’ll Be Home Someday,” an intense minor-key blues that was co-written by Hank Ballard of The Midnighters. (Speaking of whom, I’d love to hear Whitfield sing “Work With Me Annie.”)
But ask me on another day, and I might tell you the highlights of this album are “Sunshine Don’t Make the Sun” or “Tall, Black and Bitter” or “Edie Please” or the slow-burner called “Tingling.” Like just about all of Whitfield’s releases, Soul Flowers of Titan is a consistent work — consistently excellent. If I were going to Mars, I’d want to take my Whitfield albums with me for the trip.
Also recommended:
* The Beast Is You by The Electric Mess. Four years ago, when I reviewed House on Fire, the previous album by this Brooklyn band, I said, “Next time I review an Electric Mess album, I don’t want to talk about how undeservedly obscure this band is.”
So I won’t talk about that. Even though …
It took them nearly four years, but the Mess is back with another electrifying collection of 13 fast-and-furious neo-garage/quasi-psychedelic pounders.
With her raspy voice and audible sneer, singer Esther Crow (she’s apparently dropped her “Chip Fontaine” persona) sounds like she’s either perpetually outraged by or perhaps sardonically bemused by the world around her. On “I’m Gone,” she snarls, “Got no use for all your spiritual talk/All your positive vibes are really such a crock.”
And a few songs later, a tune called “You Can’t Hide” — my favorite cut on the album, at least so far — features a spoken-word segment where she says, “Like a wild dog in the night/I’m gonna sniff you out, baby.”
But while she sounds like the aggressor there, just a few seconds later, she’s saying, “Get off of me, you get off of me! Get off of me!” (That’s an especially surprising turn in a song that starts out, “Let me be your sloppy seconds, baby.”) [Author's Note: In a Facebook post yesterday Esther Crow herself said, "... the lyrics he refers to: "you get off of me!" Are really: "you can't hide from me!" So I remain the creepy aggressor after all!"]
And on another favorite, “Plastic Jack,” Crow confesses, “I’m a charlatan to the highest degree ... I’m a fraud, a phony ... a quack, a swindler, a deceiver, imposter, a backslider.”
While Ms. Crow is the undisputed star, she couldn’t do it without the rest of the band. The musical interplay between guitarist Dan Crow (Esther’s husband) and keyboardist Oweinama Biu continues to amaze and mystify, while the rhythm section of bass man Derek Davidson (who also writes a large share of the songs) and drummer Alan Camlet provide a solid, if frantic, foundation.
Though the group is a self-proclaimed “mess,” there is nothing slapdash about this tight little unit.
Video time!
Here's that Barrence Whitfield video I mentioned above
And here's the title song of the new album by The Electric Mess
