MORE CHARGES FOR ANGELO

A version of this appeared in The Santa Fe New Mexican
November 19, 2005

A key witness in the federal extortion and money-laundering case against former state Treasurer Robert Vigil is facing 19 new counts in a state security fraud case.

The new charges for which Albuquerque businessman Angelo Garcia was indicted on Thursday are on top of the 27 charges he already was facing in the same case involving a Santa Fe low-income housing development that never got off the ground.

Attorney General Patricia Madrid said Friday that the victims in the case are all elderly New Mexico residents.

“Some people see white collar crimes as simply an issue about money,” Madrid said in a written statement. “But when an elderly person is defrauded of their life savings we are talking about much more than money. When an individual is living on a fixed income the loss of life savings greatly impacts the future quality of life. Targeting the elderly and defrauding them of their life savings is unconscionable.”

Also expressing disgust for those who cheat elderly victims was Sam Bregman, one of Vigil’s lawyers in his federal case.

“Angelo Garcia is the government’s star witness against my client,” Bregman said in an interview Friday. “He is nothing more than a con man. The government’s entire case against Robert Vigil is based on the testimony of con men and convicted criminals.”

Garcia has pleaded not guilty to the original state securities-fraud charges.
But he has pleaded guilty in federal court to aiding and abetting extortion in a kickback scheme involving Vigil and his predecessor Michael Montoya — who this month pleaded guilty to one count of extortion in the federal case.

Garcia already was cooperating with the federal government against Vigil and Montoya when he was originally indicted in September by a state grand jury in the securities-fraud case.

Garcia’s new charges represent more than $600,000 allegedly lost by seven victims, Madrid said.

One elderly couple allegedly lost more than $174,000, while another man allegedly lost more than $156,000. A mother and daughter each allegedly lost more than $100,000 to Garcia’s venture. A second couple allegedly lost about $65,000.

These losses are in addition to the near $1 million that state prosecutors say Garcia and his partners took from elderly investors covered in the previous indictments. Those charges are still pending.

Garcia’s new indictment includes five counts each of securities fraud, fraud over $20,000 and sale of unregistered securities, and one count each of forgery, racketeering and conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

The Santa Fe project was a $2.6 million, 44-unit apartment complex called the San Clemente Apartments proposed to be built on 3.5 acres between Airport Road and Jaguar Drive. Some of Garcia’s alleged victims put up money for projects in Rio Rancho and Belen. None of the three projects were ever built.

The same Bernalillo County grand jury on Thursday also indicted Orlando Montoya — brother of the former treasurer — on four additional felony counts in the securities-fraud case.

Orlando Montoya previously was indicted on 13 felony counts in the case.

Angelo Garcia’s brother Joseph Garcia also was indicted on 11 felony counts in September in the securities- fraud case. The grand jury didn’t add any new charges for him this week.

Both Joseph Garcia and Orlando Montoya have pleaded not guilty.

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, November 18, 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
All of the Monkeys Ain't in the Zoo by Tommy Collins
Operation Blues by Hank Thompson
A Good Night Tonight by Tom Armstrong
Hillbilly Train by Sonny George & The Tennessee Sons
You Said Goodbye by The San Juan River by Nancy Apple & Rob McNurlin
Veteran's Day by Tom Russell Band
Put it Back by Billy Kaundart
This Bottle in My Hand by George Jones & David Allen Coe
Curly Toes by (Unknown)

Endless War by Son Volt
Come On by Hundred Year Flood
The Demon of White Sadness by Marah
If My Heart Was a Car by The Old 97s
One Last Question by Jason & The Scorchers
Trampled Underfoot by Michael Hall
Arkansas Hard Luck Blues by Lonnie Glosson
Music Has No End by Clothesline Revival with Neil Morris

Don't Worry 'Bout Me by Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Buckskin Stallion Blues by Jimmie Dale Gilmore & Mudhoney
I'm Gonna Strangle You Shorty by The Flatlanders
Everybody's Talkin' by Bobby Bare
Daddy What If by Bobby Bare with Bobby Bare, Jr.
Painting Her Fingernails by Bobby Bare Jr.'s Young Criminal Starvation League
Freakin' at The Freaker's Ball by Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show
Peace in the Valley by Jimmie Dale Gilmore

I Wish I Were a Pirate by Ukulele Man
Cornbread Nation by Tim O'Brien
Better Than Me by Bobby Earl Smith
Look What Thoughts Will Do by Merle Haggard
Poor Poor Lenore by The Handsome Family
It's Just You by Blaze Foley
The Rue of Ruby Whores by Michael Hurley
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

AND I GUESS THERE WON'T BE A DIXIE CHICKS DAY IN THE SENATE

Here's an Associated Press item about Senate Republicans shooting down a resolution honoring Bruce Springsteen.

I can't see why they can't forgive The Boss for supporting John Kerry. Last year at a George Bush appearance in Albuquerque they played a taped marching-band version of "This Land is Your Land," which was written by Woody Guthrie, a self-proclaimed communist.

By DONNA DE LA CRUZ

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bruce Springsteen famously was “born in the USA,” but he’s getting scorned in the U.S. Senate.

An effort by New Jersey’s two Democratic senators to honor the veteran rocker was shot down Friday by Republicans who are apparently still miffed a year after the Boss lent his voice to the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

The chamber’s GOP leaders refused to bring up for consideration a resolution, introduced by Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Jon Corzine, that honored Springsteen’s long career and the 1975 release of his iconic album, “Born to Run.”

No reason was given, said Lautenberg spokesman Alex Formuzis.

“Resolutions like this pass all the time in the U.S. Senate, usually by unanimous consent,” he said.

Telephone calls to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s office seeking comment were not immediately returned.

Lautenberg said he couldn’t understand why anyone would object to the resolution.

“Even if the Republicans don’t like (Springsteen’s) tunes, I would hope they appreciated his contributions to American culture,” Lautenberg said.

Springsteen endorsed Kerry last year, and made campaign appearances that drew huge crowds who came to hear music described in the resolution as “a cultural milestone that has touched the lives of millions of people.”

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: HOW I LOVE THEM OLD SONGS

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Novemebr 18, 2004

In recent days a couple of albums full of cover songs by a couple of great country singers have graced my CD player. The artists are very different and the albums they’ve released probably are even more different.

But both Come on Back by Jimmie Dale Gilmore and The Moon Was Blue by Bobby Bare are simple but extremely enjoyable works that reveal the foundations of these artists’ respective work. They’re both short -- each less than 40 minutes -- but very satisfying.

Gilmore’s album is a memorial to his late father Brian Gilmore, who was a part-time country musician -- a guitarist whose most prized possession was his old Fender “Nocaster” electric guitar. Gilmore in the liner notes tells of a newspaper clipping from The Tulia Herald from the early ‘50s. It’s an ad for a dance at the VFW Hall starring “The Swingaroos featuring Brian Gilmore and his Electric Guitar!”

You can see that very guitar on the CD cover and hear it on this album, played by Robbie Gjersoe, who also plays lap steel and other stringed instruments.

Come on Back consists of Brian Gilmore’s favorite country classics. There are loving renditions of tunes from the songbooks of Hank Williams (“I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”); Lefty Frizzell (“Saginaw, Michigan”); Jimmie Rodgers (“Standin’ On the Corner”); Ernest Tubb (“I’m Walkin’ the Floor Over You”); Hank Snow (“I’m Movin’ On”); Johnny Cash (“Train of Love”); and The Carter Family (“Jimmy Brown the Newsboy”).

There are some songs here that just seem to be part of the honky tonk astral plane: “Pick Me Up On Your Way Down” for instance, and “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.” They were hits by Charlie Walker and Slim Willett respectively. These singers have largely been forgotten, but the songs live on in renditions by untold numbers of country bands in untold numbers of Saturday night barrooms.

All the tracks are played by Gilmore and a basic guitars/bass/drums combo (some feature fiddler Eamon McLoughlin). The whole shebang was produced and arranged by Jimmie Dale’s fellow Flatlander Joe Ely.

Only one song here is a little jarring. That’s “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me,” a Marty Robbins song. Gilmore notes that Robbins’ original was the first commercial recording to employ a distorted guitar. Here the guitar solo almost sounds like Mudhoney, the Seattle grunge warriors with whom Gilmore recorded in the mid ’90s. I’m not complaining. The arrangement just seems a little out of context here.

Come On Back ends with a classic gospel tune that has been a longtime favorite of singers both Black and white -- Thomas Dorsey’s “Peace in the Valley.” A few days before he died, Brian Gilmore told his granddaughter that this was his favorite song of all time.

I bet the old man would have loved this album.

And I bet he would have liked Bobby Bare’s new one too.


The Moon Was Blue is a collection of standards from the worlds of jazz, pop and (gulp!) easy listening done in a “countrypolitan“ style. The most obvious comparison would be to Willie Nelson’s Stardust.

Bare does versions of “Love Letters in the Sand,” “Yesterday When I Was Young” and even “Shine on Harvest Moon.”

It’s produced by Bare’s son, Bobby Jr., a musician in his own right who is perfectly capable of getting just as grungy as Mudhoney. That makes the mainly straightforward MOR arrangement here -- some songs even feature The Nashville String Machine -- even more surprising.

To be sure, there are a few moments of subversive sonic weirdness here -- most notably a growing guitar balancing the sweet female choral of “Am I That easy To Forget” and some strange electronic atmospherics on “Everybody’s Talkin’” and “Fellow Travelers.”

This is the first album in umpteen years for Bare, who first starting cranking out hits in the late 1950s. In the early 1960s he had a string of records that would become Nashville classics, most notably “Detroit City,” “Miller’s Cave” and “500 Miles Away from Home.” Then in the ‘70s, he teamed up with songwriter Shel Silverstein to create some of the greatest country novelty songs of The Outlaw Era -- “Marie Lavaux,” “The Winner,” “Warm and Free” and “Tequila Sheila.”

Surprisingly, the only disappointing song here is Bare’s version of a Silverstein song, “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan.” It’s not bad, but it just can’t compare with Marianne Faithful, who applied her crone croak to the tune on her album Broken English and rendered any future versions irrelevant.

The late Roger Miller, who was a Nashville regular during the same era when Bare first made it big, once told me that when country musicians got together for after-hours jam sessions, it’s the old standards they mainly liked to do.

Hearing Bare’s husky croon on songs like “Are You Sincere” and “It’s All in The Game” I can envision Bare in the backroom of Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, strumming and singing with Roger and Willie and Ray Price and Faron Young.

And speaking of Ms. LaVaux … You can find Bare’s “Marie Lavaux” on the recent Columbia Legacy compilation The Best of Shel Silverstein. There’s also the ultra sappy “Daddy What If,” featuring a very young Bare Jr. (I would have preferred “Warm and Free” but nobody asked me.)

This collection features songs performed not only by Silverstein, but by the original performers who made his tunes famous.

There’s “A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash; “The Taker” by Kris Kristofferson”; “The Unicorn” by The Irish Rovers; “A Couple More Years” by Willie & Waylon and some hits by Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show, notably “Silvia’s Mother,” “Cover of The Rolling Stone” and “Freaking at the Freakers’ Ball.”

My main complaint here is that there’s too much Dr. Hook here. Emmylou Harris’ “Queen of the Silver Dollar” is a hundred times stronger than Hook’s version.

Missing from the collection is “Lucy Jordan,” one of Silverstein‘s greatest tunes. I wish it had Faithful’s rendition. At least they didn’t use Dr. Hook’s.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: SQUIRMING TOWARD 2008

A version of this published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
November 17, 2005

Gov. Bill Richardson’s name frequently appears in the “2008 Democrats” section of The Note on ABC News’ daily political Web site, along with other potential presidential contenders.

But usually when the governor is there, it’s not for “tortured squirming.”

Richardson was recognized for giving the “most awkward non-answer of the weekend” during his appearance on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.

According to The Note, Wallace asked the gov about Washington Post columnist Al Kamen’s account of Richardson telling guests at an elite Georgetown dinner party that he’s “going” for president in 2008.

Noted The Note, “viewers were subjected to some tortured squirming.”

What makes Bill squirm? Here’s a transcript of how that interview ended:

Wallace: ... there’s a report this week about you going to a fancy Georgetown dinner party, and let’s put up on the screen what the report said. “Richardson was quoted by one guest as saying, ‘I’m running and you can tell people that.’ Two others recalled him saying, “I’m going in 2008.’” Governor, simple yes or no question. Is that story true?

Richardson: Well, you know, this is the season for rumors. What I’ve said and I’ve always said, Chris, I got to get re-elected in one year. I’ve got a broad agenda in New Mexico. I love being New Mexico governor. New Mexico has been very good to me. We’ll see after ‘08.

W: Well, not after ‘08. That will be a little late. But did you say at that party -- simple yes or no -- I’m going?

R: Those are rumors. You know, this was one of those dinner parties where there were a lot of people supporting a bunch of candidates.

W: Well, you could end the rumor, Governor.

R: Well, no, that is incorrect. I said that beyond ‘06, we’re going to take a look at a lot of options.

W: Okay. Governor, that’s a yes or no answer.

Richardson went through a similar version of this dance on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition Wednesday, ultimately saying that Kamen’s column was false. But since it was radio it was hard to tell how tortured the squirming was.

To Tell the Truth: So Kamen had it wrong, and veteran Associated Press political reporter Ron Fournier had it wrong earlier this year when he reported “New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has told party leaders he will run.”

How could otherwise respected journalists keep getting this wrong? Why do they keep reporting falsehoods about the governor of New Mexico?

Chatter about Kamen’s column and Richardson’s refusal to pledge to serve a full term if elected governor next year, prompted former state Republican John Dendahl this week to wonder, tongue-in-cheek, what Democrat is really running for governor in 2006.

“It's time for one of those ‘Will the REAL candidate please stand up?’ challenges, with (Lt. Gov. Diane) Denish as the proper responder,” Dendahl said.

I love Paris in the springtime: The strangest e-mail I’ve gotten
all month has to be one from the state Senate Republicans, in which Mark Boitano of Albuquerque — one of the most socially conservative senators in office — expresses his admiration for a pop-culture (some would say “trash culture”) icon.

“I've become a Paris Hilton fan,” Boitano wrote in an “op-ed” piece.

O.K., that got my attention.

“No, it's not after viewing a provocative photo or a steamy video,” the senator continued. “It's after hearing Paris make an expectedly wise statement about breaking her engagement because she's not ready to get married and wants to avoid a divorce. ‘I have seen the breakups between people who love each other and rush into getting married too quickly. I do not want to make that mistake,’ Ms. Hilton said recently. The two million plus Americans who will marry in the next year can learn something from Paris' decision.”

Boitano goes on to note Hilton’s New Mexico roots.

“Her great-grandfather — hotelier and philanthropist Conrad Hilton — was born in New Mexico, served in the state legislature and was known to have deep affection for his family and country. He would be proud of her, as should state lawmakers, social scientists and anyone worried about the future of marriage, family and society in America.”

Boitano frequently sponsors legislation he says is designed to strengthen the institution of marriage.

Last year he co-sponsored a package of bills that included measures to reduce marriage license fees for couples who take marriage-education programs and require that divorcing couples with children go to pre-divorce counseling classes. The proposals didn’t make it out of the Senate.

“Some think Paris Hilton is overexposed (in more ways than one),” Boitano wrote, “but regardless of what you think about her, when people like Paris think twice about better marriage preparation that can result in improved marital unions and less use of the nuclear option of breakup and divorce (there) may be a ray of hope for this storied institution after all, and as Paris is fond of saying, ‘that's hot!’ ”