TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Songs From Woody

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
 July 20, 2012

Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, you wrote us some songs.

And because July 14 would have been Guthrie’s 100th birthday, it’s a good time to celebrate his impressive body of work, which in turn celebrates all of us — when he’s not calling a pox on cruel vigilantes, bankers who rob you with a fountain pen, and others who would oppress the people.

I realized that Guthrie had transformed from a dusty old counterculture outcast hero into a mainstream icon eight years ago when I was covering a campaign speech by President George W. Bush in Albuquerque. At the end of the rally there was canned music — upbeat, if not quite inspirational, instrumental versions of patriotic songs. And among these was “This Land Is Your Land” by Guthrie.

I couldn’t resist needling a Republican friend I saw there. “Do you realize they’re playing a song written by an admitted communist?” He looked at me like I was crazy.

But a lot of people take this stuff seriously. At least they used to.

According to the Roadside America website in an article about the Guthrie statue in the the town of Okemah, Oklahoma, where he was born, local folks “remembered him mostly as a socialist who wrote a regular column, `Woody Sez,’ for The Daily Worker — the newspaper of the American Communist Party.”

It’s true that there were lots of bitter feelings about Woody’s politics among conservative elements in the Sooner state. I remember visiting there in the mid-’70s when the idea of the Okemah statue was first being discussed. The Daily Oklahoman was frothing over the notion of building a memorial for a commie folksinger. As Roadside America notes, “It wasn’t until 1998, 31 years after his death — and after everyone who disliked him had also died — that the town erected a statue in his honor.”

So you can listen to the songs of Woody Guthrie these days without being labeled a dangerous subversive. And there’s lots to choose from.

Here are my Top 10 Guthrie covers.

1) “Do-Re-Mi” by Ry Cooder. Guthrie meant for this song to be good-natured and humorous, a warning to poor folks against being lured to California to find work only to be exploited and mistreated once they got there. But on his live album, Show Time!, Cooder, aided by Flaco Jiménez on accordion, combines this with the Mexican polka “Viva Sequin” to turn “Do-Re-Mi” into a fiesta.

2) “Vigilante Man” by Hindu Love Gods. The Love Gods was a one-off project by Warren Zevon, backed by members of R.E.M. in 1990. This is a straightforward folk-rock version led by Zevon’s ragged voice and Peter Buck conjuring up the music of both Luther Perkins and Ennio Morricone on guitar.

3) “I Ain’t Got a Home in This World Anymore” by Bruce Springsteen. This appears on a 1988 various-artists compilation called Folkways: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. It was just a few years before that when Springsteen’s manager turned him onto Joe Klein’s biography Woody Guthrie: A Life, which was instrumental in politicizing Springsteen. Springsteen also did a rocking version of “Vigilante Man” on this tribute album, but his mournful, acoustic version of “I Ain’t Got a Home” goes straight to the heart.

4) “Philadelphia Lawyer” by The Maddox Brothers & Rose. This is a tale of revenge — well, perhaps just Old West justice — about a cowboy who loses his sweetheart to a slick attorney from the East. I’ve got it on a collection called America’s Most Colorful Hillbilly Band Vol. 1. Rose Maddox would record it again as a bluegrass number a few decades later on a solo album, This Is Rose Maddox.

5) “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” by The Byrds. Guthrie wrote this song in 1948 after reading about a U.S. government plane deporting 28 people to Mexico. The plane had caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon in California and crashed, killing everyone on board. Guthrie was saddened by the tragedy and angered at the fact that the victims weren’t named. The Byrds did this song as a country waltz, powered by those trademark Byrds harmonies.

6) “Pretty Boy Floyd” by The Byrds. Again with the Byrds. In their early days they were known as devoted Dylan interpreters. But they also did well by Guthrie. Years before I’d ever heard this song, my Oklahoma grandmother used to tell me the story of the famous Robin Hood-style bank robber delivering a truckload of groceries to the poor in Oklahoma right before Christmas one year during the Depression. Most of the world, me included, first heard this tune, done as a bluegrass romp on the landmark 1968 country-rock album Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

7) “Hard Travelin’ ” by Simon Stokes. Guthrie sang this as a happy hobo tune. But Stokes, with his gruff voice and minor-key arrangement, makes a listener believe that he’s traveled every mile and barely survived the journey. Stokes sounds like a hobo who would rip out your spleen and throw it in the pot with his Mulligan stew. He sounds scary in the song even when he does a verse in a strange falsetto.

8) “Grand Coulee Dam” by Lonnie Donegan. This song celebrates a massive public-works project of the ’30s — an economic stimulus package on a scale we can’t even imagine these days. True story: in 1941 the Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Oregon, hired Guthrie to write music for a film about the Columbia River and public power. This song, “Roll on Columbia” and several others came out of that arrangement. Skiffle King Donegan’s 1958 studio recording of this song is a spirited take that gets faster and faster as the song progresses.

9) “Dust Bowl Refugee” by James Talley. This song is from Talley’s excellent tribute album, Woody Guthrie and Songs of My Oklahoma Home, which was recorded in Santa Fe at Stepbridge Studios in the 1990s. This is one of Guthrie’s finest if not that famous Dust Bowl ballads, and Talley did it justice.

10) “This Land Is Your Your Land” by Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings. Guthrie wrote in response to Kate Smith’s “God Bless America,” which he thought was pompous. “This Land” has been de-fanged to the point that it’s no more controversial than a summer camp singalong. But Jones, the most significant soul singer to arise in the last 10 years or so, puts fire and defiance back into the tune.

Here are some of those songs on video

 

eMusic July

* The Essential Early Years: 1949-1954 by June Carter. Most people think of this lady as Mrs. Johnny Cash. It's a shame that her early solo largely has been overlooked. This collection, (a bargain -- $5.99 for 27 songs) shows Little Junie was a funny, sexy singer and a hundred-proof hillbilly.

A handful of these tunes were on the June Carter Cash retrospective, Keep on the Sunny Side, that Sony Legacy put out a few years ago.

As I've said before, back in the period covered in this collection, Nashville apparently was trying to market June as a real hillbilly version of Dorothy Shay (“The Park Avenue Hillbilly”). This involved a lot of novelty material. But June was really good at it.

A few songs that were on Keep on the Sunny Side are here -- "Root Hog or Die," "No Swallerin' Place" for instance. "Knock Kneed Suzy" is low-tone hillbilly humor, (and thus I love it). And speaking of funny business, Homer & Jethro are all over the place here on songs like "Hucklebuck" and "I Said My Nightshirt and Put On My Prayers."

Meanwhile, she sings about the heartbreak of erectile dysfunction in the song "You Flopped When You Got Me Alone."

But not everything here is a novelty song. Songs like "Honey Look What You've Done," "Crocodile Tears" and  "He Don't Love Me Anymore" are shoulda-been classic country weepers. A young Chet Atkins plays guitar on most tracks

* Lex Hives by The Hives.  Many critics have been less than kind about this album. Granted, a lot of the tunes here have a certain classic-rock sheen. “Go Right Ahead” sounds like Electric Light Orchestra filtered through T Rex. “I Want More” might be an AC/DC sendup. And on the very first track, The Hives seem to put the whole album in the context of arena-rock knuckleheadedness with their minute-long tongue-in-cheek invocation “Come On!” Here, with overdubbed crowd cheers in the background, Almqvist chants, “Come on! Come on! Come on! ... Everybody, come on!”


Sound familiar? I wrote about this album in a recent Terrell's Tuneup. Read the whole thing HERE


But before you do, have a little consumer advice: There are two versions of this album on eMusic: The regular (linked above) and a deluxe edition. The deluxe costs $2 more and has two additional tracks. The catch is, those are only available when you download the entire deluxe edition. Also, you can't get them separately on Amazon or iTunes either. So if you want the songs "High School Shuffle" and "Insane," (and they are pretty good -- I've heard them on Spotify.) be sure to go deluxe.

* Metal Circus by Husker Du . This seven-song EP from 1983 is one of the few Husker Du works I'd never bought.

This is known as a transitional record, where Bob Mould, Grant Hart and Greg Norton began to move away from being just another Midwest hardcore band and started paying more attention to songwriting, melody, lyrics, all those good things -- without losing the fire and fury that propelled them in the first place.

Although I tend to gravitate to the Mould songs on most Husker albums, and the opening song, "Real World" is a fine Mould effort, as is the exhilarating "First of the Last Calls."

But the greatest song on Metal Circus is a Hart tune. "Diane" is a chilling first-person account based on the 1980 abduction and murder of a West Minneapolis waitress by serial killer Joseph Donald Ture. The song is written from the perspective of the killer (eight years before Nirvana would take the same approach with "Polly."

"Hey little girl, do you need a ride?/Well, I've got room in my wagon why don't you hop inside?" (In reality, witnesses heard Edwards scream and saw the abductor force her into his car.) "... We could lay in the weeds for a little while / I'll put your clothes in a nice, neat little pile "

I was a latecomer to Husker Du. They had broken up shortly before I bought that used CD of Flip Your Wig that made me a fan. Now I almost wish I'd have heard this nightmarish contemporary murder ballad before I heard all the great Husker albums that followed

* Gus Cannon Vol. 1 (1927-28).   While writing my recent review of  The South Memphis String Band's Old Times There ...   I wanted to hear Cannon's original recording of  "Can You Blame the Colored Man," which Cannon recorded under the name of "Banjo Joe." Lo and behold, it was right here on eMusic on this fine Document Records collection.

Not only that, but there were five other Banjo Joe songs, which Cannon recorded before forming his quintessential jug band, Cannon's Jug Stompers. On these, which were Cannon's first recordings, he's accompanied by Blind Blake on guitar.

So I nabbed all those, plus a couple of Jug Stompers tracks I didn't already have ("Springdale Blues" and "Riley's Wagon")

Some of the Banjo Joe songs -- "Jonestown Blues" (no, not that Jonestown!), "Madison Street Rag" and "My Money Never Runs Out") were later recorded by the Jug Stompers. The later versions sound fuller with prominent harmonica and, of course, jug.)

R.I.P. Kitty Wells

Kitty indeed was the rightful queen of country music. She died Monday from complications from a stroke. She was 92.

She's best known for her 1952 hit "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," written by J.D. Miller, probably is the greatest "answer song" in the history of music. It was a pointed reply to the Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life."

But one of the most soulful country songs ever recorded was Kitty's "Making Believe." Kitty had a hit with it in the '50s. Emmylou Harris and Merle Haggard both did fine versions. But I also love how Social Distortion made it work as a punk-rock stomper.

Here's an obituary from the Los Angeles Times' Pop & Hiss blog. And below are videos of Kitty singing those two wonderful songs.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, July, 2012 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at) ksfr.org

 OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Dyin' for It by Mudhoney
Baby Stardust by Thee Michelle Gun Elephant
Kelly Ride by The Mighties
Jiving Sister Fanny by The Rolling Stones
My Baby's Gone by The Scumbags
Sticky by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Don't Call Us, We'll Call You by Figures of Light
Crack Head Joe by Little Freddy King

Advanced Romance by Frank Zappa & The Mothers with Captain Beefheart
Three- Time Loser by 68 Comeback
Red Right Hand by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Canyons of Your Mind by The Bonzo Dog Band

Devil's Motorcycle by The Chocolate Watch Band
Mr. Trouble by Stan Ridgway
Pictures of Lily by The Hickoids
Sunrise (Turn On) by The Chesterfield Kungs
I Couldn't Sleep by Joey Ramone
Macho Grande by Joe "King" Carrasco
Omo Pupa by West African Highlife Band
Buzz Buzz Buzz by The Hollywood Flames

I'm Leaving it Up to You by Big Sandy with Dewey Terry
Down in Mississippi by James Luther Dickinson with The North Mississippi Allstars
Locked Down by Dr. John
Maria Has a Son by Kult
You and Me and The Bottle Makes Three Tonight by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
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TERRELL'S TUNEUP: On Sand and Dickinson

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
July 6,  2012

For more than a quarter century, a raspy-voiced oracle from Arizona named Howe Gelb has been cranking out fascinating recordings of sun-dried songs and wind-chapped ballads, presiding over an ever-changing lineup in a band called Giant Sand. 


Since 1985, Giant Sand has released about 20 albums, not including a fistful of Gelb’s solo albums and records released under the name “The Band of Blackie Ranchette.”


And he’s still at it. Just last month Gelb unleashed Tucson: A Country Rock Opera, a sprawling (70-minute!) musical saga featuring a sprawling band (up to a dozen members in the latest configuration, including a string section from Denmark) called Giant Giant Sand.

According to press materials, Tucson tells a tale that “revolves around a semi-grizzled man with overt boyish naiveté who sets off to escape his hometown and embarks on a life-changing road trip; eschewing all his worldly goods and leaving his girlfriend, encountering jail at the Mexican border, finding love at a train station saloon and fearing the end of the world.”

I’ll be honest: if you’re just listening to the album without benefit of liner notes and lyric sheet, it’s going to be difficult to follow the plot, the characters, etc. My advice is not to worry about it. Just sit back and enjoy the music. There’s much to enjoy, and you won’t be tested on the words.

There are some surface similarities between Tucson and El Santo Grial: La Pistola Piadosa, last year’s strange, beautiful, and disturbing album by Slackeye Slim. While Slackeye didn’t bill Santo Grial as an opera, like Tucson, it’s a work of interconnected songs that tell a story (Slackeye’s album more obviously so.) Both Gelb and Joe Frankland (aka Slackeye Slim) are dark, brooding presences on their respective works. Dabbed on both of their palettes are country music, off-kilter alt rock, the sounds of Mexico, and cowboy songs.

A couple of big differences, though, are that 1) in Tucson, Gelb also dips his brush into cocktail jazz (on “Ready or Not,” sung by the sleepy-voiced Lonna Kelley and “Not the End of the World,” sung by Gelb and Kelley) and gutbucket blues (on “Mostly Wrong,” featuring Gelb’s voice accompanied only by guitar) and 2) The body count in Slackeye’s story is much higher than it is in Gelb’s.

The highlights of Tucson include the opening song, “Wind Blown Waltz,” an acoustic barroom lament full of yearning and tumbleweed imagery that sets the tone for the album; “Caranito,” an upbeat cumbia sung in Spanish; and “Thing Like That,” which also appeared on the first Giant Sand album I ever owned, 1992’s Center of the Universe. The new version has rockabilly overtones, drawing from the sound of early Johnny Cash — yet it also includes that Danish string section. (I do miss the electric-guitar freakout of the original version, though.)

Maybe it’s just because the death of Levon Helm earlier this year shook me so much, but the song that first grabbed me by the throat was a cover of “Out of the Blue,” a lesser-known song by The Band, which originally appeared on The Last Waltz. Gelb trades verse with Kelley and other band members; all of them sing this aching tune with soul. Steel guitarist Maggie Björklund sounds heavenly on this.

Though Giant Sand is now “giant giant,” most the songs on the album don’t feature everyone at once. Some, like “Mostly Wrong,” just have one or two instruments. In fact, there are so many slow, somber, minimalist tunes that I wish it were a lot more loud and rowdy.

Most of Gelb’s music in recent years has tended to be mellow. But he’s the kind of artist who’s hard to predict, so maybe next time he’ll raise the roof, or at least the volume.

Also recommended:

* I’m Just Dead, I’m Not Gone by James Luther Dickinson and North Mississippi Allstars. You know by the brief spoken introduction of this live album that the recording isn’t exactly new. Dickinson leads off with a pointed jab at “our father in Washington,” George W. Bush. While the political reference is slightly dated, the music isn’t. This is the stuff of the immortals.

By the time of his death in 2009 at the age of 67, Dickinson had become the face of Memphis music, or at least one of that city’s most aggressive musical ambassadors. For some four decades, if you were a musician who wanted to add some Memphis to your music, Dickinson was your man.

As a producer, a piano-plinkin’ sideman, and a field recorder, he worked with everyone from Aretha Franklin to Mudhoney, from The Flamin’ Groovies to Furry Lewis, from Otha Turner to The Replacements, from Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to Petula Clarke … you get the picture. That’s Dickinson playing piano on The Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” Bob Dylan’s album Time out of Mind, and too many Ry Cooder albums to mention.

Dickinson was a fine performer in his own right, as this, his second live album (the first being 1997’s A Thousand Footprints in the Sand), proves. Recorded in Memphis in 2006 and backed by the North Mississippi Allstars — which includes his two sons, guitarist Luther and drummer Cody — this mostly is good-time blues-soaked, country-fried roots rock.

Only a genuine sociopath could listen to Dickinson’s version of “Kassie Jones, Pt. 1” (the story of mythical railroad engineer Casey Jones) without a huge stupid grin. Same goes for his rendition of Sleepy John Estes’ “Ax Sweet Mama.”

But Dickinson also was capable of getting serious. “Codine,” written by Buffy Sainte-Marie, is an intense minor-key rage against narcotic addiction. Dickinson practically shouts some of the lyrics: “Got a pain in my belly, an ache in my head/Feel like I’m dyin’, I wish I were dead.”

And then there’s Dickinson’s version of bluesman J.B. Lenoir’s frightening “Down in Mississippi.” The arrangement of this song is close to that on Cooder’s soundtrack to the 1986 movie Crossroads. (Dickinson played piano on that version, too.)

I’m Just Dead would be a great introduction for someone not familiar with Dickinson’s music. And for old fans, it’s a great reminder of what a force Jim Dickinson was.

Blog Bonus:
Here's Howe with K.T. Tunstall and John Paul Jones doing a song from Tucson






Here's Mr. Dicksinson, a few months before he died:

Late Night With Tom Waits

POST UPDATED 9-13-14: I just noticed that the original Youtube video links were yanked by the copyright police. Hope the ones I replaced them with last longer.

Tom Waits made the rounds on late night tv this week, yacking it up with David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon and playing some songs from his excellent Bad as Me album. In case you missed it on the tube (like I did  ), enjoy both appearances through the magic of the internet. (thanks to my Washington correspondent Chuck for alerting me to the Letterman appearance.)

The band on both shows is an impressive collection of musicians. There's long time bassist Larry Taylor (original Canned Heat), guitarist David Hidalgo (Los Lobos), keyboardist Augie Myers (Sir Douglas Quintet) and guitarist Big Bill Morganfield, whose dad was none other than Muddy Waters. The drummer is Casey Waits, whose dad is none other than Tom Waits.


Here's the song "Chicago" performed on Letterman:



Here's the song "Raised Right Men" on Fallon




This reminds me of the first time I saw Waits on tv about 35 years ago.

The Big Enchilada Has Reached the BIG FIVE-OH!

Welcome to the halfway-to-100 episode of The Big Enchilada. It's called "Sonic Snake Oil," and like the best of patent medicines from eras gone by, it'll cure what ails you. Users of this miracle podcast have reported that it's calmed their nerves, soothed their nightmares strengthened their bones, boosted their vitality and cured their lumbago, tizzic, measles and criminal insanity. Possible side effects include increased susceptibility to rockin' pneumonia and boogie-woogie flu. 

(In accordance with all State and Federal Laws, please be advised that this show is for entertainment and educational uses only. The Big Enchilada can make no claims of supernatural or therapeutic effects or powers of this podcast..) 

DOWNLOAD | SUBSCRIBE| FACEBOOK | SUBSCRIBE TO ALL GARAGEPUNK PIRATE RADIO PODCASTS |

(Note: The feed has changed to subscribe to all the GaragePunk Pirate Radio Podcasts. It's now "http://feeds.feedburner.com/GPPR")
Here's the playlist:

(Background Music: Snake Charmer by The Puddle Jumpers)
Rattlesnake, Baby, Rattlesnake by Joe Johnson
Ratfink by Bloodshot Bill
13 MPH and I'm Speeding by McFadden's Parachute *
Drop in and Go by The Molting Vultures
Down the Drain by The Escatones
Ladies' Underwear by Dan Melchior's Broke Revue
Nacho Daddy by Joe "King" Carrasco & The Crowns

(Background Music: Cobra by E Boys)
Snake-Eyed Suzie by Thee Cybermen
He Looks Like a Psycho by The Electric Mess
Magic Potion by Mondo Topless
$#@?!! by The Unband
Brad Cruise by Dusty Mush *
Snake Boy Lives in the Mississippi by El Paso Hot Button

(Background Music: Snakecharmer by Mad Man Jones)
Snakepit by Hipbone Slim & The Knee Tremblers
Wild Wild Party by Darryl Vincent
Rage in a Cage by Ghost Bikini
Special Purpose by Jonny Manak & The Depressives (free download HERE)
Gone Deep Underground by Stan Ridgway
Snakedrive by R.L. Burnside



* These tracks are on the latest GaragePunk Hideout compilation, Supercharged Sounds


Play it here:

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, July 8, 2012 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Down the Road by Dead Moon
Butt Town by Iggy Pop
Some Kind of Fun by The 99ers
Psychotic Reaction by The Cramps
We're Not Your Slaves by Jonny Manak & the Depressives
You're No Rock 'n' Roll Fun by Sleater-Kinney
I Got Worms by Archie & The Pukes
Que Wow by Joe "King" Carrasco & The Crowns
WPLJ by Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention

Frankenstein by New York Dolls
Cyco Sanchez Has a Drink by Cyco Sanchez Supergroup
Cut it Off by The Mojomatics
30 Minute Love by The Terrorists
Bring it to Jerome by Bo Diddley (featuring Jerome Green)
Summer Heat by Ghost Bikini
Summertime by Big Brother & The Holding Company

Gone Deep Underground by Stan Ridgway
(Find You in El Paso) by Deadbolt
The Boa Constrictor Ate My Wife Last Night by Simon Stokes & The Heathen Angels
Out of the Swamp by Dan Melchior's Broke Revue
Took My Lady to Dinner by King Khan & The Shrines
Rickshaw Rattletrap by Churchwood
The Midnight Creep by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Domesticide by The Grannies

You're So Innocent by Figures of Light
Like a Pill by the Nevermores
Ghost of a Texas Ladies' Man by Concrete Blonde
The Snake by Johnny Rivers
Burnin' Streets by Joe Strummer
Wide Open Blues by Big John Bates
Codine by James Luther Dickinson & The North Mississippi Allstars
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, July 6, 2012 
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
 OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Seven Devils by The Goddamn Gallows
Life's Pissing in the Wind by Zeno Tornado & The Boney Google Brothers
Crow Holler by The Shiners
Goddamn Blue Yodel # 7 by Slim Cessna's Auto Club
The Wolfman of Del Rio by Terry Allen
Jukebox Boogie by Big Jeff & The Radio Playboys
The Love That Faded by Bob Dylan
Eat Steak by The Reverend Horton Heat

Nacho Daddy by Joe "King" Carrasco & The Crowns *
Nacho Mama by Joe Ely
Who Were You Thinking Of  by The Sir Douglas Quintet
My Window Faces the South by Paul Rhea McDonald
Mama's Fried Potatoes by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
Happy Hour by Ted Hawkins
She Still Comes Around by Jerry Lee Lewis
Knock-Kneed Suzie by June Carter
Cool and Dark Inside by Blonde Boy Grunt & The Groans
I’m Gonna Get Drunk and Play Hank Williams Jr. & Brad Paisley

Afghan Forklift by Stan Ridgway
American Trash by Betty Dylan
Dancing Queen by The Yayhoos
Road Bound by Bob Wayne
Leaving by Salty Pajamas
Fattening Frogs for Snakes by Bob Coltman
San Antonio Romeo by Cathy Faber's Swingin' Country Band
Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child by Mojo Nixon

My Little Anna by Joe "King" Carrasco & The Crowns
Burn the Honky Tonk by Jimbo Mathis
That's the Way Love Goes by The Harmony Sisters
I Just Dropped In To Say Goodbye by Carl Smith
Just an Old Man with an Old Song by James Hand
Tramp on Your Street by Billy Joe Shaver
Don't Forget Me When I Die by Rachel Brooke
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

* Joe "King" Carrasco will be playing the KTAO Solar Center in Taos Saturday night and Low Spirits in Albuquerque


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TERRELL'S TUNEUP: (Mr.) Trouble Ahead

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
July 6,  2012



The first time I saw Stan Ridgway touting Mr. Trouble on Facebook, he referred to it as a “four-song EP.” That was just a couple of months ago. Somehow, the project kept growing, and by the time it made it to CD form, the darn thing had become a 10-song, 45-minute album.

For those keeping score, there are six new songs here plus four live tracks — all of which are taken from Ridgway’s 2010 appearance on the Mountain Stage radio show. So what we have here isn’t really an album but two EPs occupying space on one disc.

This raises an interesting question: who cares?

Whether it’s an album or EPs (or a breath mint or a candy mint), Mr. Trouble contains some of the best new songs Ridgway has done in years.

Ridgway 101 for the uninitiated: The first memory many longtime fans have of Stanard Ridgway is his face rising out of a pot of beans in the video for the song “Mexican Radio.” Ridgway was the singer of the Los Angeles New Wave group Wall of Voodoo. The video was an early MTV favorite — and it was far snazzier than anything A Flock of Seagulls or The Buggles ever did.

In a way, it was fitting that the Wall achieved fame through a video. The band formed in hopes of being hired to write and perform soundtracks for low-budget movies. But not long after that video — and the excellent Call of the West album, which contains “Mexican Radio” — things started falling apart, and Ridgway left to start a solo career.

After a short stint with Geffen Records, Ridgway has gone the independent route, not achieving massive fame but — with the help of his wife, keyboardist Pietra Wexstun — building a healthy cult following.

Back to the present: The first Mr. Trouble tunes that really grabbed me were the bluesy, funky, crime-jazz-tinted numbers, which hark back to Ridgway’s early solo years in the mid-’80s — when critics were calling him a rock ’n’ roll Raymond Chandler.

“All Too Much” (no, not The Beatles’ song) is a breezy, soul-informed workout — there’s a horn section! — in which Wexstun and guitarist Rick King shine. The melody might remind you of The B-52s’ “Love Shack,” but the lyrics aren’t so idyllic. Ridgway, as he’s known to do, sings about corruption, injustice, and hard times.

“Well it’s a hot afternoon on a city street/A cop in black and strolling his beat/He hears a baby crying from a window ledge/Times are tough and people still on the edge/And there’s a gang of boys movin’ on the corner/lookin’ mean and gettin’ ready to fight/As somewhere downtown in a high-rise office a man at the bank tells you times are tight.”

The title song is a swampy blues number that allows King to show off some nasty Tony Joe White licks and Ridgway to blow his distinctive harmonica. What’s that strange sitar sound you hear in the background in the first minute or so of the song?

Even better is “Gone Deep Underground,” a snappy, bass-driven sleaze-blues jumper in which Ridgway sings about institutions crumbling and various people making themselves scarce. The song is full of images of boarded-up houses, people sleeping in airport bars, and even a secret government laboratory. It also contains some of the funniest lyrics I’ve heard lately: “Sandstorm blowin’ into Phoenix can ruin a perfectly good toupee/Hey, somebody hand me a Kleenex/She’s on a crying jag that won’t go away.”


 “Across the Border” might just be the prettiest and saddest song Ridgway’s ever written. It’s a wistful tune colored by what sounds like  tropical marimbas. The melody is gorgeous, and I don’t think Ridgway’s voice has ever sounded better. But it’s the story he tells that will punch you in the gut. A woman carrying only a small suitcase and a cellphone is leaving her country, crossing the border to start a new life.

As she’s walking, she gets a call from her husband or boyfriend, I assume, who’s trying to change her mind. But it doesn’t work. “‘This country, it once was a jewel/In a wilderness so wild and so cruel/But now no one can fix it, everything’s broken/So I’m leavin’ tonight in this rain/And nothing can stop me, no chain/And least of all you, so don’t call me again,’ and she closed up her phone.” And then comes an unforgettable image. “She walked ahead slowly, her hands holding tight/A boy on the corner lost the string of his kite/And it blew past the red, white, and blue and into the gold, red, and green/Across the border.”

At first I assumed the protagonist is a Mexican, leaving her “broken” country to come to the good old U.S.A. But could it be that she’s an American going into Mexico? After all, the boy’s kite is apparently flying across the border into Mexico, so that’s the way the wind is blowing.

The Mountain Stage tracks are decent, if not essential, performances of acoustic-oriented Ridgway tunes, with bluegrass honcho Tim O’Brien playing fiddle. The material is drawn from Ridgway’s first solo album, 1986’s The Big Heat; his previous album, Neon Mirage, from 2010; and a couple from in between. The finest of these is one of Ridgway’s best-known songs, “Camouflage,” a Vietnam ghost story that never gets old, even when you know the surprise ending.

The thing I like most about this album is that it’s far more upbeat than the comparatively somber Neon Mirage, an album made following the deaths of several of Ridgway’s loved ones. Like the title character of his new album, Ridgway seems eager to cause a little trouble here. And it sure sounds good.

Blog Bonus: Enjoy this video of a couple of songs from Mr. Trouble