THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

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

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
My Name is Jorge by The Gourds
The Winner by Bobby Bare
Juanita by The Flying Burrito Brothers
Love's Gonna Live Here by George Jones & Buck Owens
I'm Gonna Take You Home and Make You Like Me by Robbie & Donna Fulks
Roll Truck Roll by Terry Allen
Fake Out by The Blacks
Dolores by Eddie Noack

New England by Jonathan Richman
Leave Me Liquor If You're Leavin' by Hog Mawl
Independence Day by Say Zuzu
New Lee Highway Blues by David Bromberg
Maybe Mexico by Jerry Jeff Walker
First Girl I Loved by John Hartford
Chicken by Geoff Muldaur with Jenni & Clare Muldaur

I'm a Lover Not a Fighter by John Schooley
I See the Light/What's His Name by Scott H. Biram
No Shoes by Hasil Adkins
Cussin' in Tongues by The Legendary Shack Shakers
I'm Convicted by Bad Livers
Louisiana Fairy Tale by Devil in a Woodpile
Boney Fingers by Hoyt Axton
Who's Julie by Mel Tillis

The Bloody Bucket by Grey DeLisle
My Home is Not a Home by Clothesline Revival with Tom Armstrong
How You Play the Game by Michelle Shocked
My Darlin' Hometown by John Prine
Trademark by Karen Collins
Gatsby's Restaurant by June Carter Cash with Jerry Hensley
When I Get My Rewards by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with Levon Helm
Fight or Flight by Shine Cherries
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: HASIL'S BASTARD SONS

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 10, 2005

Hasil Adkins, described in the All Music Guide as a “frantic one-man band who bashed out ultra-crude rock & roll tunes about sex, chicken, and decapitation into a wheezing reel-to-reel tape machine in a West Virginia shack," died in April, just before his 68th birthday.

He was truly a one-of-a-kind musical maniac. Artists like Adkins are lightning-struck mutations. You can’t study and rehearse your way into Haze-hood.

But his one-man band routine is a modern incarnation of an ancient tradition. While the common image of one man-bands is a goofy novelty worth of Vaudeville or Venice Beach, according to music historian and instrument inventor Hal Rammel, the concept can be traced back to the 13th Century.

“As a category of musicianship it transcends cultural and geographic boundaries, spans stylistic limits, and defies conventional notions of technique and instrumentation,” Rammel wrote in 1990. “despite its generally accepted status as an isolated novelty, it is a phenomenon with some identifiable historical continuity.”

The cult of Hasil, did leave its mark on the music world -- though his followers are even more obscure than Adkins was.

One obvious heir is Arizona’s Bob Log III, an avant-blues avatar who looks like a drunken Power Ranger playing simultaneous slide guitar and kick drum as he sings sonically distorted songs about whiskey and strippers.

And shortly before Adkins’ death I came across recent CDs by two other Hasil-soaked one-man bands -- John Schooley (pictured here with Hasil himself) and Scott H. Biram.


Schooley’s CD, John Schooley & His One-Man Band is on Voodoo Rhythm, a Swiss rockabilly label. This means I had to do a little research. Voodoo Rhythm, after all is that same whacky company that perpetrated the Jerry J. Nixon hoax -- a CD of a rockabilly singer who purportedly recorded in Santa Fe in the early ‘60s.

But I’m pretty sure Schooley actually exists.

Birham’s The Dirty Old One-Man Band is on Bloodshot Records of Chicago, the home of “insurgent country.” The Bloodshot folks are smart enough not to get hung up on the fact that Biram is a lot closer to blues than country.

Here’s the rap on Biram: According to Paste Magazine, “Back in April 2003, Biram was rammed head-on by an 18-wheeler at 75 MPH, leaving him wheelchair bound with two broken legs, a broken foot, broken arm and a foot less of his lower intestine. But that sure as hell wasn’t going to stop him. Within a month he was back onstage at Austin, Texas’ Continental Club, rocking his hometown crowd with an I.V. jabbed in his arm.”

I think the Human Resources Department would refer to that as a “positive work attitude.”

Both CDs are boozy, lo-fi, noisy guitar-driven raunchy romps. Both men list Austin, Texas for a hometown. (Biram thanks someone named “Schooley” in his liner notes. I’m assuming it’s John.)

Each does a mix of his own songs along with covers of blues and country material.

Schooley covers Rufus Thomas’ “Tiger Man,” Howlin’ Wolf’s “KIllin’ Floor” and Jimmy Reed’s “Honest I Do” Biram does Lead Belly‘s “Black Betty,” and the old hillbilly favorite “Muleskinner Blues.”

To the naked ear, these one-man bands from Texas may sound somewhat alike.

One difference is that Schooley is more of an actual one-man band, which means he plays guitar and foot-pedal-operated percussion at the same time. Biram’s main percussion comes from amplifying his tapping foot, so the beat isn’t as strong as Schooley’s

But Birham’s CD is more diverse in sound. He occasionally skips the surly bonds of one-man-band convention with an actual back-up acoustic country group called The Weary Boys. In a couple of tunes he’s accompanied by a gaggle of background singers he’s dubbed Scott H. Biram’s First Church of the Ultimate Fanaticism.

He puts aside the train-wreck blues sound for a sweet country sound. One might think that after his run-in with that 18-wheeler, a song like “Wreck My Car” would be a cacophonous scream ride. Instead, it’s actually a rather pretty, heavy on the harmonica, that contains a sweet snatch of Bruce Channel’s “Hey Baby” at the end. And in “Sweet Thing,” a bluegrassy song, Biram even abandons his 4 a.m. ham-radio distorto voice to sing it clearly.

While both Biram or Schooley specialize in a sound suggesting wild abandon, and both can rock like madmen, neither have the crazy edge of their spiritual forefather, Mr. Adkins. In the weird subculture of one-man blues screamer bands, that one man still stands miles above anyone else.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: RACING WITH RICHARDSON

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 9, 2005

MANCHESTER, N.H. — New Mexicans upset by those reports a couple of years ago indicating Gov. Bill Richardson orders his state police drivers to go 100 mph on our roads shouldn’t feel alone.

According to one New England journalist, our governor does this in Nuevo Hampshire too.

On Wednesday morning, a freelance photographer from Cambridge, Mass., working for The New Mexican to document Richardson’s visit here this week, tried to follow the governor’s entourage from a public radio station in Concord, N.H., to a meeting in Portsmouth, N.H. “I tried to keep up, but I gave up at 95 mph,” Jodi Hilton said.

No, the New Hampshire police didn’t stop him. In fact, a New Hampshire State Police officer accompanied Team Richardson on his travels.

Richardson spokesman Billy Sparks denied the governor was going that fast. “I was in the car behind him, and we didn’t go over 70,” he said.

The Richardson Posse: Richardson, of course, didn’t go alone to New Hampshire. Traveling with him, according to Chief of Staff Dave Contarino, were four staffers and two state police officers assigned to the governor.

The Democratic Governors Association, which Richardson chairs, is paying for the travel — except the police, who are paid by the state. So far, there have been no audible objections from other Democratic governors — though that could change if any other D-guv jumps into the presidential race.

Keeping the trains on time: Also with Richardson was Michael J. Stratton, a political consultant from Littleton, Colo. Stratton has worked for the Carter and Clinton administrations and has managed campaigns of several Colorado Democrats, including last year’s successful U.S. Senate race by Ken Salazar. He’s now a consultant for the Democratic Governors Association.

“I do a lot of (Richardson’s) out-of-town appearances,” Stratton told me shortly before Richardson spoke at Tuesday’s New Hampshire Latino Summit luncheon. “We’re old friends. I’ve known him for about 30 years, since he first moved to New Mexico.”

Stratton, according to a March article in The Hill, a publication about Congress, is a new member of a Democratic National Committee’s commission studying possible changes to the strange process by which the political parties choose our presidential nominees. The publication noted that Stratton assembled a coalition of Democrats in eight Western states, including New Mexico, to petition the DNC to push for a Western regional primary.

Richardson repeatedly assured New Hampshire audiences, who are a little touchy about the subject, that he’s in favor of keeping the New Hampshire primary first.

Stratton was modest about his role in Richardson’s current trip. “I’m just an advance man,” he said. “I make the trains run on time.”

Another familiar face: Also popping up at several Richardson stops here was Walter “Butch” Maki, a Santa Fe businessman and lobbyist as well as a former staffer of Richardson’s when he served in Congress and a longtime associate.

Maki told me he was in New England helping set up a branch of his security business. Maki, a New Hampshire native who still owns land there, invited several relatives from the area to Richardson’s Politics and Eggs speech Tuesday.

Recycling jokes: When you hire joke writers for $12,000, you don’t just want to use a joke once and throw it away. One of Richardson’s best-received routines here is one where he explains in both English and Spanish his position on running for president. “No, I will not run for president,” he says in English. Then, switching to Spanish, he adds, “Seguro que sí, ¡voy a ser candidato!” (”Of course, I will be a candidate!”)

Luckily few people, if anyone, attending Tuesday’s New Hampshire Latino Summit had been at the annual Gridiron dinner in Washington, D.C., when he premiered the joke a couple of months ago.

Courting the I-man: Speaking of jokers, at a Wednesday breakfast for a group of French-American New Hampshirites, someone asked Richardson whether he would seek the support of national radio-personality Don Imus, who operates a ranch for children with terminal diseases in San Miguel County and also broadcasts some of his shows from there.

Richardson described his relationship with the acid-tongued broadcaster: “In the early days of our relationship, he made false allegations about me — that I was fat. I wondered why I should go on his show when he pillories me.” After Richardson appeared on Imus in the Morning, however, Imus wasn’t so rough on him, Richardson said.

Richardson, who is a frequent guest on countless national television-news shows, said he gets more comments from Imus listeners than from all the other shows. “People are always telling me, ‘I heard you on Imus,’ ” he said. “Or Imus was making fun of you, ha-ha.’ ”

STATE GOP ATTACKS GUV IN TWO STATES

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
April 9, 2005

MANCHESTER, N.H. — As Gov. Bill Richardson traveled around New Hampshire on Wednesday, making contacts and trying to build his name recognition for a possible presidential bid, New Mexico Republicans launched an ad campaign designed to embarrass him in two states.

The New Mexico Republican Party began airing radio spots in both New Hampshire and New Mexico criticizing Richardson for what they call his “extravagant lifestyle at taxpayer expense.”

The ad labels Richardson as a “high-class showboat” and compares him with entertainers P. Diddy and Britney Spears.

The attack apparently was inspired in part by news reports that the Richardson administration spent $5.5 million to buy a new jet airplane — though the 30-second commercial blasts him on other issues as well.

Marta Kramer, executive director of state Republican Party, said Wednesday, “When people heard about this plane, our phones were ringing off the hook.”

A Richardson spokesman issued a statement denouncing the ads. “This is a desperate, pathetic, partisan attack filled with lies and complete fabrications, and about what you would expect from a party that lacks leadership and any real ideas for moving New Mexico forward,” Gilbert Gallegos wrote.

A GOP news release said the ad campaign — called “Operation High Roller” — will run statewide in New Mexico for at least the next week and that the ads aired Wednesday on three New Hampshire stations. The New Hampshire ads, the announcement said, are “designed to coincide with Richardson’s pursuit of the Democratic nomination for President.”

Richardson has told several New Hampshire audiences this week that he is keeping his options open for 2008. He has repeatedly said his main focus is getting re-elected governor in 2006.

Political experts in New Hampshire and Washington, D.C., have said this week’s trip to New Hampshire appears to be a “testing of the waters” for Richardson.

Kramer declined to say how much her party had spent on the ads or what stations would be airing them. But the party released this transcript of the ad:

It’s the lifestyles of the rich and famous ... who is this high-class showboat?
$5.5 million for a brand new jet airplane ...
Three personal chefs ...
Travels with a large entourage of body guards and staff to places like Europe and Las Vegas ...
Gets front-row seats to all the best events ... and isn’t bothered by speed limits ...
Is it P-Diddy? (Britney) Spears?
No ... it’s Gov. Bill Richardson ...
And how does Gov. Richardson pay for it all ... he doesn’t — you do ...
That’s why Bill Richardson has raised taxes by 740 million dollars ... and raided our children’s permanent fund ...
And the most creative way to keep the money rolling in? Bill Richardson taxes the elderly in nursing homes at $9 a day ... that’s over $3,000 a year for every patient ...
Nursing-home patients may have to dig deep to pay the tab ... But Governor Richardson just wouldn’t be the same without his 5 million dollar jet.
Announcer: Call Gov. Richardson at 827-3000 ... tell him to stop living the rich and famous lifestyle ... on the backs of New Mexico taxpayers.

The controversial jet is a 2005 Cessna Citation Bravo, which can carry eight passengers and two pilots at a speed of 463 mph. Delivery is expected in August.

Speaking to reporters before hearing the news about the Republicans radio ads, Richardson defended the purchase of the plane, saying Republican critics were “just playing politics.”

“Every Republican in the Legislature voted for the plane,” he said.

Richardson said he’s not the only state official who will be using the plane. “A lot of people will benefit from it,” he said, adding that the governor’s office will only use it 7 percent of the time.

Gallegos said the Department of Transportation uses state aircraft the most at 28 percent of the time, followed by the School for the Visually Handicapped at 20 percent; the Department of Health Children Medical Services uses state planes 9 percent of the time.

The new jet will replace a “39-year-old, unsafe plane,” Gallegos said.

Gallegos’ news release challenges most the points of the Republican ad.

He said the Governor’s mansion staff employs only one chef.

He noted that Richardson has successfully pushed for personal income-tax cuts as well as ending gross-receipts taxes on food. Republicans argue that these tax cuts have been more than offset by increases in taxes and fees in other areas, including various taxes on the trucking industry, a huge raise in cigarette taxes and other increases.

He argued that Richardson rarely takes a state plane on his out-of-state trips and that most of Richardson’s travels are within the state.

NEW FANS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

As published in The The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 9, 2005

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Gov. Bill Richardson’s two-day trip to New Hampshire, which included an overstuffed schedule of speaking engagements, interviews and news conferences, won him praise from many who heard him.

A typical comment came from Eric Drouart, a professor of business administration who heard a Wednesday breakfast speech by the New Mexico Democrat.

“I was impressed by his bipartisan approach to solving the problems of education and security,” Drouart said. “And he was very funny.”

Richardson, who claimed his trip officially had nothing to do with any presidential ambitions, told anyone who asked that he is keeping his options open for the 2008 race. New Hampshire traditionally holds the first presidential primary in the election cycle.

Most of those interviewed seemed to assume that Richardson is running for president. At a Tuesday breakfast event, when Richardson said “I’m not running for anything,” a woman in the audience laughed and said “Sure.”

Many praised Richardson for his sense of humor. “I like the fact he is self-deprecating,” said Chris Williams, vice president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, who was part of a small audience Wednesday at a breakfast for leaders in the local Franco-American community.

In that talk, Richardson poked fun at his girth and laughed at his attempt to speak French. (Though Richardson said he minored in French in college, his command of that language is far less impressive than his Spanish.)

He also made frequent jokes about his real intentions for 2008.

“I’m not asking you for anything. ... Yet,” he told the Franco-Americans.

Many praised Richardson’s knowledge of issues. “He spent a good deal of time talking about education,” said Jim Brett, president of the New England Council, a business group that sponsored Tuesday’s Politics and Eggs breakfast.

Karina Mera, who heard Richardson at a luncheon for the New Hampshire Latino Summit on Tuesday, said it’s good for young Hispanics to see an example of a successful Hispanic like Richardson. “I really hope he runs for president,” she said.

New Hampshire reporters and radio interviewers who talked to Richardson seemed to be interested in two major topics — the governor’s opinion of recent comments by Democratic National chairman Howard Dean and two small-town New Hampshire police chiefs who recently began arresting undocumented Mexican immigrants on charges of trespassing.

On Dean, Richardson said he stands behind the chairman, though he said Dean made a mistake with his recent controversial remarks about Republicans.

On the police chiefs, Richardson said he didn’t think they should make such arrests, but said he sympathizes with them, saying the situation is the result of a failed federal immigration policy.

One Republican who heard Richardson on Wednesday said she found Richardson charming and full of common sense.

But Georgi Laurin Hippauf, a former vice chair of the New Hampshire GOP, predicted Richardson would not end up on the top of the Democratic ticket.

“If Hillary (Clinton) runs, I can see Gov. Richardson as being the perfect geographical match,” Hippauf said. “She’s from the East and he’s from the West. And he emulates a warmth she doesn’t necessarily have. If I were running the Democratic campaign, that would be my strategy.”