UPDATING MY LINKS

I just added a bunch of links to the sidebar (on the right hand side of this blog).

I've added a direct link to Picnic Time For Potatoheads on iTunes. (Make me rich!) and I've broken up my long list of blog links into "N.M. Blogs" and "Crony Blogs." For argument's sake I still consider Larry Calloway a New Mexican even though he's in Colorado. I've added some new links to all categories. Check 'em all out.

Happy Mother's Day all you moms out there! (Yes, I'll do my annual Mother's Day set on Terrell's Sound World tonight.)

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, May 12, 2006
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Nasty Dan by Johnny Cash
The Trouble With Girls by The Stumbleweeds
Half a Boy and Half a Man by Queen Ida
Jacob's Ladder by Bruce Springsteen
Meximelt by Southern Culture on The Skids
I Don't Know Why I Love You (But I Do) by Cornell Hurd
Ghost Riders in the Sky by Last Mile Ramblers

Rednecks by Steve Earle
Feb 14 by Drive-By Truckers
Gusty Winds May Exist by The Rivet Gang
Pour Me a Strong One by Tobias Rene
Horse and Crow by Ronnie Elliott
Community Property by The Whiskey Rebellion
Flapping Your Broken Wings by The Handsome Family
Take Your Place by Allejandro Escovedo
Lion in Winter by Hoyt Axton

HAG SET
All Songs by Merle Haggard except where noted
Okie From Muskogee's Comin' Home
Carolyn
Fightin' Side of Me
That's the News
Tulare Dust
Are the Good Times Really Over (Wish a Buck Was Still Silver)
Wishin' All These Old Things Were New
Big Time Annie's Square
I'll Fix Your Flat Tire, Merle by Pure Prairie League
America First

Belle Star by Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris
The Needle Has Landed by Neko Case
Satan's Jewled Crown by The Louvin Brothers
La La Land by Gary Heffern
Crossing Muddy Waters by John Hiatt
Love and Mercy by Jeff Tweedy
I am Born to Preach the Gospel by Washington Phillips
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

DEVASTATED!

Many of you have been asking, Where do I go to get my Devastatin' Dave dog shirts and wall clocks.


Devastatin' Dave Barsanti alerted me to the other Devastatin' Dave's own Cafepress store.
CLICK HERE

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: PEACENIK FROM MUSKOGEE

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 12, 2006


Some people are surprised by “America First,” a tune from Merle Haggard’s latest album, Chicago Wind (released last October), where Hag declares the need to “liberate these United States; we’re the ones who need it the worst,” and “Freedom is stuck in reverse/Let’s get out of Iraq and get back on the track/And let’s rebuild America first.”

For that matter, some were surprised that Haggard would tour with Bob Dylan. After all, the Okie from Muskogee was supposed to be the grand bard of the right wing. Hippies and squirrelly guys who don’t believe in fightin’ ought to love it or leave it, according to some of Hag’s most notorious songs. What’s the guy who sang “Fightin’ Side of Me” doing now, talking like a liberal and hanging out with that guy who wrote all those subversive songs like “Masters of War” and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”?

Well, for one thing, for most of his five-decade career, Haggard has delighted in surprising people. To paraphrase one old song, he wears his own kind of hat. The singer’s politics are and always have been a lot more complex than people give him credit for. In another song on Chicago Wind, “Where’s the Freedom,” he bemoans the fact that schools and governments can’t display the 10 commandments — as well as the fact that people can’t afford gasoline.

We’ve known Merle is no partisan hack since at least 1981, with “Are the Good Times Really Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver).” Here he sings about how Nixon — who years before had embraced Haggard at a White House command performance — “lied to us all on TV.”

And two years before “America First,” Hag, on his song “That’s the News,” cast a cynical eye on President Bush declaring “mission accomplished” in Iraq.

In reality Haggard’s always been more tolerant of those with different opinions and lifestyles than he shows on “Okie” or “Fightin’ Side.”

Some important clues can be found on Hag/Someday We’ll Look Back, a couple of albums recently released as a single CD. Hag includes the touching song “The Farmer’s Daughter.” It’s about a farmer who’s accepting his city-boy son-in-law even though “his hair’s a little longer than we’re used to.”

But while that song has the spirit of reconciliation, on the next tune, “I’ve Done it All,” he sings “I’ve even been to ’Frisco wearing regular clothes/Felt them modern hippie folks starin’ down their nose.”

But note that he’s not claiming the “hippie folks” tried to make him take a trip on LSD or burned a flag in his face. No, their offense was their elitism, looking down at a working-class guy.

The greatest country album, ever. Before going on with this discussion, I have to declare an extreme prejudice here. I believe in my heart that Someday We’ll Look Back is not only Merle Haggard’s greatest album, but the greatest album in country-music history, bar none.

Hag’s voice is at full power, and The Strangers (curiously and inexcusably uncredited individually on this reissue) prove why they’re considered among the finest C&W units ever.

Someday features masterful country existential-angst songs like Roger Miller’s “Train of Life”; love songs including The George Jones-worthy “One Sweet Hello” and “I’d Rather Be Gone”; and the bleak but beautiful “Carolyn,” (written by Bakersfield titan Tommy Collins), where you can’t tell if the singer is warning his wife that he’s considering adultery or if he’s confessing in a backhanded way.

There are a couple of cheeky humorous numbers like “The Only Trouble With Me” (the rest of that sentence being “is you”) and the prison tune “Huntsville,” which ain’t “Mama Tried” but is still pretty cool.

And there are all these tough and gritty Steinbeckian Dust Bowl ballads where Haggard sounds more in touch with that old lefty Woody Guthrie than Dylan ever did in songs like “Tulare Dust,” “One Row at a Time,” and Dallas Frazier’s “California Cottonfields”: “Our Model A was loaded down and California-bound/And a change of luck was just four days away/But the only change that I remember seeing in my daddy/was when his dark hair turned to silver gray.”

Big Time Annie’s Square: “Big Time Annie’s Square” was one song on Someday We’ll Look Back that proved Haggard wasn’t the hippie-hating redneck many thought he was. Although this track is almost a throwaway compared with some of the others on the album, at the time it came out, I considered it sort of an apology for “The Fightin’ Side of Me.” It’s about an Okie soldier who comes back from Vietnam to find his Tulsa girl moved to “some town in California called ‘San something’ somewhere close to East L.A.” He discovers Annie has become one of them hippies. He’s wary. He’s “heard about those sugar cubes before I ever came to find her there.”

“We don’t agree on nothin’, but I’ll be damned if we don’t make a pair,” he sings. And he’s “glad to be accepted” by Annie’s strange new associates.

Big Time Annie’s friends: Indeed, not all the “hippie folk” looked down their collective nose at him. Gram Parsons, who did a wonderful version of “California Cottonfields,” actually tried back in the eao get Haggard to produce one of his albums.

The Grateful Dead did "Mama Tried." Every local country-rock outfit in the country played "Silver Wings."

One of the finest hippie Hag tributes was “I’ll Change Your Flat Tire, Merle,” written by Nick Gravenites. It was originally recorded by the post-Janis Big Brother and the Holding Company, though the better-known version is by Pure Prairie League. It’s a fantasy in which a hippie offers to help “the greatest country singer alive.”

“You’re a honky I know/But Merle, you’ve got soul.”

Hag said it best: Haggard’s attitude toward all of this perhaps was best expressed when I saw him in concert about 10 years ago. He began singing one of his best-known songs. “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee ...” The crowd went wild. But Haggard stopped the song. “Now who really gives a damn whether or not they smoke marijuana in Muskogee?” he said.

The crowd went even wilder

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: CQ CALLS N.M. GOV RACE

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 11, 2006

The race for governor of New Mexico is over. At least if you believe the Washington, D.C.-based Congressional Quarterly.


In a story published Wednesday, CQ’s Marie Horrigan wrote: “New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, who is seeking a second term this year, appeared a solid favorite over little-known Republican challenger J.R. Damron — even before their latest campaign-finance filings were posted.

“But the reports, posted this week by the New Mexico Secretary of State, document that the race is a financial mismatch and suggest Richardson now appears virtually certain to secure re-election, and has led CQPolitics.com to change its rating on the race to Safe Democratic from Leans Democratic. ... it appears at this juncture that Richardson is a shoo-in.”

The article notes that Richardson, who has raised close to $7 million in the race, has “a monumental 267-to-1 advantage in cash reserves over Damron ...”

Richardson is one of two Dem governors on CQ’s “Safe” list. The other is New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, who Richardson has visited a couple of times in the past year.

Candidates love revealing huge amounts of campaign contributions for the same reason Soviets loved having big parades with missiles and tanks: It discourages potential enemies.

Or, as then-state Treasurer Robert Vigil explained to investment councilor Kent Nelson (in a conversation taped by the FBI), “If you don't have any money man, you'll get 'em lined up like hot cakes.”

A modest proposal: So if Richardson is a “shoo-in,” it raises the question why he needs to keep raising money, as he surely will do.

Consider the recent news that the Richardson campaign gave more than $44,000 of “tainted” money from his pal Guy Riordan to 70-plus charities in the state. Albuquerque investor and former state Game Commissioner Riordan, if you haven’t been paying attention, was implicated last month in Vigil’s federal corruption trial.

This raises another interesting scenario.

Since Richardson’s such a sure bet, why doesn’t he give the rest of his campaign war chest to charity? Or, if not the whole thing, give enough away so he only has, say, 100 times the amount Damron has.

It had to have felt great giving away $44,560 to homeless shelters, literacy programs, fallen firefighter memorials, libraries, animal-protection sanctuaries, museums, domestic-violence shelters and junior rodeos. Just think how wonderful it would feel to give away a few million.

The only people who would suffer would be campaign consultants and television-ad reps.

And what Richardson would lose in campaign cash-on-hand, he’d be repaid 10 times over in national publicity. He’d get to play the good guy on Larry King and Bill O’Reilly, talking about how campaigns really have gotten too expensive and, doggone it, someone finally had to take a stand, and how it wouldn’t hurt other politicians to follow suit.

Dream on.

Truckin’ down the campaign trail: Or, if you’re swimming in campaign bucks, you can always do what state Land Commissioner Pat Lyons did — buy yourself a pickup truck.

According to his campaign-finance report, filed Monday with the Secretary of State’s Office, last October Lyons paid himself $29,700 for a “campaign truck.”

It’s a Ford Diesel F-250 Supercab, Lyons said Wednesday. So far, he’s put 20,000 to 30,000 miles on the truck, he said.

In the 2002 campaign, Republican Lyons said, he bought a truck — out of his own pocket — for $22,000. After the campaign, he was able to get only about $6,000 for it, he said.

“I didn’t want to do that again,” he said. So after discussing it with his campaign committee, he decided to buy a new truck with campaign funds.

The two Democrats competing for the land-commissioner nomination — both former land commissioners — were quick to blast Lyons. “It may not be illegal, but it strains ethical considerations,” Jim Baca said.

Ray Powell said he was appalled and this illustrates the need for public financing of land-commissioner campaigns.

Lyons has raised more than $373,000 this year for his campaign.

Where the politicians and the antelope play: One unusual campaign expense on Lyons’ report were several payments — totaling more than $18,000 — for antelope permits. “I bought antelope permits for $800 each and sold them to raise funds,” Lyons said.

Sounds like more fun than a rubber-chicken dinner and a no-host bar.

One of the ranchers who sold the permits was the commissioner’s brother, Phil Lyons of Cuervo. He was paid $8,000 for 10 permits. Both Baca and Powell found this questionable.

Lyons got a refund on one batch of permits (totaling $7,200) from another rancher because he couldn’t sell them, he said.

A bipartisan Guy: Lyons is the first Republican I’ve seen to receive money from Riordan. According to Lyons’ report, he got $2,000 from Riordan last September.

Like all the Democrats who got Riordan money, Lyons got rid of his in late April, just days after former Treasurer Michael Montoya testified at Vigil’s trial about taking kickbacks from Riordan in restroom stalls.

But unlike the Democrats, Lyons didn’t give his Riordan money to charity. Instead, he deposited it in the state general fund. “I don’t think you should be giving it to your favorite charity,” Lyons said Wednesday. “It’s a state investment scandal. The money belongs to all the people.”