Terry Allen with my son Anton at Santa Fe Brewing Company in 2006. (Anton looks older these days. Terry doesn't)
Here's what looks like a fine show down in Albuquerque coming up this weekend. Santa Fe's own Terry Allen and his son Bukka Allen, also a musician, will be playing at the Kimo Theater Saturday, Oct. 10 for an even called "An Evening for Vietnam."
The Allens' part of the show will follow a screening of Deryle Perryman and Moises Gonzalez' documentary Same Same But Different, a story of war veterans returning to Vietnam.
The show is a benefit for a music school in Vietnam being built by TwoBricks, an Albuquerque non-profit that builds music schools in underdeveloped regions.
Tickets are $10-$100 (now there's a range!) You can buy them HERE.
Listen to The Santa Fe Opry on KSFR, 101.1 FM in Santa Fe this Friday (10 pm-midnight). I might just have another ticket or two to give away.
Below is one of my favorite Terry Allen songs, "There Ought to Be a Law Against Sunny California," performed at Santa Fe Bandstand in 2012. Unfortunately, Terry cleaned up the lyrics when performing at that "family friendly" event.
Sunday, October 4, 2015 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 Here's the playlist
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
We're an American Band by Grand Funk Railroad
Sinner Man by Esquerita
Drug Train by Social Distortion
Teeny Bopper Teeny Bopper by The Count Five
Vendidi Fumar by Churchwood
Dancing Fool by Butthole Surfers
Girl from Al-Qaeda by The Jack & Gene Show
Is That Religion? by Cab Calloway
Reefer Man by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Tumblin' Dice by Johnny Copeland
Ain't No Easy Way by Nancy Sinatra with Jon Spencer
Do the Get Down by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
It's The Truth, Ruth by The Big Bopper
As You Go Down by Holly Golightly
96 Tears by Aretha Franklin
Down on Me by Big Brother & The Holding Company
Kick Hit 4 Hit Kix U (Blues for Jimi and Janis) by John Lee Hooker
Ball and Chain by Big Brother & The Holding Company
Get It While You Can by Howard Tate
Elephant Gun by Beirut
Wicked Waters by Benjamin Booker
High Noon Blues by The Night Beats
Crawl by The Cynics
Not of This World by The Plimsouls
Prayer for New Mexico by Ronnie Gene
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, October 2, 2015 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
from the April 1930 edition of What’s on the Air, a publication of WHAS radio in Louisville, Ky.
Earl McDonald is the banjo man in the middle.
Click the image to make it more readable
Most people haven't heard of him, but American music owes a lot to an African American banjo player from Kentucky named Earl McDonald.
As a teenager circa 1900, (no that's not a typo), McDonald was a fan of what might have been the very first jug band in the known universe, The Cy Anderson Jug Band, which featured early jug pioneer B.D. Tite.
The Anderson band, based in Louisville, knocked around for about nine years, playing "riverboats, carnivals, parties and venues throughout the Midwest and upper South" according to Don Kent's liner notes for the wonderful Yazoo jug band collectionRuckus Juice & Chitlins.
But by 1909, a homesick Anderson decided to move back to Virginia. But McDonald was ready to fill the void. Earl McDonald's Original Louisville Jug Band got a gig playing the Kentucky Derby. According to the Jug Band Hall of Fame:
By 1914, he was travelling with his band to performances in New York and Chicago. Earl McDonald led the Ballard Chefs' weekly performances on Louisville's WHAS radio for three years (1929-1932). Public response exceeded expectations, enhancing the popularity of jug band music throughout the eastern half of the United States. Earl McDonald's voice and the rhythm of his jug blowing enlivened the recordings of more than 40 tunes with a half-dozen bands from 1924 to 1931.
McDonald played with the Original Louisville Jug Band as well as the Ballard Chefs and The Old Southern Jug Band. And in 1924 with a group that eventally became known as The Dixieland Jug Blowers -- which was a merger of McDonald's Original band and one led by his former musical partner Clifford Hayes -- he made the first known jug band recording backing singer Sara Martin on "Blue Devil Blues."
I wasn't able to find any information and what happened to McDonald. He was doing his Ballard Chefs radio gig as late as 1932. Tat's about the time the bottom was falling out of the recording industry, especially for "race" records and "hillbilly" records. I'm not even sure when McDonald died.
But he sure left some fun tunes behind. Enjoy some now.
Here's my favorite Earl McDonald song, "She's in the Graveyard Now," a variation of "In the Jailhouse Now."
And here's another classic
And here is another McDonald, Hayes and Martin collaboration from 1924
And what the heck, here are a bunch of songs from McDonald and his bands
Today, in case you didn't know, is International Blasphemy Rights Day.
And my boss still wants me to go to work.
But this is serious. This little-known holiday is a tradition that goes back all the way to 2009. It originated with the Center for Inquiry's Campaign for Free Expression. According to the group's website, the day was created "to show solidarity with those who challenge oppressive laws and social prohibitions against free expression, to support the right to challenge prevailing religious beliefs without fear of violence, arrest, or persecution."
Blasphemy Rights Day is observed every September 30, the website says, "to commemorate the publishing of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, which angered religious believers around the world, many of whom expressed their disapproval with violent protests, riots, and in some cases, murder."
Yes in many parts of the world you can be jailed, executed or disappeared just by expressing ideas the ruling religion deems blasphemous.
Places ruled by Islamic fundamentalists is one example. And just a few years ago, Pussy Riot showed that blasphemy can land you in prison in Russia.
So I'm proud to be an American, to live in a land where you can blaspheme til you're blue and, even though you'll probably piss off a lot of believers, and maybe even get beat up by righteously outraged, usually your life and liberty won't be threatened.
In honor of the day here are three of my favorite examples of good old American blasphemy.
And, no, John Lennon's "Imagine" isn't one of them. First of all, he technically wasn't an American. But most of all, to commit a kind of blasphemy myself, the song just sucks. So many times I've heard it sung or quoted so solemnly by self-righteous hippies, I'd rather listen to Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
Actually, I'd rather listen to these tunes.
Let's start with Cab Calloway. Back in the mid '60s, when I was in grade school in Oklahoma City, I saw Cab Calloway in person. He played with a small combo during the half time at a Harlem Globetrotters game. I had no idea who he was, but my grandmother, who took me to the game, was hep to that Hi-Di-Ho jive. I loved it, but I was stunned when Cab sang "It Ain't Necessarily So," a song from Porgy & Bess.It basically twisted my youthful Okie head off.
I didn't come from a religious family. We were not churchgoers. My grandmother used to delight in pointing out contradictions in the Bible. The extent of my grandfather's religious teachings was that Jesus loved the little children.
But in conservative Oklahoma most of my friends did go to church, and religion seemed to be everywhere. So when this crazy dude in a zoot suit sang "the things you are liable to read in the Bible, it ain't necessarily so ..." and poked fun at various Bible stories, it opened my eyes. And when Calloway went into his crazy scat singing, it sounded like wild demonic chants beckoning the listeners to follow him into an exciting and probably dangerous new world.
Here's a version of an older Calloway blaspheming away.
Sometimes I think Randy Newman in his prime was the closest thing to Mark Twain that My Generation ever had. That was because of wickedly subversive songs like this.
And here is Robbie Fulks exploring similar terrain. To me he never sounded like he was mocking any religious ideas with this song. He's always sung it with a certain sadness in his voice. And the melody is so pretty, it sounds like the Devil himself wrote it to lead good Christians to the fires.
