Welcome to this month's Big Enchilada, where we're all just dancing at Doom's Doorway. To quote the ascended master Warren Zevon, "Get up and dance or I'll kill ya!" This show includes a tribute to Billy Miller, who died this month, and the fabulous Norton Records.
Sunday, Nov. 27, 2016 KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell Webcasting! 101.1 FM
(This show was prerecorded. It originally aired Sept. 2, 2012) OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres Dive by L7 Mr. Big Hat by The McCool Whips Suicide Cat by Pong Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell by Iggy & The Stooges Nobody to Love by The 13th Floor Elevators Maelstrom by Rocket From the Crypt Four O'Clocker by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 I Pity the Man by The Hickoids Draggin' the Line by Tommy James & The Shondells (Russian title) by Pussy Riot Hang On by Pussy Galore Cuckoo by The Monks Milkshake and Honey by Sleater-Kinney Tiger Lillian by Kevin Coyne Hot Rod Baby by Elvis From Outer Space Somebodu Knockin' by T-Model Ford Women and Wimmen by John Lee Hooker Nancy Sinatra Tribute Set Nancy Sinatra by The Bottle Rockets How Does That Grab You by Empress of Furrs Summer Wine by Rick Shea & Patty Booker Some Velvet Morning by Firewater These Boots Are Made for Walkin' by Johnny Thunders & Wayne Kramer Lightnin's Girl by Lydia Lunch You Only Live Twice by Nancy Sinatra Prisoner of The Tiki Room by Mojo Nixon The Trip by Donovan Done Got Old by Robert Belfour No Chance by Houndog Between the Ditches by The Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band Long Black Veil by The Walkabouts The Port of Amsterdam by David Bowie Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
In the not-so-distant past, every now and then I would encounter a special sort of reader who seemed to love to play what I call “stump the critic.” This is the sort of guy — and it would always be a guy — who would go down some list in his head of obscure bands and singers until he got to ones to which I wasn’t hip.
These days I wouldn’t last long in such a game. It’s true that I don’t like a large percentage of the new crap that’s out there. But it’s also possible that there’s another factor at work. Maybe I’ve become more musically conservative in my advanced years and more cynical about what constitutes musical innovation.
But one thing I can say for myself: I was a fan of Churchwood before most people outside of Austin, which means I’m far cooler than most of those “stump the critic” twits. And Churchwood, as they prove once again with their recently released fourth album, Hex City, is a band that all true rock ’n’ roll fans should seek out.
Now.
Churchwood is fronted by singer Joe Doerr, an English professor by day, and guitarist Bill Anderson, who I only recently realized used to play with the acoustic country/punk group The Meat Purveyors, who were always one of the highlights of Bloodshot Records’ annual South by Southwest party at the Yard Dog Art Gallery. Anderson and Doerr have been co-conspirators for decades in various Austin bands.
Some critics — and in fact their own record company, Saustex — have called them an avant-garde blues band. There’s a lot of truth in that. You can certainly hear the influence of Captain Beefheart — who put the sounds of Howlin’ Wolf through a Dadaist meat grinder — in Churchwood’s musical magic.
Churchwwod live in Austin 2015
But the band goes well beyond the Captain’s brand of blues. You also can hear echoes of Beefheart’s pal Frank Zappa in Churchwood’s knack for suddenly changing time signatures in the middle of a song. I’ve compared them to Pere Ubu.
And a current weird musical fantasy of mine is producing a split album that would have Churchwood doing songs by The Fall on one side and The Fall covering Churchwood tunes on the other.
On this album, the band’s basic lineup — which includes guitarist Billysteve Korpi, Adam Kahan on bass, and drummer Julien Peterson — is fortified on some songs by a horn section (The Money Shot Brass) and a pair of female vocalists called The Nicotine Choir.
Every track is filled with incredible blues, funk, and sometimes even metal riffs, as if the Dap-Kings were in a vicious battle with the Butthole Surfers while Doerr plays the role of oracle, unleashing barrages of verse.
By the title, you might suspect “One Big White Nightmare” is about the 2016 election. But what I hear is Doerr standing on the sidelines of some pending apocalypse laughing insanely while shooting arrows of flaming literary imagery: “Haiku: seventeen syllables/frame about a doubt with a grim conclusion/yahoo: all the Houyhnhnms in the world/are getting rounded and ridden into mass delusion …”
(Houyhnhnms? That should get a Swift response.)
Desperately fleeing from some crazy unnamed trouble is a theme that runs through more than one song on Hex City. On the low and slow “Hallelujah” (no, not the song by Leonard Cohen, peace be upon him), Doerr sings, “Yeah, we slithered out of Dodge in a ’60 El Camino/and we parked beneath a sycamore tree/the radio was playing ‘Found My Love in Portofino’ when you entered all the terms of my plea. …”
A few songs later, on “Chickasaw Fire,” he rapidly recites, “payin’ no attention ’cause I’m jailhouse broke/I drive a stolen Cadillac and into the smoke/of a Chickasaw fire. …”
Hex City itself is a dangerous adventure. And the adventure only deepens with every listen.
Also recommended:
* The Out of Towners by Hickoids. This is a bittersweet EP by these venerated Austin cowpunks and Saustex Records flagship band. It’s a happy occasion because this is the first Hickoids release since 2013’s Hairy Chafin’ Ape Suit. But it’s also sad because the six tracks on this CD are the last recordings by the late Davy Jones, the lanky goofball guitarist known for his sweet smile, tacky plaid suits, colorful paint-flecked boots, and cowboy hats.
Jones -- a founding Hickoids member along with Saustex commander Jeff Smith -- died of lung cancer a year ago. In fact, this column is being published on Nov. 25, the first anniversary of Davy’s death.
The Out of Towners is a collection of covers of songs written by some of the band’s favorite songwriters from Texas. It kicks off with a sweet-sounding version of “I Have Always Been Here Before” by the Lone Star State’s favorite psychedelic ranger, Roky Erickson, and includes a blistering take on Willie Nelson’s hit “Night Life” and a more reverent cover of Doug Sahm’s “At the Crossroads,” a song best known for the line “you just can’t live in Texas if you ain’t got a whole lot of soul.”
The late great Davy Jones
There’s a slow, soulful song by Santa Fe resident Terry Allen called “I Just Left Myself Today,” (“I didn’t float, I didn’t fly, I did not transcend. No I just walked out on me again”) from his classic Lubbock on Everything album. And there’s “Dead in a Motel Room,” a dark rocker by the Dicks, an old Austin punk rock band that included Jones. This one has a harmonica solo by Walter Daniels of Big Foot Chester and Meet Your Death.
One of my favorite tunes here is “Cans,” which was written by Rich Minus, who is better known for writing “Laredo Rose,” which was recorded by the Texas Tornados. Minus died earlier this year at the age of seventy-five. “Cans” is the story of a homeless man. I don’t think this band has ever sounded prettier.
Here are some Videos for yas
First some Churchwood. I found some from their recent CD release party at the Hole in the Wall in Austin.
And here is America's beloved Hickoids. Smitty is woefully under-miked here, but this clip captures a big chunk of the Hickoids spirit.
And here's an old favorite tune recorded at the Davy Jones memorial in April.
Every Thanksgiving while counting my blessings and stuffing my face, I think of Little Eva and "The Turkey Trot," her follow-up to her big hit "The Loco-Motion."
Here she is singing on Shindig in 1965, backed up by The Shindogs and The Blossoms.
I was always fascinated with the line "My grandmother taught this dance to me. She did it at the turn of the century.
It's quite possible if Little Eva's grandmother was of dancing age in the early 1900s, she indeed was doing the Turkey Trot. It was a dance craze fueled by the rise of ragtime music.
Dances that drew partners close together — along with touching and embracing and all that stuff — became flashpoints for public outrage. They were badmouthed and banned from coast to coast. Fears that party-goers might do the Bunny Hug or Turkey Trot may have even led to the cancellation of the official inaugural ball of newly elected President Woodrow Wilson in the spring of 1913. ... In the summer of 1909, a bellboy in San Francisco, according to the local Chronicle, was arrested for doing the Turkey Trot at a dance hall. "I can't dance any other way," he told the judge.
If indeed Little Eva's grandmother was Turkey Trotting back in that time, here are some of the songs she would have been dancing to.
Here's a variation by Arthur Pryor, combining the Turkery Trot with another popular "animal dance" of the era, The Grizzly.
And going back even further, this is a wax cylinder recording from 1908 by the American Symphony Orchestra.
Some of the sweetest memories of my pre-teen years involve being lost in an airplane-glue haze building models. I loved the Aurora monster kits, -- and I once won a prize from a local hobby shop for my Mummy model.
But even more, I loved the Revell models from the Big Daddy Roth universe --- Mr. Gasser, Rat Fink, Drag Nut, etc. -- and their rivals, The Weird-ohs and their beach-loving cousins, The Silly Surfers from the Hawk Model Company.
One cool thing about both the Big Daddy Roth models and the Hawk models is that both had music to go along with them. In fact, the Roth-spawned Mr. Gasser & The Weird-ohs had three albums to their credit in the mid '60s.
Even as a kid I noticed that Gasser's band sounded a lot like The Weird-ohs (and The Silly Surfers.) That's because both fake groups were fronted an L.A, studio cat named Gary Usher.
By the time he got around to these bands Usher already had co-written songs with Brian Wilson including "In My Room." (Usher also was the brains behind The Hondells, who had a hit with the Wilson-penned "Little Honda." )
Let's hear some songs by these bands, starting with Mr. Gasser & The Weirdos, singing the title song of their first album, "Hot Rod Hootenanny."
As a kid, one of my favorite Gasser tunes was "The Ballad of Eefin Fink: "He's the hero of the story. But he's the villain too. So naturally the question is "Who?"
Back in the mid '60s I had a split LP of The Weird-ohs and The Silly Surfers. Here's a shoulda-been Weird-ohs hit called "Huey's Hut Rod."
Meanwhile, the best Silly Surfers tune was "Hodad Makin' the Scene With a Six Pack."
Back in the '90s, I thought I might be the last man alive who remembered this stuff. Then Pearl Jam went and covered this Silly Surfers classic
The Sadies
And 10 years ago, the Canadian group, The Sadies did a credible job in conjuring the airplane-glue rock spirit when they provided the soundtrack to the Big Daddy Roth documentary "Tales of the Rat Fink."
NORTON RECORDS set 
NORTON RECORDS set 
