Make Music Day Santa Fe

 

Members of Busy McCarroll's Thunderstorm Singing/Songwriting Class 

Turquoise Trail Elementary Charter School.

Busy McCarroll’s involvement in the international summer solstice musical event known as Make Music Day began more than 20 years ago.

“I first heard about the event in the 90’s when Nathalie Bonnard-Grenet, who’s from France, called me to ask me to play at this global music event that started in France and happened on Summer Solstice,” the longtime Santa Fe musician said recently. Bonnard-Grenet, she said, asked her to play in front of a local Starbucks. Several other local musicians were asked to play at other Santa Fe spots that day as well.

It wasn’t exactly a red-letter day in the singer’s career.

Performing in front of the coffee shop with local cellist Michael Kott, McCarroll recalled, “We had to pay for a buskers license which cost $35, we didn’t get paid and made about $5 in tips.”

That’s a gig that most musicians trying to make a living in Santa Fe can relate to.

But that would not be the end of Make Music Day in this town. In 2012, Bruce Adams, former owner of The Santa Fean magazine, and Mary Bonney brought Make Music back to Santa. Adams and Bonney produced the event for two years. In 2014 they asked The Santa Fe Music Alliance to take over.

McCarroll, who later became president of the Music Alliance, took charge of the event that year, which was a big outdoor show at the Santa Fe Railyard. Nobody can question her dedication to the cause.

One year McCarroll even suffered sun stroke while trying to manage the stage during a particularly scorching Make Music Day. She still has vivid memories of sitting inside the nearby Violet Crown theater, with ice on her neck, directing the show via text messages to Music Alliance vice president Amado Abeyta, family members and other volunteers outside.

A big Railyard blowout, featuring several bands playing on the outdoor stage, was the format of Santa Fe’s Make Music Day for the next several years. Performers included a who’s who of local bands, all of whom were paid to perform.

And then came the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which caused last year’s local Make Music events to be cancelled.

But now Make Music Day is returning to Santa Fe on Monday, June 21 for a mostly virtual event – with a few live performances at venues including Santa Fe Brewing Company and The Candyman. All events are free and open to the public.

Besides the Santa Fe Music Alliance, organizations and businesses behind this year’s local celebration include the city of Santa Fe’s Arts and Culture Department, the New Mexico Music Commission Foundation, The Candyman Strings and Things, Amp Concerts, and Kludgit Sound. Sponsors include local radio stations KSWV, KBAC and KSFR and The Santa Fean.

It’s no coincidence that the woman who first contacted McCarroll about Make Music Day back in the ‘90s was French. The event has origins in France’s national government. In October 1981, French Minister of Culture Jack Lang appointed Maurice Fleuret, a composer and music journalist, as director of music and dance.

In response to a national study that showed that half of France’s young people played a musical instrument, Fleuret created a national festival, called “Fête de la Musique,” dedicated to give all sorts of musicians – all ages, all genres, all skill levels, professional and amateur – the opportunity to perform.

“We needed an event that would allow us to measure what place music occupied in individual and collective life,” Fleuret said in 1983. “A spectacular movement of awareness, a spontaneous impetus to alert public opinion and perhaps also … the political class. This is why the Ministry of Culture had the idea of organizing a Fête de la Musique in 1982. A non-directive celebration, which brings together all French people for whom music matters.”

It wasn’t one big show on one big stage. Rather there were hundreds of performances “everywhere in the streets, squares, kiosks, courtyards, gardens, stations, squares …” according to the French Ministry of Culture’s website.

And within a few years the idea spread to other countries, including the U.S.

On summer solstice two years ago, according to the Make Music Day website 85 North American cities organized 5,383 free concerts at 1,862 locations on this continent and more than 1000 cities worldwide.

Abeyta, a local musician and KSWV radio host, who has been involved for several years with Make Music Day — both as a performer and stage manager — said recently that it’s a relief to see live performance on Santa Fe’s horizon once again.

“The effect of the pandemic on musicians and the whole artistic community has been awful,” Abeyta said. “You see prominent local musicians out busking or working construction, doing things they shouldn’t have to do just to survive. I’m really thankful to be able to do something musical again.” (Abeyta, in sunglasses playing in his band Sol Fire  with his brother Buddy Abeyta at a previous Make Music Day in photo at left.)

Among the early acts to sign up for this year’s show, according to Cindy Cook — a member of the local Make Music Santa Fe planning committee and co-owner of The Candyman Strings & Things — are Marc & Paula’s Roadside Distraction, Half Pint & The Growlers, singer-songwriter Lucy Barna, singer-composer Lisa B. Friedland, longtime local troubadour Michael J. Roth and rocker David Wheeler.

On the classical music side, Cook said The Santa Fe Youth Symphony as well as the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival will be doing video performances.

One of the day’s local live events, Cook said, will be a socially-distanced drum circle taking place on the covered porch of The Candyman, 851 St. Michael’s Drive, between noon and 5 p.m. “We’ll be giving away a free set of drum sticks, courtesy of Pro-Mark, to participants while supplies last,” she said. The store also will provide instruments for those who want to join the circle but don’t have their own drums or percussion instruments.

The Hohner company provided 100 free harmonicas for community members who would like to participate in Make Music Santa Fe. Cook said anyone who wants one of those harmonicas is encouraged to stop by The Candyman prior to June 21st. And for those wanting to learn how to actually play their new instruments, the store will provide free harmonica lessons from one of the city’s best-known harp-blowers, longtime Santa Fe musician and radio host “Harmonica Mike” Handler. Those lessons may be viewed online or taken in-person on Make Music Day.

Free ukulele books, courtesy of Alfred Publishing, are also available for pick up at The Candyman before June 21st. The store will provide free in-person or online video ukulele lessons. “For those that choose in-person lessons, if they don’t have a ukulele, they may borrow one of theirs,” Cook said.

Meanwhile, during his KSWV show on June 21 (11 a.m. – noon), Abeyta will play tunes from local musicians. Musicians who want to be included in this should drop their CDs at the Candyman before Friday, June 18, when the CDs will be delivered to the radio station.

McCarroll said she recently heard someone describe Make Music Day as a “musical holiday.” Indeed, that phrase captures the spirit of the event both locally and internationally. It always falls on solstice, June 21, which means that, like this year, most of the time it falls on a weekday. But even for those who have to work should think about taking a little music break, or two that day and catch some music either in person or online.

Musicians wanting to take part in Santa Fe’s Make Music Day can sign up at www.makemusicday.org/santafe. Registration closes on June 20.

Businesses, buildings, schools, churches, and other institutions can visit the website to feature their outdoor spaces as concert and musical activity locations.

Santa Fe musicians with pre‐recorded videos can sign up at www.makemusicday.org/santafe and provide links where their videos may be viewed. Videos may also be posted using the hashtag “#makemusicsantafe.”

The Sunstroke Sessions: Busy, far left, conquers the heat and joins 

Eliza & Tony Gilkyson -- with Susan Hyde Holmes on bass

onstage at 2015 Make Music Day

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Dale, Jason & Martha

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
April 26, 2018

Let me riff on the old Wolf Brand Chili ad from decades ago: Neighbor, how long has it been since you read a big steaming Terrell’s Tune-up column entirely devoted to country music?

Well, that’s too long! So here is a look at three fine hillbilly albums I’ve been listening to lately.

* Call Me Lucky by Dale Watson. If there’s a better, more authentic, harder working and more
prolific purveyor of old fashioned honky-tonk music than Watson, I sure haven’t heard of him or her. He’s a little guy with a big white pompadour and a powerful baritone, similar to that of Waylon Jennings, though sometimes reminiscent of Johnny Cash.

He’s got humor and soul, an amazing (and amazingly consistent) band and a work ethic that would put most of us to shame. I’ve seen him play the Continental Club in Austin on both Christmas and Thanksgiving nights and once saw him at the Broken Spoke in the Texas capital play three hours without taking a break.

And the records keep coming. By my count, this is his sixth album since 2015. Among his recent discography there’s a duet with Ray Benson, a covers album, a live album and one featuring of re-recordings of his old songs.

In the past year or so, Watson bought a second home, so he now splits his residency between Austin and Memphis. And yes, you can hear echoes of both Sun rockabilly and Stax soul in Lucky (though not as much as his 2011 offering The Sun Sessions, which was recorded at the studio where Elvis, Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash and Cash made their magic.)

A few songs, including “Tupelo, Mississippi & a ’57 Fairlane,” “Inside View” and “Who Needs This Band” feature a horn section. Willie Nelson’s harmonica man Mickey Rafael, sort-of a one-man horn section himself,  graces some songs here, including “Johnny and June,” on which Watson trades lines of love with his real-life girlfriend Celine Lee.

In two songs here, Watson jokingly questions his own intelligence. “I know that I’m not smarter than nearly anyone / I’m just lucky,” he sings in the title track. And backed by a classic Johnny Cash chunka-chunka beat in “The Dumb Song” Watson pokes fun at his own dumb habits like drinking, smoking and eating “that Southern fried chicken.”

But don’t be fooled. Dale is far from dumb. And if you’re smart you’ll give this album a listen.

* Stand Tall by Jason Ringenberg. With Jason & The Scorchers, the band that made him famous (well, kinda famous) Ringenberg is the guy who brought cow-punk to Nashville. No question he’s a rocker, but he’s got country in his heart. That was obvious even back in the days when he was sporting a Mohawk along with a red sparkly C&W jacket. And it’s even more obvious on this, his latest solo album.

Starting off with the spaghetti-western style instrumental title song, this album is populated with hard-edged honky-tonkers like “Many Happy Hangovers to You,” an emotional cover of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Hobo Bill’s Last Ride,” a sweet acoustic, fiddle-colored ode to nature, “Here in the Sequoias” and a country-waltz version of Bob Dylan’s “Farewell Angelina.”

There are songs praising The Ramones – based on the time The Scorchers backed them on a 1982 Texas tour – environmentalist pioneer John Muir and John the Baptist, (who Ringenberg says “was a real humdinger.”)

This is not nearly as political his last proper solo record, 2004’s Empire Builders, (I’m not counting his children’s records he’s released under the name of “Farmer Jason) there’s a fife-and-drums Civil War ballad, “I’m Walking Home,” which is anti-war as well as anti-slavery and pretty radical all around.  “Well I hated slavery and all that support it / But I hate the Union for what it’s become,” the Confederate deserter sings.

* Dancing Shadows by Martha Fields. For the past several years, the West Virginia-born Fields has
made the very best country music coming out of France. Maybe even the whole European Union. And I believe this album, released late last year, is the expatriate hillbilly’s best –at least so far. Her band may be French, but they sound like true Americans to me.

Some of the songs here deal with being a foreigner, such as the lonesome “Paris to Austin” (that contains the line “I’ll pretend the Eifel Tower is a big oil well”) and the bluesy “Exile,” in which Fields sings, “I’m a stranger in my homeland / So afraid for my homeland / And I hurt for what I’ve left behind …”

There are a couple of nostalgic tunes for her past homes, the bluegrass-touched “West Virginia in My Bones,” and the slow aching, acoustic “Oklahoma on My Mind.” However I like up-tempo, country-rockers like “Last Train to Sanesville” (I missed that train years ago!), the dobro-driven “Demona,” and the bluegrass stomp “Maxine.”

But the one I keep going back to is the truthfully titled romp called “Hillbilly Bop.” My favorite verse is where she sings, “Well brother’s got the moonshine, Daddy’s got molasses / Get off your hillbilly asses / You gotta hillbilly bop …”

Here are some videos

First a live version of the title song of Dale's latest.



Jason scorches The Ramones



Martha shows how the Hillbilly Bop is done



And yes, tracks from all three of these albums, plus a lot more, can be heard on a recent episode of The Big Enchilada. In fact, I named the episode after a certain Martha Fields song. Listen and/or download HERE or just listen below:

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Songs the Sun Sessions Taught Us

Elvis Presley was more than a great performer. With his earliest recordings he showed that he was a gifted currator of American songs.

On this Throwback Thursday let's look at original -- or in some cases, just earlier -- versions of some of the songs -- country songs, R&B songs, pop tunes -- that make up various versions of Elvis' Sun Sessions.

First of all, hats off to Adam Aguirre of  the Route 66 show on KUNM, who inspired this post by recently playing these first two songs on a recent Saturday night.

First let's start with Ernest Tubb



Elvis apparently loved bluegrass. He rocked this Bill Monroe classic.



Speaking of a blue moon, this tune, written by Richard Rogers & Lorenz Hart was first recorded by Connee Boswell in 1935. I've always liked this early '50s version by Billie Holiday.



Probably my favorite Sun Sessions song is "Tryin' to Get to You." I didn't realize until recently that this song originally was receorded by The Eagles. (No, no those Eagles!)



"My Happiness" goes back to the late '40s, recorded by The Marlin Sisters



We all know Elvis loved the blues. Here's one, by Kokomo Arnold, that Elvis used to get real gone for a change.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: To Sing Those American Tunes

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
June 30, 2017

Back during the height of Watergate, Paul Simon sang, “We come in the age’s most uncertain hour to sing an American tune.” 

We’ve had lots of uncertain hours since then, and I still find strength in those American tunes, the old creaky blues, gospel, hillbilly, jug-band records, those crazy songs of joy, wry humor, and simple wisdom sung by people living in severe poverty in isolated regions, in an era of harsh injustice and racial apartheid. 

I find comfort in those weird musical stories of horrible murders, of hopping trains, of hopeless drunks finding the Lord, of spooky old pines where the sun never shines, of carefree ducks diving into rivers of whiskey.

So during this uncertain, tense, and violent era I was heartened in recent weeks when PBS presented American Epic, its excellent documentary series about the dawn of the American recording industry in the mid-1920s, when record companies sent talent scouts to scour the hills, hollers, and honky-tonks of the South to find musicians that the folks in rural America could relate to. 

The series, directed by British filmmaker Bernard MacMahon and narrated by Robert Redford, focuses on a handful of greats like the Carter Family, Mississippi John Hurt (a sweet, gentle spirit who is one of my major musical heroes), blues pioneer Charlie Patton, and South Carolina gospel singer and preacher Elder J.E. Burch — whose parishioners included the young Dizzy Gillespie. 

American Epic features three episodes of musical history, plus one called “The American Epic Sessions,” which consists of performances of (mostly) old songs by contemporary artists including Alabama Shakes, Taj Mahal, Los Lobos, Beck, Willie Nelson with the late Merle Haggard, and more. These tunes were recorded on an old pulley-driven Western Electric Scully lathe, the kind that the record companies hauled around to record the immortals in the ’20s and ’30s. Throughout “Sessions,” the directors show a near cargo-cult fascination with this Rube Goldberg-like device.

Though the South is the main focus of American Epic, there are also excursions into the West. There is a segment on Tejano music queen Lydia Mendoza and a trip to Hawaii, where we hear the story of Joseph Kekuku, the man who invented the steel guitar. 

And there is a segment on Hopi music, telling the story of how racist religious nuts in Congress sought to ban the tribe’s Snake Dance, calling the Hopi religion “a weird cult” after unauthorized film footage of the dance — which had been attended years before in Arizona by President Theodore Roosevelt — leaked out. In response, a group of Hopi religious leaders went to Washington, D.C., in 1926 to perform the Snake Dance for a crowd of dignitaries on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. They also recorded several songs for RCA Victor.


Being a jug-band fanatic, my favorite segment deals with the Memphis Jug Band, led by Will Shade. At one point the rapper Nas talks about the similarities between hip-hop and jug-band music. “These guys are talking about carrying guns, shooting something, protecting their honor, chasing after some woman who’s done them dirty.” Nas, backed by an acoustic band led by Jack White, performs a version of the Memphis Jug Band’s “On the Road Again” in the “Sessions” episode.

Sony has released nine American Epic albums, including a single-disc soundtrack of the artists covered, a five-disc box set, a “Sessions” soundtrack by modern musicians, and several for individual artists and genres. Critic Robert Christgau recently joked — was he joking? — that “American Epic is a Sony plot to poach/rescue the American folk music franchise from the Smithsonian and the great Harry Smith.”

Most of this music is available on other compilations. Here are some other great American roots-music collections:

Harry Smith

* Anthology of American Folk Music. The fabulously eccentric Harry Smith compiled this collection in 1952 from old 78 rpm records in his personal collection. The 84 songs — blues, hillbilly, Cajun, gospel — originally were recorded between 1927 and 1932. Among the artists included are Mississippi John Hurt, Charlie Patton, the Carter Family, Dock Boggs, Blind Willie Johnson, Rev. J.M. Gates, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Uncle Dave Macon. Keep in mind, the anthology came about in 1952, back when only a few academics and the most obsessive record collectors knew who any of these people were.

* The Bristol Sessions. The first episode of American Epic tells the story of RCA talent scout Ralph Peer setting up a makeshift recording studio in an old furniture store in Bristol, Tennessee, in 1927 and striking gold. Among those he attracted to Bristol were the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. Also among the Bristol bunch were West Virginia bard Blind Alfred Reed, Ernest Stoneman, and the Tenneva Ramblers, whose song “The Longest Train I Ever Saw” would in subsequent years be handed back and forth among black bluesmen and white hillbilly and bluegrass singers under various titles (“In the Pines,” “Black Girl”). It would re-emerge in the 1990s as Nirvana’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” (There are a few versions of this collection available ranging from a single disc to a five-disc box.)


* Ruckus Juice & Chitlins: The Great Jug Bands. This is a set of two CDs (sold separately) of classic jug-band recordings from Yazoo Records. The collection includes seminal acts like the Memphis Jug Band, Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Earl McDonald’s Original Louisville Jug Band, Whistler & His Jug Band, and more. (Vol. 2 can be found HERE)

* My Rough and Rowdy Ways: Badman Ballads & Hellraising Songs, Classic Recordings From the 1920s and ’30s. This is my second-favorite two-disc collection from Yazoo. The subtitle says it all. It’s a bunch of great hellraising blues and hillbilly songs about sex, booze, drugs (Dick Justice’s “Cocaine” kicks off Vol. 2), gambling, and murderers — from Stack-O-Lee to Billy the Kid to the psycho who killed Pretty Polly.

I did a quick Throwback Thursday blog post on American Epic a few weeks ago, including a few videos. You can see that HERE. 

Here are some more videos, starting with The Memphis Jug Band



Here's Dick Justice's take on the same subject



Was Donald Trump thinking about Lydia Mendoza's classic song when he spoke of "bad hombres" crossing our borders?



This song by The Alabama Shakes is one of my favorites from American Epic Sessions

Yep, I'm Still an eMusic Fiend

It's been several months since my last eMusic report and my inbox is full of angry emails demanding I get back on my monthly routine. (Actually, nobody has seemed to notice I'd stopped doing it. I guess I'm just posting this shows how obsessive I am.)

Anyway, I'm just going to give a quick glance at what I've downloaded in the past 3 or 4 months.

Naturally, I downloaded some of those excellent, bargain-priced compilations that eMusic is known for.

These include:

* Screaming Gospel Holy Rollers vol. 1. This just might be the most spirit-filled, tambourine-shaken', hallelujah-shoutin' old-time gospel collections I've ever come across. This music -- African-American gospel of the '40s and '50s -- truly is the spring from which rock and soul music flowed. And, yes, it was this collection that prompted me to include a wild gospel set on my recent Big Enchilada podcast Shout When the Spirit Says Shout.  Compiled by "Radio DJ and TV presenter" Mark Lamarr for the British Vee-Tone Records, this album features some gospel giants such as Marie Knight, the Famous Davis Sisters and the Blind Boys (both Archie Brownlee's group from Mississippi and their rivals, Clarence Fountain's group from Alabama), as well as several I've never heard of. Each track is tremendous And here's some great news: There's a Volume 2 of Screaming Gospel Holy Rollers.

* Rockin' Boppin' Hillbilly Gals. The title of this 40-track (!!) collection might be somewhat misleading. Whoever slapped this together -- and indeed, the album does have a slapdash feel -- has a bigger-tent definition of "hillbilly" than most of us. The "hillbilly gals" include country stars like Loretta Lynn, Rose Maddox and Kitty Wells; first-generation rockabilly fillies Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin; blues belters like Big Mama Thorton and Lucille Bogan; gospel great Clara Ward; and even an early jazz singers, Bertha "Chippie" Hill and Eva Taylor, both of whom sing on tracks with Louis Armstrong. With songs ranging from Bogan's "Shave 'em Dry" to Ward's "King Jesus is All I Need, " you can't say there's not variety here. 

 * Cool Town Bop. This is an international rockabilly revival collection from the early '90s. "International?" you ask. Indeed, there's Greek rockabilly, Dutch rockabilly, Swedish rockabilly, some token American rockabilly, a bunch of British rockabilly, and  my favorite Cannuckabilly, the late Ray Condo doing a song called "One Hand Loose." Condo is the only act I recognized here and his contribution probably is the best thing here, though I'm also fond of "Please I Wonder" by The Roomates, an English band, though it's more doo-wop than rockabilly. While there's no great revelations here, it's a good listen

I also downloaded these single-artist albums

* House of Blue Lights by Don Covay & The Jefferson Lemon Blues Band. Did I say I was obsessive? Back when I was a freshman in college, (1971-72) I was listening to the KUNM blues show (It was on Wednesdsay nights back then too.) and decided to tape it. One of the songs I remember from that tape was "The Blues Don't Knock" by Don Covay. It wasn't your typical blues song. it was slow and dreamy and featured a flute, I lost that tape years ago, but a few months ago I started thinking about that song and with a few quick Googles I learned it was on this 1969 album, which is available on eMusic. And I'm happy I found it. Though he's best known as an R&B and soul artist, this is a stab at raw blues, backed by a rock band. Though I came for "The Blues Don't Knock," I stayed for the title song, a seven-minute-plus minor-key show-stopper about a guy whose life is ruined by a whore house. (There's a shorter reprise of the song at the end of the album that's nearly as intense.)

* Fire On the Bayou by Stephanie McDee. I'll admit it. I downloaded this because it has the original version of "Call the Police," which was covered by The Oblivians on their great comeback album Desperation earlier this year. McDee's music is a hopped-up zydeco hybrid with elements of hip-hop and techno. This album is less than a half-hour long and it gets pretty repetitive. But I bet it's great live.

* Love Visions by Nobunny. Cwazy Wabbit! If he were more famous, singer/guitarist Justin Champlin would do for shopping mall Easter Bunnies what John Wayne Gacy did for clowns. And he should be more famous. Behind the ratty rabbit mask is a master of irresistible, hooky pop/punk songs. Just about all these songs will get you hopping.

* Live at the Fish Fry by Pocket FishRmen. This band of wild Texas punks started out in the mid '80s. They broke up around the turn of the century, but in recent years they've reunited at least once a year to host an annual charity show in Austin called "The Pocket FishRmen Fish Fry." This album, released in 2011, was recorded at one of those. It's full of frantic, foul-mouthed fun, including odes to Amy Carter, Santa Claus and Saddam Hussein.

* (The songs I didn't already have from) Blank Generation by Richard Hell & The Voidoids. The title song of this was one of the earliest and still one of the greatest punk anthems ever. While  no other song came close to "Blank Generation," the rest of the album is good. How can any band with Robert Quine on guitar be anything but? I love Hell's weird barking in "liars Beware." And I'm a complete sucker for the slow dance cover of the Sammy Cahn /James Van Heusen standard "All the Way." For punk/lounge music, it's matched only by Iggy Pop's version of "One for My Baby (and One More For the Road)."

* The Anti- Naturalists by The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. I downloaded this right after the death of Karen Black this summer. Black herself was a talented singer and songwriter, but, no, she wasn't part of this 1990s New York punk outfit that took her name and honored her voluptuous horror. VHKB, fronted by singer Kembra Pfahler, wasn't exactly groundbreaking, but this record showed they were a lot of fun.

* Moon Sick by Thee Oh Sees. Back in May, I declared Thee Oh See's Floating Coffin as my likely choice for album of the year. Months have passed and I still feel that way. This four-song EP consists of outtakes from the Floating Coffin sessions. The first three songs, "Born in a Graveyard," (which starts off with some computer beeping right out of Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio") "Sewer Fire" (one of the band's harder-edged tunes) and "Humans Be Swayed" would have fit in on Coffin. The more I listen to this EP, the more I'm impressed with "Humans Be Swayed," which starts off with slow droning, then bursts into a frantic, choppy rocker. The last song "Candy Clocks" is almost folk-rock. I continue to be amazed and infatuated by Thee Oh Sees.

* The Devil in Me by Big Foot Chester. I just downloaded this album a couple of days ago. It's raw, minimalist punk blues from a 1990s band led by Texas harmonica man Walter Daniels, who has played with some of my favorite musical acts including Hickoids, Buick MacKane and Eugene Chadbourne. I saw Daniels last year in Austin playing an acoustic set with guitarist John Schooley and banjoist Ralph White.

Several of the albums I got from eMusic in recent weeks ended up being reviewed in my weekly Terrell's Tuneup column.

Namely:

* Signed and Sealed in Blood by Dropkick Murpheys (My review is HERE)
* Fayt by Cankisou (My review is HERE)
* Electric Slave by Black Joe Lewis (My review is HERE)
* Haunted Head by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkeybirds (My review is HERE)
And though it's not really an album ...
* Nine Songs by Tim Timebomb "(Between the Two of Us) One of Us Has the Answer"; "Dope Sick Girl"; "Gentleman of the Road"; "Hard Travelin' "; "Jim Dandy"; "Jockey Full of Bourbon"; "Rock This Joint"; "Squeezebox"; and "Rocks Off"  (My review is HERE)

I've also downloaded several individual songs including:

* Three Ty Wagner songs (who I'm looking forward to see this weekend in New Orleans at the Ponderosa Stomp.)
* "Blues in the Night" by Eydie Gorme. (R.I.P.)
* "Warmed Over Kisses" by Dave Edmunds. A nice dose of bluegrass-rock.
* Two songs from Nancy Sinatra's self-titled 2004 album (which since has disappeared from eMusic!) The best of these is "Ain't No Easy Way," which is funky duet with the mighty Jon Spencer. "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" which is nice and pretty with Nancy singing disparagingly of "some skinny bitch in hotpants."
* Three songs from Other Voices by The Doors, the band's first post-Jim Morrison album. No Freudian pyscho-odysseys without ol' Jim. But these tunes, "I'm Horny, I'm Stoned," "Variety is the Spice of Life," and "In the Eye of the Sun" are just decent bluesy rock.)

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: New Dylan Portrait Reveals New Colors

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Sept. 6, 2013



It's interesting that Columbia Legacy would release an two-disc "bootleg" set of unreleased Bob Dylan recordings centered around one of his most critically un-acclaimed albums in his 50-year career.

But that's the case of Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) The Bootleg Series Vol. 10. About half the songs are alternative versions, demos, or cutting-room-floor songs originally meant for Self Portrait, Dylan's album (it was a double album in the days of vinyl, though it all fit on a single CD) Released in the summer of 1970. There also are several different versions of songs that appeared on New Morning, (which came only months after Self Portrait), plus a smattering from Nashville Skyline and other projects.

At the time of its release, Self Portrait was the most controversial thing Dylan had done since "going electric" at the Newport Folk Festival five years before. In his autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. One, Dylan described this album: "I just threw everything I could think of at the wall and whatever stuck, released it, and then went back and scooped up everything that didn't stick, and released that too."

The critics raved. Actually, the critics ranted and it wasn't pretty. It was as if they felt personally that the most important artist of a generation had released a record that wasn't a grand revelation. Instead, despite the portentous title, Self Portrait was just a fun and sometimes sloppy musical notebook of Dylan singing some favorite folk and country songs, mixed in with a few live recordings and musical experiments.

"What is this shit?"was the opening sentence of the review in Rolling Stone (in those days a rock 'n' roll magazine, believe it or not) by Greil Marcus. Marcus, in the liner notes for the new collection, wrote that those were "the words that were coming out of everybody's mouth" when first hearing Self Portrait.

But not everybody.

I was just a high school kid when Self Portrait came out and, for the most part I liked it. And for the most part, I still do. Sure there were some clunkers -- his undercooked version of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer," the bafflingly over-produced "Bell Isle," the mediocre take on Elmore James' "It Hurts Me Too," and the outright bizarre "In Search of Little Sadie," which sounded like a stoned private joke. And, as is the case with many other classic double albums, Self Portrait could have, should have been boiled down to a single disc.


But there was so much to love in Self Portrait. The first song was the enigmatic "All the Tired Horses." Dylan didn't sing this. It was a chorus of three women singing, "All the tired horses in the sun / How am I supposed to get any riding done / Ummm ummm..." over and over again like some plantation dirge with a string section coming in. There was a raucous live version of "Quinn the Eskimo" (with The Band) that sounded like a saloon fight. And there was a straight version of "Little Sadie" on which Bromberg on guitar sounded so much like Doc Watson, I had to check the credits.

The Original

Speaking of "Little Sadie," my favorite aspect of Self Portrait was what seemed to be an Old West/frontier/gunslinger undercurrent. One of the best was "Alberta #1," a funky old folk song (I remembered it from seeing Parnell Roberts, Adam from Bonanza, perform it on some TV variety show.) "I'd give you more gold than your apron could hold" sounds like a love-sick promise by the world's horniest prospector.

Dylan's laconic version featured a tasty dobro by David Bromberg and call-and-response vocals by the same trio that sang "All the Tired Horses." Later in the album there was a slightly faster "Alberta #2" and I liked that too. (And, to get ahead of myself a little, I also like "Alberta #3" on Another Self Portrait, despite its abrupt end.)

One of the most moving songs on the album was a moonshiner ballad, "Copper Kettle" where Dylan, in the voice of a proud defiant hillbilly Everyman, sings, "My daddy he made whiskey, my granddad he did too / We ain't paid no whiskey tax since 1792." There was The Everly Brothers' "Take a Message to Mary," with that haunting introduction by a female chorus, "These are the words of a frontier lad, who lost his love when he turned bad..."

But best of all was Dylan's version of "Days of 49," an old gold rush song about a sad '49 lamenting the loss of old compadres, a motley, whoring gaggle of drunks, brawlers and card-cheats -- the kind of men who built this great land of ours. "They call me a bummer and a gin-shot too, but what cares I for praise?" Dylan snarls. The verses document the lives and violent deaths of pals like Poker Bill, New York Jake and Ragshag Bill.

David Bromberg, the secret hero of the
Self Portrait sessions.

The devastating final verse puts it all in perspective: "Of all the comrades that I've had, there's none that's left to boast / And I'm left alone in my misery, like some poor wandering ghost ..." Makes you wonder whether Dylan has harbored a fear of being the last man standing among his glory-days contemporaries.

"Railroad Bill," a fine old American outlaw ballad included in Another Self Portrait, would have fit in perfectly among the Old West tunes on the original album. Why it was excluded while "The Boxer" was included we'll never know.

While any fan of any performer enjoys hearing out-takes and versions of familiar songs at various stages of development -- "New Morning" with horns, "Wigwam" without the horns, "Sign on the Window" with orchestra! -- my favorite tunes on the new collection are the ones like "Railroad Bill," that I'd never heard Dylan do before. There are a few, such as "Annie's Going to Sing Her Song" (written by folkie Tom Paxton) and a folk song called "Pretty Saro" that can only be described as gorgeous.

For sheer fun, it would be hard to beat the bluesy "Working on a Guru," featuring George Harrison on guitar, from the New Morning sessions. And for the pure mystery of folk music, Dylan, backed by Bromberg's guitar and pianist Al Kooper, sings a song called "Tattle O'Day," full of nonsense lyrics of animals with fantastic powers.

While I prefer the familiar versions of the Self Portrait songs to the versions on the new "bootleg" collection, there are exceptions. Both "Copper Kettle" and "Belle Isle" are stripped of their over-dubbed sweetening strings, leaving performances that only seem more passionate.

If nothing else, Another Self Portrait is forcing a second look of the original Self Portrait. Maybe it wasn't as big of a revelation as Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde on Blonde. But in its own strange way, it had its own revelatory power.

Some video for yas:






Dylan's "Alberta"s are cooler, but Pernell's is the first version I heard.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: The Honky Tonk Lives!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Feb. 1, 2013



Honky-tonk music is alive.

Alive? It’s rarely sounded healthier, judging by Dale Watson’s latest album.

The record is called El Rancho Azul. There on the back cover you see Watson and his band, the Lone Stars, standing beside their tour bus in front of the Broken Spoke in Austin. That’s the famous old saloon where I last saw Watson play. (He did a solid three-hour-plus set without taking a break.) Even though this was a couple of years ago, I’m pretty sure I heard at least a couple of these songs that night.

This is no song cycle or rock opera, but El Rancho Azul does deal with certain recurring themes. Number one is drinking. Four of the album’s 14 songs have the word “drink” in the title. There’s “I Lie When I Drink” (“and I drink a lot,” Watson sings in the refrain), “Drink to Remember,” “I Hate to Drink Alone,” and “Drink Drink Drink.”) Then there’s a song called “Smokey Old Bar” (in which Watson enjoys drinking cold Lone Star) and one called “Thanks to Tequila” (in which Watson makes fun of the way cactus juice slurs his speech).

There are a couple minor themes at work on the album, as well. One is dancing and the other is weddings. Come to think of it, drinking, dancing, and weddings go together. On the dancing front, there are two similar songs that deal with a woman teaching a man how to survive on the dance floor. These are “Quick Quick Slow Slow,” followed by “Slow Quick Quick,” which is about waltzing. Then there’s “Cowboy Boots,” in which Watson sings of his love for women dancing in such footwear.

Watson’s wedding tunes are quite different. “We’re Gonna Get Married” is a fast song sung from the perspective of an enthusiastic groom. This is followed by “Daughter’s Wedding Song,” which is sung from the viewpoint of the bride’s father. “It’s hard to let go of that little girl whose whole body would sleep on my chest,” Watson says, starting off the second verse. It’s slow, pretty, heartfelt, and overtly sentimental. Merle Haggard fans will note similarities between this and Hag’s “The Farmer’s Daughter.”

Watson at the Broken Spoke, March 2011

Watson finally got around to recording “Where Do You Want It,” his black-humor outlaw song celebrating the shooting incident near Waco that involved the mighty Billy Joe Shaver. Billy Joe was eventually acquitted of aggravated assault charges connected with the confrontation. (What Texas jury is going to convict Billy Joe Shaver when Willie Nelson is sitting right there in the courtroom?) Though Watson wrote this song, it was originally recorded by Whitey Morgan & The 78s about two years ago.

Watson’s on a real roll lately. I thought his previous album, The Sun Sessions — recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis with a stripped-down version of his band and an early Johnny Cash feel — was the best thing he’d done in years. But this one is even better.

^

Also recommended:

* Be Right Back! by Chris O’Connell. Even if you don’t recognize her name, chances are you’ve heard the voice of Chris O’Connell.

She was the original female with Asleep at the Wheel, before those latter-day saints of western swing moved to Texas.

Yes, she was the female singer on the early Wheel hit “The Letter That Johnny Walker Read.” And, from the same album, Texas Gold, she sang lead on “Bump Bounce Boogie,” which was one of the sexiest songs to come out of the Cosmic Cowboy era.

O’Connell worked with the Wheel on and off for a couple of decades. She has collaborated with a bunch of folks, including Wheel alums like Floyd Domino and Maryann Price (one of Dan Hicks’ most famous Lickettes). And she even took a 12-year break from the biz of show before coming back to record her first solo record.

There are plenty of tunes here — opener “A Little Mo’ Love,” “Everything Is Movin’ Too Fast,” and “One More Day” — that wouldn’t seem out of place on an Asleep at the Wheel record. “My Baby Don’t Love Me Any More,” written by Johnny Paycheck, is a fine country song that features two of country rock’s greatest guitarists, Bill Kirchen and Junior Brown, backing O’Connell.

She takes a bluegrass turn with “City Water,” with another former Wheel member, Cindy Cashdollar, on dobro. Cashdollar also plays on O’Connell’s nicely understated version of “Shenandoah.”

O’Connell ventures out of the country/western-swing realm, getting jazzy on some tracks and going to the cocktail lounge on others like “When Love Was New” and “Skid Row in My Mind.” She draws from a variety of sources including Rodgers and Hart (“Everything I’ve Got Belongs to You”), Irving Berlin (“It’ll Come to You”), and Elvis (a strong performance on “(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame.”

BLOG BONUS: Enjoy some videos

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Remembering Janis

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
July 27, 2012

Janis Joplin has been dead nearly 42 years. During her brief time in the sun, she was hardly prolific, recording a couple of albums with Big Brother & The Holding Company and two solo albums, the second released only after her death. 

But all these years later, her music does not seem dated. Her voice still seems like a tornado blowing through a human throat. When I listen to Janis Joplin, it’s not out of sappy nostalgia, some longing for the good old days of Haight-Ashbury or Woodstock. I listen because her albums are still some of the most powerful, soulful recordings ever made.

Joplin fans have a lot to be happy about this year. In recent months, we’ve gotten two albums with plenty of unreleased material. Here’s a look at both.

* Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968 by Big Brother & The Holding Company. One of the biggest musical crimes of the late ’60s was when the suits convinced Janis to leave Big Brother. True, she was the star and she was the main draw, and they never would have been famous without her. But Big Brother was a spirited little psychedelic combo, ragged but righteous.

Janis was the MVP, but guitarist James Gurley was an unsung monster. His solos here on songs like “Light Is Faster Than Sound,” “It’s a Deal,” and the nine-minute Joplin signature “Ball and Chain” are first-class examples of San Francisco psychedelia.

Most of the 14 tracks on this album were never made available, legally at least, before this cool document saw the light of day this year. (A few songs appeared on a box set several years ago.) The album was recorded over two nights in late June 1968, soon after the band finished recording its masterpiece (and final album), Cheap Thrills. Most of the songs from that album are here. And a few, such as “Summertime” and the ever-explosive “Ball and Chain,” are better than the album versions.

But most fun are the more obscure tunes: “Flower in the Sun,” “Catch Me Daddy,” and especially “Coo Coo” —this one is folk-rock at its very finest. For one thing, it’s an actual folk song. But more importantly, it really walks. Big Brother used a similar melody and arrangement for their Cheap Thrills song “Oh, Sweet Mary.”

The sound here might seem strange. Recorded by Grateful Dead sound man and famed LSD manufacturer Augustus Owsley Stanley III (who supervised the remastering for this package last year, before he died in a car wreck), the album has basically no overlap in the stereo mix. Drums and vocals come out of one speaker; everything else from the other.

And while Joplin’s vocals for the most part are right on target, sometimes Sam Andrews’ vocals seem off. It’s really apparent in the opening song, “Combination of the Two.” This might be because the group had no stage monitors back then, and finding their pitch was sometimes tricky.

* The Pearl Sessions by Janis Joplin. Pearl was Joplin’s last album, released posthumously. It’s not as strong as Cheap Thrills. By this stage in her career, she had basically become a soul singer, a wilder Etta James, not a psychedelic waif goddess. And, of course, Big Brother was long gone. But this was where most of us first heard some of Joplin’s landmark tunes — “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Move Over,” and her swan song, “Get It While You Can.”

This album is more for rabid Janis zealots than for casual fans. While disk 1 has the entire Pearl album, plus mono-mix singles of several songs, alternative takes and studio banter make up the lion’s share of the second disc.

Longtime fans will love hearing how these songs evolved in the studio. And it’s great hearing Janis’ wheezy horse-laugh as she chastises herself for blowing some of her vocal parts or gossips about fellow musicians.

Janis as muse: 

Not only did Joplin leave behind a lot of music of her own, she also inspired several songs about her.

* “Janis” by Country Joe & The Fish. “Into my life on waves of electrical sound/And flashing light she came.” This appeared on The Fish’s second album, I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die, in 1968.

Country Joe McDonald had dated Janis before either was famous. One day, according to an autobiography on his website, McDonald said he thought they should break up. Janis then “asked me to write her a song, ‘before you get too far away from me.’ I agreed.”

But even though “Janis” was written and recorded long before she died, the chorus almost sounds like an epitaph: “Even though I know that you and I/Could never find the kind of love we wanted/Together, alone, I find myself/Missing you and I/You and I.”

* “Epitaph (Black and Blue)” by Kris Kristofferson. Here’s another songwriter who had an affair with Janis. She included Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee” on Pearl, and he wrote this angry, heartbreaking tribute for her, which appeared on his album The Silver Tongued Devil and I.

 “When she was dying/Lord, we let her down./There’s no use cryin’/It can’t help her now. … Just say she was someone/Lord, so far from home/Whose life was so lonesome/She died all alone/Who dreamed pretty dreams/That never came true/Lord, why was she born/So black and blue?”

* “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” by Leonard Cohen. Yet another Janis tribute from yet another of her lovers. Like the best Cohen songs, it’s sad and funny at the same time.

“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel/You were famous, your heart was a legend/You told me again you preferred handsome men/But for me you would make an exception. … You fixed yourself, you said, ‘Well never mind/We are ugly but we have the music.’”

* “Saw Your Name in the Paper” by Loudon Wainwright III. This entry, admittedly, is questionable. For 40 years I assumed this song was a lament for Janis. “Make yourself a hero, it’s heroes people crave/Make yourself a master, but know you are a slave.”

But last year, Time magazine mentioned the song, saying it actually was about Wainwright’s jealousy over “the rising fame” of his then wife and fellow singer, Kate McGarrigle.

But damn the facts. I don’t care. When I first heard the song as a freshman in college, only months after Joplin’s death, in my heart I knew it was a song for Janis. I’m sticking with that.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Some Texas Honky Tonk Sounds

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Feb. 3, 2012


Texas country singer Dale Watson’s latest album, The Sun Sessions, has a funny backstory. Watson had been booked at a bar in Memphis, Tennessee. Or at least he thought he had a gig there. Somewhere between Austin and Memphis he learned there was a misunderstanding. “No, we have a DJ on Tuesdays, and we don’t have you booked,” someone at the club told him.

“After feeling awful that a music town with such a history would rather have a dance DJ than live music, I thought, ‘What the hell. I got lemons. Let’s make lemonade,’” Watson writes in the CD liner notes.

Dale Watson last year at the Broken Spoke

So he called Sun Studio — the funky little magic factory in Memphis that gave birth to rockabilly and launched the careers of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash — and asked to book some time. He was in luck. And so were fans of Watson’s music.


Watson almost always plays country music in a basic, understated way — steel, fiddle, guitar, bass, drums, and not much else.

But for this album, he strips it down even more. In honor of Cash’s Tennessee Two, Watson calls the backup band on this record The Texas Two. They are stand-up bassist Chris Crepps and a drummer, Mike Bernal, who just hits the snare. Watson only plays his acoustic guitar. Together they celebrate the signature sound of Sun.

To Watson’s credit, even though this is something of a “tribute” album, he didn’t play the hits of the ascended masters that we’ve all heard a zillion times before. He wrote all these tunes — six of them on the bus to Memphis after he booked his session time at Sun. Watson’s baritone sounds more like Cash’s voice than the voices of the other Sun titans, so this album might be viewed as more of an alternative-reality tribute to the Man in Black.

The album starts out with a jittery little tune called “Down Down Down Down Down.” With Crepps’ urgent bass doing most of the work, Watson spins a tale of a man about to sink. “Well I had my first taste of whiskey/I had my first taste of love/Both got me high and twisted up inside/Only one way to go after up.”

No, this isn’t the beginning of some gigantic bummer. It has fun and good times, too.

For instance, “My Baby Makes Me Gravy” is a happy song of good country cookin’ and sex. “Drive Drive Drive” sounds a lot like Cash’s “Cry Cry Cry,” and “Gothenburg Train” has the feel of a classic train song.

Big Daddy

Watson also does several character sketches. “George O’Dwyer” is the story of a hell-raising buddy of Watson’s who owned a recording studio in Austin. “Jonny at the Door” is a salute to a barroom bouncer, and “Big Daddy” is about a shoeshine man in Austin. (I got my shoes shined by Big Daddy when I was at the Broken Spoke for a Watson show last year.)

My favorite song on The Sun Sessions is “Elbow Grease, Spackle and Pine Sol.” The narrator is served his divorce papers, and he’s in his empty house, apologizing to his ex about holes in the wall and stains on the carpet.

At first a listener might think he’s regretting being a sloppy and possibly violent husband. But — in one of those wonderful twists you find in country-music classics like Leon Ashley’s “Laura (What’s He Got That I Ain’t Got)” and Willie Nelson’s “I Just Can’t Let You Say Goodbye” — you realize the narrator is holding a gun, and he’s apologizing for the mess he’s about to leave his former Mrs. to clean up.

One amazing thing about this album is that none of the 14 songs here reaches the three-minute mark. Nearly half of them are under two minutes. Watson knows that brevity sometimes packs a harder punch.

Also recommended:

RB & Two Hoots at Threadgill's last year

*  Come and Take It by Rick Broussard’s Two Hoots and a Holler. I know Matt Brooks, the guitar player for this band, through an online music-discussion board that I used to belong to starting back in the 1990s. I had never met him face to face, but for years he had been trying to get me to see his band when I went to Austin.

Somehow I never was able to arrange that — until last August, when I was at the Live Music Capital of the World and Matt’s band was playing a gig at Threadgill’s World Headquarters.

I was impressed. Broussard is a fine singer and songwriter, and the Hoots are a mighty tight country-rock band. They ought to be by now. Broussard started the group back in 1984. Members have changed and shuffled through the years, but Broussard has been at it long enough to know what he wants from his players. (And, showing what a small world it is, I learned that the fiddle player, Sean Orr, used to play with Joe West’s band when the pride of Lone Butte lived in Austin.)

Many of the songs they played the night I saw them are on this album. Among them are the Mexican-flavored opening cut, “I Cried and Cried the Day Doug Sahm Died.” It’s Broussard’s heartfelt tribute to a fellow San Antonio native.

There are some excellent honky-tonkers here, such as “Me Not Calling” and “Every Bit as Proud.” Maybe you haven’t heard of them, but Rick and the boys are big in Norway — at least the town of Halden, to which they pay a rocking tribute in “Halden (Is a Hell Raisin’ Town).” In an obscure historical reference to a Swedish monarch who was killed in battle there in 1718, Broussard sings, “Those people never go to bed/They shot King Karl in the head.”

With the help of fiddler Amy Farris, Broussard delivers a bluegrass sound on “Over My Head in Blue.” It’s a shift from the song that precedes it, “Love Me Truly,” a honky-tonk tune with echoes of British Invasion-era rock. But it works.

This group also plays one of the best Bob Dylan covers recorded in recent years. I didn’t think there was much else anyone could do with the song “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” but Broussard and the band rip through it with abandon, like a fun cross between The Pogues and Jason & The Scorchers.

I’m hoping Two Hoots and a Holler are playing next time I’m in Austin.