Friday, June 23, 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
Big Dwarf Rodeo by Rev. Horton Heat
Cowboy in Flames by The Waco Brothers
Kiss My Ring by Frank Black
Happy Anniversary by The Bottle Rockets
Burn the Honeysuckle by The Gourds
Keep on Truckin' by Hot Tuna
Eve Stole the Apple by Abigail Washburn
Bad Brahma Bull by Rex Allen
Loser by Dave Alvin
Rich Man's Town by Country Dick Montana
Hadacol Blues by James Luther Dickinson
Old Pine Box by The Dead Brothers
Since the Well Ran Dry by Tony Gilkyson
Black Label Blues by Gamble Rogers
You're Still on My Mind by George Jones
Just a Rodeo Cowboy by Vincent Craig
These Boots Ain't Made For Walkin' by Buckshot Dot
Tesla's Hotel Room by The Handsome Family
Scar on Her Cheek by The Rivet Gang
One Plate Guy by The Lonesome Brothers
Traveling on the Dark Side by Rico Bell & The Snake Handlers
Kangaroo Blues by Cliff Bruner's Texas Wanderers
Black Rider Blues by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
Rockin' Rollin' Mama by Buddy Jones
Little Joe the Wrangler by Joe West
Funnybone by Guy Clark
Mama's Picture by Mose McCormack
Winter Ground (Long and Lonesome Ride to Dalhart) by Michael Martin Murphey
Barely Human by Robbie Fulks
As Soon as I Hang Up the Phone by Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn
The Sound of One Heart Breaking by Tom Russell
Out of This World by The V-Roys
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Friday, June 23, 2006
TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: HANDSOME SOUNDS
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 23, 2006
The thing I like best about The Handsome Family is how they create these deceptively sweet country melodies that invite you to drift along — but somewhere along the line, the lyrics take unexpected twists and lead you into strange realms.
A vibrant but alien spirit world will be uncovered, gurgling just below mundane surfaces. Ancient myths are re-enacted by helpless mortals. Or sometimes the song turns into a tale in which humans behave bizarrely, sometimes atrociously.
This holds true with the Albuquerque couple’s latest album, Last Days of Wonder. Not only is Rennie Sparks’ songwriting as mysterious and funny as ever, but this album also might just be the group’s strongest musically. Brett Sparks’ baritone, as always, is the perfect narrative vehicle for his wife’s lyrics. (I once wrote that he sings like you’d imagine Abe Lincoln would.) But the instrumentation makes for one sonically pleasing experience. Most of it is done by Brett, but some is supplied by members of Albuquerque’s Rivet Gang, which includes Brett’s brother Darrell Sparks.
The record starts off with a slow, cowboy-sounding tune called “Your Great Journey.” This is basically a poetic rewrite of Louis Jordan’s “Jack, You Dead.”
“When automatic sinks in airports/no longer see your hands/and elevator doors close on you/when buses drive right past./When the only voice that answers/is the whir of a ceiling fan/your great journey has begun.”
There’s “Tesla’s Hotel Room,” a biographical ode to the inventor and engineer who discovered alternating current and who died impoverished in 1943. The Wikipedia entry on Nikola Tesla says, “In his later years, Tesla was regarded as a mad scientist and became noted for making bizarre claims about possible scientific developments. ... Many of his achievements have been used, with some controversy, to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories, and New Age occultism.”
But The Handsome Family is kinder, calling Tesla’s final days “the last days of wonder/when spirits still flew round bubbling test tubes in half-darkened rooms.” They show Tesla eating only saltines, nursing sick pigeons, and “dreaming of God as an X-ray machine.”
There’s “Flapping Your Broken Wings,” a song that, as Brett told me in an interview last year, is about “golf course vandalism.” The first line is a classic: “I can still see you there/in your grass-stained underwear/Dancing crooked circles across the golf course green.” It’s a happy tune about a drunken couple trespassing on a golf course at 3 a.m. just for a crazy frolic. By the last verse, consequences portend: “Like jewels on your green dress, my lady of the golf course/running in your underwear to greet the cops who’d driven up.” (I don’t think this song is autobiographical, but the Sparkses do live near a nine-hole golf course.)
Probably the prettiest song here is “Beautiful William,” where Brett’s guitar is accompanied by ghostly synths. It’s about a man who mysteriously disappears: “Was he given a package by a man on a train?/We found his car by the roadside later that day.” But even more mysterious is the reaction of William’s friends. “Rose smashed his windows till the glass/was all gone. Polly broke the back door/and she screamed down the hall./But no answer sounded but the wind flying/through as we tore up the green lawn/and torched all the rooms.”
“Hunter Green,” one of the rare songs on which Rennie sings lead, alludes to Celtic mythology and William Butler Yeats. A hunter kills a deer that turns into “my true love ... in a dress of darkest green” and then reverts back into a deer.
My favorite here is “After We Shot the Grizzly,” a breezy little tune with dark lyrics about castaways. But this ain’t Gilligan’s Island. “We built a raft from skin and bones./Only five could safely float. The others stood/upon the shore. They screamed and threw sharp stones ...”
Whether they’re singing of legendary seas, sad little forgotten graveyards, bowling alleys, golf courses, airports, or drive-in restaurants, The Handsome Family leads their listeners to magic. Are these not still the days of wonder?
CD-release party: The Handsome Family performs on Saturday, June 24, at the Launchpad, 618 Central Ave. S.W., Albuquerque, with Fast Heart Mart and The Rivet Gang. Doors open at 8 p.m. It’s only $7! For more information, call 505-764-8887.
Also recommended:
The Time Is Now by The Rivet Gang. The latest album by this Albuquerque band is a fine showcase for its off-kilter, laid-back, acoustic brand of country. Featuring the songwriting talents of Darrell Sparks and Eric Johnson — and the cool picking of Dave Gutierrez — this record is perfect for your car CD player on a long drive into the desert.
There’s even a song called “Sunday Drive” that starts out: “My car is my church ... Mary Magdalene is a hula dancer/dancing to my favorite hymn, the sound of the wheels going round and round ...”
My favorite tune here is “Scar on Her Cheek,” an accordion (by Brett Sparks) and mandolin waltz with the refrain, “The scar on her cheek are the secrets we keep/Some things too real are hard to reveal/The scar on her cheek are the secrets we keep/I know where she walks her dog.”
There’s one cover song here — the bluegrassy “Spider and I,” a Brian Eno song that fits right in with the Gang’s originals.
Belated congratulations: to the Jimmy Stadler Band. Jimmy and the boys (drummer Craig Neil and bassist Dave Toland) last month won the New Mexico Music Award for CD of the Year for last year’s release, Sagebrush Alley. That album also featured New Mexico Music Award winners “Let’s Go See Daddy” (Best Song) and “Bad Habit” (Best Novelty/Humorous Song).
Bonus!
In honor of The Handsome Family, here's the story I did for New Mexico Magazine on alternative country in this state, published earlier this year, featuring them Handsomes, Terry Allen and Joe West.
A version of this was published in New Mexico Magazine
March, 2006
For a couple of weeks in the mid 1990s “alternative country,” often abbreviated to the more computer-friendly “alt. country,” was supposed to be the next big thing in the music world.
To the relief of many of its fans and leading lights -- definitely a crowd that doesn‘t place much value on trendiness -- it didn’t happen. Whatever “the next big thing” turned out to be, it didn’t have much of a twang.
But even though alt. country didn’t become the juggernaut that some predicted, there are plenty of country music fans who believe that the slick, sanitized mainstream music played on commercial country stations today isn’t traditional enough, isn’t rough enough, isn’t dark enough, isn’t weird enough.
Thus, there’s still a market for “alternative country.” And it’s a field in which New Mexico has made its mark.
The state has attracted some musicians who had already made their mark before moving to New Mexico. These include Terry Allen, a major don in what’s known as “The Lubbock Mafia,” who has lived in Santa Fe since the late ‘80s and The Handsome Family, who moved from Chicago to Albuquerque in 2001.
And the state can claim at least one homegrown musician -- singer/songwriter/latter-day rhinestone cowboy Joe West of Santa Fe -- whose fandom is growing beyond New Mexico’s borders.
There’s been much ink devoted to pondering what exactly alt. country is. Until last year, No Depression magazine, a national publication devoted to the sound, described itself as the “alternative country (whatever that is) bi-monthly.”
I take the big-tent approach to defining alt. country, or, as the music is sometimes referred to, “Americana.”
Let’s include rock bands with a country or rootsy sound, aging outlaws and cosmic cowboys, edgy singer songwriters with drawls in their voices and country in their souls, renegade rockabillies, retro-honky tonkers and insurgent bluegrassers who are too country for country radio, and basically any singer or picker who knows the secret connections between Hank and Hendrix.
From at least the time of the “Outlaw Era” of the early to mid ‘70s, there has been a traditional underground country/folk “trade route” between Austin, Texas and New Mexico. Austin’s cosmic cowboys -- icons like Willie Nelson or Jerry Jeff Walker as well as lesser-known acts.
And some even moved here. The ski town of Red River has been home to Ray Wylie Hubbard and Bill & Bonnie Hearne -- a blind Texas honky-tonk couple who lived in Red River before settling in Santa Fe, where they have lived for more than 20 years.
Another Texan to rise from the Outlaw Era was Michael Martin Murphey, who lived near Taos for most the ‘80s and ‘90s.
And while he didn’t perform here much, northern New Mexico was a place of retreat and relaxation for Doug Sahm, who died in Taos in 1999.
But the Austin/New Mexico route is a two-way street. The state’s ever-struggling music scene -- in long-defunct bars like The Golden Inn, The Thunderbird in Placitas, The Bourbon & Blues and The Turf Club in Santa Fe -- has produced a handful of artists who went on to bigger things in Austin.
Jamie Brown, who attended high school in Santa Fe, played here in the ‘70s with a band called The Last Mile Ramblers before becoming famous as “Junior Brown,” melding elements of Ernest Tubb and Jimi Hendrix in Austin’s Continental Club.
Eliza Gilkyson, who has become a respected singer/songwriter, was another fixture in the Santa Fe music scene from the late ‘60s through the early ‘80s, where she was known as Lisa Gilkyson. The daughter of song writer Terry Gilkyson (“The Bear Necessities,” “Memories Are Made of This”), she has been an Austin resident for several years. Her brother Tony Gilkyson moved west to Los Angeles, where he was a guitarist for the 1980s roots-rock band Lone Justice, as well as L.A. punk giants X.
In the mid 1990s a female-dominated band called Hazeldine rose from the streets of Albuquerque -- in fact they were named for a street in Albuquerque -- to become an important influence in the national alt. country scene.
Today the state is home to many impressive musicians who could be considered alt. country. Nels Andrews plays his dark brooding tunes with his band The El Paso Eyepatch in Albuquerque, while Chipper Thompson creates his bluegrass-drenched “folk ’n’ roll in Taos. Septuagenarian Kell Robertson comes out of his Santa Fe County chicken coop ever so often to sing his beatnik/cowboy tunes. In Silver City Bayou Seco plays a sweet blend of Cajun, New Mexican and country music.
Here’s a look at some major alt. country heroes currently living in New Mexico.
XXX
Terry Allen is not your typical musician -- alt. country or otherwise. He’s more like a mad scientist who uses music, painting, sculpture, film, video, and just about all aspects of theater in his art. He’ll get an idea and sometimes it will involve words, paintings, and often, music.
Of his various disciplines he said “They feed each other so much,” he said, “It depends on what I’m curious about and what the ideas are at the time I’m working. I kind of let the work dictate where it goes, whatever form it takes.”
Still, he’s one of the most respected songwriters in the country music underground. Allen’s 1979 album Lubbock on Everything, a roadhouse rocker (the first to feature his Panhandle Mystery Band) with hilarious, sardonic and often poignant stories of West Texas characters -- generally is considered one of the seminal country-rock albums of all time. His songs have been covered by Doug Sahm, Bobby Bare, Little Feat, Robert Earl Keene, Cracker and others.
Allen is from Lubbock, Texas and his name is synonymous with the music of Lubbock -- a scene that gave the world Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock.
But for the past 18 years he’s lived in Santa Fe with his wife of 40 some years, Jo Harvey Allen, an actress and performance artist whose voice frequently pops up on Terry’s albums.
For the past three years, the thrust of Allen’s musical output “at least CD-wise,” he said, has been reissues of some of his lesser-known work from the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Among the recent re-issues are Juarez (originally released in 1975) a wild, violent, desperate, often funny but ultimately tragic tour of the underbelly of the Southwest; Amerasia, a soundtrack for Wolf-Eckart Bühler’s 1985 film, which dealt with Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War and the Americans who stayed there after the war; and The Silent Majority, which Allen describes as “a compilation of out-takes, in-takes, mis-takes, work tapes, added tos, taken froms, omissions and foreign materials.” The original album cover was a photo of Allen with Nancy Reagan taken at the in Washington, D.C. where Allen had won a National Gallery award for video arts.
While you won’t find it in record stores, another Allen CD can be found in the book version of Dug Out, a multi-media work that involves writing, painting, video and sculpture installations, and a theater presentation. The work, Allen said, is loosely based on the lives of his father -- a one-time pro-baseball player who promoted wrestling matches and rock ‘n‘ roll shows in Lubbock in the ‘50s -- and his mother, a professional jazz pianist. The CD is a recording of a live recording of the Dugout theater piece broadcast on National Public Radio.
Soon to be reissued is Pedal Steal, originally commissioned as a soundtrack by the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in the ‘80s.
The song cycle revolves around true stories a steel guitarist named Wayne Gayley, who toured in bands around Texas and New Mexico and died of a drug overdose in the late 70s. “It came from a bunch of stories that a guy named Roxy Gordon told me,“ he said, referring to the American Indian artist, musician and writer who for a brief time in the ‘70s published Picking Up the Tempo, a paper in Albuquerque dedicated to country music.
Allen has no current plans for a CD of new material. “I steadily write songs, but not necessarily songs to put out on a CD,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that, just sit down and try to write a CD.”
But who knows when a play or a painting could bloom into a full-blown new Terry Allen album?
XXX
The Handsome Family sing melodies that sound as if they came out of scratchy old cowboy records or dusty hymnals secretly smuggled out of backwoods churches. And the lyrics take you to mysterious places, telling strange tales of ghosts, dead children, murders, supernatural animals, drunken domestic disputes, uneasy little victories and somber little defeats.
The Family is actually just a couple -- Brett and Rennie Sparks, who live and record at their home in Albuquerque’s Nob Hill.
Rennie writes the lyrics to the songs and plays instruments including the autoharp, which adds an old-timey Carter Family sound. Brett is the lead vocalist. “He sings like you’d imagine Abe Lincoln would sing,” a wise critic once wrote.
Though they usually are identified as a Chicago act, and they say they make most of their money touring in the United Kingdom, Brett has roots in New Mexico.
“I grew up in the Southwest,” he said in a recent interview. “I was raised in Texas and New Mexico. I was born in a little town, Perryton, Texas up near the Oklahoma border. My father worked in the oil fields. We lived in Bush country, Odessa, Midland. And we lived in Farmington. I graduated from UNM. I was there in Albuquerque for five years in the 80s.”
Moving to New Mexico has affected Rennie’s songwriting.
“Chicago was a dark, gloomy place with terrible weather,” she said. “There was no sense of being in the natural world living in Chicago.”
But New Mexico, she said, has been good for her mental health. “No matter how bad the day’s been there’s always going to be a good sunset,” she said. “Here there’s more songs with the color gold and the color red. In Chicago there were more songs about snow.”
In recent years, The Handsome Family was in Searching For the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, a captivating documentary by Andrew Douglas, an Englishman who, along with singer Jim White as a tour guide explores whiskey-soaked honky tonks, backwoods Pentecostal churches, truckstops, swamps, coal mines, prisons and barber shops of the South. Not only did they perform their music, but Douglas inserted a conversation between Brett and Rennie talking in the car about the significance of blood in Southern literature, music and religion.
Meanwhile, Rennie contributed a chapter to a 2004 collection of essays called The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad. She wrote about the classic American murder ballad “Pretty Polly,” which is the story of a woman stabbed to death in the woods by her lover.
The group’s most recent album, 2003’s Singing Bones, showed a definite southwestern influence. There was much desert imagery -- red-rock deserts, dusty mesas, rattlesnakes and mountain cats -- and even hints of Mexican music here and there.
“I’m writing a song about all these strange little graveyards you find in Albuquerque tucked away where the city’s grown around them,” Rennie said.
Added Brett, “We’ve got songs about a bowling alley bar, about deer hunting, about golf course vandalism …” The couple lives near a golf course, he explained.
The New Mexico landscape is a perfect backdrop for The Handsome Family’s stark, spooky and sometimes tragic songs.
Brett pointed out that there’s a long tradition of such themes in country music.
“I believe fundamentally that any work of art that doesn’t acknowledge the fact that we’re all mortal is incomplete or childish,” Rennie said. “I try to encompass that in my songs, even happy songs. That doesn’t mean that I’m obsessed by suicide and murder. Everybody’s had a dream where you’ve killed someone. That doesn’t mean you want to go out and murder people in your waking life.
“It doesn’t mean you should be paralyzed by fear and loathing,” she said. “You should appreciate things for their ephemeral nature. It’s nothing to be scared of.”
XXX
Joe West recently experienced a “One of Our 50 is Missing” moment. During an interview on Scottish BBC during his Fall 2005 tour of the British Isles, a radio host was praising West’s song “Trotsky’s Blues,” a surreal little rocker in which the singer sees the Russian revolutionary at Santa Fe’s Bert’s Burger Bowl.
The interviewer stated that Leon Trotsky had been killed in New Mexico and asked whether there was a “Trotsky visitor center” in Santa Fe. (Trotsky was assassinated near Mexico City.) At first West thought he was joking. “By the time I realized what he was saying, I had to play a song,” West said in a recent interview.
Maybe it’s just a testament to West’s songwriting. Even his funniest numbers ring true. A listener is tempted to believe even his wilder fantasies.
Many of West’s songs are down-to-earth tales of real-live working folks -- “Mike the Can Man,” about a neighbor of West’s who earns a living recycling trash; “Anita Pita” a single mom who cleans art galleries; “Rehab Girl,” who works at a substance-abuse treatment center and “likes her men shady.”
Many of his songs are strong on social commentary, such as “$2,000 Navajo Rug,” which lampoons Santa Fe excess.
Then there’s a whole body of Joe West “Jamie” songs, dealing with West’s mythical composite lost-love muse, who has survived domestic violence, alcoholism and untold stupid love affairs. “But the truth of the matter is I ain’t never loved a girl like her before,” West sings of Jamie on “Reprimand.”
And in his live show, you’ll be treated to West versions of cheesy ‘70s pop-country hits. At his CD release party for Human Cannonball at Santa Fe’s Tiny’s Lounge last year, he had the whole crowd singing along with every word of Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
West, 38, the son of Santa Fe artist Jerry West, has deep roots in Santa Fe. After his parents’ divorce, he split most of his school years between Santa Fe and South Dakota, where his mother had moved.
“I went to a different school almost every year,” West said. He graduated from high school in South Dakota. He graduated from the University of South Dakota, where he majored in theater.
After college in 1991 he went to New York City to pursue a career in theater. There he hooked up with a gaggle of bluegrass musicians.
“I started playing in subways,” he said. “I evolved from being a theater person to being a musician full time.”
West had dabbled in music much earlier. “When I was in junior high I got very much into punk rock, and tried to start a punk rock band, which sounded very much like an alternative folk country band,” he said. “As hard as I tried I never quite became a punk rocker.
West moved to Austin, Texas in the late ‘90s where he formed a band called Joe West & The Sinners.
But before his move to Austin, West was hanging out in Santa Fe. He befriended members of a band called ThaMuseMeant and recorded his first proper CD, Trip to Roswell New Mexico.
When West moved back to Santa Fe in 2001, ThaMuseMeant introduced him to a whole community of musicians including bands like Hundred Year Flood and Goshen who formed the nucleus of what became Frogville Records.
West has recorded two albums for the label, South Dakota Hairdo and Human Cannonball.
But he’s got outside projects as well. He’s a member of a Santa Fe gospel group called Bethleham and Eggs. And for more experimental music he’s got this contraption called The Intergalactic Honky-Tonk Machine, which West says is a "time traveling music device," which includes a drum machine, electronic tape loops and a smoke machine.
And he’s talking about doing a concept album about an “androgynous time-traveler space character” who claims to be the love child of a glam-rock star, conceived in New Mexico during the filming of The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Now that’s alternative country!
June 23, 2006
The thing I like best about The Handsome Family is how they create these deceptively sweet country melodies that invite you to drift along — but somewhere along the line, the lyrics take unexpected twists and lead you into strange realms.
A vibrant but alien spirit world will be uncovered, gurgling just below mundane surfaces. Ancient myths are re-enacted by helpless mortals. Or sometimes the song turns into a tale in which humans behave bizarrely, sometimes atrociously.
This holds true with the Albuquerque couple’s latest album, Last Days of Wonder. Not only is Rennie Sparks’ songwriting as mysterious and funny as ever, but this album also might just be the group’s strongest musically. Brett Sparks’ baritone, as always, is the perfect narrative vehicle for his wife’s lyrics. (I once wrote that he sings like you’d imagine Abe Lincoln would.) But the instrumentation makes for one sonically pleasing experience. Most of it is done by Brett, but some is supplied by members of Albuquerque’s Rivet Gang, which includes Brett’s brother Darrell Sparks.
The record starts off with a slow, cowboy-sounding tune called “Your Great Journey.” This is basically a poetic rewrite of Louis Jordan’s “Jack, You Dead.”
“When automatic sinks in airports/no longer see your hands/and elevator doors close on you/when buses drive right past./When the only voice that answers/is the whir of a ceiling fan/your great journey has begun.”
There’s “Tesla’s Hotel Room,” a biographical ode to the inventor and engineer who discovered alternating current and who died impoverished in 1943. The Wikipedia entry on Nikola Tesla says, “In his later years, Tesla was regarded as a mad scientist and became noted for making bizarre claims about possible scientific developments. ... Many of his achievements have been used, with some controversy, to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories, and New Age occultism.”
But The Handsome Family is kinder, calling Tesla’s final days “the last days of wonder/when spirits still flew round bubbling test tubes in half-darkened rooms.” They show Tesla eating only saltines, nursing sick pigeons, and “dreaming of God as an X-ray machine.”
There’s “Flapping Your Broken Wings,” a song that, as Brett told me in an interview last year, is about “golf course vandalism.” The first line is a classic: “I can still see you there/in your grass-stained underwear/Dancing crooked circles across the golf course green.” It’s a happy tune about a drunken couple trespassing on a golf course at 3 a.m. just for a crazy frolic. By the last verse, consequences portend: “Like jewels on your green dress, my lady of the golf course/running in your underwear to greet the cops who’d driven up.” (I don’t think this song is autobiographical, but the Sparkses do live near a nine-hole golf course.)
Probably the prettiest song here is “Beautiful William,” where Brett’s guitar is accompanied by ghostly synths. It’s about a man who mysteriously disappears: “Was he given a package by a man on a train?/We found his car by the roadside later that day.” But even more mysterious is the reaction of William’s friends. “Rose smashed his windows till the glass/was all gone. Polly broke the back door/and she screamed down the hall./But no answer sounded but the wind flying/through as we tore up the green lawn/and torched all the rooms.”
“Hunter Green,” one of the rare songs on which Rennie sings lead, alludes to Celtic mythology and William Butler Yeats. A hunter kills a deer that turns into “my true love ... in a dress of darkest green” and then reverts back into a deer.
My favorite here is “After We Shot the Grizzly,” a breezy little tune with dark lyrics about castaways. But this ain’t Gilligan’s Island. “We built a raft from skin and bones./Only five could safely float. The others stood/upon the shore. They screamed and threw sharp stones ...”
Whether they’re singing of legendary seas, sad little forgotten graveyards, bowling alleys, golf courses, airports, or drive-in restaurants, The Handsome Family leads their listeners to magic. Are these not still the days of wonder?
CD-release party: The Handsome Family performs on Saturday, June 24, at the Launchpad, 618 Central Ave. S.W., Albuquerque, with Fast Heart Mart and The Rivet Gang. Doors open at 8 p.m. It’s only $7! For more information, call 505-764-8887.
Also recommended:
The Time Is Now by The Rivet Gang. The latest album by this Albuquerque band is a fine showcase for its off-kilter, laid-back, acoustic brand of country. Featuring the songwriting talents of Darrell Sparks and Eric Johnson — and the cool picking of Dave Gutierrez — this record is perfect for your car CD player on a long drive into the desert.
There’s even a song called “Sunday Drive” that starts out: “My car is my church ... Mary Magdalene is a hula dancer/dancing to my favorite hymn, the sound of the wheels going round and round ...”
My favorite tune here is “Scar on Her Cheek,” an accordion (by Brett Sparks) and mandolin waltz with the refrain, “The scar on her cheek are the secrets we keep/Some things too real are hard to reveal/The scar on her cheek are the secrets we keep/I know where she walks her dog.”
There’s one cover song here — the bluegrassy “Spider and I,” a Brian Eno song that fits right in with the Gang’s originals.
Belated congratulations: to the Jimmy Stadler Band. Jimmy and the boys (drummer Craig Neil and bassist Dave Toland) last month won the New Mexico Music Award for CD of the Year for last year’s release, Sagebrush Alley. That album also featured New Mexico Music Award winners “Let’s Go See Daddy” (Best Song) and “Bad Habit” (Best Novelty/Humorous Song).
Bonus!
In honor of The Handsome Family, here's the story I did for New Mexico Magazine on alternative country in this state, published earlier this year, featuring them Handsomes, Terry Allen and Joe West.
A version of this was published in New Mexico Magazine
March, 2006
For a couple of weeks in the mid 1990s “alternative country,” often abbreviated to the more computer-friendly “alt. country,” was supposed to be the next big thing in the music world.
To the relief of many of its fans and leading lights -- definitely a crowd that doesn‘t place much value on trendiness -- it didn’t happen. Whatever “the next big thing” turned out to be, it didn’t have much of a twang.
But even though alt. country didn’t become the juggernaut that some predicted, there are plenty of country music fans who believe that the slick, sanitized mainstream music played on commercial country stations today isn’t traditional enough, isn’t rough enough, isn’t dark enough, isn’t weird enough.
Thus, there’s still a market for “alternative country.” And it’s a field in which New Mexico has made its mark.
The state has attracted some musicians who had already made their mark before moving to New Mexico. These include Terry Allen, a major don in what’s known as “The Lubbock Mafia,” who has lived in Santa Fe since the late ‘80s and The Handsome Family, who moved from Chicago to Albuquerque in 2001.
And the state can claim at least one homegrown musician -- singer/songwriter/latter-day rhinestone cowboy Joe West of Santa Fe -- whose fandom is growing beyond New Mexico’s borders.
There’s been much ink devoted to pondering what exactly alt. country is. Until last year
I take the big-tent approach to defining alt. country, or, as the music is sometimes referred to, “Americana.”
Let’s include rock bands with a country or rootsy sound, aging outlaws and cosmic cowboys, edgy singer songwriters with drawls in their voices and country in their souls, renegade rockabillies, retro-honky tonkers and insurgent bluegrassers who are too country for country radio, and basically any singer or picker who knows the secret connections between Hank and Hendrix.
From at least the time of the “Outlaw Era” of the early to mid ‘70s, there has been a traditional underground country/folk “trade route” between Austin, Texas and New Mexico. Austin’s cosmic cowboys -- icons like Willie Nelson or Jerry Jeff Walker as well as lesser-known acts.
And some even moved here. The ski town of Red River has been home to Ray Wylie Hubbard and Bill & Bonnie Hearne -- a blind Texas honky-tonk couple who lived in Red River before settling in Santa Fe, where they have lived for more than 20 years.
Another Texan to rise from the Outlaw Era was Michael Martin Murphey, who lived near Taos for most the ‘80s and ‘90s.
And while he didn’t perform here much, northern New Mexico was a place of retreat and relaxation for Doug Sahm, who died in Taos in 1999.
But the Austin/New Mexico route is a two-way street. The state’s ever-struggling music scene -- in long-defunct bars like The Golden Inn, The Thunderbird in Placitas, The Bourbon & Blues and The Turf Club in Santa Fe -- has produced a handful of artists who went on to bigger things in Austin.
Jamie Brown, who attended high school in Santa Fe, played here in the ‘70s with a band called The Last Mile Ramblers before becoming famous as “Junior Brown,” melding elements of Ernest Tubb and Jimi Hendrix in Austin’s Continental Club.
Eliza Gilkyson, who has become a respected singer/songwriter, was another fixture in the Santa Fe music scene from the late ‘60s through the early ‘80s, where she was known as Lisa Gilkyson. The daughter of song writer Terry Gilkyson (“The Bear Necessities,” “Memories Are Made of This”), she has been an Austin resident for several years. Her brother Tony Gilkyson moved west to Los Angeles, where he was a guitarist for the 1980s roots-rock band Lone Justice, as well as L.A. punk giants X.
In the mid 1990s a female-dominated band called Hazeldine rose from the streets of Albuquerque -- in fact they were named for a street in Albuquerque -- to become an important influence in the national alt. country scene.
Today the state is home to many impressive musicians who could be considered alt. country. Nels Andrews plays his dark brooding tunes with his band The El Paso Eyepatch in Albuquerque, while Chipper Thompson creates his bluegrass-drenched “folk ’n’ roll in Taos. Septuagenarian Kell Robertson comes out of his Santa Fe County chicken coop ever so often to sing his beatnik/cowboy tunes. In Silver City Bayou Seco plays a sweet blend of Cajun, New Mexican and country music.
Here’s a look at some major alt. country heroes currently living in New Mexico.
XXX
Terry Allen is not your typical musician -- alt. country or otherwise. He’s more like a mad scientist who uses music, painting, sculpture, film, video, and just about all aspects of theater in his art. He’ll get an idea and sometimes it will involve words, paintings, and often, music.
Of his various disciplines he said “They feed each other so much,” he said, “It depends on what I’m curious about and what the ideas are at the time I’m working. I kind of let the work dictate where it goes, whatever form it takes.”
Still, he’s one of the most respected songwriters in the country music underground. Allen’s 1979 album Lubbock on Everything, a roadhouse rocker (the first to feature his Panhandle Mystery Band) with hilarious, sardonic and often poignant stories of West Texas characters -- generally is considered one of the seminal country-rock albums of all time. His songs have been covered by Doug Sahm, Bobby Bare, Little Feat, Robert Earl Keene, Cracker and others.
Allen is from Lubbock, Texas and his name is synonymous with the music of Lubbock -- a scene that gave the world Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock.
But for the past 18 years he’s lived in Santa Fe with his wife of 40 some years, Jo Harvey Allen, an actress and performance artist whose voice frequently pops up on Terry’s albums.
For the past three years, the thrust of Allen’s musical output “at least CD-wise,” he said, has been reissues of some of his lesser-known work from the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Among the recent re-issues are Juarez (originally released in 1975) a wild, violent, desperate, often funny but ultimately tragic tour of the underbelly of the Southwest; Amerasia, a soundtrack for Wolf-Eckart Bühler’s 1985 film, which dealt with Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War and the Americans who stayed there after the war; and The Silent Majority, which Allen describes as “a compilation of out-takes, in-takes, mis-takes, work tapes, added tos, taken froms, omissions and foreign materials.” The original album cover was a photo of Allen with Nancy Reagan taken at the in Washington, D.C. where Allen had won a National Gallery award for video arts.
While you won’t find it in record stores, another Allen CD can be found in the book version of Dug Out, a multi-media work that involves writing, painting, video and sculpture installations, and a theater presentation. The work, Allen said, is loosely based on the lives of his father -- a one-time pro-baseball player who promoted wrestling matches and rock ‘n‘ roll shows in Lubbock in the ‘50s -- and his mother, a professional jazz pianist. The CD is a recording of a live recording of the Dugout theater piece broadcast on National Public Radio.
Soon to be reissued is Pedal Steal,
The song cycle revolves around true stories a steel guitarist named Wayne Gayley, who toured in bands around Texas and New Mexico and died of a drug overdose in the late 70s. “It came from a bunch of stories that a guy named Roxy Gordon told me,“ he said, referring to the American Indian artist, musician and writer who for a brief time in the ‘70s published Picking Up the Tempo, a paper in Albuquerque dedicated to country music.
Allen has no current plans for a CD of new material. “I steadily write songs, but not necessarily songs to put out on a CD,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that, just sit down and try to write a CD.”
But who knows when a play or a painting could bloom into a full-blown new Terry Allen album?
XXX
The Handsome Family sing melodies that sound as if they came out of scratchy old cowboy records or dusty hymnals secretly smuggled out of backwoods churches. And the lyrics take you to mysterious places, telling strange tales of ghosts, dead children, murders, supernatural animals, drunken domestic disputes, uneasy little victories and somber little defeats.
The Family is actually just a couple -- Brett and Rennie Sparks, who live and record at their home in Albuquerque’s Nob Hill.
Rennie writes the lyrics to the songs and plays instruments including the autoharp, which adds an old-timey Carter Family sound. Brett is the lead vocalist. “He sings like you’d imagine Abe Lincoln would sing,” a wise critic once wrote.
Though they usually are identified as a Chicago act, and they say they make most of their money touring in the United Kingdom, Brett has roots in New Mexico.
“I grew up in the Southwest,” he said in a recent interview. “I was raised in Texas and New Mexico. I was born in a little town, Perryton, Texas up near the Oklahoma border. My father worked in the oil fields. We lived in Bush country, Odessa, Midland. And we lived in Farmington. I graduated from UNM. I was there in Albuquerque for five years in the 80s.”
Moving to New Mexico has affected Rennie’s songwriting.
“Chicago was a dark, gloomy place with terrible weather,” she said. “There was no sense of being in the natural world living in Chicago.”
But New Mexico, she said, has been good for her mental health. “No matter how bad the day’s been there’s always going to be a good sunset,” she said. “Here there’s more songs with the color gold and the color red. In Chicago there were more songs about snow.”
In recent years, The Handsome Family was in Searching For the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, a captivating documentary by Andrew Douglas, an Englishman who, along with singer Jim White as a tour guide explores whiskey-soaked honky tonks, backwoods Pentecostal churches, truckstops, swamps, coal mines, prisons and barber shops of the South. Not only did they perform their music, but Douglas inserted a conversation between Brett and Rennie talking in the car about the significance of blood in Southern literature, music and religion.
Meanwhile, Rennie contributed a chapter to a 2004 collection of essays called The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad. She wrote about the classic American murder ballad “Pretty Polly,” which is the story of a woman stabbed to death in the woods by her lover.
The group’s most recent album, 2003’s Singing Bones, showed a definite southwestern influence. There was much desert imagery -- red-rock deserts, dusty mesas, rattlesnakes and mountain cats -- and even hints of Mexican music here and there.
“I’m writing a song about all these strange little graveyards you find in Albuquerque tucked away where the city’s grown around them,” Rennie said.
Added Brett, “We’ve got songs about a bowling alley bar, about deer hunting, about golf course vandalism …” The couple lives near a golf course, he explained.
The New Mexico landscape is a perfect backdrop for The Handsome Family’s stark, spooky and sometimes tragic songs.
Brett pointed out that there’s a long tradition of such themes in country music.
“I believe fundamentally that any work of art that doesn’t acknowledge the fact that we’re all mortal is incomplete or childish,” Rennie said. “I try to encompass that in my songs, even happy songs. That doesn’t mean that I’m obsessed by suicide and murder. Everybody’s had a dream where you’ve killed someone. That doesn’t mean you want to go out and murder people in your waking life.
“It doesn’t mean you should be paralyzed by fear and loathing,” she said. “You should appreciate things for their ephemeral nature. It’s nothing to be scared of.”
XXX
Joe West recently experienced a “One of Our 50 is Missing” moment. During an interview on Scottish BBC during his Fall 2005 tour of the British Isles, a radio host was praising West’s song “Trotsky’s Blues,” a surreal little rocker in which the singer sees the Russian revolutionary at Santa Fe’s Bert’s Burger Bowl.
The interviewer stated that Leon Trotsky had been killed in New Mexico and asked whether there was a “Trotsky visitor center” in Santa Fe. (Trotsky was assassinated near Mexico City.) At first West thought he was joking. “By the time I realized what he was saying, I had to play a song,” West said in a recent interview.
Maybe it’s just a testament to West’s songwriting. Even his funniest numbers ring true. A listener is tempted to believe even his wilder fantasies.
Many of West’s songs are down-to-earth tales of real-live working folks -- “Mike the Can Man,” about a neighbor of West’s who earns a living recycling trash; “Anita Pita” a single mom who cleans art galleries; “Rehab Girl,” who works at a substance-abuse treatment center and “likes her men shady.”
Many of his songs are strong on social commentary, such as “$2,000 Navajo Rug,” which lampoons Santa Fe excess.
Then there’s a whole body of Joe West “Jamie” songs, dealing with West’s mythical composite lost-love muse, who has survived domestic violence, alcoholism and untold stupid love affairs. “But the truth of the matter is I ain’t never loved a girl like her before,” West sings of Jamie on “Reprimand.”
And in his live show, you’ll be treated to West versions of cheesy ‘70s pop-country hits. At his CD release party for Human Cannonball at Santa Fe’s Tiny’s Lounge last year, he had the whole crowd singing along with every word of Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
West, 38, the son of Santa Fe artist Jerry West, has deep roots in Santa Fe. After his parents’ divorce, he split most of his school years between Santa Fe and South Dakota, where his mother had moved.
“I went to a different school almost every year,” West said. He graduated from high school in South Dakota. He graduated from the University of South Dakota, where he majored in theater.
After college in 1991 he went to New York City to pursue a career in theater. There he hooked up with a gaggle of bluegrass musicians.
“I started playing in subways,” he said. “I evolved from being a theater person to being a musician full time.”
West had dabbled in music much earlier. “When I was in junior high I got very much into punk rock, and tried to start a punk rock band, which sounded very much like an alternative folk country band,” he said. “As hard as I tried I never quite became a punk rocker.
West moved to Austin, Texas in the late ‘90s where he formed a band called Joe West & The Sinners.
But before his move to Austin, West was hanging out in Santa Fe. He befriended members of a band called ThaMuseMeant and recorded his first proper CD, Trip to Roswell New Mexico.
When West moved back to Santa Fe in 2001, ThaMuseMeant introduced him to a whole community of musicians including bands like Hundred Year Flood and Goshen who formed the nucleus of what became Frogville Records.
West has recorded two albums for the label, South Dakota Hairdo and Human Cannonball.
But he’s got outside projects as well. He’s a member of a Santa Fe gospel group called Bethleham and Eggs. And for more experimental music he’s got this contraption called The Intergalactic Honky-Tonk Machine, which West says is a "time traveling music device," which includes a drum machine, electronic tape loops and a smoke machine.
And he’s talking about doing a concept album about an “androgynous time-traveler space character” who claims to be the love child of a glam-rock star, conceived in New Mexico during the filming of The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Now that’s alternative country!
Thursday, June 22, 2006
THIS RACE IS JUST STARTING FOLKS ...
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 22, 2006
Surrogates for Gov. Bill Richardson took little time in blasting the new Republican gubernatorial candidate John Dendahl. But one e-mail from a Richardson spokesman has angered Dendahl and other Republicans. Dendahl says a news release from Richardson’s communications director, Pahl Shipley, amounts to campaigning on taxpayer’s money.
Shipley on Saturday e-mailed reporters with a short statement saying Dendahl, a former state GOP chairman, “embraces division and negativity” and decrying the Republican candidate’s “pro-drug legalization plan.”
Dendahl, as party chairman, had backed former Gov. Gary Johnson’s drug-law-reform ideas. He has said he is not proposing drug decriminalization in his campaign, but the Richardson camp has made an issue of Dendahl’s stance.
Dendahl on Wednesday faxed Richardson a letter complaining about the Shipley statement and asking to see a copy of the governor’s office policies “guiding government employees with respect to activities in support of your state and national campaigns.”
Rep. Dan Foley, R-Roswell, also weighed in on the Shipley e-mail. “This is another example of tax money being used to advertise their political agenda,” Foley said Tuesday. “If he’s such an eloquent spokesman, let him go to work for the campaign.”
Shipley responded, “The fact is it was done on my personal time and on my personal computer, although an official response was appropriate because Mr. Dendahl attacked the governor’s performance as governor.”
Then he made a jab of his own, referring to a Foley controversy: “Nevertheless, I bet my e-mail cost taxpayers a lot less than Rep. Foley's military flyover for his car-dealer friend."
The state National Guard, at Foley’s request in November, sent two New Mexico Air National Guard fighter jets to fly over the grand opening of a Roswell Toyota dealership — who was a Foley campaign contributor. Foley has denied the request was connected to the contributions.
June 22, 2006
Surrogates for Gov. Bill Richardson took little time in blasting the new Republican gubernatorial candidate John Dendahl. But one e-mail from a Richardson spokesman has angered Dendahl and other Republicans. Dendahl says a news release from Richardson’s communications director, Pahl Shipley, amounts to campaigning on taxpayer’s money.
Shipley on Saturday e-mailed reporters with a short statement saying Dendahl, a former state GOP chairman, “embraces division and negativity” and decrying the Republican candidate’s “pro-drug legalization plan.”
Dendahl, as party chairman, had backed former Gov. Gary Johnson’s drug-law-reform ideas. He has said he is not proposing drug decriminalization in his campaign, but the Richardson camp has made an issue of Dendahl’s stance.
Dendahl on Wednesday faxed Richardson a letter complaining about the Shipley statement and asking to see a copy of the governor’s office policies “guiding government employees with respect to activities in support of your state and national campaigns.”
Rep. Dan Foley, R-Roswell, also weighed in on the Shipley e-mail. “This is another example of tax money being used to advertise their political agenda,” Foley said Tuesday. “If he’s such an eloquent spokesman, let him go to work for the campaign.”
Shipley responded, “The fact is it was done on my personal time and on my personal computer, although an official response was appropriate because Mr. Dendahl attacked the governor’s performance as governor.”
Then he made a jab of his own, referring to a Foley controversy: “Nevertheless, I bet my e-mail cost taxpayers a lot less than Rep. Foley's military flyover for his car-dealer friend."
The state National Guard, at Foley’s request in November, sent two New Mexico Air National Guard fighter jets to fly over the grand opening of a Roswell Toyota dealership — who was a Foley campaign contributor. Foley has denied the request was connected to the contributions.
ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 22, 2006
The silence was screaming.
Last Friday, the buzz was out that J.R. Damron would be stepping down as the Republican nominee for governor. It seemed like it should have been easy enough to get someone to confirm or deny it — or perhaps to get someone to refuse to confirm or deny it, which would have been almost as good.
But it was one of those frustrating days in which nobody who knew anything about the impending move would return my phone calls. (I know at least one other reporter who went through the same thing.)
Damron, his wife, Barbara, lieutenant governor candidate Sue Wilson Beffort, state GOP chairman Allen Weh, party executive director Marta Kramer ... the list goes on.
And, not knowing he would be the one who would get the nomination, I put in a call to John Dendahl, who usually is helpful in filling me in on what’s happening with the Republican Party. But for the first time in the six years since I’ve been covering state politics, Dendahl didn’t get back to me that day.
This made me know something big was up.
Complicating matters was the fact that President Bush made an appearance in Albuquerque on Friday to help raise money for U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson’s re-election effort. Many of those I was trying to reach were there.
One might assume that one reason no Republican wanted to talk about the gubernatorial switcheroo on Friday is they didn’t want that news to compete with the coverage of the Bush visit.
However, Damron this week said the Bush visit wasn’t a consideration, at least in the discussions he’d heard.
By Saturday, the Republican Central Committee made it official. Damron was out; Dendahl was in.
Most of the people I’d called later apologized for not getting back to me. I’m still not sure why it was so important to keep this news under wrap until Saturday.
But when we get behind closed doors ... Even on Saturday, Republican honchos were determined to keep reporters in the dark until the deal was done. Moments after Damron arrived, news hounds were asked to “excuse themselves” from the room.
They closed it tighter than a conference committee at the Legislature.
“We had a little internal business,” Weh later told reporters.
Some Republicans there weren’t sure what was going on before the meeting started. Former Gov. David Cargo noted that the written agenda for the meeting said nothing about replacing the gubernatorial candidate. The action would come under “new business,” Cargo said.
Dendahl would later apologize for the move, saying he wouldn’t have closed the meeting.
Damron said he thought party leaders were worried there might be unexpected fireworks.
But back in 2003 when the central committee voted to replace Dendahl with Ramsay Gorham, the meeting was open and somehow the GOP survived.
Apparently there were no serious fights Saturday. Dendahl was nominated by acclamation. All we could hear from the outside was occasional applause. No screaming or breaking glass.
There was one almost comical moment when Cargo, ever the maverick, came out to the lobby to tell reporters Dendahl was being nominated for governor, and we should “get in there.”
We did. The reporters returned to the back of the room as Beffort was giving a speech praising her new running mate. Several committee members shot us quizzical looks. A few moments later, a young man came back and asked us to leave again.
But the room apparently was getting hot. For a while, they opened an outside door, away from the sight of reporters in the lobby. They closed those doors, however, when reporters from the Associated Press moseyed by.
Later, someone opened the door near the podium. Several reporters gathered there for a couple of minutes and heard a little more of Beffort’s speech before someone inside closed it on us.
The Cargo train: When he’s not leading reporters into meetings where they’re not welcome, Cargo is chairman of the commission that oversees the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, which is owned jointly by the states of New Mexico and Colorado.
Cargo has been bragging a lot lately about the 64-mile railroad.
According to Cargo, there were 4,158 riders on the steam-powered train during the week of June 5, up from 3,285 the same week last year.
The ex-guv said he recently ribbed the current guv over his planned RailRunner Express commuter railroad. “I told him I bet more people ride my train than his,” Cargo said.
June 22, 2006
The silence was screaming.
Last Friday, the buzz was out that J.R. Damron would be stepping down as the Republican nominee for governor. It seemed like it should have been easy enough to get someone to confirm or deny it — or perhaps to get someone to refuse to confirm or deny it, which would have been almost as good.
But it was one of those frustrating days in which nobody who knew anything about the impending move would return my phone calls. (I know at least one other reporter who went through the same thing.)
Damron, his wife, Barbara, lieutenant governor candidate Sue Wilson Beffort, state GOP chairman Allen Weh, party executive director Marta Kramer ... the list goes on.
And, not knowing he would be the one who would get the nomination, I put in a call to John Dendahl, who usually is helpful in filling me in on what’s happening with the Republican Party. But for the first time in the six years since I’ve been covering state politics, Dendahl didn’t get back to me that day.
This made me know something big was up.
Complicating matters was the fact that President Bush made an appearance in Albuquerque on Friday to help raise money for U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson’s re-election effort. Many of those I was trying to reach were there.
One might assume that one reason no Republican wanted to talk about the gubernatorial switcheroo on Friday is they didn’t want that news to compete with the coverage of the Bush visit.
However, Damron this week said the Bush visit wasn’t a consideration, at least in the discussions he’d heard.
By Saturday, the Republican Central Committee made it official. Damron was out; Dendahl was in.
Most of the people I’d called later apologized for not getting back to me. I’m still not sure why it was so important to keep this news under wrap until Saturday.
But when we get behind closed doors ... Even on Saturday, Republican honchos were determined to keep reporters in the dark until the deal was done. Moments after Damron arrived, news hounds were asked to “excuse themselves” from the room.
They closed it tighter than a conference committee at the Legislature.
“We had a little internal business,” Weh later told reporters.
Some Republicans there weren’t sure what was going on before the meeting started. Former Gov. David Cargo noted that the written agenda for the meeting said nothing about replacing the gubernatorial candidate. The action would come under “new business,” Cargo said.
Dendahl would later apologize for the move, saying he wouldn’t have closed the meeting.
Damron said he thought party leaders were worried there might be unexpected fireworks.
But back in 2003 when the central committee voted to replace Dendahl with Ramsay Gorham, the meeting was open and somehow the GOP survived.
Apparently there were no serious fights Saturday. Dendahl was nominated by acclamation. All we could hear from the outside was occasional applause. No screaming or breaking glass.
There was one almost comical moment when Cargo, ever the maverick, came out to the lobby to tell reporters Dendahl was being nominated for governor, and we should “get in there.”
We did. The reporters returned to the back of the room as Beffort was giving a speech praising her new running mate. Several committee members shot us quizzical looks. A few moments later, a young man came back and asked us to leave again.
But the room apparently was getting hot. For a while, they opened an outside door, away from the sight of reporters in the lobby. They closed those doors, however, when reporters from the Associated Press moseyed by.
Later, someone opened the door near the podium. Several reporters gathered there for a couple of minutes and heard a little more of Beffort’s speech before someone inside closed it on us.
The Cargo train: When he’s not leading reporters into meetings where they’re not welcome, Cargo is chairman of the commission that oversees the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, which is owned jointly by the states of New Mexico and Colorado.Cargo has been bragging a lot lately about the 64-mile railroad.
According to Cargo, there were 4,158 riders on the steam-powered train during the week of June 5, up from 3,285 the same week last year.
The ex-guv said he recently ribbed the current guv over his planned RailRunner Express commuter railroad. “I told him I bet more people ride my train than his,” Cargo said.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
MORE ON DENDAHL/DAMRON SWITCHEROO
You can find my latest story HERE
I got a voice mail this morning from an anonymous reader who seemed angry that my stories on this political development have appeared on page one. He pointed out that Andy Lenderman's story on the drought was way back in the local section. (Then the caller got all emotional, saying, "Who gives a POOP about Dendahl??? Who gives a POOP?")
I'm pretty sure it wasn't Andy who called.
A couple of points: Reporters don't decide what goes where in the paper. Now and then I've seen stories of mine on page one that probably wouldn't have been there on busier news days. And there have been a few times I've seen stories of mine back with the hog reports and truss ads I thought should have been on page on. Every day it's a crap shoot.
But more importantly, I think there are a lot of folks out there who do "give a POOP" about this political development. If nothing else, it's one of the most unusual political moves in this state in recent memory.
If you do give a POOP, follow the link. If not, then don't. Same for the link to the drought story.
I got a voice mail this morning from an anonymous reader who seemed angry that my stories on this political development have appeared on page one. He pointed out that Andy Lenderman's story on the drought was way back in the local section. (Then the caller got all emotional, saying, "Who gives a POOP about Dendahl??? Who gives a POOP?")
I'm pretty sure it wasn't Andy who called.
A couple of points: Reporters don't decide what goes where in the paper. Now and then I've seen stories of mine on page one that probably wouldn't have been there on busier news days. And there have been a few times I've seen stories of mine back with the hog reports and truss ads I thought should have been on page on. Every day it's a crap shoot.
But more importantly, I think there are a lot of folks out there who do "give a POOP" about this political development. If nothing else, it's one of the most unusual political moves in this state in recent memory.
If you do give a POOP, follow the link. If not, then don't. Same for the link to the drought story.
Monday, June 19, 2006
TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST
Sunday, June 18, 2006
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
FATHERS DAY SET
Just Like My Dad by ThaMuseMeant
Pappa Won't Leave You, Henry by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Pappa Was a Steel-Headed Man by Robbie Fulks
Dad, I'm In Jail by Was (Not Was)
Drunk Daddy by Cherry-Poppin' Daddies
Adam Raised a Cain by Bruce Springsteen
A Father and a Son by Loudon Wainwright III
My Old Man's a Fatso by The Angry Samoans
Bow Tie Daddy by The Mothers of Invention
The Farmer's Daughter by Merle Haggard
Our Patriarch by The Gourds
I Want You to Hurt Like I Do by Randy Newman
My Old Man by Jerry Jeff Walker
Last Ship Leaving by Elvis Costello
Get on the Boat by Prince
Everybody is a Star by Sly & The Family Stone with The Roots
Cloud 9 by The Temptations
Why Can't We Be Friends by War
Bunzu Sounds by Zinabu
I Like the Things About Me by The Staples Singers
St. James Infirmary by Chris Thomas King
Bad Treatment by Rev. Beat Man & The Church of Herpes
Bucket of Juice by Big Ugly Guys
Nancy Reagan's Head by Mission of Burma
Japanese Rhumba by Petty Booka
I-Yah-Hoy by Shoukichi Kina
Golden Shore by Frank Black
I Love Her, She Loves Me by NRBQ
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
FATHERS DAY SET
Just Like My Dad by ThaMuseMeant
Pappa Won't Leave You, Henry by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Pappa Was a Steel-Headed Man by Robbie Fulks
Dad, I'm In Jail by Was (Not Was)
Drunk Daddy by Cherry-Poppin' Daddies
Adam Raised a Cain by Bruce Springsteen
A Father and a Son by Loudon Wainwright III
My Old Man's a Fatso by The Angry Samoans
Bow Tie Daddy by The Mothers of Invention
The Farmer's Daughter by Merle Haggard
Our Patriarch by The Gourds
I Want You to Hurt Like I Do by Randy Newman
My Old Man by Jerry Jeff Walker
Last Ship Leaving by Elvis Costello
Get on the Boat by Prince
Everybody is a Star by Sly & The Family Stone with The Roots
Cloud 9 by The Temptations
Why Can't We Be Friends by War
Bunzu Sounds by Zinabu
I Like the Things About Me by The Staples Singers
St. James Infirmary by Chris Thomas King
Bad Treatment by Rev. Beat Man & The Church of Herpes
Bucket of Juice by Big Ugly Guys
Nancy Reagan's Head by Mission of Burma
Japanese Rhumba by Petty Booka
I-Yah-Hoy by Shoukichi Kina
Golden Shore by Frank Black
I Love Her, She Loves Me by NRBQ
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Sunday, June 18, 2006
ENTER DENDAHL
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 18, 2006
ALBUQUERQUE — Following the abrupt withdrawal of Republican gubernatorial candidate J.R. Damron from the race, GOP leaders meeting behind closed doors Saturday named former state party chairman John Dendahl to run against incumbent Gov. Bill Richardson.
Dendahl described the nomination by the state Republican Central Committee as a “wonderful homecoming.” Three years ago, the committee ousted Dendahl as state chairman in a bitter contest.
Dendahl was nominated by acclamation, state GOP chairman Allen Weh told reporters following the meeting. He noted that many present who voted for Dendahl on Saturday had voted against him in 2003. “This party is very, very unified,” Weh said.
Damron, a Santa Fe physician and political novice, mailed a letter Friday to the secretary of state officially withdrawing from the race, Weh told reporters.
Damron, who left the meeting before reporters were allowed in, didn’t explain exactly why he decided to quit the race. One campaign staffer said the move was “100 percent voluntary.”
In recent weeks, some Republicans have complained privately that the Damron campaign had not been aggressive enough in the race against Richardson, whose poll numbers remain high and whose money-raising ability has dwarfed Damron’s.
By the first of June, the incumbent reported about $5.7 million in the bank. Damron had just over $43,000 and campaign debts totaling $120,000.
“I’ve got to start at scratch,” Dendahl said Saturday. “We have to find out whether there’s serious Republicans in this state and out of state who will help finance this campaign.”
But Dendahl said he doesn’t have to match Richardson “dollar for dollar” to run a credible campaign.
Dendahl has written a political column for The New Mexican and other newspapers in recent years. “I’m able to make terse, clear statements to clearly and concisely articulate why Bill Richardson’s approach is so bad for our state,” he said.
Dendahl, 67, headed what was then the Tourism and Economic Development Department in the 1980s under the Gov. Garrey Carruthers. He ran for the GOP nomination for governor in 1994, losing to Gary Johnson in the primary.
While Dendahl has never been afraid to take off the gloves with any political opponent, Democrats on Saturday didn’t hesitate to attack Dendahl’s nomination.
“For the Republicans to nominate a negative-campaigning partisan in a last-minute political deal strikes me as an act of desperation,” said Dave Contarino, Richardson’s chief political adviser. “A lot of right-thinking Republicans are going to scratch their heads. Dendahl has been divisive in his own party.”
One Republican at the meeting was less than enthusiastic about Dendahl. “We couldn’t have chosen a more divisive candidate,” said former Gov. David Cargo, long known as a party maverick.
In an e-mail statement, state Democratic Party chairman John Wertheim called Dendahl, “a venomous and divisive radical.”
Both Contarino and Wertheim immediately seized upon an issue that got Dendahl in trouble with his own party: drug-law reform. During the last term of Gov. Johnson’s administration, Dendahl strongly backed Johnson’s efforts to decriminalize marijuana.
On Saturday, Dendahl said he’d told state party leaders that his gubernatorial campaign would not “have the luxury of pioneering new policies” because he’ll be too focused on pointing out flaws in Richardson’s policies.
Polls in New Mexico show strong support for at least one of the ideas Dendahl backed — making marijuana legal for treating certain serious illnesses. Richardson this year endorsed a bill that would have established a state medical-marijuana program.
Though Contarino said Richardson is looking forward to “a public debate” over the issues during the campaign, he said it’s too early to say whether the governor would debate Dendahl one-on-one.
Dendahl said he first heard about Damron’s decision to withdraw early last week. Lieutenant governor candidate Sue Beffort Wilson said she only learned about it Friday.
Damron’s withdrawal comes only two weeks after he won the Republican primary. He only had a write-in opponent in the primary.
Also about two weeks ago, Damron announced he was closing his medical practice in Santa Fe. He is president of Santa Fe Radiology.
Though Damron was considered a political unknown, he’d been active in county Republican politics, serving as treasurer of the Santa Fe County GOP.
He started out the year aggressively campaigning against Richardson. Shortly after Richardson’s state-of-the-state address on the first day of the state Legislature’s session in January, Damron came to the Capitol Rotunda and gave a response, blasting Richardson for traveling too much and for increasing the governor’s staff as well as for transportation proposals including the planned spaceport and passenger-rail system.
In May, he made a speech blasting Richardson for running “the most corrupt administration in our state’s history.”
At least one of his attacks proved untrue, however. Damron recently claimed Richardson had convinced the Legislature to increase the number of days the governor could travel out of state. No such legislation ever passed.
Damron’s campaign manager Greg Graves quit in April, and no one was hired to replace him.
There appeared to be personal animosity between Damron and Richardson.
In April, Damron’s wife, Barbara, said she had been “pressured” to resign from the St. Vincent Regional Medical Center’s governing board by hospital officials who feared retribution from Richardson.
According to Barbara Damron, hospital president Alex Valdez told her that her presence on the board might jeopardize state funds for St. Vincent. When asked about that statement, Valdez said, “I don’t respond to rumors.” A Richardson spokesman denied the governor forced Barbara Damron off the board.
Prior to J.R. Damron’s announcement, Graves, a former executive director of the state Republican Party, said before he left the Damron campaign in April, he advised the candidate to “think very strongly if he really wanted to do this or not.” J.R. Damron at the time said he wanted to go through with the campaign, Graves said.
Also on Saturday, the GOP chose another candidate for the state auditor’s race. Albuquerque accountant Lorenzo Garcia will replace Daniel Alvarez, who withdrew his candidacy. Garcia is up against Democrat Jeff Armijo in the general election.
XXXX
John Dendahl
Age: 67
Residence: Santa Fe
Education: Bachelor’s degree, electrical engineering, business administration, University of Colorado, 1961
Past government experience: Secretary of Economic Development and Tourism, 1988-90
Past political experience: Chairman of New Mexico Republican Party, 1995-2003; sought GOP nomination for governor, 1994
Other work: Newspaper columnist; property manager; president First National Bank of Santa Fe; real-estate developer; former chief executive officer of Eberline Instrument Co., a Santa Fe firm now known as Thermo, that manufactures radiation-measuring equipment
Civic: Former chairman of the St. John’s College board; former member of Santa Fe Opera board
Personal: Wife, Jackie Dendahl; five children, two stepchildren, nine grandchildren. Dendahl was a member of the 1960 Olympic Cross Country Ski team. His father grew up on the land where the present state Capitol now stands.
June 18, 2006
ALBUQUERQUE — Following the abrupt withdrawal of Republican gubernatorial candidate J.R. Damron from the race, GOP leaders meeting behind closed doors Saturday named former state party chairman John Dendahl to run against incumbent Gov. Bill Richardson.
Dendahl described the nomination by the state Republican Central Committee as a “wonderful homecoming.” Three years ago, the committee ousted Dendahl as state chairman in a bitter contest.
Dendahl was nominated by acclamation, state GOP chairman Allen Weh told reporters following the meeting. He noted that many present who voted for Dendahl on Saturday had voted against him in 2003. “This party is very, very unified,” Weh said.
Damron, a Santa Fe physician and political novice, mailed a letter Friday to the secretary of state officially withdrawing from the race, Weh told reporters.
Damron, who left the meeting before reporters were allowed in, didn’t explain exactly why he decided to quit the race. One campaign staffer said the move was “100 percent voluntary.”
In recent weeks, some Republicans have complained privately that the Damron campaign had not been aggressive enough in the race against Richardson, whose poll numbers remain high and whose money-raising ability has dwarfed Damron’s.
By the first of June, the incumbent reported about $5.7 million in the bank. Damron had just over $43,000 and campaign debts totaling $120,000.
“I’ve got to start at scratch,” Dendahl said Saturday. “We have to find out whether there’s serious Republicans in this state and out of state who will help finance this campaign.”
But Dendahl said he doesn’t have to match Richardson “dollar for dollar” to run a credible campaign.
Dendahl has written a political column for The New Mexican and other newspapers in recent years. “I’m able to make terse, clear statements to clearly and concisely articulate why Bill Richardson’s approach is so bad for our state,” he said.
Dendahl, 67, headed what was then the Tourism and Economic Development Department in the 1980s under the Gov. Garrey Carruthers. He ran for the GOP nomination for governor in 1994, losing to Gary Johnson in the primary.
While Dendahl has never been afraid to take off the gloves with any political opponent, Democrats on Saturday didn’t hesitate to attack Dendahl’s nomination.
“For the Republicans to nominate a negative-campaigning partisan in a last-minute political deal strikes me as an act of desperation,” said Dave Contarino, Richardson’s chief political adviser. “A lot of right-thinking Republicans are going to scratch their heads. Dendahl has been divisive in his own party.”
One Republican at the meeting was less than enthusiastic about Dendahl. “We couldn’t have chosen a more divisive candidate,” said former Gov. David Cargo, long known as a party maverick.
In an e-mail statement, state Democratic Party chairman John Wertheim called Dendahl, “a venomous and divisive radical.”
Both Contarino and Wertheim immediately seized upon an issue that got Dendahl in trouble with his own party: drug-law reform. During the last term of Gov. Johnson’s administration, Dendahl strongly backed Johnson’s efforts to decriminalize marijuana.
On Saturday, Dendahl said he’d told state party leaders that his gubernatorial campaign would not “have the luxury of pioneering new policies” because he’ll be too focused on pointing out flaws in Richardson’s policies.
Polls in New Mexico show strong support for at least one of the ideas Dendahl backed — making marijuana legal for treating certain serious illnesses. Richardson this year endorsed a bill that would have established a state medical-marijuana program.
Though Contarino said Richardson is looking forward to “a public debate” over the issues during the campaign, he said it’s too early to say whether the governor would debate Dendahl one-on-one.
Dendahl said he first heard about Damron’s decision to withdraw early last week. Lieutenant governor candidate Sue Beffort Wilson said she only learned about it Friday.
Damron’s withdrawal comes only two weeks after he won the Republican primary. He only had a write-in opponent in the primary.
Also about two weeks ago, Damron announced he was closing his medical practice in Santa Fe. He is president of Santa Fe Radiology.
Though Damron was considered a political unknown, he’d been active in county Republican politics, serving as treasurer of the Santa Fe County GOP.
He started out the year aggressively campaigning against Richardson. Shortly after Richardson’s state-of-the-state address on the first day of the state Legislature’s session in January, Damron came to the Capitol Rotunda and gave a response, blasting Richardson for traveling too much and for increasing the governor’s staff as well as for transportation proposals including the planned spaceport and passenger-rail system.
In May, he made a speech blasting Richardson for running “the most corrupt administration in our state’s history.”
At least one of his attacks proved untrue, however. Damron recently claimed Richardson had convinced the Legislature to increase the number of days the governor could travel out of state. No such legislation ever passed.
Damron’s campaign manager Greg Graves quit in April, and no one was hired to replace him.
There appeared to be personal animosity between Damron and Richardson.
In April, Damron’s wife, Barbara, said she had been “pressured” to resign from the St. Vincent Regional Medical Center’s governing board by hospital officials who feared retribution from Richardson.
According to Barbara Damron, hospital president Alex Valdez told her that her presence on the board might jeopardize state funds for St. Vincent. When asked about that statement, Valdez said, “I don’t respond to rumors.” A Richardson spokesman denied the governor forced Barbara Damron off the board.
Prior to J.R. Damron’s announcement, Graves, a former executive director of the state Republican Party, said before he left the Damron campaign in April, he advised the candidate to “think very strongly if he really wanted to do this or not.” J.R. Damron at the time said he wanted to go through with the campaign, Graves said.
Also on Saturday, the GOP chose another candidate for the state auditor’s race. Albuquerque accountant Lorenzo Garcia will replace Daniel Alvarez, who withdrew his candidacy. Garcia is up against Democrat Jeff Armijo in the general election.
XXXX
John Dendahl
Age: 67
Residence: Santa Fe
Education: Bachelor’s degree, electrical engineering, business administration, University of Colorado, 1961
Past government experience: Secretary of Economic Development and Tourism, 1988-90
Past political experience: Chairman of New Mexico Republican Party, 1995-2003; sought GOP nomination for governor, 1994
Other work: Newspaper columnist; property manager; president First National Bank of Santa Fe; real-estate developer; former chief executive officer of Eberline Instrument Co., a Santa Fe firm now known as Thermo, that manufactures radiation-measuring equipment
Civic: Former chairman of the St. John’s College board; former member of Santa Fe Opera board
Personal: Wife, Jackie Dendahl; five children, two stepchildren, nine grandchildren. Dendahl was a member of the 1960 Olympic Cross Country Ski team. His father grew up on the land where the present state Capitol now stands.
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