THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, September 15, 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
Homo Erectus by Ray Benson & Reckless Kelly
American Trash by Betty Dylan
Tear-Stained Letter by Jo-El Sonier
Jason Fleming by The Sadies with Neko Case
Honky Tonk Mood Again by Jim Lauderdale
Truck Drivin' Son of a Gun by Dave Dudley
Rainmaker by Pima Express
Borrow Your Cape by Bobby Bare Jr's Young Criminals Starvation League
The Great Speckled Bird by Rob McNurlin
Colour of a Carnival by Kasey Chambers

Rabbit by Ray Wylie Hubbard
Never Gonna Be Your Bride by Carrie Rodriguez
That Lovin' You Feeling Again by Roy Orbison & Emmylou Harris
The Glory of True Love by John Prine
Cripple Creek by Steve Rosen
What's Wrong With Right by Hacienda Brothers
Wanderin' Star by Shane MacGowan with Charlie McLennan

Hank Williams Memorial Set
Lovesick Blues by Hank Williams
Are You Sure hank Done it This Way by Waylon Jennings
Mrs. Hank Williams by Fred Eaglesmith
Has Anybody Here Seen Hank? by The Waterboys
Please Don't Let Me Love You by Hank Williams
The Great Hank by Robert Earl Keen
Family Tradition by Cracker
The Night Hank Williams Came to Town by Johnny Cash

Honey Do You Love Me, Huh? by Hank Williams with Curley Williams
Hank Williams You Wrote My Life by Moe Bandy
I Think Hank Would Have Done it This Way by The Blue Chieftains
The Car Hank Died In by The Austin Lounge Lizards
Long White Cadillac by Dave Alvin
Nashville Radio by Jon Langford
Hank Williams' Ghost by Darrell Scott
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: SONGS FOR HANK

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
September 15, 2006


Hank Williams, whose 83rd birthday is Sunday, left behind country music’s greatest catalog of songs. But not only did he create mountains of great songs, he also inspired a bona fide subgenre of country music — songs about Hank Williams.

Hank’s body was barely cold before the tribute songs started pouring out of Nashville, Tenn., which virtually banished him during his lifetime. There were “The Death of Hank Williams” by Jack Cardwell, “Hank Williams Will Live Forever” by Johnnie & Jack, “The Life of Hank Williams” by Hawkshaw Hawkins, “The Death of Hank Williams” by Jimmie Logsdon, and many more.

And in the early ’80s, there was even some local yokel here in Santa Fe who did a song called “Hank Williams Conquers the Martians.”

The tradition continues today, though in recent times Hank appears more of an icon, Faust in a cowboy hat, a symbol of raw talent doomed by human frailties, a personification of the double-edged nature of fame, a lonesome-voiced indictment of the dark side of show business.

Two recent tunes by contemporary songwriters are prime examples of Hank songs. Canadian alternative-country singer Fred Eaglesmith, on his latest album, Milly’s Cafe, brings us “Mrs. Hank Williams,” a sad story of a woman traveling with some drifting cowboy band. Though Eaglesmith is sympathetic, the woman seems half Miss Audrey, half Yoko Ono. “When we got to Cincinnati/I had to put her on a plane/She was fighting with the band/And it was her or it was them ... She doesn’t watch the show/She just stays in the car/And watches the young girls/Outside the stage door.”

Even more poignant is “Hank Williams’ Ghost,” which can be found on Darrell Scott’s recent album The Invisible Man. This is a song of self-loathing, “rage and angst,” and “hillbilly sins,” a self-inventory of a man whose “coulda woulda beens” have been colliding mercilessly with his “shoulda knowns.” Though his name is in the title, Hank doesn’t appear until the final refrain. “Fare thee well and adios/We hurt the ones we love the most/And we blame it on Hank Williams’ ghost.”

I’ve got a feeling Hank’s ghost will continue to haunt songwriters for years to come.

Here are my all-time top 10 Hank Songs:

1. “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” by Waylon Jennings. Back in the mid-’70s, just about the time that outlaw bit was getting out of hand, Waymore unleashed this tune, one of his few self-written hits, which was an indictment of the Nashville machine (“Rhinestone suits and new shiny cars/It’s been the same way for years/We need to change.”) and a fearful look at the direction of his life and career (“Ten years down the road, making one night stands/Speeding my young life away ... Did ol’ Hank really do it this way?”)

2. “Nashville Radio” by Jon Langford. Hank inspired several songs as well as paintings by Mekon/Waco Brother Langford. The two pieces on this blog post are Langford's. His gorgeous art book Nashville Radio contains examples of visual art and music, with several tunes based on the Hank myth on the accompanying CD, including one “Oh No, Hank!” in which Joe Stalin plots to murder the singer. Also there is Langford’s finest Hank song, “Nashville Radio.” The perspective switches from Hank in his final days (“I can shake my hips, but I walk like a cripple and my body is getting too thin”) to the singer’s lonesome ghost (“I gave my life to country music, I took my pills and lost/Now they don’t play my songs on the radio, it’s like I never was”). Langford’s done a few versions of this, including one on his album All the Fame of Lofty Deeds. But worth seeking out is the limited-edition Gravestone EP, where the song is done as a medley with “The Death of Country Music.”

3. “Long White Cadillac” by The Blasters. If you went to the recent Thirsty Ear Festival you got to hear this song’s author, Dave Alvin, do a thunderous version of the song. The original version was by Alvin’s old band The Blasters. It’s a chilling tale of Hank’s death with frightening imagery: “Night wolves moan/the winter hills are black/I’m all alone/sitting in the back/of a long white Cadillac.”

4. “The Car Hank Died In” by The Austin Lounge Lizards. That long white Cadillac also appears in this humorous tune on the album Creatures From the Black Saloon. But this is mainly a stab at Nashville hawking pain and passion as a tourist attraction.

5. “Has Anybody Here Seen Hank” by The Waterboys. A honky-tonk is nothing but an Irish pub in this tribute song from The Waterboys’ best album Fisherman’s Blues. “I don’t care what he did with his women/I don’t care what he did when he drank/I want to hear just one note/from his lonesome old throat/Has anybody here seen Hank?”

6. “The Great Hank” by Robert Earl Keen. Hank is a benevolent ghost in this surreal tune from Keen’s 2005 album What I Really Mean. The song starts out, “I saw the great Hank Williams singing on the stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and he was all dressed up in drag.”

7. “Hank Williams You Wrote My Life” by Moe Bandy. This was a hit for Bandy in the early ’80s, and is best-known for the line, “You wrote ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ about a gal like my first ex-wife.”

8. “The Night Hank Williams Came to Town” by Johnny Cash. This was a hit for Cash in 1986. But it was rewritten from a song by T.C. Roberts (real name, Tabby Crabb), called “The Night Porter Wagoner Came to Town.” “Porter” was an early country video hit on the Country Music Television network in 1985.

9. “I Think Hank Woulda Done It This Way” by The Blue Chieftains. This irreverent answer to the famous Waylon song presents Hank as a proto-rock ’n’ roll wild man. It’s one of two Hank songs (the other being “Do It for Hank” by The World Famous Blue Jays) on the influential Rig Rock Jukebox compilation.

10. “Family Tradition” by Hank Williams Jr. Back in his heyday Bocephus seemed to spend half of his time complaining how hard it was being Hank Williams’ son and the other half proudly proclaiming he was Hank Williams’ son.

INTERNATIONAL INCIDENTS

The world would be such a nicer place if all our international crises were like this one:

US President George Bush is to host White House talks on British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Cohen, 35, creator of Ali G, has infuriated the Kazakhstan government with his portrayal of Borat, a bumbling Kazakh TV presenter.

And now a movie of Borat's adventures in the US has caused a diplomatic incident.

The opening scene, which shows Borat lustily kissing his sister goodbye and setting off for America in a car pulled by a horse, had audiences in stitches when it was first shown last week.

But the film, which has just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, has prompted a swift reaction from the Kazakhstan government, which is launching a PR blitz in the States.

Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev is to fly to the US to meet President Bush in the coming weeks and on the agenda will be his country's image.

I hope our president can explain that not every American behaves like the Three Stooges.


The Borat response

ROUNDHOUSE ROUNDUP: YOU OUGHTA BE IN PICTURES

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
September 14, 2006

I have to admit I kind of like Gov. Bill Richardson’s latest commercial, the cowboy movie spoof where the governor plays an Old West sheriff.

No, it’s not great drama, and it’s certainly not in the league of Western comedies like Blazing Saddles.

But compared with the 30-second character assassinations that pass for most political advertising in this great nation of ours, Richardson’s horse-opera fantasy is a breath of fresh air.

And those are just the negative ads. Most “positive” political spots are even worse — sickly sweet sentimentality, inane happy-talk, flag-waving drivel ...

And then there was Richardson’s meth-lab ad a few weeks ago that shows apparent ne’er-do-wells cooking what we assume to be drugs in their kitchen while an innocent child plays on the floor with a Tonka toy. Later, we see Richardson marching with a group of uniformed officers.

Then later a bunch of heavily armed cops breaking down a door. In that one, you almost expect the narrator to declare, “Bill Richardson: He cut taxes and brought martial law ... for the children.”

Naw, give me the cowboy movie. In fact, I hope Richardson was serious when at the end of this ad he said: “Next time, let’s make a space movie.” He’d make a great Buzz Lightyear-type character. And how about a faux detective flick with a sultry saxophone soundtrack and the governor in Guy Noir/Nick Danger guise? Maybe a Tarzan parody?


Better yet, a zombie movie in which Richardson has to battle former state auditor candidate Jeff Armijo, who keeps coming back from the dead. (And considering Wednesday’s development in the real-life Armijo saga, this could feature House Speaker Ben Luján as a guest exorcist.)

At this point in the campaign, when Richardson has a wide lead in the polls and an impossible lead in campaign contributions, he can afford to have some fun with his ads. If Republican opponent John Dendahl starts looking like a threat, we can expect that Old West dust to turn to modern-day mud.

Gimme a milk. Probably the funniest gag in the Western commercial is when “Sheriff” Richardson walks into a saloon and, in his best tough-guy voice, orders a milk.

This probably is pure coincidence, but for the record, according to the latest figures from the Institute of Money in State Politics, Richardson has received 14 contributions totaling $27,625 this election cycle from the dairy industry.

In contrast, he’s only picked up $24,125 from beer, wine and liquor interests. These figures are based on campaign finance reports as of the end of May.


Garrey silent on guv race. Former Gov. Garrey Carruthers, a Republican, is not publicly backing this year’s GOP gubernatorial candidate, John Dendahl. But Carruthers isn’t publicly opposing Dendahl, either.

On Tuesday, immediately after Carruthers spoke at a news conference with Richardson in the governor’s Cabinet Room, I asked the former chief executive whom he was backing for governor this year.

He declined to answer, saying his ballot is secret.

It’s no secret Carruthers gets along well with the current occupant of the Governor’s Mansion, despite their party differences.

Richardson named him as co-chairman of the blue-ribbon task force that’s studying ethics and campaign reforms. The two taught a class together last year at New Mexico State University, where Carruthers is dean of the business school. Carruthers was in Santa Fe on Tuesday for Richardson’s announcement of a new program in which the top business students at NMSU and The University of New Mexico will manage the investment of $10 million in state money.

While Carruthers made it clear he wanted to keep his opinion of this year’s governor’s race to himself, he added: “I will say, though, I’ve never voted a straight party ticket in my life.”

For my "Ad Watch" analysis piece on the Richardson "Western" spot, CLICK HERE

For my "Ad Watch" analysis piece on the meth lab commercial, mentioned above (plus anoter Richardson ad) , CLICK HERE

CHEETAH STEAKS WITH CHATEAU MARGEUA

The Corsair's take on Gov. Richardson's recent rescue mission in Sudan is pretty hilarious.

CLICK HERE

JUDGING THE JUDGES

Las Cruces blogger Heath Haussamen just posted a new special report Judging Our Judges that examines the state Judicial Standards Commission and the rash of cases judicial misconduct in the past couple of years. He starts out with a rundown of Dona Ana County judges who have found theselves in hot water in recent years. (More than a third of petitions Judicial Standards has received in the past two years deal with judges from his county.)

There will be a new article posted every day between now and Thursday, so check it out.

(For my own sardonic stab a few months ago at "Judges Gone Wild" CLICK HERE.)

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, September 10, 2006
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell Guest Co-host Stan Rosen

SONGS FOR THE WORKING MAN
POST LABOR DAY SPECIAL

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Plenty Tuff, Union Made by The Waco Brothers
The Union Fights the Battle of Freedom/The Memorial Day Massacre by Bucky Halker
There Is Power in The Union by The Solidarity Singers
The Death of Mother Jones by Gene Autry
Red Neck, Blue Collar by James Luther Dickinson

De Colores/We Were There by Brooklyn Women's Chorus
Sweetheart on the Barricades by Richard Thompson & Danny Thompson
Big Boss Man by Jimmy Reed
Weave Room Blues/Babies in the Mill by Dorsey Dixon
Links in the Chain by Phil Ochs

Armies of the Working Class Poor by Mike Stout
Ballad for Americans/Joe Hill by Paul Robeson
Red Wine by Woody Guthrie
Pie in the Sky by Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco
Waist Deep in the Big Muddy by Pete Seeger

Ballad of the Triangle Fire by The Jewish Labor Bund
Ludlow Massacre by Howard Zinn
Talking Union Blues/Study War No More by Pete Seeger
Working Man's Blues by Merle Haggard
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, September 8, 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
Ashgrove by Dave Alvin
American Music by The Blasters
Life's Little Ups and Downs by The Hacienda Brothers
The Inca Princess by Richard Buckner & Jon Langford
Big Kiss by Carrie Rodriguez
Will You Let Me Stay With You by Chipper Thompson

I Met Jesus in a Bar/Don't Blame the Wrong Guy by Jim Lauderdale
The Buzzard Was Their Friend by Dan Hicks & His Hotlicks
Three Legged Man by Steve Goodman
All of the Monkeys Ain't in the Zoo by Tommy Collins
Blue Bonnet Lane by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
I've Always Been Crazy by Waylon Jennings
Summer is Over by Fred Eaglesmith
Mike the Can Man by Joe West
Old Cat Died by The Carolina Chocolate Drops

Whiter Shade of Pale by Dan Reeder
Sticky Chemical by Bobby Bare Jr.
Tom Mix & Lucille Mulhall by Mary Minton
The Beast and The Burden by Hundred Year Flood
Redneck, Blue Collar by James Luther Dickinson
Like the 309 by Johnny Cash
Eternal Vacation by Buck Owens
Your Cheatin' Heart by Ray Charles

I Saw the Buildings by James Talley
No Way Sure by Loudon Wainwright III
Treat Each Other Right by Greg Brown
I Wish I Knew How it Will Feel to Be Free by Irma Thomas
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

VIVA LA FIESTAS!

It was the wettest Zozobra I remember -- at least in the past 10 years. It started right as we got to Ft. marcy Park and stopped, as if by magic right when the lights went out for the burn.

As usual, it was spectacular!

Viva la Fiestas!

See my Zozobra pictures HERE

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: FLOGGING THROUGHT THE FOG

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
September 8, 2006


One of the most glorious blasts of music from the 1980s was The Pogues. I’m talking, of course, of the Shane McGowan era. After the periodontal poster boy singer left, The Pogues were just another folk-rock band. But with McGowan full throttle with an Old Bushmills bottle, The Pogues were an unholy union of The Clash and The Clancy Brothers, ridden by voodoo gods and dancing obscene jigs at the very gates of hell.

Although the Pogues faded away — McGowan pursuing a half-ass solo career, releasing a few albums in the last dozen years or so —their wild, drunken spirit lives on in at least a couple of American bands.


There’s the Dropkick Murphys from Boston, a punk band with bagpipes and mandolin.
And then there’s the Murphys’ natural opponent in your ultimate imaginary Celt-rock battle of the bands, Flogging Molly, a Los Angeles-based band (with a Dublin-born singer) that has just released a DVD/CD set called Whiskey on a Sunday.

Both of these groups have the basic fire of The Pogues and have the basic crazy Irish punk-trad sound down. Neither, though, has quite captured McGowan’s possessed poetic aura.

But what amazes me is that while the Dropkicks have acknowledged, tacitly at least, their debt to The Pogues — they recorded the appropriately titled song “Wild Rover,” with McGowan a few years ago — Flogging Molly just did a feature-length documentary, the aforementioned DVD, without once mentioning The Pogues.

It’s especially ironic because of two songs included on the Whiskey CD. “The Wanderlust” has a melody similar to “The Sick Bed of Cuchulain,” while the Mideastern-sounding “Another Bag of Bricks” will remind Pogue fans of “Turkish Song of the Damned.”

So it rings pretty hollow when Flogging Molly frontman Dave King boldly declares at the end of the DVD, “As humble of a band as we are, in the sense of our heritage and where we come from … I would not be sitting here if I didn’t think we were the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world.”

Even when The Rolling Stones really were the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world, you rarely heard or read an interview with Mick Jagger or Keith Richards where they didn’t praise their forebears, like Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, etc.

But with this verbal flogging out of the way, there’s a lot to like about the music found on Whiskey on a Sunday, which I recently bought on impulse after hearing a few songs being played at a Denver record store. It’s basically my introduction to Flogging Molly.

The CD has 10 songs, some but not all featured in the documentary. There are some acoustic — but not necessarily mellow — versions of Flogging favorites like “Drunken Lullabies” and “Tomorrow Comes a Day Too Soon.”

And even better are the live tracks, “The Likes of You Again” and the anthemic “What’s Left of the Flag.”

As far as the DVD goes, this film by Jim Dziura is basically a promo piece that will best be enjoyed by established Flogging Molly fans.

All seven Floggers have their own little segments in which they tell their life stories and bandmates give kiss-up testimonials (“Dennis is one of the greatest people I’ve ever met in my life.”). Admirably democratic, I guess. Trouble is, most of them haven’t had lives that are all that interesting.

Like most rock-doc projects, my main criticism is that there should have been less yack and more music. The live sequences are, for the most part, thrilling. But then a perfectly good performance is interrupted by some band member whining about how tough touring life is or some inarticulate fan talking about how Flogging Molly rules. (Then again, there’s a pretty cool little scene where a band member is berating a fan for showing his genitals to a bandmate’s wife.)

Even if it isn’t the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world, and even if it doesn’t pay proper tribute to St. Shane, Flogging Molly upholds and defends the marriage of punk rock and traditional Irish music. Till death do it part.

Also recommended:

* The Twenty-Seven Points by The Fall. Twenty-five years ago, when I interviewed a young British singer I’d never heard of from a young British band I’d never heard of over beers at Evangelo’s, I never figured that I’d still be writing about them six years into the 21st century.
The singer was Mark E. Smith, and the band was The Fall. The Gold Bar, the venue where the band played, is long gone. But Smith is still a Fall guy, cranking out riff-driven-guitar mutant garage rock overlaid with Smith’s hypnotic if not always decipherable half-spoken, half-sung lyrics that hint of a dark mythos that lies somewhere between William Blake and H.P. Lovecraft.

In recent years, Smith seems to be slowing down, releasing mainly archival stuff (though last October, The Fall had a fun little new album called Heads Roll, which, somehow in this era of terrorist beheadings, wasn’t a huge pop hit.)

The recently rereleased The Twenty-Seven Points is, believe it or not, a double live album (Holy Peter Frampton, Batman!) Well, mostly live. There are a couple of studio tracks here: “Cloud of Black,” with a percolating electronic-blip bleepy beat, and the lengthy, slow-burning “Noel’s Chemical Effluence.”

But most of it was recorded in various cities in 1995, spliced together like a collage with all of its varying audio qualities.

There are several tunes — “Lady Bird (“Green Grass”), “Middle Class Revolt” — from the mid-’90s. There are incomprehensible spoken-word segments, including some dumb jokes. There’s one of my favorite Fall tunes, “Big New Prinz,” in which Smith shouts repeatedly, “Check the record check the record ... He is nuts!”

He is. But I’d still buy him a beer at Evangelo’s.