COFFEE WITH CHARLIE, PUNCH IN THE SENATE

Tampa rocker Ronny Elliott writes about an encounter with the great Charlie Louvin on a cool little Web site called The Brink.

Last time I saw Ronny we were in the Austin airport. He was standing in line for ice cream and he'd just seen Karl Rove. But that's another story.

Speaking of political encounters, I wish the New Mexico Legislature was as fun as the Alabama state Senate yesterday.

Check out this story and make sure to watch the video. It might make us New Mexicans long for a rematch between Rod Adair and Raymond Sanchez.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: SONGS FOR DESERT ROADS

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 8, 2007

In some respects, Thirteen Cities, the new album by the Portland, Ore.-based band Richmond Fontaine, sounds like a soundtrack record. Not for a movie; maybe for a book. Fontaine singer Willy Vlautin is a novelist whose book, The Motel Life, was recently published by Harper Perennial.

The title of the book is referenced in the song “Westward Ho”: “The Rancho and Sutro, the Time Zone and don’t forget/The Everybody’s Inn or the Monte Carlo/Motel life ain’t much of a life, and a motel ain’t much of a home/But I found out years ago that a house ain’t either.”

I haven’t read the book, but if it’s anything like Thirteen Cities, it has to be a cross between Steinbeck, Bukowski, and — I dunno — Gram Parsons?

This album is a literary work in itself. It’s a song cycle (alt-country opera?) about that motel life — character sketches and short stories, mostly in first person, of drifters adrift in the American West. Vlautin strips away all romantic notions of the West, portraying a dusty, windblown world of truck drivers, aimless hitchhikers, fugitives, illegal immigrants, tough bars, and mixed-up kids.

Musically the band sounds something like Wilco (Vlautin’s voice calls to mind Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy) colored by Calexico. There are reasons for that. Calexico’s Joey Burns plays bass and accordion on some songs, and that band’s Jacob Valenzuela lends his trumpet on some numbers. The album was recorded in Tucson, Ariz., so it’s only natural that local alt-rock godfather and Giant Sand-man Howe Gelb guests on piano on one song. There’s lots of moody steel guitar, giving a ghostly edge to sad melodies.

After a short instrumental prelude, Thirteen Cities’ first full-fledged song, “Moving Back Home #2,” with its quick rhythm and blaring trumpets, is more upbeat than most of the others, but the lyrics set the emotional mood. The narrator has been living in his mother’s basement, constantly bickering with her, and losing money at off-track betting. He is sitting on top of a parking garage and contemplating suicide. You know he won’t be in Mom’s house much longer, but there’s no real hope that a change of scenery will improve his outlook.

The characters in these songs don’t burn, burn, burn like Kerouac’s mad highway angels. They’re sad refugees from oppressors who are never quite identified, seeking some better place that’s most likely a desert mirage.

"I started having dreams of the desert so real they haunted me/Always sunny and never gray no noise just wind and sage,” Vlautin sings in one song. “I began taking vacation days and driving out as far as I could/The people around me said I drew away that a ghost I became.”

One song, “$87 and a Guilty Conscience That Gets Worse the Longer I Go,” takes place partly in New Mexico. It starts out at a boxing match in Albuquerque. “The referee wouldn’t stop the bout/The kid’s blood hit the fifth row ... that was the night I gave up the fights.” The narrator and his traveling companion encounter an overturned semitrailer on Interstate 25 near Las Cruces. “We pushed in the windshield and pulled the guy out/ We left him on the side of the road/My friend said we had to leave before the cops showed/What he’d done I didn’t know.”

By the next verse the travelers are in Arizona, where they pick up a teenage hitchhiker. "Saddest eyes and rotten teeth/Said she was only 16.” The narrator’s friend stops at a motel and gets a room for himself and the girl — an act that outrages the narrator and effectively ends the friendship. You don’t know whether it’s moral outrage or jealousy. All you know is that he feels guilty when he calls the police.

Vlautin looks at the ugly current that rages inside the national immigration debate on a song called “The Disappearance of Ray Norton.” It’s spoken-word song over a wistful backdrop of guitar, bass, and clarinet; in it the narrator tells of a friend who hated Mexicans. “He started going on and on about it, how they’re all moving in, buying and renting all the houses around us, how they’re ruining the property values, how they’re ruining everything. He’d get real upset about it, start saying crazy things.” Ray, the friend, moves in with “a group of guys ... they all had shaved heads and tattoos.” That arrangement ends badly and eventually Ray disappears, shunned by his father, his employer, and his ex-girlfriend. But you get the feeling that the next time anyone hears of Ray Norton, it’s going to be tragic and ugly.

Immigration is the subject of another song, “I Fell Into Painting Houses in Phoenix, Arizona.” The narrator quits his job when he realizes an undocumented co-worker was stiffed by his employers for five days of work. The song ends with reflections on headlines dealing with “a family left in the trunk of a car, or a family abandoned in the desert alone.”

There’s a ray of hope in the upbeat “Four Walls.” The narrator is in love and wants nothing to do with anything from the outside world: “We’ll just lay around and our hearts will sing like mariachis.”

But that mood quickly dissolves in the last song, “Lost in This World,” in which Vlautin moans over Burns’ stark piano, “I barely know where I am/I’m sorry I ain’t called you in days/Maybe I’ll never get over Wes and the hospital/And now I don’t even have bus fare home.”

But you know he’s out there on some highway in Utah or Wyoming, nursing a beer and a broken heart, sweeping the floor in some back-road joint, playing the horses, and wondering if he’ll ever get back home — living the motel life and wondering how long it’s going to last.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUNDUP: THOUGHTS ON SUNDAY'S DEBATE

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 7, 2007

Gov. Bill Richardson’s debate performance in Manchester, N.H., on Sunday was a vast improvement over his initial debate showing in South Carolina in April.

He was more relaxed and less inclined to grimace or scowl. And despite the New Hampshire humidity — which I’ll personally testify is an inspiration to perspiration — he didn’t appear to be sweating nearly as much as he did in that first debate.

Still it would be a mistake to call Sunday’s debate a big breakthrough for Richardson.

While he might be eligible for the “most improved” award, he still got some bad reviews. Even worse, he barely got mentioned in many national stories.

That might be less the fault of Richardson than CNN, which organized and televised the event. Many commentators pointed out the format seemed to favor the front-runners — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

One problem managing these debates is the sheer number of candidates. I started having ugly flashbacks of those unwieldy candidate forums years ago when Santa Fe had a dozen candidates for mayor.

Richardson wasn’t asked a question until 18 minutes into the debate. I could feel his pain when the question about making English the nation’s official language came up. Here was a chance to brag that he is governor of a state that has always had two official languages. But he didn’t get a chance to respond.

When Richardson was called on, however, his answers almost always reverted to his standard campaign rhetoric and meandered off subject.

When someone asks him a question on an issue, he starts shotgunning all his soundbites on that general topic. Thus, when asked Sunday about providing health insurance for all without raising taxes, he started talking about child immunization and getting junk food out of the schools.

He had a couple of good moments. His idea to threaten a 2008 Summer Olympics boycott to pressure China into helping stop the violence in Sudan might not turn out any better than Jimmy Carter’s 1980 Olympic boycott. But it’s an idea that might have made national headlines had Clinton or Obama suggested it.

Richardson also gave a good, concise answer on veterans’ health care. His idea of a “hero health card,” which would allow veterans to get care at any hospital, deserves more discussion.

But, several times in the debate, moderator Wolf Blitzer had to cut off Richardson or try to steer him back on course. That happened to other candidates as well, but Richardson wasted much of his precious television time this way.

Must be doing something right: Polls show Richardson gaining, though still a second-tier candidate. A WBZ/Franklin Pierce College poll taken the day after the debate shows the only two candidates gaining significant strength in New Hampshire are Clinton and Richardson.

Clinton has picked up 6 points since March, putting her at 38 percent. Richardson gained 5 points, putting him at 8 percent. He’s tied with Al Gore — who hasn’t declared he’s running — but still lagging behind Obama and Edwards. Joe Biden has moved up slightly since March, to 4 percent from 1 percent.

This poll showed 60 percent of the people who had watched the debate and read, saw or heard media reports thought Clinton won the debate. One percent said Richardson.

The numbers are based on telephone interviews Monday with 424 likely Democratic presidential primary voters. The margin of error is 4.8 percentage points.

Meanwhile, the latest Rasmussen poll, released Wednesday, showed Richardson gaining on Republican candidates. The poll, taken two days after Richardson’s May 27 Meet the Press appearance, showed him trailing Rudy Giuliani by only 4 points, 43 percent to 39 percent.

Meanwhile, John McCain was ahead of Richardson by 5 points, 43 percent to 38 percent.
This national telephone survey of 800 likely voters has a 4-point margin of error.

“Richardson has improved significantly against both candidates over the past several months,” according to the Rasmussen Report Web site. “In April, Giuliani was leading Richardson by 17 percentage points, 51 percent to 34 percent. In late February, Richardson trailed McCain by nine points, 36 percent to 45 percent.

“Richardson’s competitive showing is as much a function of soft support for the leading GOP candidates as his own viability as a runner-up Democratic candidate. At least 18 percent in each match-up are undecided or prefer a third party option.”

The bad news for the governor from Rasmussen is that Richardson’s disapproval number is bigger than his approval number — 42 percent to 31 percent.

Worst-case scenarios: One of the cheesiest aspects of the presidential debates this season are those questions that seem ripped out of Tom Clancy novels or episodes of the TV series 24.

On Sunday, a question initially posed to Dennis Kucinich was “if you were president of the United States and the intelligence community said to you, ‘We know where Osama bin Laden is. He’s in Pakistan. We’ve got the specific target. But he’s only going to be there for 20 minutes. You’ve got to give the order yes or no to take him out with a Hellfire missile, but it’s going to kill some innocent civilians at the same time: What would be your decision?”

Such questions are irritating and probably make a sad comment about the mentality of today’s electorate. But I bet they’re fun to write.

Here’s my suggestion for the next debate: “What if a giant meteor were heading toward Earth and the only one who could stop it was God, and the only way He’d do it was if the U.S. agreed to allow children to pray in public schools. Would you do that? Raise your hands if you’d allow it.”

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Laurell filled in for me on the Santa Fe Opry Friday when I was in New Hampshire. Here's her play list.

I don't know whether Dan did a play list for Sound World Sunday. I heard a little bit of his show via the Internet just in time to hear my favorite Archers of Load song, "All the Nation's Airports." If he does have a play list, I'll post it when I get it.

Thanks, Laurell and Dan. Good job, both of yas.

Friday, June 1, 2007
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Substitute Host: Laurell Reynolds

Ed's Place - Horace Heiler
Jubilee - Patti Smith
Mississippi Queen (Live)- Mountain
97 Men In This Here Town- Buffy Sainte-Marie
Back In the Saddle Again- Gene Autry
8 Weeks In A Barroom - Ramblin Red Bailey
Drinking All My Troubles Away- Paul Howard & His Cotton Pickers
Enchanted Forest - Mohawk & The Rednecks
Women Do Know How To Carry On- Waylon Jennings
Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head - B.J. Thomas
Nat'l Weed Grower's Assoc. -Michael Hurley

Blue Moon - Cowboy Junkies
Blue Moon of Kentucky - Elvis Presely
Blue Moon Nights - John Fogerty
Cattle Call-Eddy Arnold
Too Many Pills- Arkey Blue
Beer Bottle Mama- Andy Reynolds & His 101 Ranch Boys
Don't Touch Me - Jeannie Seely
I Wish I Was A Single Girl Again - The Maddox Brothers & Rose

Country Pie- Bob Dylan
Santa Fe- Bob Dylan
Same Old Man- The Holy Modal Rounders
Down And Out - Chuck Wells
Dolores- Eddie Noack
Spanish Pipedream- John Prine
Black Cadillac -Rosanne Cash
Still Doin' Time- George Jones
Beautiful- Gordon Lightfoot
Gentle On My Mind- John Hartford
Magdalene Laundries- Emmylou Harris

RICHARDSON: BOYCOTT THE OLYMPICS?

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 4, 2007


(If you're looking for my debate blog, it's the previous post. Just scroll down.)



MANCHESTER, N.H. — At a debate with seven other presidential candidates Sunday, Gov. Bill Richardson said the U.S. should pressure China to take a bigger role in establishing peace in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The statement came as Richardson and the other candidates competed for time and attention in the two-hour debate, which was held at Saint Anselm College and shown nationally on CNN.

Richardson said he is not in favor of using military force in Darfur, which is in the midst of a civil war many call a genocide on the part of the Sudanese government.

“This is what I would do,” Richardson said when asked about how he would try to bring peace to the region. “Number one, more U.N. peacekeepers. The government is refusing to make this happen. Secondly, economic sanctions. We’ve imposed them, but they’re weak. We need European countries to make them happen. Third, we need China, to lean on China, which has enormous leverage over Darfur. And if the Chinese don’t want to do this, we say to them, maybe we won’t go to the Olympics.”

The 2008 Summer Olympics are scheduled to be held in Beijing. The last time the U.S. boycotted the Olympics was in 1980, when President Carter protested the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The Olympics were held in Moscow that year.

Later in the debate, moderator Wolf Blitzer returned to Richardson to ask about the his boycott idea.

“China purchases a lot of their oil — most of it, a good part of it — from Sudan. And my view is that they are a leverage point. And they have not been strong on the Sudan,” Richardson said.

Addressing one of his opponents, Richardson said to Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, “We don’t need, Joe — with all due respect — another military involvement. Iraq is enough. And we must get out of Iraq. What we need to do is move forward with the toughest options. Am I for a no-fly zone? Yes. I think we need strong economic sanctions.

“And we lack the moral authority to build international coalitions to fight genocide in Darfur,” Richardson continued. “We should shut down — I would as first day as president, I would shut down Guantánamo. I would shut down Abu Ghraib and secret prisons. That is the moral authority that we don’t have.”

Richardson has experience in the Sudan. Last year, he went there to negotiate the release of a U.S. journalist captured by government forces. Early this year, he went to Darfur to attempt to negotiate peace. He got two sides to agree to a cease-fire — though the violence there goes on.

“I got a very fragile cease-fire put together there three months ago,” Richardson said in the debate. “And we made things a little better.”

One of Richardson’s rivals, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, disagreed with Richardson about using the Olympics as leverage. It’s important to engage the Chinese in the Darfur crisis, Dodd said, “But the idea that you go in and stop the Olympics from happening, I don’t think gets you there. I think that’s more likely to delay the kind of influence and support China ought to be providing.”

But another candidate disagreed with Dodd. “I think that we should use whatever tools available to us,” said former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Richardson and other candidates were asked how they would use former President Bill Clinton, the most recent Democratic president.

Richardson said Bill Clinton should be secretary-general of the United Nations. He also said he would ask the former president to serve as a special envoy to the Middle East.

In April, Richardson, speaking to the National Jewish Democratic Council, said he’d consider bringing back James Baker — former secretary of state under the first President Bush — as a special envoy for the Mideast peace process.

One of Richardson’s opponents, front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, hinted there could be a role for Richardson in her administration.

“In my administration, (there would be) diplomacy, patient, careful diplomacy, the kind of diplomacy that Bill Richardson did for my husband, that really gets people to stay with it over time.”