TERRELL'S TUNEUP: FOR YOUR THAMUSEMEANT

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 22, 2007


ThaMuseMeant fled Santa Fe for the Pacific Northwest a few years ago, but their fans here still think of them as local (just as we did a few years before that, when they fled Santa Fe for Austin, Texas).

They’ve been together in various configurations for nearly 15 years. Original members Nathan Moore, Aimee Curl, and David Tiller are still there. I do miss drummer Jeff Sussman, who made the band rock in the early days. But Enion Pelta, who has been in the group for the last four or five years, is a strong addition. Her gypsy-style violin plays off Tiller’s mandolin to give ThaMuseMeant its special flavor.

The group’s latest album, Never Settle For Less, shows that Moore is still writing some well-crafted and occasionally hilarious songs.

The one that nearly made me wreck my car last week is “Unprotected,” which begins with Moore, sounding more like Dean Martin than he ever has in his life, crooning, “I’ve had unprotected sex tons of times.” The lyrics go on to praise psychedelic drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and all sorts of vices. This is terribly irresponsible and sends a terrible message to the children. I think it’s my favorite track on the album.

Curl’s strongest moment comes in “Nowhere From Here to Go,” a slow, lonesome folksy/country tune suited perfectly to her backwoods warble.

If you want more of Moore, he’s got a new solo album, In His Own Worlds, featuring various Frogville Records regulars and other local music luminaries.
“Understand Under” is a Dylan-ish, bluesy rocker about scrambled ambitions. “I want to be fluent in every language/ I want to be a painter, the next Abbie Hoffman/I want to be the mayor of my hometown in the Blue Ridge Mountains/I got to get there more often.”

All the songs here are originals, save “Wandering Aengus,” an adaptation of a William Butler Yeats poem. The late Dave Van Ronk did a version of this, but Moore’s is far more upbeat. There’s a short but head-turning violin solo by Pelta.

The dual CD release party for ThaMuseMeant and Nathan Moore is at 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 27, at Santa Fe Brewing Company. The cover charge is $10.00 at the door. Also playing is Tiller and Pelta’s group Taarka. It’s the first (and probably will be the only) performance by ThaMuseMeant in New Mexico this year. For information, call 424-3333.

Also recommended:

*Lioness by Goshen. Like ThaMuseMeant, Goshen is one of the founding Frogville Records bands. Basically, Goshen is singer/songwriter/guitarist Grant Hayunga plus the fabulous Palmer brothers from Hundred Year Flood (Bill on keyboards, Jim on drums).

During Goshen’s intense late-night performance at last year’s Thirsty Ear Festival, I had the revelation that this music is what people who condemn the blues hear right before they die and go to Hell. Lioness only reinforces that.

For the rest of us, Goshen can be heavenly. Hayunga’s crazy slide guitar and his voice, gliding between inspired mumble and sweet croon, are irresistible.

This album seems to be more sonically diverse than past Goshen efforts. There are still the frantic, sweaty rockers I love so well (“Hate to Say Goodnight,” “Jackrabbit,” “They Grew Wild For You”), but there are plenty of mid-tempo and slower numbers, too. And Hayunga seems to be paying more attention to his vocals here. Some of the songs sound downright pretty.

One of my favorites is “Gun Blue,” an easy-paced tune where the slide guitar slithers like a snake. You expect it to turn around and pounce any minute.

Then there’s “To Begin Again,” which starts off as a 90 mph joyride to doom then slows to a screeching halt, with Bill Palmer playing organ like Lurch on The Addams Family. It goes through this cycle at least a couple of times and before you know it, the song melts into the next track, the slow, foreboding, organ-heavy “Son of a Gun,” a psychedelic masterpiece lost in time.

*Heartaches & Honky-Tonks by Bill Hearne’s Roadhouse Revue. The Frogville factory apparently has been cranking around the clock in recent weeks. Hearne is a longtime Santa Fe favorite, and hard-core honky-tonk is his specialty. As the title implies, he’s in his element here.

He’s got a hot little band behind him — Augé Hays on steel, Bob Goldstein on guitar, Cathy Faber on bass, and rotating drummers who include Pete Amahl, Chris Carpenter, and Mark Clark. Plus, there’s a bevy of guest musicians including fiddle great Johnny Gimble. Hearne’s wife and longtime musical partner Bonnie shows up for a duet with Bill on “Somewhere Between,” a Merle Haggard/Bonnie Owens song.

And as the name of the group suggests, this is a review. Bill Hearne steps back and lets Faber sing lead on a couple of tunes, which is a real treat. My favorite Faber track here is “Wishful Thinking,” an old Wynn Stewart two-stepper.

Some of the songs might seem overly familiar — “Close Up the Honky-Tonks,” Sing Me Back Home,” “Wine Me Up.” But Hearne loves this music so much and he puts so much of himself into the material that he gives these standards a freshness that lesser performers could never reach.
For more information on ThaMuseMeant, Goshen, and Bill Hearne’s Roadhouse Revue, see The Frogville site.

*Lucky 13 by Mike Montiel. Here’s an artist who grew up in Santa Fe and has played guitar in bars around here probably longer than he’d like to admit. I think the first time I saw him was in the ’70s in the Turf Club, when he was with The Ozone Express.

On his first solo album, which he co-produced with Española singer Steve Chavez, Montiel presents 13 original tunes in various styles.

There are blues rockers like the opening song “You Can’t Trust a Woman” and “Watch Who You’re Hurtin’”; acoustic blues like “Been Gone So Long”; country tunes like “I Thought You Were Somebody Else” and “You Don’t Care,” which sounds like a long-lost Mavericks track; outright rockers like “Redemption” (where he lets loose the wah-wah); and Spanish-flavored songs like the instrumental “After the Gunfight.”

Several cuts here are instrumentals, spotlighting Montiel on electric as well as acoustic guitars.

My favorite is a breezy blues ballad called “Love Me Again.” Montiel “cries” some of the lines. It’s pretty and tough at the same time.

For more information e-mail Montiel.

MY PHOTOS ARE GREAT FOR THE RADIO

A few of my photos from my recent trip to New Hampshire have been posted (with my permission) on the Web site of New Hampshire Public Radio.

It's part of their collection of photos from the 2008 New Hampshire primary.

My photos start HERE . (Click "Next" to see the others.)

ROUNDHOUSE ROUNDUP: FIELD OF NIGHTMARES

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 21, 2007

In his autobiography Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life, Gov. Bill Richardson wrote that baseball was “the ruling passion of my young life.”

Reminiscing about coming to the U.S. from Mexico to attend a private boarding school in Concord, Mass., Richardson’s book recalls how his baseball skills helped him overcome his feelings of being from a different country. “I still felt like an outsider. But as it had been in Mexico, baseball rescued me,” Richardson wrote.

I thought about this earlier this week when the state Republican Party released its satirical 2007 Bill Richardson baseball card, which cleverly pokes fun at some of the governor’s position changes.

Seeing the double photo of Richardson (one in a Yankees cap, one in a Red Sox cap), I thought about this cruel irony:

While baseball was Richardson’s salvation as a youth, the national pastime has become a common thread in many of the controversies that have haunted his campaign for president.

First there was the draft/no-draft story. Richardson for years said he’d been drafted by the old Kansas City Athletics in the 1960s. He told me that in a 2002 interview. However, last year, a sports writer for the Albuquerque Journal checked it out and debunked the story.

Then there was his recent statement on Meet the Press that he’s a fan of both the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees — teams that constitute probably the fiercest rivalry in modern Major League baseball. This caused a huge Internet buzz on both political and sports blogs. Fans of both teams were in a state of disbelief.

More recently was the profile of Richardson in The New Republic. Writer Ryan Lizza mainly focused on Richardson’s shifting positions on foreign policy issues. However, the part of the piece that received the most attention was the part describing Richardson at — yes — a baseball game in Iowa.

“As we get up from our seats to visit the play-by-play announcer’s booth, Richardson does something I’ve never seen any politician do,” Lizza wrote. “There are two women sitting in front of us. They are both young and attractive, probably in their twenties. The governor rotates his large frame sideways and shimmies out of his row. The two women smile up at him. As he passes, Richardson reaches down and places his fingertips on the head of one of the women, tickling her scalp as he opens and closes his hand. Then, as he reaches for the next scalp, his hand suddenly aborts its mission, as if the governor realizes this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

At least he didn’t say he was a fan of both the Albuquerque Isotopes and the Iowa Cubs.

It’s got to eat at Richardson to think that a game that once brought him acceptance and praise now is associated with some of the statements and incidents that appear to be holding him back from the major leagues of politics.

With all due respect: At a candidate forum in February in Carson City, Nev., Richardson made headlines by saying he and the other Democratic presidential candidates should sign a pledge not to attack one another.

However, earlier this week at a Washington, D.C., speech, Richardson was on the offensive, naming names in distinguishing his position on withdrawing troops from Iraq.

“With all due respect to my outstanding Democratic colleagues — U.S. Sens. (Hillary) Clinton, (Barack) Obama, (Christopher) Dodd and (Joseph) Biden — they all voted for timeline legislation that had loopholes,” he said at the Take Back America conference. “Those loopholes allow this president, or any president, to leave an undetermined number of troops in Iraq indefinitely. ... Clearly, my Democratic colleagues in this campaign think it’s responsible to have an ongoing military role in Iraq. They voted not once but twice to leave troops behind.” (See Youtube clip below)

It’s not really an attack, though. He did say “with all due respect” and call them “outstanding.”

However, Lizza — the same writer at that Iowa ballgame — pointed out in The New Republic political blog, The Plank, that one of those pieces of legislation was the Feingold-Reid amendment, which would have cut off funds for the war next March and which Richardson initially supported.

In a later blog post, Lizza quotes a rebuttal from Richardson spokesman Pahl Shipley, saying Richardson only “conditionally” supported the amendment, without exceptions in the amendment for training Iraqi soldiers and other limited purposes.

Richardson has a new anti-war Web site called No Troops Left Behind.

His Take Back America speech is below:

HILLARY GOES FOR CELINE

Apparently writing off the rock 'n' roll vote, Hillary Clinton has gone and chosen a song by Celine Dion -- who isn't even an American -- for her campaign theme.

She managed to get a theme song even crappier than her husband's -- Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow."



There apparently was a vote on her Web site. I suspect Republican sabotage. What's Donald Segretti up to these days?

So come on, Bill Richardson. Here's your chance to pay tribute to good American music! . I made a lot of good suggestions for your theme song. Jean Knight, Howlin' Wolf, Emmett Miller, Warren Zevon, Angel Espinoza ... and my column readers made some good suggestions too. Any of them are better than Celine Dion!

Speaking of Republican sabotage, the state GOP today released its 2007 Bill Richardson baseball card.

PLAY FOR PAY

A group of big-name musicians, and, I assume, the major labels who love them, want radio stations to start paying to air their music.

Check this out:

Setting the stage for a new battle between radio broadcasters and the music industry, a group of recording artists have formed a coalition called musicFIRST to seek cash payments from local radio stations for the airplay of music broadcast over the air. Among the members seeking new performance royalties are Christina Aguilera, Jimmy Buffett, Celine Dion, Toby Keith, John Legend and Jennifer Lopez. The group plans to introduce its legislative plans Thursday.

Currently, broadcasters pay songwriter royalites to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, but not performance royalties. Broadcasters are required to pay performance royalties for music streamed over the Internet.

I believe this request should be honored.

Therefore, I hereby pledge to never play any songs by Christina Aguilera, Jimmy Buffett, Celine Dion, Toby Keith, John Legend or Jennifer Lopez on any of my shows. I hope other radio folk do the same.

Seriously, I hate to side with the National Association of Broadcasters on anything. But where would these "artists" be if radio didn't play their stupid music a jillion times a week?