UP IN CHICAGO I WAS KNOWN AS QUITE A BOY

I'm here in Chicago to see the last day of The Pitchfork Festival with my son. I'm most excited about seeing King Khan & The Shrines, but I'm also looking forward to The Dirty Projectors and Dinosaur Jr. I'll write a full report tomorrow.

I spent part of this afternoon checking out the old Chess Studios at 2120 South Michigan Avenue. It's now known as Willie Dixon's Blues Heaven.

When we went in, a man led us up a flight of stairs and into a room with rows of chairs in front of a TV set. He put on a video about the history of Chicago blues with some great footage of Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, James Cotton, etc.

It didn't hit me until I'd been there a few minutes that this was the actual studio where Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and even The Rolling Stones had recorded some of the seminal songs of the last 50 years.

"Johnny B. Goode" was recorded in that that room. It's nothing short of sacred ground!

Talking with our friendly tour guide, he said, "You're from Santa Fe? Do you know Sharon McConnell? Sure shootin', downstairs on a wall are dozens of Sharon's Lifecast collection of plaster facial masks of blues musicians.

Many of these graced the New Mexico state Capitol Rotunda a couple of years ago. It was almost like seeing a bunch of old friends. I've always said the Roundhouse lost some soul when they took that exhibit down.

Sharon, who now lives in Mississippi, is well liked at Blues Heaven. She apparently did some casting of blues faces there at the museum a few years ago. Some of the women working there even asked me how Sharon's dog Bella was doing.

I took a few snapshots at the museum. Check 'em HERE..

And yes, we went to the top of the Sears Tower...

GOURDS ON THE PLAZA

There was a big crowd on the Plaza Thursday and, as expected, The Gourds romped and stomped a hopped-up set at Santa Fe Bandstand. And even though they didn't play my favorite two Gourds songs ("Ants on the Melon" and "My Name is Jorge") it was still a great show. They did so many good songs, who cares if they didn't do everything.

One of my favorites was a rousing Beatles cover -- an under-appreciated Ringo "country" song, "Don't Pass Me By." This they followed with a medley of "Motherless Children" and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken."

They did one of their most powerful tunes, "Web Before You Walk Into It" (" ... you bought the last bottle last time, remember?") which is from their very first album, Dems Good Beeble.

And, hell, "Burn the Honeysuckle" is pretty similar to "Ants on the Melon" -- and almost as good.

They performed good versions of "Pine Island Bayou," "Lower 48," (their rowdy encore) "Red Letter Day" (banjo/fiddle/guitar man Max Johnston's one turn at the mike Thursday) and "(Somebody Bring me a Flower) I'm a Robot," which first appeared on singer Kev Russell's solo album several years ago.

And no, The Gourds didn't suddenly burst into a raging stream of obscenities. They managed to follow their no-cussing clause. (And no, they didn't do "Gin and Juice" despite some shouted requests.) For one thing, the place was crawling with kiddies, some of whom occasionally joined the band onstage. That's one of the cool things about the Santa Fe Bandstand shows. It does have a community/family feel.

Next Thursday, Bone Orchard and Hundred Year Flood play Santa Fe Bandstand.

Check out my snapshots HERE

And again, just because I'm a nice guy, I'll share a recent Gourds concert (April 15, 08), courtesy of the Live Music Archive. It's from a house party in St. Louis. Listen to any or all of the songs.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: MCMURTRY'S TOYS

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 18, 2008

I wouldn’t be the first critic in Criticdom to compare the latest work of James McMurtry — who is playing this weekend at Santa Fe Brewing Company — to the music of Steve Earle. McMurtry’s most recent album, Just Us Kids, is full of political rage.

I’m not sure whether “The Governor” is about any actual governor — definitely not ours; the story takes place in a state that has water. It’s a hard-edged, blues-drenched parable of different kinds of justice among the various social classes. A fisherman is killed by a reckless cigarette boat on an unnamed lake.

“They try to get a warrant — dream all you want/They won’t be searchin’ any lakefront homes/Justice is blind to them that own it/Money don’t talk when it’s one of their own.”

The wistful “Ruins of the Realm” deals with the decay of various civilizations, including our own. My favorite verse is probably: “We got the National Guard with the bayonets/We got the Ten Commandments on the Swe shalt not kill/Dancin’ in the ruins of our own free will/Dancin’ in the ruins of the South/Confederate flag taped over my mouth.”

In “God Bless America (Pat MacDonald Must Die),” McMurtry, over a monster-metal riff, describes an SUV (and the political/economic realities behind it: “That thing don’t run on French fry grease/That thing don’t run on love and peace/Takes gasoline to make that thing go/Now bring your hands up nice and slow.” (No, the MacDonald in the title isn’t some obscure cabinet secretary. He’s the former leader of Timbuk 3, who plays harmonica on the song.)

The weakest political song here may be the one that’s gotten the most attention. “Cheney’s Toy,” a near-six-minute tirade against the president of the United States.

“You’re the man; show ’em what you’re made of/You’re no longer daddy’s boy/Take a stand, give ’em what they paid for/’cause you’re only Cheney’s toy.”

I dunno, but it seems to me that this piñata’s already been beaten to shreds, and the candy’s all gone. No, I don’t mind singers ripping into sitting presidents. I liked Neil Young’s Living With War. And, 40 years after they recorded it, I still laugh at Country Joe & The Fish telling Richard Nixon to “go back to Orange County and take off your pants” in “Superbird (Tricky Dick).” The point is, our current lame-duck president’s poll numbers are so low at this point that railing against Bush seems more like a tired ritual than a daring attack.

As always, McMurtry’s best songs deal not with politicians but with the lives of the working class and underclass trying to get by. “Fireline Road” is about a woman caring for her drug-addicted incest-victim sister. The narrator dreams of changing her name and changing her life. “Ruby and Carlos” is an aching acoustic tune about a drummer, his much-older girlfriend, and their deteriorating relationship.

But actually I wish there were a few less-serious numbers and a few more songs like the opening track, “Bayou Tortous.” It’s a straight-ahead swamp stomp (featuring a cameo by Cajun-rocker C.C. Adcock on guitar) and one of the few tunes in which the lyrics offer some of McMurtry’s trademark sardonic humor. The song starts off with the narrator and his wife “sitting on a couch watching Court TV.” But escapades ensue.

“I was lookin’ at every woman but mine/I was lookin’ at their faces,lookin’ at their parts/Lookin’ through the hole at the bottom of my heart.”

This tune comes closer than anything else on the album to some of McMurtry’s classics, like “Choctaw Bingo” and “Sixty Acres.” I hope he spends more time in Turtle Bayou and a little less time in The Situation Room.

James McMurtry and the Heartless Bastards perform at 7:30 p.m Friday, July 18, at Santa Fe Brewing Company (27 Fire Place). Tickets are $18 in advance at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St., 988-1234; $25 at the door.

Also recommended:

* Deep Cuts by Tony Joe White. The undisputed king of swamp rock (well, I guess, unless you’re unless you’re Slim Harpo) is back with an amazing little record that actually adds weird new dimensions to the basic sound he pioneered nearly 40 years ago.

With his impossibly deep drawl, his tremolo guitar, and a soul full of Louisiana funk, White brought the swamp to mainstream America with his hit “Polk Salad Annie.”

(Intellectual side trip: most people who think about this kind of thing believe that the coolest moment in the history of swamp rock was when Tony Joe says, “chomp, chomp” right after singing, “gators got your granny” in the refrain of the song. But I’m convinced that the coolest moment in the history of swamp rock came right after that, when Tony Joe says, “a wretched, spiteful, straight-razor-totin’ woman,” referring to Annie’s mother. Or, come to think of it, maybe it was the surprise wah-wah guitar solo at the very end. Discuss amongst yourselves.)

The new album, produced by White’s son Jody, updates the sound with some tasteful touches of techno, doing so without overwhelming his dad — and without being cheesy. If anything, it sounds even swampier.

Tony Joe performs a few of his older songs here, including “Willie and Laura Mae Jones,” the foreboding “High Sheriff of Calhoun Parrish” (it now sounds like a tune Portishead might do), and a here-come-the-hippies 1968 oddity called “Soul Francisco (those flower children were “wearin’ beads and all kind of funky clothes,” according to Tony Joe).

There are also a couple of funky instrumentals: “Set the Hook” (with a nasty harmonica solo over the voodoo drums) and “Swamp Water,” in which crazy drums battle a choppy guitar (Tony Joe’s still got his wah-wah pedal!). There’s also “As the Crow Flies” a six-minute swamp odyssey.

So dive right in. The gators are still hungry.

THE WAYBACK MACHINE

While cruising around on the Live Music Archive tonight I found a strange little site called The Wayback Machine , which basically is a search engine for long-lost Web pages that have been archived through some unholy fusing of technology and necromancy.

I couldn't resist the temptation to look up my original Web site, which I created soon after I first got on AOL about 11 years ago.

Sure enough, there were a few versions of the old site, the earliest being from December 1998. The cool thing is, most of the graphics and the links still work! (Some of my favorite old antimated giffs I'll include here.)

I also found some versions of the Web site after I left AOL and took the site to the wretched Dreamwater site. The most recent one is May 2003. It includes the infamous dancing Potatoheads, which came up in a murder trial in which the defense attorney tried to imply my Web site influenced the investigation of the case. (The defendant got off, so maybe the jury believed some of that talk.)

By the end of the year I was no longer able to access my site (and unable to get anyone from Dreamwater to return e-mails), so that led me to create this here blog.

Sure brings back some memories!

A HECK OF A SHOW

I'm looking forward to seeing The Gourds Thursday night on the Plaza as part of the Santa Fe Bandstand series. But the show just became more interesting after this Internet message from Gourds singer/mandolinist Kev Russell. (I'm naturally suspicious of some things that pop up on the Web, even some Maureen Dowd columns. But I checked this out and verified it with a source close to the band.)

Oh by the way we are under a "curse word" ban in Santa Fe NM this week. I do not know if we can get through a whole show without dropping expletives. If we hadn't been told not to, it would have been more likely that we wouldn't. But, now, I don't know, I just don't know. We might have some huffy New Mexicans morally judging us as we bust out of the Land Of Enchantment, pockets full of chili pods and fried bread.

I suspect there's probably some standard clause in The Gourds' contract prohibiting obscenity since it's outisde on public property, etc. I doubt the Cuss Word Police will be pulling double shifts Thursday night to guard us against the Gourds menace.

Still, it'll be interesting to see how the band handles the inevitable requests for their countried-up version of "Gin and Juice."

Should be a darn good show. Sean Helean opens at 6 p.m. The Gourds go on at 7.

MORE ON THE SECOND COMING

I'm still on the mailing list for The Government of God on Earth , the organization of Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, the self proclaimed second coming of Christ. They forwarded the news of a Houston TV station doing a report on the new messiah. Read it and watch it HERE.

Part of the new JC's gospel is pretty interesting.

"His message tells us that we’re perfect, that there’s no sin, there’s no devil,” (one follower) says. Miranda also says there’s no hell.

I think he got that from a much older source -- The Temptations:

"I'm tellin' you the natural facts for what it's worth/ You make your own Heaven and Hell right here on Earth/on Earth, on Earth, on Earth."

You gotta dig those cool "666" symbols on the podium and his followers' baseball caps. What could that mean?

I found this YouTube about Miranda by his fans. Enjoy.

CAMPAIGN RETROSPECT

I know, I know, I'm on vacation and I probably should be avoiding political stuff, but I couldn't resist Comedy Central's Indecision 2008 retrospect on the Richardson presidential campaign.

Basically, it's pretty brutal, but I learned these interesting "facts":

* Richardson was "The first serious candidate to strongly resemble the Incredible Hulk."

* Richardson enjoyed "support from the powerful pro-cockfighting wing of the Democratic Party." (They link to a story on the governor's much-mocked 2006 statement that "arguments for and against cockfighting have been strong on both sides," but failed to point out that he changed his mind and supported the cockfighting ban a few months later.)

The Indecision 2008 piece concludes, "For now Richardson remains the Governor of New Mexico, but the state's lackluster economy may inspire the voters to place him on waivers, at which point Richardson hopes he'll be picked up by the increasingly desperate Washington Nationals!"