TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, June 14, 2009
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell with Special Co-host Tom Trusnovic
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

(Inebriated, uh, I mean abbreviated show tonight. First hour pre-empted by special Thirsty Ear Festival broadcast.)

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Make Up by Monkeyshines
I'm Fried by The Stooges
You Got it All ... Wrong by The Hives
Cave Girl by The Tex Reys
King Kong & Frankenstein by Monkeyshines
Black Cat Bone by Monkeyshines
Devil Inside by Rev. Beat-Man
Big Game Hunter by Hipbone Slim & The Knee Tremblers
Last Lost Fight by New Bomb Turks
Be My Queen by The Chantelles

Get Your Kicks on Route 666 by 27 Devils Joking
Going Away Baby by Grains of Sand
Caca de Vaca by Joe "King" Carrasco
Digging Up My Date by The Blood-Drained Cows
Crackhead Joe by Little Freddy King
What You Want by The Floors
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

SHORT SOUND WORLD TONIGHT

Terrell's Sound World is cut in half tonight because of the Thirsty Ear boradcast. So I won't be on until 11 p.m. and then for just an hour.

But it should be a good damn hour. I'll be joined by Tommy Trusnovic -- you should know him from Monkeyshines, The Blood Drained Cows, The Floors, 27 Devils Joking and who knows how many other bands. He says he has some brain new Monkeyshines tracks, so that'll be fun.

If you're in Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico tune in at 101.1 FM. For you in the outside world you can listen on the Web.

THIRSTY EAR 2009

The Thirsty Ear Festival snuck up on me this year. For the first time in its 10 year history, the festival was not held on Labor Day weekend. As I said before, I thought Mike Koster was crazy for changing the date, but yesterday shattered all previous attendance records, so that shows you what I know.

I wasn't able to make the Friday night show, but I was there for nearly all of yesterday. As always it was a good solid day of music from both local and national blues/country/folks acts at eaves Movie Ranch southeast of the city.

Most of the music through the day was nice and mellow. But for those of us who prefer it nice and rowdy as opposed to mellow, the show didn't really come alive until last night when Nathan & The Zydeco Cha Chas took the stage.

Nathan Williams and his band play good fast-paced traditional zydeco. Nathan dances around like a man half his age and his cousin, rubboard player Mark Williams, is even wilder. Great showmen and fun sounds.

Here's some thoughts about the rest of the day:

* Definitely the strongest part of the afternoon was banjo man Bela Fleck's set with African kora playerToumani Diabate. That was downright celestial. Diabate's instrument, which is a cousin to the banjo, reminded me of Washington Phillips, the itinerant gospel singer of the 1920s who played a stringed instrument that nobody has positively identified.

* The most stunning moment of the festival was during Felecia Ford's appearance with Sharon Gilchrist & band's late-night jam in the "hotel." It seemed that about half the musicians in town I know joined on stage at some point. But Felecia's performance of the Patsy Cline song, "So Wrong" would even put Patsy to shame.

* Watching Santa Fe's Alex Maryol in the hotel earlier in the day, I flashed back to the first time I'd seen him play in that building -- one of the very early -- maybe the first? -- Thirsty Ears when Alex was just a teenager. He was doing a solo acoustic set in the hotel -- if my memory serves me well because it was raining like crazy and the main stage act couldn't play. At one point songs, his cell phone went off. Alex answered and said "Hi Mom." He listened for a couple a couple of moments and very politely said something like, "OK, well, I'm on stage now .." I later told him that Elvis would have been proud of him.

* Sorry, Keb Mo fans -- and that includes about 99.6 percent of the people at Thirsty Ear yesterday -- I'm just not that big a fan. I just like my blues rougher and crazier.

* Early in the afternoon I ran into Otis Taylor wandering the grounds. He said he was just vacationing, not there to play. Dang! Would have loved to hear Otis!

The festival goes on today. It's "Community Day" which means local bands including Soulman Sam & Soul Explosion and Felix y Los Gatos. Admission is only $5 and two cans of food. ($10 if you don't bring the food.)

So get your cans out to Eaves Ranch!

Here's my FLICKR photos from Thirsty ear Saturday.

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, June 12, 2009
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Pink Mountain Rag by John Doe & The Sadies
Your Love and His Blood by Wayne Hancock
Tired of Being Me by Dave Gonzales
Ladies Love Outlaws by Waylon Jennings
Thank God For the Road by The Flatlanders
Blue Moon of Kentucky by Rev. Beat-Man
When the Police Came by Mama Rosin
Country Playboy Special by The Pine Leaf Boys
Walk On By by Charlie Pride
Settin' the Woods on Fire by Bob Log III

Subterranean Homesick Blues by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
Shake Shake Mama by Bob Dylan
Big Dog, Little Dog by Harvey Hunt
Rock-N-Bones by Elroy Dietzel
Rednecks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer by Johnny Russell
Hillbilly Truckdriving Man by Bill Kirchen
Keep on Truckin' by Smokey Wood & The Wood Chips
Deisel Smoke, Dangerous Curves by The Last Mile Ramblers
Jug Rag by The Prarie Ramblers

Let's All Be Normal by Poor Yorick
You Had Me at Get Lost by The Olympic Ass-Kicking Team
CB Song by Th' Legendary Shack Shakers
LSD Made a Wreck Outta Me by T. Tex Edwards & Out on Parole
Wolverton Mountain by Claude King
Hot Tamale Pete by Bob Skyles & The Skyrockets
Pistol Packin' Mama by Al Dexter & His Troopers
Liza Pull Down the Shades by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys

You Took My Thing and Put it In Your Place by C.W. Stoneking
Flapping Your Broken Wings by The Handsome Family
Satan's Jeweled Crown by The Louvin Brothers
Still Drunk, Still Crazy & Still Blue by Scott H. Biram
We Live In Two Different Worlds by Hank Williams
Faded Love by Chris Darrow
I've Got a Tender Heart by Eleni Mandell
A Satisfied Mind by Porter Wagoner
Something to Think About by Willie Nelson
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: COUNTRY GOLD

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 12, 2009

You can sweeten it with lush strings and horns. You can punk it up and strip it down. You can call in Hollywood golden throats or manufacture achy-breaky phony-baloney dance crazes. You can make it “alt” or “progressive” or “new traditionalist.” You can mock it with sarcastic “yeee-haws” or, even worse, take it oh so seriously.

But it’s hard to beat good old honky-tonk music, the kind made back before country music became so self-conscious. Though the originals are always the best, there are a couple of recent albums on which the artists honor the classic honky-tonk sound — plus one that represents the most ambitious case of hillbilly revisionism ever.

* Country Club by John Doe & The Sadies. This is a collection of (mostly) country classics — Willie Nelson’s “Night Life,” Bobby Bare’s “Detroit City,” Hank Williams’ “Take These Chains From My Heart,” etc. — along with some inspired obscurities and a smattering of originals.

Doe, of course, is the frontman for the Los Angeles punk band X, while The Sadies, led by Canadian brothers Dallas and Travis Good, are an ace utility band that has backed the likes of Neko Case, R & B lecher Andre Williams, Jon Langford, and others.

Even though he doesn’t have any Southern twang in his voice (and fortunately he doesn’t try to fake it), Doe’s husky vocals are just right for these songs. It’s obvious in every note that he and his band truly love this material. Of course we’ve known that ever since Doe and then-wife Exene Cervenka teamed up with Dave Alvin to form The Knitters all those years ago.

And while all the love is there, Doe and the Good brothers aren’t afraid to take some liberties with the tunes. The most obvious case is Merle Haggard’s “Are the Good Times Really Over for Good.” Hag’s version is slow and mournful, aching with nostalgia for those times before microwave ovens (“when a girl could still cook and still would”). But Doe & The Sadies (backed by Kathleen Edwards on harmony vocals) do it as an outright stomper. I’m torn here, because it does alter the mood of the song. But then again, it sounds so dang good.

One of my favorites here is the cover of Roger Miller’s “Husbands and Wives,” the late Tesuque resident’s lament about divorce. Then there’s “It Just Dawned on Me,” a bluegrassy stomper (with fiddle and mandolin by Travis Good) written by Doe and Cervenka.

But the very best is a forgotten little nugget by Whisperin’ Bill Anderson, “The Cold Hard Facts of Life.” It’s a twofer — a cheatin’ song and a murder ballad packed into one sad tale. And, shades of O.J., it’s a rare double murder in which the weapon is a knife.

* Viper of Melody by Wayne Hancock. Wayne the Train is perhaps the greatest living purveyor of ’50s-style roadhouse honky-tonk. His band — featuring an upright bass (Huckleberry Johnson), steel guitar (Anthony Locke), and guitar (Izak Zaidman) — is certainly retro, but it never sounds hokey. It’s Texas through and through, produced by Lloyd Maines and recorded in Dripping Strings.

All but one of the songs here are original, the exception being “Midnight Stars and You,” a jazzy little hillbilly torch song. There are some economic blues — “Working at Working” and a train song “Freight Train Boogie” (not the Delmore Brothers classic) — and some proto-rockabilly (“Dog House Blues”).

But once again, my favorite is a murder song. “Your Love and His Blood” contains a should-be-classic line: “The next time we’re together, you’ll be on the witness stand.”

One sad note: Viper of Melody is dedicated to guitarist Paul Skelton, an Austin picker whom Hancock describes as a mentor. Skelton, who played with the Cornell Hurd Band, died earlier this year. He apparently was slated to play on this album but was too ill to do so. Skelton would have made this record even better, but Hancock and the boys have made some music that would have made Paul proud.

* Naked Willie by Willie Nelson. Lots of casual fans believe that Willie sprang out of the Outlaw era of the 1970s, along with Waylon and Jerry Jeff and the boys. Many are unaware that he made a bunch of records in the 1960s.

And the sad part is that they probably wouldn’t recognize Willie even if they heard these early tracks. That’s because, like so many Nashville artists of that era, his music was overproduced, oversweetened, and over-country-politaned by the lords of 16th Avenue. Nelson was produced by Chet Atkins himself, and while Chet was an amazing guitarist, some of his Nashville Sound recordings are crimes against nature.

So Willie’s longtime harmonica player, Mickey Raphael, took it upon himself to rescue some of these great old Willie songs. He appointed himself “un-producer” and went about scraping off all the horns and strings, all the Anita Kerr Singers choruses.

This is similar, in concept at least, to Let It Be ... Naked, which was a de-Spectored version of Let It Be, the final Beatles album, which many believe was Phil Spector’s first murder victim.

While Naked Willie doesn’t sound nearly as sterile as Let It Be ... Naked, there is a hollow feeling to many of the tunes. This isn’t Raphael’s fault as much as it is the fault of the original arrangements. Even without Anita Kerr, these tunes are a lot stiffer and poppier than the 1970s records — Shotgun Willie, Phases and Stages, Red Headed Stranger — that most of us Willie fans first came to love. Even without the horns and strings, most of the songs here still sound overproduced.

If you really want a glimpse of 1960s Willie in the raw, seek out Crazy: The Demo Sessions, which features Willie and his lonely guitar singing “Permanently Lonely,” “I’ve Just Destroyed the World,” “Opportunity to Cry,” and other haunting tunes.

NM GROUP IN ONLINE BATTLE OF THE BANDS

Asper Kourt, an Albuquerque band that won a University of New Mexico competition, is now in a neck-to-neck struggle with a Pennsylvania group in the Song Joust Battle of the Bands.

At this writing, So Long Pluto, representing Pennsylvania State University, is leading with 3076 plays. Asper Kourt is in second place with 2,490 plays.

You can play their song "Rain Before Shine" and help Asper Kourt HERE.

The winner of the contest gets a recording contract with Song Joust Records. (In today's music industry, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, but don't mind my cynicism.)

The contest ends June 20.

Asper Kourt members are Kevin Herig (lead vocals, rhythm guitar); Mat Beston (bass); Nate Boitano (lead guitar); Kurt Sorenson (piano) and Heath Warren (drums). Boitano is the son of state Sen. Mark Boitano, R-Albuquerque.

THE FIRST AND HOPEFULLY LAST TIME BRET MICHAELS EVER WILL APPEAR IN THIS BLOG

Last night at the Tony Awards.



A story about the incident is HERE.