IN RECOGNITION OF ROBERT NOVAK'S PASSING

Here's an old 1986 Crossfire episode with Novak debating Frank Zappa about that pesky First Amendment. (Actually Novak is far more reasonable than Washington Times columnist John Lofton here)

Thanks, Paul Bonanos.

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TERRY ALLEN ON THE PLAZA TONIGHT!

Here's the best musical deal of the week. Terry Allen playing free on the Plaza.

Terry and his son Bukka will play as part of the Santa Fe Bandstand series. It's the last week of the series, which I believe is one of the better things the City of Santa Fe does all year.

Also on the bill are singer Terri Hendrix with ace Lubbock steel guitarist Lloyd Maines. (Will Lloyd play with the Allen boys? He's a card-carrying member of Terry's Panhandle Mystery Band.)

The show starts at 6 pm. Be there!

And if you have a few minutes, here's a story I did about Terry about 10 years ago for No Depression.

****

In other local music news, Mary & Mars, a local bluegrass favorite of a few years ago featuring Sharon Gilchrist, Josh Martin and Ben Wright, are doing a couple of reunion shows.

There's a "secret" warm-up show Aug. 19th at the Cowgirl. Then the official gig at the Santa Fe Brewing Company on Aug. 28 with none other than Xoe Fitzgerald (no not suspect he is Joe West) opening.

Maybe if you ask nice, Sharon will sing her wonderful version of "I Say a Little Prayer."

XXXXX

Finally, I'm humbled at the nice write-up that Michael Kaiser gave my podcast, THE BIG ENCHILADA.

What's humbling is that Kaiser is one of my podcasting role models. His RadiOblivion on the Garagepunk Podcast Network is a true inspiration. (Check it out and Blow Up Your Radio, baby!) I feel like a Little Leaguer who just got a compliment from Mickey Mantle.

By the way, I'm working on my next podcast, which should be up before Labor Day.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, August 16, 2009
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Hobo Babylon by Deadbolt
Big Mouth Mickey by The Guilty Hearts
Amazons and Coyotes by Simon Stokes
Satanic Rites by Los Peyotes
Monk Time by The Monks
Shapeshifter/Saguaro by Lone Monk
Granny Tops 'em at the Hop by The A-Bones
Wildman on the Loose by Mose Allison

Jack Pepsi by TAD
Montana Slim by Andre Williams
Girl Gunslinger by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Everywhere by Nathaniel Mayer
I Don't Want No Funky Chicken by Wiley & The Checkmates
The Third Degree by The Dynamites featuring Charles Walker
Rootie Tootie Baby by King Salami & The Cumberland Three

JIM DICKINSON TRIBUTE

Monkey Man by Jim Dickinson
Down in Mississippi by Ry Cooder featuring Terry Evans, Bobby Charles & Willie Green Jr.
Killing Him by Amy LaVere
Let Your Light Shine on Me by Mudboy & the Neutrons
High Flyin' Baby by The Flamin' Groovies
A Thousand Forms of Mind by Mudhoney
Nobody Wants You When You're Down and Out by Jim Dickinson
Bad Man by T-Model Ford

Boll Weevil by North Mississippi All Stars
Red Neck Blue Collar by James Luther Dickinson
Country Blues by Tarbox Ramblers
Floating Bridge by Sleepy John Estes
I Don't Know by Flat Duo Jets
Spirit in the Dark by Aretha Franklin
Jesus on the Mainline by Tate County Singers, Otha Turner & The Afrosippi Allstars

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, August 14, 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
Goode's Field Road by Drive-By Truckers
Waco Express by The Waco Brothers
High Priced Chick by Yuchi & The Hilltone Boys
Let's Have a Party by Wanda Jackson
Gee Whiz Liz by Charles Senns
To' Up from the Floor Up by Ronnie Dawson
Red Chevrolet by The Crew
White Dove by Levon Helm
My Rough and Rowdy Ways by Chris Hillman
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by Gene Pitney

Rollergirl Gail by Misery Jackals
Cook County Jail by Ethyl & The Regulars
Haunted Heels by Big Sandy & The Flyrite Boys
Tourist in Town by Ray Mason
The Way You Can Get by The Gourds
Colorado Girl by Steve Earle
Down to the River by Clarence Fountain & Sam Butler
It Took 4 Beatles to Make One Elvis by Harry Hayward

DAVE ALVIN SET
All Songs by Dave except where noted
Boss of the Blues
Wanda and June
Marie Marie by Los Lobos
What Did the Deep Sea Say?
Out of Control
Closing Time by The Pleasure Barons

Que Sera Sera
So Long, Baby by Jo-El Sonier
So Long, Baby
Don't Look Now
Interstate City
Downey Girl


Dave Alvin and The Guilty Women play at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15, at Santa Fe Brewing Company, 37 Fire Place. Tickets are $25 at the door.

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: GUILT COMPLEX

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
August 14, 2009

After the death of his best friend, accordion player Chris Gaffney, who died of liver cancer last year, Dave Alvin disbanded his group The Guilty Men. Asked by the organizers of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco to try “something different” for his performance there last year, Alvin rounded up a bevy of the most respected female performers in contemporary roots music.

These included steel-guitar player Cindy Cashdollar (who has played with Asleep at the Wheel, Ryan Adams, Bob Dylan, and others), guitarist Nina Gerber, fiddler and mandolin player Laurie Lewis, fiddler Amy Farris, drummer Lisa Pankratz (who’s played with Cornell Hurd, Sleepy LaBeef, Billy Joe Shaver, etc.), bassist Sarah Brown, and singer Christy McWilson.

Thus was born The Guilty Women.

Apparently the festival performance was successful. The gig led to an album, Dave Alvin and The Guilty Women, and a tour, which is stopping at the Santa Fe Brewing Company on Saturday, Aug. 15.

The album could hardly be considered Alvin’s best. (For the record, I believe that honor belongs to his 1996 live album, Interstate City, followed by his more recent Ashgrove, which was released in 2004.) But there’s lots of good stuff on Guilty Women.

The record kicks off with “Marie Marie,” which is perhaps the best-known song by The Blasters (the group Alvin formed with his brother Phil in 1979). Los Lobos does this tune, too. I’ve seen them perform it with Dave Alvin and, just last month, with Phil at the Hootenanny festival in California. Phil, with the current lineup of The Blasters, sings it in Spanish these days.

But on this album, Dave and the Guilty Women do it Cajun style. (Alvin has said in the past that he wrote it as a Balfa Brothers-meets-Chuck Berry tune.) Even though the Blasters did it as a sweaty early rock ’n’ roller, it works great with swampy fiddles and Cashdollar’s prominent steel.
The band gets to rocking on the next track, “California’s Burning,” with a bullet-train beat by Pankratz and a nasty recurring blues hook (by Gerber, I’m assuming).

Another favorite of mine here is “Boss of the Blues,” another bluesy one. This sounds as if it might be a leftover from Ashgrove. It’s about Alvin and his brother cruising around the streets of L.A. with Big Joe Turner. (The title song of Ashgrove was about Dave and Phil sneaking in to the famous folk and blues club The Ash Grove as underage kids.) In “Boss,” Alvin has the long-departed Big Joe waxing nostalgic about the old days and the old haunts where he’d jam all night long. But by 1972, when he was riding with the worshipful Alvin boys, Turner is horrified by all the “burned-out buildings and abandoned stores” and sadly realizes that “no one around here remembers who the hell I am.”

There’s another autobiographical song about another of Alvin’s musical heroes. “Nana and Jimi” recalls the time when he was 12 and his mom drove him to a Jimi Hendrix concert. It starts out with some acoustic “Foxy Lady” riffs. Mom drives him to the show, parks, and waits outside. “She said, ‘Be careful honey of those crazy people inside,’” Alvin sings. The show is transformative. Even the cops at the door and on the stage seem “cool and strange” to the lad: “I was gonna see Jimi, and nothing’s gonna be the same.” This song reminds me of the look in my son’s eyes after I took him to a Green Day show a few years ago.

Surprisingly, the most moving song on Guilty Women is a tribute to another musician, but not a venerated old blues shouter or hillbilly king. “Downey Girl” is a sweet ode to a singer from Alvin’s hometown of Downey, California — the princess of early 1970s puff-pop, Karen Carpenter.

Alvin has conflicted feelings about Carpenter, who died in 1983 as a result of complications from anorexia. Her “sweet suburban songs” don’t do much for him musically. “I never liked her music, never saw her hangin’ ’round/And I never said nothin’ when people put her down,” Alvin sings. But he realizes he feels a connection. “But now that I’m older I can understand her pain/And I can feel a little pride when people say her name.”

One of the only problems with the album is that there are a few too many slow, folkie tunes. Years ago, Alvin said that there are two types of folk songs: quiet and loud. “I play both,” he bragged.

I like the loud ones better, Dave.

Also, Alvin is guilty of turning too many of his vocal duties over to McWilson. I enjoy what she does with “Weight of the World,” a song she wrote that sounds worthy of Buddy Miller. But she also does another original, “Potter’s Field,” and seems to take the lion’s share of Tim Hardin’s “Don’t Make Promises” and “Que Sera Sera” (yes, the old Doris Day tune). After a while, she starts to sound a little bit like Karen Carpenter.

I have to admit I really like the arrangement of “Que Sera Sera,” especially the piano playing by guest Guilty Woman Marcia Ball, who unfortunately isn’t touring with the band.

Dave Alvin and The Guilty Women play at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15, at Santa Fe Brewing Company, 37 Fire Place. Tickets are $23 in advance from the Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St., 988-1234, or $25 at the door.

* Also worth checking out: Alvin produced and played on a tribute to Chris Gaffney called Man of Somebody’s Dreams. It’s got some good covers of Gaffney tunes by Joe Ely, Los Lobos, Robbie Fulks, Peter Case, Big Sandy with Los Straitjackets, John Doe, James McMurtry, and others. And it’s got the last song Gaffney ever recorded, “The Guitars of My Dead Friends.” Google “Chris Gaffney” and “Yep Roc.” It’ll take you there.

* Big dose of Dave: I’ll play a 30-minute Dave Alvin segment, featuring an overview of his fine career, Friday night on The Santa Fe Opry on KSFR-FM 101.1 and streaming live at ksfr.org. The Opry starts at 10 p.m.; the Alvin set will start shortly after 11 p.m. And don't forget Terrell's Sound World, free-form weirdo radio, same time, same station, on Sunday nights.

NEW MEXICAN NIGHT AT SF BANDSTAND

Here's one I'd better cross-post on my music and politics blogs.

Wednesday night is Santa Fe New Mexican Night at the Santa Fe Bandstand series on the Plaza. My co-worker Robert Nott and I are co-hosting the show, which begins at 6 p.m.

On the program is former Lt. Gov. Roberto Mondragon, who for the record, was the very first person I ever interviewed at the Roundhouse (back in 1980) and one of the very few known New Mexico Democrats not currently running for lieutenant governor.

I guess there's something of a tradition of public officials in this state being musicians. There's New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Charles Daniels, like Taos Mayor Darren Cordova, like Court of Appeals Judge Rod Kennedy. A few years ago I wrote a column about Mondragon leading a whole chorus of politicos singing "De Colores" at a rally for then presidential contender Wesley Clark.

Mondragon and the mariachis then proceeded to sing three or four other tunes. He even got Mayor Larry Delgado to help him out in "The Fiesta Song." Delgado, former Gov. Jerry Apodaca and state Sen. Mary Jane Garcia swayed along with the music, playing The Pips to Mondragon's Gladys Knight.

I'm not sure whether any national television cameras were there, but it would have been a great CNN moment showing a unique side of New Mexico politics.

If you saw the movie The Milagro Beanfield War, you heard Roberto sing "De Colores" at the end of the film.

Also on the program are Mariachi Buenaventura, Santa Fe’s first all female mariachi band and guitarist Antonio Mendoza.

See you on the Plaza Wednesday.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, August 9, 2009
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Fuego by Los Peyotes
Let's Go Trippin' by Dick Dale
Geraldine by The A-Bones
Theme Song by Quan & The Chinese Takeouts
White Dress by Nathaniel Mayer
Mama Get the Hammer by Barrence Whitfield
Some Other Guy by Terry Dee & The Roadrunners
It's a Lie by King Khan
Cuckoo by The Monks
Take it Off by The Genteels

Rob and Steal by Paul "Wine" Jones
Let's Get Funky by Hound Dog Taylor
Pop Pop Pop (Remix) by T-Model Ford
Daddy Rollin' Stone by Andre Williams
Skinny Jimmy by The Del Morocos
My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama by Frank Zappa
Don't Slander Me by Roky Erikson

Woodstock Set (All songs live from Woodstock, August 1969)
The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil by The Jefferson Airplane
Love City by Sly & The Family Stone
Mean Town Blues by Johnny Winter
Fried Neck Bones and Some Home Fries by Santana
Work Me Lord/Piece of My Heart by Janis Joplin
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis