THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, May 6, 2011
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
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by Gene Pitney
I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You by Dr. John
Life is a Carnival by The Band
Back In The Saddle by Jim Kweskin
Cajun Stripper by Doug Kershaw
Pinetree Boogie by Th' Legendary Shack Shakers
Hate and Whiskey by Black Eyed Vermillion
Monkey Face Gene by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
Texas Whore Pleaser by Slackeye Slim

Too Much Monkey Business by Sleepy LaBeef
Let's Do Wrong Tonight by Simon Stokes
I'm Coming Home by Gal Holiday
What Do I Care? by Eddie Spaghetti
If You Play With My Mind by Cornell Hurd
Memories Cost A Lot by Whitey Morgan
Nighttime Honk by D.G. Williams and The Delta Raiders
Jug Town by Neil Hamburger

The Barnyard by Rachel Brooke
In The Clay Beneath The Tomb by Hylo Brown & The Timberliners
Lonely Are the Free by Steve Earle
Old Chunk Of Coal by Billy Joe Shaver
Poor Little Critter on the Road by Trailer Bride
Pocket Dial by The Possum Posse
Western Union Wire by Kinky Friedman & The Texas Jewboys
Doney Holler by Jawbone
Mister Sandman by Homer & Jethro

The Bird That Lived in a Burning Tree by Graham Lindsey
Starry Eyes by Roky Erickson
Kokomo Prayer Vigil by Peter Case
Sam Hall by Tex Ritter
Long Way to Hollywood by Steve Young
Broken Man by The Goddamn Gallows
Peg and Awl by Peter Stampfel & The Worm All-Stars
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Radio Joe!

I've just become brothers-in-radio with Joe West, one of  my all-time favorite Santa Fe songwriters.

Joe's new show, The Intergalactic Honky Tonk Machine can be heard 1 a.m. (yes, that's a.m.!) Thursdays on KSFR . And if you're not a night owl, Joe is archiving his shows on his website.

Joe West with Mike the Can Man at Frogfest '09

It's not just another music show. His first episode is a musical character profile of a singer named Dona Dylanschneider. Check it out.

In other Joe West news, he's got a new album coming out in June called Aberdeen, South Dakota. Joe says it's "my own personal "nod" to the memories, the relics and the debris of yesterday and was created using antiquated recording equipment and found thrift store instruments."

It'll be available on CD as well as cassette. (Get ready for the cassette revival!)

And there's more! Joe is following the Butch Hancock route. He'll be the special musical guest on rafting trips down the Chama River by Santa Fe Rafting. Joe will  be playing campfire concerts on these trips. (I still say that the best concert I ever went to was a Butch show one night during a Rio Grande raft trip. It was raining, so the concert was under a tarp held up by us in the audience.)

(I haven't posted my rafting photo with Butch in a couple of years, so check it out)

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Go Rimbaud!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 6, 2011

Just what the free world needs: another blues-rock band from Austin, Texas.

But Churchwood is different. To start with, instead of idolizing Stevie Ray Vaughn, this band names the late, great Captain Beefheart as its guiding spiritual light. No, Churchwood doesn’t exactly sound like the Captain on its new self-titled album. It just shares his ability to take the essence of primitive blues and mutate it into something new.

And the group doesn’t sound like all those trashy, lo-fi blues-punk groups — many of which I love — like the ones who populate Voodoo Rhythm’s roster. Churchwood is a little more refined, though it is still far from slick. For the record, the band doesn’t share many musical similarities with one of my favorite bluegrass punk bands, The Meat Purveyors, even though one of its guitarists, Bill Anderson, played in that group.

These guys are downright literate. Singer/ harmonica-honker Joe Doerr might sound like he spends every night chugging Budweisers in biker bars, but he’s a published poet and is a professor of English at St. Edward’s University in Austin. Churchwood’s literary bent is most obvious in the song “Rimbaud Diddley,” a tribute to Elias McDaniel and his famous beat as well as to the French Symbolist poet.

(There is rock ’n’ roll precedent here. Bob Dylan namechecked Rimbaud in the song “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” and Patti Smith began her career shouting “Go Rimbaud, go Rimbaud” on the song “Land” on her first album, Horses.)

And then on “Ulysses,” Churchwood cleverly mixes references to the hero of the Odyssey, the hard-drinking Civil War general, and James Joyce.

And wake up, fans of Hermann Hesse and Carlos Santana. There’s a song called “Abraxas.” This is a spoken-word piece with a bluesy backdrop and a beatnik vibe. Doerr recites, “I only speak in tongues now/ I wrangle serpents because they rankle me/ I do sleep well in the arms of dragons/Blind drunk on poison with the will to see.”

My favorite Churchwood song is “Car Crash,” despite its grim lyrics. The narrator prophesies and describes in detail his own death on some lonesome highway:

 “The road is wet and the hills are steep/I’ve miles to go before I sleep/A tractor trailer blows its horn at me/A stream of headlights makes it hard to see.”

But the music is so upbeat and rocking that you get the feeling it’s been a pretty fun joyride until the moment of impact.

Hear “Rimbaud Diddley”in its entirety on the latest exciting episode of The Big Enchilada podcast.

Also recommended:

* Kicking It With the Twits by The Hickoids. I never would have guessed that long-time Texas cowpunkers The Hickoids were Anglophiles. But they are, and this album, which has a Union Jack-themed album cover, consists of tunes from the British Invasion.

Actually from more than one British Invasion.

The liner notes of this CD (Note to MP3 generation: ask your parents what liner notes are) explain the weird trans-Atlantic musical ping-pong game between American and British rock ’n’ roll, from early blues and R&B to the Beatles era, West Coast psychedelia, British glam rock, and the rise of punk rock in New York and London.

“Our look and sound has always owed at least as much to England as it does to the United States,” The Hickoids declare, “so this is our own little tribute to the sexually deviant rockers of the British Isles.”

Come to think of it, singer Jeff Smith is known as “the thin white Duke of Hazzard.”

Among the selections here are songs by The Stones and The Who as well as by Mott the Hoople, Brian Eno, The Damned, Slade, The Move, and Elton John. Elton John? Why not. I like The Hickoid’s cover of “Bennie & The Jets,” with its steel guitar, better than Elton’s original. (And at least they avoided “Tiny Dancer.”)

The Hickoids did a great job of choosing at least slightly lesser-known songs from their English heroes. For instance, the Rolling Stones cover is “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?” It’s not exactly an obscurity — it was played on the radio all the time when I was in junior high — but not one overplayed on “oldies radio.” I like the tacky electric organ sound The Hickoids put on it.

The Hickoids add some subtle country guitar licks to The Who’s “Pictures of Lily,” Pete Townshend’s early ode to porn. Mott’s “Whizz Kid” is good and rocking. But I’d also like to hear a Hickoids version of “All the Way to Memphis.”

My only real complaint is that the album is just eight songs long. Come on, Hickoids, where are the covers of songs by The Animals, The Zombies, and — especially — The Fall? “Big New Prinz” with steel guitar would be a real treat. Maybe a “Twits Part 2” is in order.

By the way, both The Hickoids and Churchwood are on the Saustex Media label — as are cool bands like Piñata Protest and T. Tex Edwards & Out on Parole. Visit www.saustexmedia.com.

The Hickoids in Santa Fe: Synchronicity alert! I had just finished writing the above review when I checked my email and learned The Hickoids are coming here June 24. It’s their first time in Santa Fe. They play the Underground — that’s the basement of Evangelo’s — with Santa Fe’s beloved The Blood Drained Cows.
 

A Gentle Folk Song Marks a Historical Moment

The singer's name is Bob Cheevers. According to his website, his songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. In the late '60s he sang the theme song for a tv comedy called Love American Style.

Now Cheevers is giving some of his American love to the late Osama Bin Laden in a song called "The End of Bin."

It's a sturdy minor-key folk tune. Nice melody, but somehow I can't imagine Peter, Paul & Mary singing, "I hope his death was painful and slow ..."

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, May 1, 2011
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
I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You by Coleman Hawkins
Meet Me Boys on the Battlefront by The Wild Tchoupitoulas
Time Is on My Side by Irma Thomas & Alan Toussaint
Junco Partner by Professor Longhair
Firewater by Big Chief Monk Boudreaux
Ooh Poo Pah Doo Part 1 by Jessie Hill
My Indian Red by Dr. John
I Been Hoodooed by Bo Dollis & The Wild Magnolias

Lover's Curse by The A-Bones
Robacuna by Davila 666
You're Gonna Miss Me by Doug Sahm & Sons
School Is for Donkeys by Will Crum
Gudbuy T' Jane by The Hickoids
Hardworkin' Man by The Cramps
Mama Get the Hammer by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Red Rose Tea by The Marquis Chimps

Mustang Ranch by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
All Fall Down by The Standells
Ulysses by Churchwood
Horse Fever Blues by The Cheating Hearts
Tricks by Andre Williams
Killer Wolf by The Ultimatemost High
The Pygmy Grind by Sonny Dublin
Heaven is Mine by Unidentified Woman & Pentecostal Temple Congregation

Winter Funeral by Manby's Head
Dead Moon Night by Dead Moon
New Orleans Walkin' Dead by North Mississippi Allstars
Village of Love/Back to the Village of Love by Nathaniel Mayer
I Need Your Lovin' by Wolfman Jack & The Wolfpack
Get Out of the Car by Richard Berry
Sweet Roseanne by Bright Light Quartet
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, April 29, 2011
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasti

ng!
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
Red Red Robin by Rosie Flores
See Willie Fly By by The Waco Brothers
Bone to Pick by Black-Eyed Vermillion
DWI Marijuana Blues by The Imperial Rooster
The End by Peter Case
Castanets by Alejandro Escovedo
Me and Rose Connelly by Rachel Brookes
Highway Patrol by Junior Brown

Yes Ma'am, He Found Me in a Honky Tonk by Gal Holiday
Dope Smokin' Song by Jesse Dayton
Waitin' on the Sky by Steve Earle
Three Bloodhounds Two Shepherds One Fila Brasileiro by Slim Cessna's Auto Club
When the Hammer Came Down by House of Freaks
Ruthie Lingle by 16 Horsepower
Meanest Jukebox In Town by Whitey Morgan
Broken Man by The Goddamn Gallows

ARHOOLIE SET
Brother Low Down by Jesse Fuller
Louisiana Rock by Clifton Chenier
I Knew You Didn't Want Me by K.C.Douglas
The Touch of God's Hand by Vern & Ray
Barushka by Howard Armstrong
Mean Boss Man by Mance Lipscomb
Pachuco Boogie by Don Tosti's Pachuco Boogie Boys
Yeah, Lord! Jesus Is Able by Rev. Louis Overstreet
I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag by Country Joe & The Fish

I Wish I Was A Single Girl Again by The Maddox Brothers & Rose
Lowdown Dirty Things by Skip James
Don't Forget Me Love by Toni Brown
Treasury Scandal by Atilla the Hun
The Dirty Dozen by Butch Cage & Willie B. Thomas
Come See by Bobby Neurwirth
Lawtell Two-Step by Pine Leaf Boys
Up on Telegraph Avenue by Lightnin' Hopkins
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets


Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Arhoolie Howls!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
April 29, 2011

American music would have been a lot poorer had German immigrant Chris Strachwitz not gotten the weird notion to make trips to Texas to record bluesmen Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb a half century ago and start his own record company to make these treasures available to the public.

Over the years, Strachwitz’s Arhoolie label has given us music by some of the most important blues, hillbilly, folk, zydeco, Cajun, Tex-Mex and gospel musicians known (or unknown) to humanity. Arhoolie albums are like musical DNA, building blocks of a musical heritage most of us take for granted. Its catalog has branched out to include music from Mexico and the Caribbean, but it’s the sound of the rural South that is the core of Arhoolie.

In honor of Arhoolie’s 50th anniversary, the company has given us Hear Me Howling! Blues, Ballads and Beyond. The package consists of four CDs, plus a book detailing Arhoolie’s history.

Mississippi Fred McDowell with  Strachwitz 

Most of the music — four hours and 40 minutes worth — has never been released before, and many of those songs that previously have seen the light of day had only been on LP decades ago. All the music here was recorded in Strachwitz’s adopted hometown of San Francisco, some in the pre-Arhoolie ’50s. Tony Bennett might have left his heart there, but Hear Me Howling shows that other musicians just left a lot of great recordings there.

Some of the musicians lived in the land of Rice-A-Roni, but many were passing through and were captured live at festivals, coffee-house concerts, and even house parties. Mississippian Skip James, for instance, was recorded at Strachwitz’s home. Can you imagine how cool it must have been to have Skip James in your living room, playing your piano and moaning his ghostly blues?

James isn’t the only major dude to appear in this collection. There are San Fran bluesman Jesse Fuller, Sonny Terry (born Saunders Terrell, no relation), Bukka White, Lonnie Johnson, zydeco deity Clifton Chenier, Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Big Joe Williams and, of course, Hopkins and Lipscomb.

Some highlights of this collection include Hopkins’ “Up on Telegraph Avenue” — also recorded at Strachwitz’s house — which is a funny and lecherous encounter between the old blues codger and “a little hippie girl” in a miniskirt who offers herbal treats.

There are four Lipscomb songs here. This soft-spoken guitar picker is a Texan, but his music reminds me a lot of that of Mississippi John Hurt, especially the tune “Sugar Babe.”

Some of the most intense songs are by Big Joe Williams. His session was recorded shortly after he had been released from the psychiatric ward of the local jail. Thus he sings “Greystone (Alameda County Jail) Blues” with blood in his eye. And “Oakland Blues,” sung by his wife Mary Williams, sounds even more frightening.

There’s even a 1965 version of the anti-war classic “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” by an early version of Country Joe & the Fish. This was a pre-electric Fish that sounded like the West Coast cousin of Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band. One thing I learned from the Howling book — Joe McDonald was named by his leftist parents for Joseph Stalin, whose nickname was “Country Joe.” Maybe this was a Communist plot!

Those musicians mentioned are just the ones you’re likely to have heard of. Some of the most amazing performances here are by those who are mainly known to Arhoolie devotees and other serious lunatics. For instance there’s the Rev. Louis Overstreet, a Southerner who ended up in Arizona, preaching at a church called St. Luke’s Powerhouse Church of God in Christ. Overstreet played electric guitar with his hands and played a bass drum with his feet, backed by his four sons on vocals.

There’s K.C. Douglas, a singing garbage man — I’m not making this up — who lived in Berkeley. There are four tracks by Douglas here including the title song. Most of his contributions are acoustic numbers — my favorite, “I Know You Didn’t Want Me” features a band, including sax and piano.

I had actually heard of Toni Brown before. She was in an old female-fronted hippie band called the Joy of Cooking that made several albums in the post-flower-power era. But I never realized until now what a great country singer she was. Hear Me Howling has three songs credited to Brown, all of them sweet, soulful acoustic hillbilly tunes in which she sings like a young Kitty Wells.

There’s also “Charles Guiteau,” a fun little assassination ballad by Crabgrass, an old-timey string band of which Brown was a member. And there’s an acoustic Joy of Cooking song, “Midnight Blues,” though I prefer Brown’s country stuff.

Santa Fe’s most prominent folkie, the late Rolf Cahn, isn’t on this album. But there are songs by two of the women he loved — Barbara Dane and Debbie Green, so Cahn is here, howling in spirit.

Country, blues, and folk tunes make up the bulk of this collection. But the fourth disc includes some jazz from the Bay Area by acts like the Now Creative Arts Jazz Ensemble, guitarist Jerry Hahn, drummer Smiley Winter, and saxman Huey “Sonny” Simmons. Interesting stuff, but Chenier’s “Louisiana Rock” and Big Mama’s “Ball and Chain” are the highlights of disc four for me.

Strachwitz is pushing 80 now, but Arhoolie isn’t showing its age. As a foreigner, Strachwitz found the music of America wild and magical. We should thank him and Arhoolie for letting us here these crazy sounds through fresh ears.

Check out www.steveterrell.blogspot.com. Arhoolie on the airwaves: Hear a special Arhoolie set on The Santa Fe Opry 10 p.m. Friday on KSFR-FM 101.1.

Blog bonus: Here's  my personal Top 10 favorite Arhoolie albums.


1 America’s Most Colorful Hillbilly Band Vol. 1 by Maddox Brothers & Rose: These southern immigrants to California had more fun than hillbillies ought to be allowed to have.


2 Pachuco Boogie: The lion’s share of the songs and indeed, the heart and soul of this CD belong to Edmundo Martínez Tostado, an El Paso native better known by his stage name: Don Tosti. Tosti — an accomplished jazzman who became a jump-blues icon of zoot-suit culture.

3 Louie Bluie Soundtrack: This is music from a quirky documentary made in the mid '80s  by Terry Zwigoff, who is more famous for Crumb. It stars fiddler/mandolinist Howard Armstrong, who plays blues, gospel and jazz tunes — not to mention a German waltz and a Polish tune. As he explains in the movie, Armstrong was fluent in several languages, including Italian and a little Chinese, which, he said, helped him get gigs when he moved from Tennessee to Chicago.

4 Live at the Powerhouse Church of God by Rev. Louis Overstreet. An electric guitar-picking, bass-drum-pounding preacher whose church was in Phoenix. Most of this album was recorded by Strachwitz during church services in 1962. But the CD version has some bonus tracks,  including several recorded at Overstreet's home in which the preacher plays acoustic guitar.

5 Big Mama Thornton with The Muddy Waters Band. Good basic Chicago blues, recorded in San Francisco. I’d have hated to have been the “hound dog” Big Mama sang about. But the “Black Rat” she lays in on this album sounds like he’s in worse trouble.

6 Good Morning Mr. Walker by Joseph Spence. Bahaman Spence was an amazing guitarist whose thick dialect made him sound like a wino from Mars when he sang his joyful tunes.

7 Sacred Steel. This style of gospel music began in the late 1930s in the House of God, an African- American Pentecostal denomination. Although the steel guitar became popular in House of God congregations that were not able to afford an organ or piano. Arhoolie has done several sacred steel compilations. The first one, release in 1997, features some of the giants of the genre including Willie Eason, The Cambell Brothers, Aubrey Ghent and Sonny Treadwell.

8 & 9 Calypsos From Trinidad: Politics, Intrigue and Violence in the 1930s; and The Roots of Narcocorrido.  These collections, although representing different countries and different styles of music, both are collections of songs, many of them controversial, dealing with politics and crime.

10 Old Time Black Southern String Band Music by Butch Cage & Willie B. Thomas,  Recorded back in 1960, but not released until five years ago,  this is nothing but party music, at least the way they used to have parties in the rural South. I was too young to have been invited to this party, but this is the next best thing.

Political Correctness As Fast as Lightning

A man at a seaside pub on the Isle of White was arrested -- arrested! -- on charges of "racially aggravated harassment" for performing the 1974 Carl Douglas hit "Kung Fu Fighting."

Read all about it HERE (Thanks to Rob for showing me this.)

Meanwhile, enjoy the video below .... WHILE YOU STILL CAN!

R.I.P. Poly Styrene, Phoebe Snow & Huey Meaux,

This morning I learned of the deaths of two very different singers whose music affected me in different ways at different times: Poly Styrene of The X-Ray Specs and Phoebe Snow, who is best remembered by folks my age for her 1975 hit "Poetry Man," though I remember her for a couple of other dark, smoky tunes from her first album, "It Must Be Sunday" and "I Don't Want the Night to End."

Also last week famed producer Huey Meaux, the Crazy Cajun died. He was the producer of Freddy Fender, The Sir Douglas Quintet, Roy Head and others.

Here's some videos to remember them by:

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, April, 24 2011
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
Live it Up by Nobunny
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues by Bob Dylan
Peter Cottontail by The Bubbadinos
Rambling Rose by Barrence Whitfield & Savages
Black Snake by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Preachin' At Traffic by The Legendary Shack Shakers
Do the Climb by King Salami & The Cumberland 3
Dirty Kid by Hell Crab City
Laugh at Me by The Devil Dogs
Take A Bath by Charles Sims

Pontiac Flannigan by Churchwood
Luck by The Manxx
Born to Lose by Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers
Adictos Al Ye-Ye by Hollywood Sinners
You Broke My Mood Ring by Root Boy Slim & The Sex Change Band
I Wish You Would by The Fleshtones
New Orleans by The Plimsouls with The Fleshtones
Cornfed Dames by The Cramps

21 Days in Jail by Magic Sam
Dead End Street by The Monsters
Hey You by Simon Stokes & The Heathen Angels
He's Doin' It by The Gories
I Would Die 4 U by The Rockin' Guys
Truck Stop Urinal by The Plainfield Butchers
El Sadistico by Deadbolt
Grifted by New Bomb Turks
Bennie & The Jets by The Hickoids

Heaven and Back by The Mekons
California Tuffy by Geraldine Fibbers
Tryin' by The King Khan & BBQ Show
You Make Your Own Heaven and Hell Right Here on Earth by The Tempations
The Sniper by The Black Angels
Moby Octopad by Yo La Tengo
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE