Tuesday, June 29, 2010

james brown, james brown


My pal Alethea and I started talking about James Brown today. She reminded me that the Godfather had died on Christmas Day back in 2006. I rambled on about a chance encounter in an ex-pat bar in Moscow, where some impertinent so and so had the gall to mock Brown’s music and transcendent talent. A bit later that night I walked out into cold, cold Moscow and got stopped by the militsia: better than listening to someone run down a genius. Anywho. In 2010 Dan Reeder did quite right by JB when he recorded the deeply soulful, gospel-inflected “James Brown is Dead and Gone.”

Dan Reeder - James Brown is Dead and Gone [emusic]

Monday, June 28, 2010

fiddlin' byrd


While running around the www today trying to find some words about the sublime Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark, I discovered over at the essential Byrd Watcher that the recently deceased Senator Robert Byrd was a fiddlin’ fool. Seems this cranky, long-winded Byrd loved to fiddle and fiddled well enough to make an Opry appearance as well as release an album, Mountain Fiddler, of old-time music. Here’s a video montage clip of Byrd flashing his skills:



Check out the wonderful University of North Carolina Southern Folklife Collection blog for a few words about the Senator and a clip of one of the songs from Mountain Fiddler.

I See Hawks in L.A. honored the late Byrd with a song on their 2006 California Country album.
I See Hawks in L.A. - Byrd from West Virginia [emusic]

And here's a few more clips:



Sunday, June 27, 2010

somehow

Vermont milk cows looking at me like the fool I am.

Somehow this bluebird contraption has made it past the one year mark. So I figured I’d celebrate with a six-pack: Waylon’s on the road again, Gene Clark is a genius again, the early Byrds hit the road for Boston, George cries in his booze again, as does Commander Cody, and James Talley casts those daily grind troubles aside and takes the wife out to raise a little hell. And while I'm celebrating, I want to thank Odie, Brendan, and Mike for helping me get and keep this thing rolling. And, folks, do yourself a solid and check out the links over on the right. If you aren’t regularly going to The Rising Storm, The Adios Lounge, Groover’s, or the other sites listed, then you are depriving the brain cells of vital musical oxygen. And speaking of oxygen, it's time to crack a cold one and listen to Waylon and the boys.

Waylon Jennings - Laid Back Country Picker
Gene Clark and the Gosdin Brothers - Is Yours Is Mine
The Byrds - Boston
George Jones - Why Baby Why
Commander Cody - Wine Do Yer Stuff
James Talley - You Can’t Ever Tell

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

harmonica wizard


Image from DeFord Bailey website


“He listened to sounds, it was sounds that were always on his mind; hens, foxes, hounds, turkeys were the subjects of his imitation as well as trains. Most of all, he wanted to get the train sound right and eventually came close enough so that a railroad engineer once came up to the WSM studios to compliment DeFord on his accuracy as well as to correct his whistle pattern for crossings.”
- from “DeFord Bailey” chapter in Guralnick’s Lost Highway

DeFord Bailey - Fox Chase [emusic]

"In fact it was DeFord's harmonica playing that inspired the Opry's change of name. DeFord's 'Pan-American Blues' led off the broadcast on the night of December 10, 1927, contrasting sharply with a 'serious' modern piece just aired on the NBC Music Appreciation Hour that was meant to convey the sense of an onrushing locomotive. There was, sniffed NBC conductor Walter Damrosch...'no place in the classics for realism.' The Solemn Ol' Judge [Opry MC George D. Hay], not to be outdone, introduced DeFord's train blues, and the Barn Dance itself, as 'nothing but realism, down to earth for the earthy,' and then came up with the inspired tag: 'For the past hour we have been listening to the music taken largely from the Grand Opera, but from now on we will present the Grand Ole Opry."

- from “DeFord Bailey” chapter in Guralnick’s Lost Highway

DeFord Bailey - Pan American Blues [emusic]

Saturday, June 19, 2010

in the end there's just a song


"In a way, it was a song about the end of life and was better suited to the tired and broken Garcia of fifty than the strong, confident man of thirty who first sang it."
- from Blair Jackson's Garcia: An American Life

Jackson is writing about "Stella Blue," yet what he says applies to the Dead's cover of Merle Haggard's "Sing Me Back Home" - but with a twist: Garcia only sang it during those "strong, confident" years, but he performed it as though he knew exactly what it was like to be tired and broken at fifty.

Grateful Dead - Sing Me Back Home [buy]

Saturday, June 12, 2010

as i've found

Reeder's homemade guitars from the Oh Boy label website.

Hiram rolled into town and gave me the keys to a Dan Reeder trip. I’ve been tripping ever since. After hanging out for a good while with Mr. Hurley, I’m pretty primed for this journey. There’s an anything goes spirit to Reeder’s songs: One minute it’s Norwegian union scale wages, the next Chinese drivers with their feet on the brakes, then we’re sailing the seas and breeding ponies. And all along it’s Reeder singing the workingman blues. It seems disparate, but that just adds to the glow of understanding.

Dan Reeder - Pussy Heaven [emusic] [oh boy]

Saturday, June 5, 2010

live machine


Mark Seliger's photo from an American Songwriter interview with Welch & Rawlings.

I don’t get out to see too many concerts, but this week I caught Sam Quinn playing a (mostly) solo acoustic set and tonight I’m hitting the town with friends to see the Dave Rawlings Machine. Since hometown pal John placed Rawlings’ Friend of a Friend album in front of me I’ve basically been delirious about it. Just listen to this infectious “Sweet Tooth” with Old Crow Medicine Show, Gillian Welch, and Benmont Tench, and you can tell why. Like many of Michael Hurley’s best songs, "Sweet Tooth" takes a break from stale old Reason to open us back up to poetic, earthly delight -- and just having a good time while we float around on this rock. Count me in.