TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Some Texas Honky Tonk Sounds

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Feb. 3, 2012


Texas country singer Dale Watson’s latest album, The Sun Sessions, has a funny backstory. Watson had been booked at a bar in Memphis, Tennessee. Or at least he thought he had a gig there. Somewhere between Austin and Memphis he learned there was a misunderstanding. “No, we have a DJ on Tuesdays, and we don’t have you booked,” someone at the club told him.

“After feeling awful that a music town with such a history would rather have a dance DJ than live music, I thought, ‘What the hell. I got lemons. Let’s make lemonade,’” Watson writes in the CD liner notes.

Dale Watson last year at the Broken Spoke

So he called Sun Studio — the funky little magic factory in Memphis that gave birth to rockabilly and launched the careers of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash — and asked to book some time. He was in luck. And so were fans of Watson’s music.


Watson almost always plays country music in a basic, understated way — steel, fiddle, guitar, bass, drums, and not much else.

But for this album, he strips it down even more. In honor of Cash’s Tennessee Two, Watson calls the backup band on this record The Texas Two. They are stand-up bassist Chris Crepps and a drummer, Mike Bernal, who just hits the snare. Watson only plays his acoustic guitar. Together they celebrate the signature sound of Sun.

To Watson’s credit, even though this is something of a “tribute” album, he didn’t play the hits of the ascended masters that we’ve all heard a zillion times before. He wrote all these tunes — six of them on the bus to Memphis after he booked his session time at Sun. Watson’s baritone sounds more like Cash’s voice than the voices of the other Sun titans, so this album might be viewed as more of an alternative-reality tribute to the Man in Black.

The album starts out with a jittery little tune called “Down Down Down Down Down.” With Crepps’ urgent bass doing most of the work, Watson spins a tale of a man about to sink. “Well I had my first taste of whiskey/I had my first taste of love/Both got me high and twisted up inside/Only one way to go after up.”

No, this isn’t the beginning of some gigantic bummer. It has fun and good times, too.

For instance, “My Baby Makes Me Gravy” is a happy song of good country cookin’ and sex. “Drive Drive Drive” sounds a lot like Cash’s “Cry Cry Cry,” and “Gothenburg Train” has the feel of a classic train song.

Big Daddy

Watson also does several character sketches. “George O’Dwyer” is the story of a hell-raising buddy of Watson’s who owned a recording studio in Austin. “Jonny at the Door” is a salute to a barroom bouncer, and “Big Daddy” is about a shoeshine man in Austin. (I got my shoes shined by Big Daddy when I was at the Broken Spoke for a Watson show last year.)

My favorite song on The Sun Sessions is “Elbow Grease, Spackle and Pine Sol.” The narrator is served his divorce papers, and he’s in his empty house, apologizing to his ex about holes in the wall and stains on the carpet.

At first a listener might think he’s regretting being a sloppy and possibly violent husband. But — in one of those wonderful twists you find in country-music classics like Leon Ashley’s “Laura (What’s He Got That I Ain’t Got)” and Willie Nelson’s “I Just Can’t Let You Say Goodbye” — you realize the narrator is holding a gun, and he’s apologizing for the mess he’s about to leave his former Mrs. to clean up.

One amazing thing about this album is that none of the 14 songs here reaches the three-minute mark. Nearly half of them are under two minutes. Watson knows that brevity sometimes packs a harder punch.

Also recommended:

RB & Two Hoots at Threadgill's last year

*  Come and Take It by Rick Broussard’s Two Hoots and a Holler. I know Matt Brooks, the guitar player for this band, through an online music-discussion board that I used to belong to starting back in the 1990s. I had never met him face to face, but for years he had been trying to get me to see his band when I went to Austin.

Somehow I never was able to arrange that — until last August, when I was at the Live Music Capital of the World and Matt’s band was playing a gig at Threadgill’s World Headquarters.

I was impressed. Broussard is a fine singer and songwriter, and the Hoots are a mighty tight country-rock band. They ought to be by now. Broussard started the group back in 1984. Members have changed and shuffled through the years, but Broussard has been at it long enough to know what he wants from his players. (And, showing what a small world it is, I learned that the fiddle player, Sean Orr, used to play with Joe West’s band when the pride of Lone Butte lived in Austin.)

Many of the songs they played the night I saw them are on this album. Among them are the Mexican-flavored opening cut, “I Cried and Cried the Day Doug Sahm Died.” It’s Broussard’s heartfelt tribute to a fellow San Antonio native.

There are some excellent honky-tonkers here, such as “Me Not Calling” and “Every Bit as Proud.” Maybe you haven’t heard of them, but Rick and the boys are big in Norway — at least the town of Halden, to which they pay a rocking tribute in “Halden (Is a Hell Raisin’ Town).” In an obscure historical reference to a Swedish monarch who was killed in battle there in 1718, Broussard sings, “Those people never go to bed/They shot King Karl in the head.”

With the help of fiddler Amy Farris, Broussard delivers a bluegrass sound on “Over My Head in Blue.” It’s a shift from the song that precedes it, “Love Me Truly,” a honky-tonk tune with echoes of British Invasion-era rock. But it works.

This group also plays one of the best Bob Dylan covers recorded in recent years. I didn’t think there was much else anyone could do with the song “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” but Broussard and the band rip through it with abandon, like a fun cross between The Pogues and Jason & The Scorchers.

I’m hoping Two Hoots and a Holler are playing next time I’m in Austin.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: LIFE OF BRIAN

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
September 19, 2008


If Brian Wilson's new album, That Lucky Old Sun, truly were the follow-up to Smile, I could see why it would be considered something of a sophomore slump.

That Lucky Old Sun is Wilson’s first album since Smile. (not counting his 2005 Christmas album). But let’s be real. Smile is a bizarre masterpiece that Wilson first began working on more than 40 years ago with The Beach Boys. It was rescued and revived four years ago by Wilson, with the loving, patient, and determined assistance of members of his band Wondermints. (Wilson fans should, if they haven’t already, immediately get their hands on the DVD Brian Wilson Presents Smile. I came away respecting his young band mates nearly as much as I respect Wilson himself.) Smile is in a class by itself, but you shouldn’t hold that against this new album.

It could be argued that, on the surface, That Lucky Old Sun sounds like a follow-up to Smile. Both albums are song cycles featuring recurring musical themes, tunes ranging from the whimsical to the melancholy, and obvious references to longtime Wilson sources like Phil Spector and The Four Freshmen. You hear strains of doo-wop, barbershop, California pop, quasi-chamber music, and lounge sleaze. The lyrics are frequently clunky — but that’s been true ever since Wilson, now in his mid-60s, was a little-bitty Beach Boy.

The tune for which the album is named, which appears as a brief introduction and reappears in short snatches elsewhere in the album, is indeed that old Frankie Laine hit. My initial encounter with the song was Ray Charles’ version in the 1960s. I was just a kid, and this big-orchestrated production was one of the first times a song actually made me sad. I could feel the depths of sorrow and frustration as Charles sang, “I fuss with my woman and toil with my kids/Sweat ’til I’m wrinkled and gray/I know that lucky old sun has nothin’ to do/But roll around heaven all day.”

But Wilson’s version of the song doesn’t evoke the same level of sadness or world-weariness. There’s no fussing or toiling here. Wilson’s take is fortified by a strange optimism, as if he’s saying, “If you’re lucky, you can be like the sun and roll around heaven all day.”

The first half or so of the record is an update of one of Wilson’s longest-running themes — his love for Southern California. It’s a celebration of Los Angeles, from the beach to the barrios to Hollywood Boulevard. “The sun burns a hole through the 6 a.m. haze/Turns up the volume and shows off its rays/Another Dodger-blue sky is crowning L.A.,” Wilson sings in the peppy “Morning Beat.” You almost expect him to intertwine pieces of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.”

But in the second half, Wilson gets more interesting as he begins to confront himself about his infamous “lost years” of mental illness. “At 25 I turned out the light/Couldn’t handle the glare in my tired eyes,” he sings in “Going Home.”

In “Oxygen to the Brain,” he moans, “How could I have got so low/I’m embarrassed to tell you so/I laid around this old place/I hardly ever washed my face.”

Then there’s “Midnight’s Another Day,” in which he sings, “Swept away in a brainstorm/Chapters missing, pages torn.”

Alas, there are aspects of this album that prevent it from being a classic. For instance, the silly doggerel “narratives” that pop up between some songs are corny and annoying. Surprisingly, they are written by Smile lyricist Van Dyke Parks. Sadly, they are Parks’ only contributions to the record.

“Mexican Girl,” about some lovely señorita in East Los Angeles, is downright embarrassing — at least the lyrics are. “Hey bonita muchacha/Don’t-cha know that I want-cha. ... You have my sacred heart/We’ll finish at the start.”

And while the music of “Forever She’ll Be My Surfer Girl” isn’t bad, the self-referential sentimentality is a little much for these jaded ears.

So no, That Lucky Old Sun is not in the same league as Smile. But consider this: even though Beethoven’s Sixth is no Beethoven’s Fifth, it’s still Beethoven.

Bonus:

Steve Terrell’s Brian Wilson List
* Best Brian Wilson Song of All Time: “Surf’s Up,” co-written by Van Parks. My favorite version of this song, originally written for Smile, is the one that appeared as the title song of the Beach Boys’ 1971 album.
* Best Brian Wilson Song of All Time Runner-Up: “Heroes and Villains.” My favorite version is from the original Smile sessions; it appears on the Beach Boys’ 1993 box set, Good Vibrations.
* Best Cover of “Surf’s Up”: David Thomas & Two Pale Boys.
* Worst Cover of “Surf’s Up”: Vince Gill, Jimmy Webb, and David Crosby on the DVD An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson.
* Weirdest Brian Wilson Song: “Rio Grande,” from his self-titled 1988 album. It sounds like the soundtrack for an imaginary theme-park ride based on a Western starring Pee-wee Herman.
* Saddest Brian Wilson Song: “Still I Dream of It.” My favorite version is the lo-fi demo track on I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.
* Best Brian Wilson Celebrity Ode: “Johnny Carson,” from The Beach Boys Love You.
* Best Ode to Brian Wilson: “Brian Wilson” by Barenaked Ladies
* Best Brian Wilson Song I Don't Care If I Never Hear Again in My Whole Life: “Good Vibrations.” It’s a great song, but Sunkist ruined it for me years ago.
* Best Brian Wilson Song That’s Not Really a Brian Wilson Song: “Meth of a Rockette’s Kick” by Mercury Rev.
* Best Brian Wilson Radio Tribute: This Sunday at 11 p.m. on Terrell’s Sound World, KSFR-FM 101.1.

Bonehead correction: This is embarrassing, but I got the title of the Zeno Tornado album reviewed in last week’s Tune-Up wrong. (I corrected it in my blog) The correct title is Rambling Man, which appears in near illegible letters on the cover. I called the album Lover of Your Dreams, which is the name of the first song. And this is what confused me: It’s also the name of a previous Tornado album

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: To Sing Those American Tunes

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
June 30, 2017

Back during the height of Watergate, Paul Simon sang, “We come in the age’s most uncertain hour to sing an American tune.” 

We’ve had lots of uncertain hours since then, and I still find strength in those American tunes, the old creaky blues, gospel, hillbilly, jug-band records, those crazy songs of joy, wry humor, and simple wisdom sung by people living in severe poverty in isolated regions, in an era of harsh injustice and racial apartheid. 

I find comfort in those weird musical stories of horrible murders, of hopping trains, of hopeless drunks finding the Lord, of spooky old pines where the sun never shines, of carefree ducks diving into rivers of whiskey.

So during this uncertain, tense, and violent era I was heartened in recent weeks when PBS presented American Epic, its excellent documentary series about the dawn of the American recording industry in the mid-1920s, when record companies sent talent scouts to scour the hills, hollers, and honky-tonks of the South to find musicians that the folks in rural America could relate to. 

The series, directed by British filmmaker Bernard MacMahon and narrated by Robert Redford, focuses on a handful of greats like the Carter Family, Mississippi John Hurt (a sweet, gentle spirit who is one of my major musical heroes), blues pioneer Charlie Patton, and South Carolina gospel singer and preacher Elder J.E. Burch — whose parishioners included the young Dizzy Gillespie. 

American Epic features three episodes of musical history, plus one called “The American Epic Sessions,” which consists of performances of (mostly) old songs by contemporary artists including Alabama Shakes, Taj Mahal, Los Lobos, Beck, Willie Nelson with the late Merle Haggard, and more. These tunes were recorded on an old pulley-driven Western Electric Scully lathe, the kind that the record companies hauled around to record the immortals in the ’20s and ’30s. Throughout “Sessions,” the directors show a near cargo-cult fascination with this Rube Goldberg-like device.

Though the South is the main focus of American Epic, there are also excursions into the West. There is a segment on Tejano music queen Lydia Mendoza and a trip to Hawaii, where we hear the story of Joseph Kekuku, the man who invented the steel guitar. 

And there is a segment on Hopi music, telling the story of how racist religious nuts in Congress sought to ban the tribe’s Snake Dance, calling the Hopi religion “a weird cult” after unauthorized film footage of the dance — which had been attended years before in Arizona by President Theodore Roosevelt — leaked out. In response, a group of Hopi religious leaders went to Washington, D.C., in 1926 to perform the Snake Dance for a crowd of dignitaries on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. They also recorded several songs for RCA Victor.


Being a jug-band fanatic, my favorite segment deals with the Memphis Jug Band, led by Will Shade. At one point the rapper Nas talks about the similarities between hip-hop and jug-band music. “These guys are talking about carrying guns, shooting something, protecting their honor, chasing after some woman who’s done them dirty.” Nas, backed by an acoustic band led by Jack White, performs a version of the Memphis Jug Band’s “On the Road Again” in the “Sessions” episode.

Sony has released nine American Epic albums, including a single-disc soundtrack of the artists covered, a five-disc box set, a “Sessions” soundtrack by modern musicians, and several for individual artists and genres. Critic Robert Christgau recently joked — was he joking? — that “American Epic is a Sony plot to poach/rescue the American folk music franchise from the Smithsonian and the great Harry Smith.”

Most of this music is available on other compilations. Here are some other great American roots-music collections:

Harry Smith

* Anthology of American Folk Music. The fabulously eccentric Harry Smith compiled this collection in 1952 from old 78 rpm records in his personal collection. The 84 songs — blues, hillbilly, Cajun, gospel — originally were recorded between 1927 and 1932. Among the artists included are Mississippi John Hurt, Charlie Patton, the Carter Family, Dock Boggs, Blind Willie Johnson, Rev. J.M. Gates, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Uncle Dave Macon. Keep in mind, the anthology came about in 1952, back when only a few academics and the most obsessive record collectors knew who any of these people were.

* The Bristol Sessions. The first episode of American Epic tells the story of RCA talent scout Ralph Peer setting up a makeshift recording studio in an old furniture store in Bristol, Tennessee, in 1927 and striking gold. Among those he attracted to Bristol were the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. Also among the Bristol bunch were West Virginia bard Blind Alfred Reed, Ernest Stoneman, and the Tenneva Ramblers, whose song “The Longest Train I Ever Saw” would in subsequent years be handed back and forth among black bluesmen and white hillbilly and bluegrass singers under various titles (“In the Pines,” “Black Girl”). It would re-emerge in the 1990s as Nirvana’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” (There are a few versions of this collection available ranging from a single disc to a five-disc box.)


* Ruckus Juice & Chitlins: The Great Jug Bands. This is a set of two CDs (sold separately) of classic jug-band recordings from Yazoo Records. The collection includes seminal acts like the Memphis Jug Band, Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Earl McDonald’s Original Louisville Jug Band, Whistler & His Jug Band, and more. (Vol. 2 can be found HERE)

* My Rough and Rowdy Ways: Badman Ballads & Hellraising Songs, Classic Recordings From the 1920s and ’30s. This is my second-favorite two-disc collection from Yazoo. The subtitle says it all. It’s a bunch of great hellraising blues and hillbilly songs about sex, booze, drugs (Dick Justice’s “Cocaine” kicks off Vol. 2), gambling, and murderers — from Stack-O-Lee to Billy the Kid to the psycho who killed Pretty Polly.

I did a quick Throwback Thursday blog post on American Epic a few weeks ago, including a few videos. You can see that HERE. 

Here are some more videos, starting with The Memphis Jug Band



Here's Dick Justice's take on the same subject



Was Donald Trump thinking about Lydia Mendoza's classic song when he spoke of "bad hombres" crossing our borders?



This song by The Alabama Shakes is one of my favorites from American Epic Sessions

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: The Honky Tonk Lives!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Feb. 1, 2013



Honky-tonk music is alive.

Alive? It’s rarely sounded healthier, judging by Dale Watson’s latest album.

The record is called El Rancho Azul. There on the back cover you see Watson and his band, the Lone Stars, standing beside their tour bus in front of the Broken Spoke in Austin. That’s the famous old saloon where I last saw Watson play. (He did a solid three-hour-plus set without taking a break.) Even though this was a couple of years ago, I’m pretty sure I heard at least a couple of these songs that night.

This is no song cycle or rock opera, but El Rancho Azul does deal with certain recurring themes. Number one is drinking. Four of the album’s 14 songs have the word “drink” in the title. There’s “I Lie When I Drink” (“and I drink a lot,” Watson sings in the refrain), “Drink to Remember,” “I Hate to Drink Alone,” and “Drink Drink Drink.”) Then there’s a song called “Smokey Old Bar” (in which Watson enjoys drinking cold Lone Star) and one called “Thanks to Tequila” (in which Watson makes fun of the way cactus juice slurs his speech).

There are a couple minor themes at work on the album, as well. One is dancing and the other is weddings. Come to think of it, drinking, dancing, and weddings go together. On the dancing front, there are two similar songs that deal with a woman teaching a man how to survive on the dance floor. These are “Quick Quick Slow Slow,” followed by “Slow Quick Quick,” which is about waltzing. Then there’s “Cowboy Boots,” in which Watson sings of his love for women dancing in such footwear.

Watson’s wedding tunes are quite different. “We’re Gonna Get Married” is a fast song sung from the perspective of an enthusiastic groom. This is followed by “Daughter’s Wedding Song,” which is sung from the viewpoint of the bride’s father. “It’s hard to let go of that little girl whose whole body would sleep on my chest,” Watson says, starting off the second verse. It’s slow, pretty, heartfelt, and overtly sentimental. Merle Haggard fans will note similarities between this and Hag’s “The Farmer’s Daughter.”

Watson at the Broken Spoke, March 2011

Watson finally got around to recording “Where Do You Want It,” his black-humor outlaw song celebrating the shooting incident near Waco that involved the mighty Billy Joe Shaver. Billy Joe was eventually acquitted of aggravated assault charges connected with the confrontation. (What Texas jury is going to convict Billy Joe Shaver when Willie Nelson is sitting right there in the courtroom?) Though Watson wrote this song, it was originally recorded by Whitey Morgan & The 78s about two years ago.

Watson’s on a real roll lately. I thought his previous album, The Sun Sessions — recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis with a stripped-down version of his band and an early Johnny Cash feel — was the best thing he’d done in years. But this one is even better.

^

Also recommended:

* Be Right Back! by Chris O’Connell. Even if you don’t recognize her name, chances are you’ve heard the voice of Chris O’Connell.

She was the original female with Asleep at the Wheel, before those latter-day saints of western swing moved to Texas.

Yes, she was the female singer on the early Wheel hit “The Letter That Johnny Walker Read.” And, from the same album, Texas Gold, she sang lead on “Bump Bounce Boogie,” which was one of the sexiest songs to come out of the Cosmic Cowboy era.

O’Connell worked with the Wheel on and off for a couple of decades. She has collaborated with a bunch of folks, including Wheel alums like Floyd Domino and Maryann Price (one of Dan Hicks’ most famous Lickettes). And she even took a 12-year break from the biz of show before coming back to record her first solo record.

There are plenty of tunes here — opener “A Little Mo’ Love,” “Everything Is Movin’ Too Fast,” and “One More Day” — that wouldn’t seem out of place on an Asleep at the Wheel record. “My Baby Don’t Love Me Any More,” written by Johnny Paycheck, is a fine country song that features two of country rock’s greatest guitarists, Bill Kirchen and Junior Brown, backing O’Connell.

She takes a bluegrass turn with “City Water,” with another former Wheel member, Cindy Cashdollar, on dobro. Cashdollar also plays on O’Connell’s nicely understated version of “Shenandoah.”

O’Connell ventures out of the country/western-swing realm, getting jazzy on some tracks and going to the cocktail lounge on others like “When Love Was New” and “Skid Row in My Mind.” She draws from a variety of sources including Rodgers and Hart (“Everything I’ve Got Belongs to You”), Irving Berlin (“It’ll Come to You”), and Elvis (a strong performance on “(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame.”

BLOG BONUS: Enjoy some videos

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Dale, Jason & Martha

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
April 26, 2018

Let me riff on the old Wolf Brand Chili ad from decades ago: Neighbor, how long has it been since you read a big steaming Terrell’s Tune-up column entirely devoted to country music?

Well, that’s too long! So here is a look at three fine hillbilly albums I’ve been listening to lately.

* Call Me Lucky by Dale Watson. If there’s a better, more authentic, harder working and more
prolific purveyor of old fashioned honky-tonk music than Watson, I sure haven’t heard of him or her. He’s a little guy with a big white pompadour and a powerful baritone, similar to that of Waylon Jennings, though sometimes reminiscent of Johnny Cash.

He’s got humor and soul, an amazing (and amazingly consistent) band and a work ethic that would put most of us to shame. I’ve seen him play the Continental Club in Austin on both Christmas and Thanksgiving nights and once saw him at the Broken Spoke in the Texas capital play three hours without taking a break.

And the records keep coming. By my count, this is his sixth album since 2015. Among his recent discography there’s a duet with Ray Benson, a covers album, a live album and one featuring of re-recordings of his old songs.

In the past year or so, Watson bought a second home, so he now splits his residency between Austin and Memphis. And yes, you can hear echoes of both Sun rockabilly and Stax soul in Lucky (though not as much as his 2011 offering The Sun Sessions, which was recorded at the studio where Elvis, Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash and Cash made their magic.)

A few songs, including “Tupelo, Mississippi & a ’57 Fairlane,” “Inside View” and “Who Needs This Band” feature a horn section. Willie Nelson’s harmonica man Mickey Rafael, sort-of a one-man horn section himself,  graces some songs here, including “Johnny and June,” on which Watson trades lines of love with his real-life girlfriend Celine Lee.

In two songs here, Watson jokingly questions his own intelligence. “I know that I’m not smarter than nearly anyone / I’m just lucky,” he sings in the title track. And backed by a classic Johnny Cash chunka-chunka beat in “The Dumb Song” Watson pokes fun at his own dumb habits like drinking, smoking and eating “that Southern fried chicken.”

But don’t be fooled. Dale is far from dumb. And if you’re smart you’ll give this album a listen.

* Stand Tall by Jason Ringenberg. With Jason & The Scorchers, the band that made him famous (well, kinda famous) Ringenberg is the guy who brought cow-punk to Nashville. No question he’s a rocker, but he’s got country in his heart. That was obvious even back in the days when he was sporting a Mohawk along with a red sparkly C&W jacket. And it’s even more obvious on this, his latest solo album.

Starting off with the spaghetti-western style instrumental title song, this album is populated with hard-edged honky-tonkers like “Many Happy Hangovers to You,” an emotional cover of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Hobo Bill’s Last Ride,” a sweet acoustic, fiddle-colored ode to nature, “Here in the Sequoias” and a country-waltz version of Bob Dylan’s “Farewell Angelina.”

There are songs praising The Ramones – based on the time The Scorchers backed them on a 1982 Texas tour – environmentalist pioneer John Muir and John the Baptist, (who Ringenberg says “was a real humdinger.”)

This is not nearly as political his last proper solo record, 2004’s Empire Builders, (I’m not counting his children’s records he’s released under the name of “Farmer Jason) there’s a fife-and-drums Civil War ballad, “I’m Walking Home,” which is anti-war as well as anti-slavery and pretty radical all around.  “Well I hated slavery and all that support it / But I hate the Union for what it’s become,” the Confederate deserter sings.

* Dancing Shadows by Martha Fields. For the past several years, the West Virginia-born Fields has
made the very best country music coming out of France. Maybe even the whole European Union. And I believe this album, released late last year, is the expatriate hillbilly’s best –at least so far. Her band may be French, but they sound like true Americans to me.

Some of the songs here deal with being a foreigner, such as the lonesome “Paris to Austin” (that contains the line “I’ll pretend the Eifel Tower is a big oil well”) and the bluesy “Exile,” in which Fields sings, “I’m a stranger in my homeland / So afraid for my homeland / And I hurt for what I’ve left behind …”

There are a couple of nostalgic tunes for her past homes, the bluegrass-touched “West Virginia in My Bones,” and the slow aching, acoustic “Oklahoma on My Mind.” However I like up-tempo, country-rockers like “Last Train to Sanesville” (I missed that train years ago!), the dobro-driven “Demona,” and the bluegrass stomp “Maxine.”

But the one I keep going back to is the truthfully titled romp called “Hillbilly Bop.” My favorite verse is where she sings, “Well brother’s got the moonshine, Daddy’s got molasses / Get off your hillbilly asses / You gotta hillbilly bop …”

Here are some videos

First a live version of the title song of Dale's latest.



Jason scorches The Ramones



Martha shows how the Hillbilly Bop is done



And yes, tracks from all three of these albums, plus a lot more, can be heard on a recent episode of The Big Enchilada. In fact, I named the episode after a certain Martha Fields song. Listen and/or download HERE or just listen below:

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Songs the Sun Sessions Taught Us

Elvis Presley was more than a great performer. With his earliest recordings he showed that he was a gifted currator of American songs.

On this Throwback Thursday let's look at original -- or in some cases, just earlier -- versions of some of the songs -- country songs, R&B songs, pop tunes -- that make up various versions of Elvis' Sun Sessions.

First of all, hats off to Adam Aguirre of  the Route 66 show on KUNM, who inspired this post by recently playing these first two songs on a recent Saturday night.

First let's start with Ernest Tubb



Elvis apparently loved bluegrass. He rocked this Bill Monroe classic.



Speaking of a blue moon, this tune, written by Richard Rogers & Lorenz Hart was first recorded by Connee Boswell in 1935. I've always liked this early '50s version by Billie Holiday.



Probably my favorite Sun Sessions song is "Tryin' to Get to You." I didn't realize until recently that this song originally was receorded by The Eagles. (No, no those Eagles!)



"My Happiness" goes back to the late '40s, recorded by The Marlin Sisters



We all know Elvis loved the blues. Here's one, by Kokomo Arnold, that Elvis used to get real gone for a change.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: STICK TO THE PLAN, GRAHAM

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
April 13, 2007

With a song called “Stick to The Plan” on his new album Don’t Tell Columbus, Graham Parker proves that mixing rock ’n’ roll and political commentary doesn’t have to result in heavy-handed screeds — and in fact can be good wicked fun.

Parker went into the amazingly strong latest stage of his 30-plus-year career when he began his association with Chicago’s Bloodshot Records in 2004. “Stick to the Plan,” while topical, is one of his strongest statements ever.

The just-under-six-minute song reminds me a lot of the cool blues-rock found on Dylan’s Modern Times. The lyrics also show the influence of prophet Bob — a little apocalyptic, a little tongue-in-cheek, outrage balanced with hipster humor. Starting out with the image of hurricanes “howling up the Florida coast,” the song, over the course of five verses, skewers the White House, the religious right, polluters, paranoia, and pigheadedness in general.

In perhaps a sly reference to the first verse of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” Parker sings,

“Well God said to the president listen to me/I will advise you on
the way it’s gonna be/So the president got to his knees and accepted his fate/It’s a done deal now if you got some objections too late/Meanwhile in the corner there’s a drunk on a stool/Slurpin’ up ketchup and acting the fool/Pretending to fight for the truth but he ain’t getting far/Because he’s working for the same team just from the other side of the bar.”

The song bounces along, with images of persecuted scientists, philandering preachers, and Arabs being tortured — punctuated by cheery choruses in which Parker and a female chorus sing, “Good things are coming if we stick to the plan ... Keep your finger on the trigger, stick to the plan.”

After what can only be described as a murderous kazoo solo, Parker slides into the last verse,
which concludes with,

“Inside the airport every worker wears a turban/At the check point they’re stripping a suburban/couple of all their clothes and smelling their feet/But the found out the odor of stupidity isn’t too sweet.”

Parker has other politically charged tunes that you’ll never find on George Bush’s iPod.
Just last year he released a digital-only single called “2000 Funerals,” a somber tune about Americans killed in Iraq. (The number, as the press release for Don’t Tell Columbus points out, is “sadly outdated” — though if you count Iraqi casualties, it was outdated long before it was written).

And on the new album there’s “The Other Side of the Reservoir,” a slow, seething song about the destruction of a community for the sake of a water project — which might just be Parker’s equivalent of John Prine’s “Paradise”: “What were they thinking when they dug that hole/and bulldozed that town down/wall by wall,” Parker spits.

No, Columbus is not a protest album. It’s not Parker’s Living With War. It has soulful love songs like the sweet “Somebody Saved Me” and the desperate “Love or Delusion,” a smoldering, understated rocker.

There’s the scathing “England’s Latest Clown,” which concerns the well-covered travails of drug-plagued British rocker Pete Doherty (who gets out of prison “looking handsome with a ton of pride/With muscles on his muscles and Kate Moss by his side.”)

And there’s “I Discovered America” (the album’s title comes from the chorus), a harmonica-and-organ-driven folk-rocker in which Parker recounts moving to this country from England while looking back at his career.

“There was smoke up to my eyeballs/Poison burned my throat/But I said I’d keep on going when everyone said don’t/With my bony-chested T-shirt/Some stolen guitar licks/navigating by dead reckoning in 1976.”

A quick Creedence Clearwater Revival riff cleverly answers the “stolen guitar lick” line. Indeed, Parker’s pilfered from some of the best. But like Johnny Cash in “One Piece at a Time,” he’s used his stolen parts to create a unique vehicle. Let’s hope he sticks to his own weird plan and keeps it going.

Also Recommended:
* Standard Songs for Average People by John Prine & Mac Wiseman. This has been a good year for good country cover albums. There was Last of the Breed by Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Ray Price, as well as Southern Culture on the Skids’ Countrypolitan Favorites. And now this Marvel Team-up of one-time “New Dylan” Prine and venerated octogenarian bluegrass sensei Mac Wiseman. It almost makes me suspect that something big might be gurgling below the surface of country music, but I’ll leave that line of thought to the mystics.

While I would have preferred some new Prine songs, this is an easygoing, friendly little album, with some fine takes on some good ol’ songs.

There’s a couple of Elvis Presley’s Sun Sessions classics (“I Forgot to Remember to Forget” and “I Love You Because”); a Bob Wills obscurity (“Don’t Be Ashamed of Your Age”); a Lefty Frizzell faux-folk tune (“Saginaw, Michigan”); an Ernest Tubb tune (“Blue Eyed Elaine”); a Patti Page pop hit (“Old Cape Cod”); some hymns (“The Old Rugged Cross,” “In the Garden”); and a couple of wonderful examples of ’70s country — Tom T. Hall’s “Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine” and Kris Kristofferson’s “Just The Other Side of Nowhere.”

Standard Songs won’t take a place in the upper pantheon of records by either artist. But when you hear these old guys trading verses on these songs they both obviously love, it’s hard not to love it back.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Dark & Savage plus Fun & Goofy

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
August 5, 2011


Holy Red Headed Stranger, Batman! It’s a cosmic concept album set in the Old West.

And just like Willie Nelson’s classic musical parable, El Santo Grial: La Pistola Piadosa, the new album by Joe Frankland, who goes by the name of Slackeye Slim, is a low-key, minimally produced work that tells a story of a loner whose religious faith is tested and remolded by his gun.

You can easily imagine Slackeye’s Drake Savage, “the Chosen One,” crying like a baby and screaming like a panther — like the Preacher in Red Headed Stranger.

Both anti-heroes chalk up notable body counts. But unlike Nelson’s Stranger, Slackeye’s Chosen One never seems to find his Denver, never quite gets his hand on the wheel. Pistola is a much darker story.

“Come one! Come all! And listen to a tale of a gun that came from heaven.” This invitation comes early in Slackeye’s story. It sounds like a pitch from a medicine-show huckster. It’s obvious that the gun from heaven is going to send a bunch of people to hell.

Slackeye, who lives in rural Wisconsin and is pursuing a degree in engineering, recorded this album in some unusual locales — a junkyard, a cabin, an abandoned radio station, a fine-arts museum, and an old mansion — in Montana. Singer Graham Lindsey, like Slackeye, a Farmageddon recording artist, collaborated on some of the tunes on Pistola. The album is Slackeye’s second.

In an online interview last month on the It Burns When I Pee podcast, Slackeye explained, “It’s basically about this guy whose family is really really religious, and they push it on him really really hard, and that obviously will push him away from it. So he turns his back on God and people in general and hates the world and does all this evil shit.”

Finding the “Pistola Piadosa,” young Drake realizes he must carry out Judgment Day.

I won’t give away the whole plot here, but by the lovely dirge “Tomorrow Morning’s Gonna Come,” Savage finds his way to his boyhood home, where he says, “I’ve forgotten all the nightmares here/ I remember all the dreams.” And in the next song, “The Chosen One (Part III),” he repeatedly growls, “I’ve got some killin’ to do” during the last half of the song.

Musically, there’s a definite mariachi/spaghetti-Western feel on much of Pistola. I’ve already noted in this column that the song “Introducing Drake Savage” (which is part of the free Southern Independent XXX, Vol. 1 compilation I reviewed here a couple of weeks ago) reminds me a lot of Calexico. That’s true of several songs on the album, such as “Vengeance Gonna Be My Name,” in which I keep expecting Mexican trumpets to come in. They don’t, but there’s a tasty overheated guitar solo toward the end.

I also hear a lot of Nick Cave in this album, especially in the moody minor-key numbers. Slackeye’s voice is deep, as is Cave’s, but it’s more scratchy and not quite as rich. It’s perfectly suited for a surreal song cycle about God’s gunslinger.

El Santo Grial: La Pistola is available as a download at Slackeye's website. A CD version allegedly is in the works.

Also recommended:


* A Sure Sign of Something by Peter Stampfel & The WORM All-Stars. It must be Wisconsin week here at “Terrell’s Tune-Up.” Although I normally associate Stampfel with New York bohemia, I realized after I started writing this that he was born in the Dairy State. This album is as goofy as Slackeye’s is grim.

So, on Wisconsin!

A Sure Sign of Something sounds like Stampfel and a group of friends fooling around and having fun with a bunch of weird songs, both familiar and unknown — which, I believe, is the true definition of “folk music,” despite the uptight, self-absorbed connotations that the concept of folk music has unfortunately taken on.

For the uninitiated, Stampfel, 72, is best known as founder and perpetrator of The Holy Modal Rounders, a group that played folk music through a psychedelic filter. He and fellow Rounder Steve Weber were also members of The Fugs. I don’t remember the name of the critic who described Stampfel’s voice as resembling that of a chicken who just won the lottery, but he or she was spot on.

This isn’t an essential Stampfel album by any means, but it’s full of strange joys. It was recorded with several musicians from the WORM art collective Stampfel met in Rotterdam a few years ago.

The album starts off with a joyful little tune, "Fucking Sailors in China Town," written by Stampfel’s ex-wife Antonia, This first-person story of a prostitute who doesn’t charge sailors has been in Stampfel's repertoire for years. Critic Robert Christgau once wrote that this song would never be recorded. He was wrong.

Stampfel and his WORM pals romp through standards like “Peg and Awl,” The Stanley Brothers’ “How Mountain Girls Can Love,” the old fiddle tune “Wake Up Jacob,” and an irreverent version of “Because, Just Because.” I first heard this song on Elvis Presley’s Sun Sessions. Stampfel writes in the liner notes he first heard it played by a Milwaukee polka band in the ’40s.

And there’s an insane cover of a crazy doo-wop song called “Shombolar,” recorded in the ’50s by a group called Sheriff & The Ravens, though Stampfel said it was written by Aki Leong and is based on an African work song.

Stampfel’s knack for rediscovering and reinterpreting gems like this is a major reason we all should love him.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: New Dylan Portrait Reveals New Colors

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Sept. 6, 2013



It's interesting that Columbia Legacy would release an two-disc "bootleg" set of unreleased Bob Dylan recordings centered around one of his most critically un-acclaimed albums in his 50-year career.

But that's the case of Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) The Bootleg Series Vol. 10. About half the songs are alternative versions, demos, or cutting-room-floor songs originally meant for Self Portrait, Dylan's album (it was a double album in the days of vinyl, though it all fit on a single CD) Released in the summer of 1970. There also are several different versions of songs that appeared on New Morning, (which came only months after Self Portrait), plus a smattering from Nashville Skyline and other projects.

At the time of its release, Self Portrait was the most controversial thing Dylan had done since "going electric" at the Newport Folk Festival five years before. In his autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. One, Dylan described this album: "I just threw everything I could think of at the wall and whatever stuck, released it, and then went back and scooped up everything that didn't stick, and released that too."

The critics raved. Actually, the critics ranted and it wasn't pretty. It was as if they felt personally that the most important artist of a generation had released a record that wasn't a grand revelation. Instead, despite the portentous title, Self Portrait was just a fun and sometimes sloppy musical notebook of Dylan singing some favorite folk and country songs, mixed in with a few live recordings and musical experiments.

"What is this shit?"was the opening sentence of the review in Rolling Stone (in those days a rock 'n' roll magazine, believe it or not) by Greil Marcus. Marcus, in the liner notes for the new collection, wrote that those were "the words that were coming out of everybody's mouth" when first hearing Self Portrait.

But not everybody.

I was just a high school kid when Self Portrait came out and, for the most part I liked it. And for the most part, I still do. Sure there were some clunkers -- his undercooked version of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer," the bafflingly over-produced "Bell Isle," the mediocre take on Elmore James' "It Hurts Me Too," and the outright bizarre "In Search of Little Sadie," which sounded like a stoned private joke. And, as is the case with many other classic double albums, Self Portrait could have, should have been boiled down to a single disc.


But there was so much to love in Self Portrait. The first song was the enigmatic "All the Tired Horses." Dylan didn't sing this. It was a chorus of three women singing, "All the tired horses in the sun / How am I supposed to get any riding done / Ummm ummm..." over and over again like some plantation dirge with a string section coming in. There was a raucous live version of "Quinn the Eskimo" (with The Band) that sounded like a saloon fight. And there was a straight version of "Little Sadie" on which Bromberg on guitar sounded so much like Doc Watson, I had to check the credits.

The Original

Speaking of "Little Sadie," my favorite aspect of Self Portrait was what seemed to be an Old West/frontier/gunslinger undercurrent. One of the best was "Alberta #1," a funky old folk song (I remembered it from seeing Parnell Roberts, Adam from Bonanza, perform it on some TV variety show.) "I'd give you more gold than your apron could hold" sounds like a love-sick promise by the world's horniest prospector.

Dylan's laconic version featured a tasty dobro by David Bromberg and call-and-response vocals by the same trio that sang "All the Tired Horses." Later in the album there was a slightly faster "Alberta #2" and I liked that too. (And, to get ahead of myself a little, I also like "Alberta #3" on Another Self Portrait, despite its abrupt end.)

One of the most moving songs on the album was a moonshiner ballad, "Copper Kettle" where Dylan, in the voice of a proud defiant hillbilly Everyman, sings, "My daddy he made whiskey, my granddad he did too / We ain't paid no whiskey tax since 1792." There was The Everly Brothers' "Take a Message to Mary," with that haunting introduction by a female chorus, "These are the words of a frontier lad, who lost his love when he turned bad..."

But best of all was Dylan's version of "Days of 49," an old gold rush song about a sad '49 lamenting the loss of old compadres, a motley, whoring gaggle of drunks, brawlers and card-cheats -- the kind of men who built this great land of ours. "They call me a bummer and a gin-shot too, but what cares I for praise?" Dylan snarls. The verses document the lives and violent deaths of pals like Poker Bill, New York Jake and Ragshag Bill.

David Bromberg, the secret hero of the
Self Portrait sessions.

The devastating final verse puts it all in perspective: "Of all the comrades that I've had, there's none that's left to boast / And I'm left alone in my misery, like some poor wandering ghost ..." Makes you wonder whether Dylan has harbored a fear of being the last man standing among his glory-days contemporaries.

"Railroad Bill," a fine old American outlaw ballad included in Another Self Portrait, would have fit in perfectly among the Old West tunes on the original album. Why it was excluded while "The Boxer" was included we'll never know.

While any fan of any performer enjoys hearing out-takes and versions of familiar songs at various stages of development -- "New Morning" with horns, "Wigwam" without the horns, "Sign on the Window" with orchestra! -- my favorite tunes on the new collection are the ones like "Railroad Bill," that I'd never heard Dylan do before. There are a few, such as "Annie's Going to Sing Her Song" (written by folkie Tom Paxton) and a folk song called "Pretty Saro" that can only be described as gorgeous.

For sheer fun, it would be hard to beat the bluesy "Working on a Guru," featuring George Harrison on guitar, from the New Morning sessions. And for the pure mystery of folk music, Dylan, backed by Bromberg's guitar and pianist Al Kooper, sings a song called "Tattle O'Day," full of nonsense lyrics of animals with fantastic powers.

While I prefer the familiar versions of the Self Portrait songs to the versions on the new "bootleg" collection, there are exceptions. Both "Copper Kettle" and "Belle Isle" are stripped of their over-dubbed sweetening strings, leaving performances that only seem more passionate.

If nothing else, Another Self Portrait is forcing a second look of the original Self Portrait. Maybe it wasn't as big of a revelation as Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde on Blonde. But in its own strange way, it had its own revelatory power.

Some video for yas:






Dylan's "Alberta"s are cooler, but Pernell's is the first version I heard.

eMUSIC NOVEMBER

* Still Stuck in Your Throat by Fishbone. I've been on a real Fishbone kick for the past couple of weeks. It started when I found a used copy of their 2002 album The Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx at Natural Sound. I'd nearly forgotten about this group and I was surprised at how vital they still sounded. I saw them play the 1990 Lollapalooza in Denver and loved how they could sound like George Clinton one moment, Pantera the next, and then Frank Zappa -- all mixed in with a hopped-up ska sound. I also was impressed, back then in '93, at how they weren't aftraid to lay on the showmanship -- a quality you didn't much find with some of the other acts like Dinosaur Jr., Alice in Chains and Rage Against the Machine.

So in recent days I was lucky to get a couple of Fishbone albums from LaLa.com (the classic Truth and Soul and the relatively new Live at the Temple Bar and More. I also ripped the Fishbone CDs I already had onto my computer -- and then I stumble across this album, released just last year, on eMusic. Nearly six and a half hours of Fishbone is going through the shuffle mode of my mind. I want to say Fishbone is a major overlooked band of the '90s -- but they're still going strong and still seriously underrated -- in this century as well.


*100 Days, 100 Nights by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. I reviewed this one recently in Tune-up, along with the new Bettye LaVette CD and the new 3-disc Wattstax collection. You can find the whole piece HERE

In fact, I liked 100 Days so much, I downloaded Sharon & Dap-Kings' 2005 album, Naturally. And if anything, I'm liking it even more. There's a duet with Lee Fields ("Stranded in Your Love") in which Lee & Sharon become a modern Butterbeans and Susie. And there's a totally revamped "This Land is Your Land." It doesn't sound like Woody, but I bet he'd love it.

Basically, I can't get enough soul music. I'm happy there's a cool "soul revival" going on and especially happy that the focus is on the music, not some bogus nostalgic cuteness. The world needs more soul.


*The Big Eyeball in The Sky by Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains. This is a good-time collaboration between Les Claypool and drummer Brain of Primus , funk keyboard great Bernie Worrell and the guitar goon known as Buckethead. So while basically it's a supercharged version of Primus with Col. Claypool in command, Bernie and Buckethead put their own peculiar stamps on the music. There's lots of tasty jams and nary a dull moment. Even the 10-minute epic "Elephant Ghost" slinks along quite nicely. It sounds like the funkiest circus you've ever seen.


*Live at Joe's Place by Hound Dog Taylor. Hound Dog was the closest the blues ever came to punk rock. Well, maybe T-Model Ford, but Hound Dog was out there a ways.

This live record (a 1972 bar gig) is nice, raw and raucous. A few standards here -- "Dust My Broom," "The Sky is Crying," "Kansas City" and a good nine-minute "Freddy's Blues."

And there's one of those strange and unintentionally funny eMusic typos -- "Give Me Back My Wig" somehow becomes "Glue Back My Wig." I like that title better.



* Emotions by The Pretty Things. Talk about being a latecomer -- I didn't really really get into this 40-plus-year-old British Invasion band until Balboa Island, thier latest, released just this year.

Emotions is from that golden year of 1967, when the group plunged into psychedelia. Unfortunately in many cases they went overboard with the horns, strings, harpsichords, harps and other Sgt. Peppery affects. Still some bitchen stuff though. Love the fuzz tone on and whatever stringed instrument (I don't think it's a sitar -- sounds almost like a banjo) on "One Long Glance." I'm also loving the acoustic pyschedelic blues of "Tripping."

*The Live Ones 6 Tracks by The Standells. Eddie Munster was right. The Standells were cool guys. Only few have surpassed their level of bitchenicity. If you don't like 'em, flake off! Get yourself a crewcut, baby! This is a way too short live show by the Dirty Water boys at Michigan State University in 1966. Good clear sound quality. My only regret is that there are only six tracks.


*Mutiny/The Bad Seed by The Birthday Party. Although I've been a Nick Cave fan for years, I basically missed out on his earlier band back in the '80s. (I wasn't invited to the Birthday Party!) I really did miss out! This band has all the spooky, threatening power of the Bad Seeds, abrasive but very listenable. Lots of critics -- including me, I think -- compared Cave's current band Grinderman to The Birthday Party. For good reason.

This collection is two BP EPs starting out with Cave shouting, "Hands up! Who wants to die" in the hard crunching "Sonny's Burning." It doesn't let up from there. "Deep in the Woods is especially frightening. "Deep in the woods a funeral is swingin' ..." Yikes!

*Nuclear War by Sun Ra Akestra. I already had an MP3 of the title track and I needed seven tracks to make my monthly 90, so this worked out perfectly.

The story behind the album, as told in the Allmusic Guide is hilarious in itself:

"Originally Ra was so sure the funky dance track was a hit, he immediately took it to Columbia Records, where they immediately rejected it. Why he thought a song with the repeating chant "Nuclear War, they're talking about Nuclear War/It's a motherf***er, don't you know/if they push that button, your ass gotta go/and whatcha gonna do without your ass" would be a hit is another puzzle in the Sun Ra myth.

Beyond the title song, many tracks here -- "Celestial Love," "Blue Intensity," "The Nameless One Number Two" -- have a cool, bluesy, sleazy yet otherworldly quality with Ra's magial roller-rink organ out front. Call it crime jazz from Neptune.

UPDATED UPDATE: Soon after I posted this I discovered that Bloodshot Records is offering its Free Label Sampler 2007: Yr Welcome, World compilation for free. So I added that too. It's got a few tunes I already have on CD by the likes of Graham Parker, The Detroit Cobras and The Gore Gore Dirls, some new material by Bloodshot stalwarts like Jon Rauhouse and Deano Waco's Dollar Store, and some acts I'm not familar with like The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir and Ha Ha Tonka.

Speaking of which, the roots-rocking Ha Ha Tonka also is offering a free five-song live in-studio set called The Hear Ya Sessions on eMusic. I think these guys would have a lot to talk about with Hundred Year Flood. It's a little bit country, a little bit psychedelic. And, like I said, it's free!

Terrell's Tuneup: My Search For Jerry J. Nixon

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican, April 2, 2004

Every few years about this time, I toy with the idea of writing an April Fool’s column and make up a bunch of ridiculous titles for CDs to review. “Where the Rude Boys Are: A Reggae Tribute to Connie Frances”; “Ebony and Ivory: The Ray Charles/Elvis Costello Sessions”; “The Symphonic Iggy Pop”; The Essential Eddie Money (oops, that’s a real one!)

Somehow it always seemed too cute to do a whole column of that stuff.

However in late March I stumbled across a real CD, that, after a little research, I’ve come to believe is an April Fool’s Day joke at Santa Fe’s expense by an obscure Swiss record label, Voodoo Rhythm.

Gentleman of Rock ‘n’ Roll. The Q Recordings, New Mexico ‘58-‘64, released last year, is by an unknown rockabilly singer named Jerry J. Nixon with sad eyes, pale skin and greasy hair.

Nixon’s life story is told inside the package.

Indeed, it was like uncovering a secret history of this place I call my home.

Born Gerald James Hall in 1937 in Yorkshire England, the future rockabilly gentleman was involved with a botched armed robbery in Southampton. But because of his youth, he got off with a light sentence, joined the merchant marines and sailed to America, where he adopted a fake identity — Jerry J. Nixon — and stayed.

By 1956 “Nixon” ended up here in Santa Fe, where he initially worked at a cardboard box and packing company. Perhaps the oppression of this factory was what led Nixon to join the Communist Party of New Mexico.

Inspired by Elvis Presley, Nixon hooked up with a band playing at Atahualpa Bar & BBQ. The were initially called The Santa Fe Flames, but under Nixon’s sway, they became The Volcanoes.

Santa Fe businessman Leonard E. Sanchez, who managed entertainers and owned Q Studios and Quality Records, heard a Nixon and The Volcanoes gig, signed them up, made some records and toured the Southwest and even Mexico.

Like the archetypal rock manager of the day, Sanchez took songwriting credits on nearly all Nixon’s original songs.

After a few short years, however, things soured between Nixon and Sanchez, who gambled away all the band’s money betting on card games and cockfights. He also favored one of his other stars, local country singer Dick Lotner.

The bad blood came to a head in 1963 when the two got into a fight that ended with Sanchez in the hospital and the Gentleman of Rock ’n’ Roll in jail. The bio in the CD says the two never spoke again. However, according to the album notes, the song “Red Sun” was recorded at Q Studios in March 1964.

But shortly after that, Nixon left the Volcanoes and the music biz in general. After doing some work in the Texas oil fields, Nixon settled in Albuquerque by 1967, working as a driver for the Sunset Glades retirement home. He died in Albuquerque in 1999.

Damn! Had I known about him, I could have interviewed him. How come nobody ever told me about Santa Fe’s greatest rockabilly commie?

But the more I thought about it, the more I suspected there was a good reason why nobody told me about Jerry J. Nixon.

The fact that I had never heard of any of the people or the places mentioned in the Nixon story made me wonder.

Checking city directories and phone books between 1957 and 1961 I found no listings for Atahualpa Bar & BBQ, Quality Records, Q recording studio or KWXL radio. There’s no current listing for Sunset Glade retirement home in the Albuquerque directory. I couldn’t find a listing for any cardboard factory in Santa Fe During those years.. There were no residential listings for Leonard Sanchez, Dick Lotner or Jerry Nixon.

Whoever wrote the stuff on the CDs knows something about Santa Fe though. Q Studios was said to be located above a garage on Galisteo Street, while Atahualpa Bar & BBQ allegedly was off Old Taos Highway.

So where did this music come from? One online critic said there are similarities between Nixon and Die Zorros, a Swiss band led by “Beatman” the head honcho of Voodoo Rhythm.

The sad part is, I wanted the album to be real. While not exactly revelatory, this is the sound of a journeyman rockabilly cat who captures the wild spirit of that era.

The music is tough and cranking. Several cuts feature an eerie organ sound (think Joe Meeks or Del Shannon), while “Saturday Midnight Bop,” has a cool sax (credited to one Jose Martinez, if that can be believed) and Latin rhythm that could pass for proto-Los Lobos.

You could almost believe it’s a frustrated cardboard worker releasing his tensions in a cluttered little studio overlooking a garage on Galisteo Street.

Of course the real Santa Fe wasn’t devoid of real rock ’n’ roll during this area. Wouldn’t it be great if some record company recorded a compilation of real Santa Fe bands — The Defiants, The Rocking Aces, The Morfomen?

Jerry J. Nixon Lives on the Radio: Hear songs from the Gentleman and other rockabilly renegades on The Santa Fe Opry, country music as the Good Lord intended, Friday 10 p.m. to midnight and Terrell’s Sound World, freeform weirdo radio (same time Sunday.)

Make Music Day Santa Fe

 

Members of Busy McCarroll's Thunderstorm Singing/Songwriting Class 

Turquoise Trail Elementary Charter School.

Busy McCarroll’s involvement in the international summer solstice musical event known as Make Music Day began more than 20 years ago.

“I first heard about the event in the 90’s when Nathalie Bonnard-Grenet, who’s from France, called me to ask me to play at this global music event that started in France and happened on Summer Solstice,” the longtime Santa Fe musician said recently. Bonnard-Grenet, she said, asked her to play in front of a local Starbucks. Several other local musicians were asked to play at other Santa Fe spots that day as well.

It wasn’t exactly a red-letter day in the singer’s career.

Performing in front of the coffee shop with local cellist Michael Kott, McCarroll recalled, “We had to pay for a buskers license which cost $35, we didn’t get paid and made about $5 in tips.”

That’s a gig that most musicians trying to make a living in Santa Fe can relate to.

But that would not be the end of Make Music Day in this town. In 2012, Bruce Adams, former owner of The Santa Fean magazine, and Mary Bonney brought Make Music back to Santa. Adams and Bonney produced the event for two years. In 2014 they asked The Santa Fe Music Alliance to take over.

McCarroll, who later became president of the Music Alliance, took charge of the event that year, which was a big outdoor show at the Santa Fe Railyard. Nobody can question her dedication to the cause.

One year McCarroll even suffered sun stroke while trying to manage the stage during a particularly scorching Make Music Day. She still has vivid memories of sitting inside the nearby Violet Crown theater, with ice on her neck, directing the show via text messages to Music Alliance vice president Amado Abeyta, family members and other volunteers outside.

A big Railyard blowout, featuring several bands playing on the outdoor stage, was the format of Santa Fe’s Make Music Day for the next several years. Performers included a who’s who of local bands, all of whom were paid to perform.

And then came the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which caused last year’s local Make Music events to be cancelled.

But now Make Music Day is returning to Santa Fe on Monday, June 21 for a mostly virtual event – with a few live performances at venues including Santa Fe Brewing Company and The Candyman. All events are free and open to the public.

Besides the Santa Fe Music Alliance, organizations and businesses behind this year’s local celebration include the city of Santa Fe’s Arts and Culture Department, the New Mexico Music Commission Foundation, The Candyman Strings and Things, Amp Concerts, and Kludgit Sound. Sponsors include local radio stations KSWV, KBAC and KSFR and The Santa Fean.

It’s no coincidence that the woman who first contacted McCarroll about Make Music Day back in the ‘90s was French. The event has origins in France’s national government. In October 1981, French Minister of Culture Jack Lang appointed Maurice Fleuret, a composer and music journalist, as director of music and dance.

In response to a national study that showed that half of France’s young people played a musical instrument, Fleuret created a national festival, called “Fête de la Musique,” dedicated to give all sorts of musicians – all ages, all genres, all skill levels, professional and amateur – the opportunity to perform.

“We needed an event that would allow us to measure what place music occupied in individual and collective life,” Fleuret said in 1983. “A spectacular movement of awareness, a spontaneous impetus to alert public opinion and perhaps also … the political class. This is why the Ministry of Culture had the idea of organizing a Fête de la Musique in 1982. A non-directive celebration, which brings together all French people for whom music matters.”

It wasn’t one big show on one big stage. Rather there were hundreds of performances “everywhere in the streets, squares, kiosks, courtyards, gardens, stations, squares …” according to the French Ministry of Culture’s website.

And within a few years the idea spread to other countries, including the U.S.

On summer solstice two years ago, according to the Make Music Day website 85 North American cities organized 5,383 free concerts at 1,862 locations on this continent and more than 1000 cities worldwide.

Abeyta, a local musician and KSWV radio host, who has been involved for several years with Make Music Day — both as a performer and stage manager — said recently that it’s a relief to see live performance on Santa Fe’s horizon once again.

“The effect of the pandemic on musicians and the whole artistic community has been awful,” Abeyta said. “You see prominent local musicians out busking or working construction, doing things they shouldn’t have to do just to survive. I’m really thankful to be able to do something musical again.” (Abeyta, in sunglasses playing in his band Sol Fire  with his brother Buddy Abeyta at a previous Make Music Day in photo at left.)

Among the early acts to sign up for this year’s show, according to Cindy Cook — a member of the local Make Music Santa Fe planning committee and co-owner of The Candyman Strings & Things — are Marc & Paula’s Roadside Distraction, Half Pint & The Growlers, singer-songwriter Lucy Barna, singer-composer Lisa B. Friedland, longtime local troubadour Michael J. Roth and rocker David Wheeler.

On the classical music side, Cook said The Santa Fe Youth Symphony as well as the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival will be doing video performances.

One of the day’s local live events, Cook said, will be a socially-distanced drum circle taking place on the covered porch of The Candyman, 851 St. Michael’s Drive, between noon and 5 p.m. “We’ll be giving away a free set of drum sticks, courtesy of Pro-Mark, to participants while supplies last,” she said. The store also will provide instruments for those who want to join the circle but don’t have their own drums or percussion instruments.

The Hohner company provided 100 free harmonicas for community members who would like to participate in Make Music Santa Fe. Cook said anyone who wants one of those harmonicas is encouraged to stop by The Candyman prior to June 21st. And for those wanting to learn how to actually play their new instruments, the store will provide free harmonica lessons from one of the city’s best-known harp-blowers, longtime Santa Fe musician and radio host “Harmonica Mike” Handler. Those lessons may be viewed online or taken in-person on Make Music Day.

Free ukulele books, courtesy of Alfred Publishing, are also available for pick up at The Candyman before June 21st. The store will provide free in-person or online video ukulele lessons. “For those that choose in-person lessons, if they don’t have a ukulele, they may borrow one of theirs,” Cook said.

Meanwhile, during his KSWV show on June 21 (11 a.m. – noon), Abeyta will play tunes from local musicians. Musicians who want to be included in this should drop their CDs at the Candyman before Friday, June 18, when the CDs will be delivered to the radio station.

McCarroll said she recently heard someone describe Make Music Day as a “musical holiday.” Indeed, that phrase captures the spirit of the event both locally and internationally. It always falls on solstice, June 21, which means that, like this year, most of the time it falls on a weekday. But even for those who have to work should think about taking a little music break, or two that day and catch some music either in person or online.

Musicians wanting to take part in Santa Fe’s Make Music Day can sign up at www.makemusicday.org/santafe. Registration closes on June 20.

Businesses, buildings, schools, churches, and other institutions can visit the website to feature their outdoor spaces as concert and musical activity locations.

Santa Fe musicians with pre‐recorded videos can sign up at www.makemusicday.org/santafe and provide links where their videos may be viewed. Videos may also be posted using the hashtag “#makemusicsantafe.”

The Sunstroke Sessions: Busy, far left, conquers the heat and joins 

Eliza & Tony Gilkyson -- with Susan Hyde Holmes on bass

onstage at 2015 Make Music Day