Kris Kristofferson was on the Today show (the Australian version) yesterday morning, being interviewed about the DVD release of Heaven's Gate. The usually inane Richard Wilkins was extremely respectful, even calling him "Mr Kristofferson" and raving about what a legend he is. He has skyrocketed in my esteem, admittedly from a pretty low base.
Wilkins also gets points for asking the question I really wanted answered, are you coming you here any time soon? Kris gave the usual reply, he loves Australia and would love to come.
Chuggy, get on the phone!
I was surprised again when Tracey Grimshaw went on about how handsome he was and what a beautiful voice he has etc. Speaking voice that is, she might not have been talking about his singing voice although that is beautiful too. Anyway, you go girlfriend. Big win for my heart and mind to Today.
Nine and Seven are engaged in a Death Match for morning ratings, if Kochy and Mel want to win me back they know what they have to do.
Damn Right I'm A Cowboy screens tomorrow night, Wednesday 20th October at 11pm on the ABC.
Damn Right I'm a Cowboy reveals the far-reaching personal and societal spin-offs from a deceptively simple community singing event enacted in a crazy ritual at a South Australian public FM radio station every week.
It documents the Hillbilly Hoot Radio Show, a shambolic attempt to foster a loose community of people drawn together solely by the love of acoustic music and Western whimsy. On this chaotic event, broadcast from a small open porch in the inner suburbs of Adelaide, an hour of live performance is squeezed onto the airwaves through three constantly open microphones without audition, programmed structure, a sound mixer or even the usual seven-second delay.
There is no song list. Rehearsals are a luxury. Backup singers and musos often choose themselves as the broadcast develops. It's not uncommon for a fresh song to be started solo and unknown only to end with a rousing final chorus taken on by professionals, non-musicians and those from the audience who stepped up onto the porch simply to give their support. At nine the last song - Will the Circle Be Unbroken - is sung by. all present, audience and performers, but few go home. They stay on to play to each other and try out ideas for another time. They stay on until midnight, or until the cops respond to someone complaining about some god-awful trombone noise.
When this weekly public radio broadcast took on a life of its own the cameras kept rolling - into joyful rehearsals, studio recording sessions, off-porch live performances, and into the homes and artistic lives of this unique and ever-growing group. The Hillbilly Hooters travel to new locations, invade the South Australian Folk Festival and participate in studio sessions. They write their own lives and loves into song and send them onto the airwaves. CDs are cut. Groups form and reform, they stage their own concerts - all the while maintaining the Hoot `traditions' of fun and Western fantasy.
We observe the Hooters developing new voices, friendships and musical diversity out of the confidence gained and the talent they discover in each other on that porch every week. Lives are gradually changed. The end result is a documentary of personal journeys, each one the result of years of gently supported immersion into the world of making moonshine music.
Damn Right I'm a Cowboy was shot with available video equipment - Super8 to DigiBeta - over almost four years. Most participants in the doco were unpaid, and many others deferred payment for this project. It was edited in several sessions over more than two years - a span dictated as much as anything by occasional small donations to the project, the producers' personal financial investment and the kindness of various Adelaide editing houses. Recently its completion for the screen has been aided by direct editing financial assistance from, and the use of post production facilities at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Damn Right I'm a Cowboy was premiered to a standing ovation and near riot at the Adelaide International Film Festival, March 2003. The film festival audience sang Will The Circle be Unbroken together at the end of the screening: 'the most amazing thing I've ever seen at a film festival' according to Richard Moore, ABC-TV.
Thanks to Gil for the info.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Sunday, October 17, 2004
An interview with Tom Russell by journalist Naomi Koppel, inexplicably not picked up for publication but reproduced here with her permission. The first few words are missing due to the tape recorder not picking them up, I'm sure you'll cope.
Tom Russell, Bern, Switzerland, June 3, 2004:-
… accompanying a book I have coming out of my letters and interviews with Charles Bukowski. He was sort of a wild, edgy, American, working-class beat poet that I became familiar with in the 70s and we had a correspondence and I interviewed him. Anyway he has become quite famous after he passed away and they’re putting out a book of my correspondence with him and letters and interviews. It’s not enough so they got me to write some – quote unquote – poetry, which I don’t consider I do. Basically they’re small short stories about a life on the road. So that’s coming out and now they came up with the idea of putting a CD with it of myself and maybe some actors and musicians reciting either Bukowski poems or some of the material in the book. We’re working on that. I’ll probably have that firmed up within two weeks. We’ll have to do that when I’m back in the States and then after that I’m touring again behind this cowbody record and working on a double album, Love and Fear I call it right now, it’s a working title. Hopefully that’ll be a bigger record. It’ll be out next year about this time.
I’ve neglected Switzerland, Austria and Germany for a couple of years and we used to do pretty well over here when I was with the Tom Russell band and the country rock scene was happening more than ten years ago you had the Frutigen festival, you had about ten major country festivals. That’s kind of on the wane since Nashville has killed country music – I have a lot of theories on that – but now there’s this alternative songwriter scene that’s surfacing big time in the UK. Uncut magazine did this review. It’s filtering here. Somebody handed me the German Rolling Stone yesterday and there was a four-star review on the cowboy record. The guy said they usually don’t care about this but because they’ve heard of you before. There is a growing awareness and interest here. We played Freiburg the other night and it was full. Uncut magazine said this guy is the heir to Johnny Cash, which of course is mighty big boots to fill. Also I think ten 15 years ago when I first started coming over here there was a language barrier on what I did so that I had to stick to really up-tempo country songs. Now that language barrier, I think with the European Union, with more awareness of American roots music. I can actually say a lot more on stage and I’m selling a lot more records and getting a lot more airplay, so that Switzerland is just as viable an audience for me, almost, as the UK. All of a sudden.
Q: What sort of people are your fans here?
A: It’s like the UK. It’s a cross-section of older people who liked country music 10 years ago but have become disenchanted with it but knew that I wrote songs for Suzy Bogguss and Johnny Cash, and people that have seen and come to festivals. But also younger kids – this is what’s exciting me. Everybody from 20 up to 35 who are sort of Springsteen-type fans, the younger, alternative rock and roll fans who like the lyrics because they’re hip enough to understand them, that these aren’t regular American lyrics, they have an edge to them. They have a political – they’re not so political but they have an interesting view of America that isn’t quite middle-of-the-road, to say the least.
Q: As an American artist coming to Europe, did September 11 affect you and the things that happened afterwards?
A: A little bit. They didn’t affect me per se. I toured, I did that tour with Nanci Griffith right after September 11, she was one of the few people who didn’t cancel her tour. You could definitely see a difference in security, getting out of America and coming into America and Americans being really freaked out about it, that security had been breached in such a wild way, but it didn’t really affect me. Even now, there is a lot of anti-American stuff going round, especially in the UK. People were trying to make me make statements about Bush. It’s too easy for journalists to do that, I told them look, I think it’s an unfortunate situation but I’m not really a political person, you know I don’t even vote. If I was really into it I would give you a more informed answer about American politics. But I see people treat me pretty well, one-on-one, not as an American but as a writer, composer who has something to say. And I’ve never written exclusively about America anyway, I wrote the Angel of Lyon and I wrote songs that took place in Norway and Spain. So I’m not a truly Americana writer. I don’t think America’s the center of the universe by any means.
Fifteen or twenty years ago Americans didn’t want to come over here. Major country artists and major folk artists thought the whole market was in North America. Well we had the opportunity to come over to Norway in the early 80s and then over to Switzerland to the first Frutigen festival, helped develop this roots awareness in Switzerland. Still people look on us as well why are you working Switzerland, because you can’t work in the US? Now 15, 20 years later all these acts, alternative country, straight country acts that aren’t at the top of the charts, want to tour Europe. They’ll go to my website, call up my agent and say can we open for Tom. In other words they’re not so proud any more or so chauvinistic because people basically are people. A good audience is a good audience. Actually you sometimes get better audiences in Europe because you’re actually outside of that American umbrella of hype that tells you what’s hip to listen to on the radio and what isn’t hip to listen to. Americans are really robots in a lot of ways about television, radio, print media. If you get away from that, it’s a fresher environment because the press is generally more unbiased and better over here, especially the UK.
I’m proud that we broke a lot of ground. I started playing a saloon in Interlaken, the Western Saloon, I think it was on the side of a disco, in 1981. You had to play Kenny Rogers songs and whatever was current on the country charts or nobody listened to you. That changed after six or seven years until today I think I’m one of the few artists that plays acoustically that sings in English that people really listen to over here, because we put the 20 years of work in. Whereas others come and go. I think the whole country festival thing, the country club with people dressing up as cowboys and Indians and firing a gun, I think that all died out a little bit, here and in the UK. This is more like a carnival routine. It’s back now to the basic roots of the music, which is the song.
Q: Tell me about the Bukowski project, how you knew him.
A: To be honest I didn’t know him that well, but I met him once and I corresponded with him. The importance of Bukowski: first of all, he was born in Germany, his father was German his mother was American and he ended up in the states, in LA, and he was abused by his father. He grew up an outsider and a loner. The important thing about Bukowski is he didn’t come out of the university system or the straight academic system. He came out of the post office – he worked in the post office for 20 years – so his angle is something peculiarly unique in America, of a working-class poet, which is really looked down on because American literature is controlled from either academia or the New York Times, the top papers, saying what is hip, what isn’t hip. Well he didn’t come from that. He came from the post office and skid row and he drank a lot. He didn’t affiliate with any scene, even the beat scene. A lot of women would consider him a misogynist because he spoke a lot about sex. It was all very tongue-in-cheek. When I met him he was very kind. I met him on the street in Hollywood. He was with his wife Linda, who handles his business now. He was sober and he was very polite, soft-spoken and was very thankful to me because I had given him some old columns of his that he didn’t own. They made a book out of it called Notes of a Dirty Old Man. He did something funny that day. I was with this woman I was singing with at the time, Patricia Hardin. He neglected to introduce us to his wife when we met him on the street. I said do you want to go have a drink and he said no, no we have to go home. We said goodbye, we gave him a record and we took off in our car. About ten minutes later this little Volkswagen came racing up to the side of us and he rolled down the window and he got my attention. I said do you want to go have a drink. He said no, this is Linda over here, and he introduced us to his wife. She had probably given him a lot of trouble. He came across as very human and his letters to me were very human. I liked his attitude. He had a very rock-and-roll attitude for an older guy. He would do these wild, drunken readings in front of students. He could be very – use any cursing, you know, in the book, just to shock, but if you got through all that he was actually a very good poet – sometimes. And I recorded I think one of his best poems "Crucifix in a Death Hand," a poem about old Los Angeles where I was born. I recite it with some musical backing, which is sort of what we’ll try to do in the record. And there are some Quentin Tarantino actors interested, Michael Madsen and maybe David Carradine. Our only stopgap here is we have to get permission from Linda, his wife. She’s already given me permission to publish the letters. It will be a very interesting project.
A lot of people are underground Bukowski fans, even women, because he loved women, even if he spoke a lot about sex or his lack of sex for many years. Later on – he was sort of, I hate to say ugly, he had a real pockmarked face. But women liked that, it was like he was the monster with the big heart. It was very unique that a guy like that would come out of the American scene and never be destroyed, and I was very drawn to him. I mean I wouldn’t want to write totally like Bukowski because of the shock value, but anybody who can survive the scene in America – because our regular poets really stink, and more recently our writers. We’re not producing great novelists or songwriters since the 60s.
Q: What’s the name of the book?
A: I think it’s called California Blood Lines: Charles Bukowski and Tom Russell. We’re shooting for Nov. 1 at the latest. The press right now is called Black Shark Press, it’s a small literary press in California. People can also check my website.
Q: CD at the same time?
A: Yeah. I have a lot of studio time booked in July. I want to work on these new love songs, but if we get the readings done in the next couple of months I can do the music pretty quickly because I have it in my head. It’ll be very unique project one way or the other. I think it’s gonna happen. But what form it will take requires me to talk to his wife. I may have to drive over to her house in Long Beach and talk to her. She’s very protective of his stuff, which is fine. It depends what we can use. I’m 90 percent certain the CD will come out in some form. Ten years ago there was a movie, Barfly, with Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway.
Love and fear. I’m calling it that now. Who knows what it’ll end up being called. I just started painting again eight months ago. I painted the last cover, for what it’s worth. Of course it’s very na๏ve, but I love folk art. I see the projects now in terms of songs and painting. I just see this big, primitive looking art, one side’s cracked, you know, but it has love and fear, the two sides of human experience basically. Myself I’ve been through three relationships in the last five or six years that have been eye-opening experiences, and a lot of that ends up on the records, like Borderland had a lot about the relationship with this woman I moved out to El Paso with six years ago, and it ended kind of strangely. And I just ended a relationship – or we mutually ended a relationship – with a musician, just because she lived in Austin, I lived in El Paso. She wanted a husband and kids and I think I’m over that. But it was a hurtful thing, so it’s kind of triggered these new love songs.
Q: So does that mean that the cowboy songs are on the back burner?
A: No, not at all, but I don’t want to be totally identified with that, it’s a side job for me. It’s amazing this record is getting the recognition it did, because to be honest I was going to put it out on my website as a little reward for my cowboy fans. Hightone Records wanted to put it out desperately, and it’s gotten more recognition right out of the gate than any record I’ve had out, except maybe The Man from God Knows Where. But no, I’m not done with the cowboy thing, in fact the biggest project, that I’ve been working on for five or six years, is like The Man from God Knows Where. It’s a history of the California West sort of through the eyes of woman, who happens to be my sister-in-law, my brother’s second wife. She grew up on a historic Spanish land-draft ranch, a very large ranch in California, has virtually lived round there all her life and is the sort of woman that’s had to kill two bears that got in her house. It’s like interviewing someone from 180 years ago. She has all the history of her family there, she has all the photos. She can tell you everything about the environment and the history of the ranch and she has a very, very articulate point of view about women and the west, so I’m going to base this sort of cowboy folk opera around her point of view. But it’s also going to be a book, so it’s taking a lot longer than I suspected. To me that’ll be the ultimate cowboy record. And I’m in no hurry because I’m going to have to spend at least another two years putting that together. So I’m not really done with the cowboy thing.
Q: You seem to have a huge number of projects going on, and yet you’re on the road so much. How do you fit it all in?
A: You know, I’ve really had to get a lot of things in my life together. One of them is being in between relationships has helped. I’m not going to rush back into a relationship because that’s just one more thing. You can’t have a girlfriend without devoting enough time to try to make it work. So I want to relax on that for a while. I’ve cut out drinking a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t a huge drinker, but again it was another thing that got in the way. I’m really very focussed on my writing and painting. That’s what I get the most enjoyment out of and that’s what I’m meant to do, and I really have these projects I want to do. I’m not a normal person, let’s face it. I don’t need to be in a marriage. I have a wonderful house out in El Paso that needs a lot of work all the time, and I can do that. I have a painting studio and a writing studio and that’s what I want to do. The next five years I really want to devote my life to these projects. I’m able to get some of it done on the road.
I’m coming to the end of this kind of touring, I think, playing the smaller joints. I think if I come out with a bigger record – the Bukowski record then the bigger record and then the western record – I should be doing small theatres. I don’t need to be on a level with Bruce Springsteen or even Nanci, but I’d like to be up in 300-400-seat theatres all over the world, playing to serious audiences. That would be fine for me. Tour in large blocks, but less, you know, tour Europe and then take two months off. Now I have to do it this way. I put two records out in 10 months and the only way you’re going to sell them and get publicity is to tour every time. But it’s working. I did the David Letterman show last May with Nanci and he saw the Uncut review and now I’m going to do it again in September, and that goes out to 40 million people worldwide. It’s too small now, I mean I’ve done it. If I keep playing at this level I’m hitting my head against the ceiling. The records are selling more and more. I’m really beyond all boundaries of age or anything else, it’s up to me now to take it to another level. I’m talking to a friend of mine to manage my affairs and make the press kit bigger and do more TV and radio, but the bottom line is I have to deliver the record that I think will resonate with more people, in the way that certain heroes of mine do, Leonard Cohen and Dylan. You can do articulate, dark, meaningful songwriting and reach an audience without being a pop star. You remain a private individual.
It’s fascinating. I don’t even know either. I love the song. Most people think Rosemary killed Big Jim but I always think why is Lily taking the dye out of her hair. Did she impersonate Rosemary and set her up. Anything can happen. It’s an extremely well-written song for, like, a western song. It’s great that people debate it. It means they’re listening, trying to listen.
There’s something special about it because of the workshops during the day where we just talk like I’m talking here and people ask questions and songwriting and stuff, which I don’t really dig talking about, but it’s kind of call and the food’s really good, but the atmosphere is unbelievable.
Q:I need to check a few basic things. Your age?
A: I’m not going to tell you that.
Q: On your website it says you were born in 1950.
A: That’s pretty accurate. That’s about it. Let me just tell you why, in a way, because I’m superstitious. I could figure out how old I am because obviously I know, I don’t know because I stopped counting, but I know the year I was born, but I don’t like it put in pieces. I don’t think you have to tell a journalist anything you don’t want to tell, and I think it’s a negative factor in a piece because it influences what younger people think. In the same way as if you play something on the radio and younger people say "What was that?" But then they find out that this guy’s in his sixties, and they think well that couldn’t be hip. The more you can get away from typecasting and just getting people to listen to what somebody says, because in my country everything is youth-oriented. I could be on a bigger label but it’s a youth-oriented market. They don’t know that I’m going to do 10 more records. They think a guy like me is going to retire. So I don’t tell. It’s too bad because you’re just heading towards that, and then you get an obituary when you die. It’s just counting something that I don’t feel I’m a part of, to be truthful. And if I did believe it I’d be looking a lot older than I do. I just don’t see it as being accurate anyway. You could interview another guy who was born in 1950 and he would seem like he was 80, you could interview another guy and it would seem like he was 32, so I just don’t believe in the barrier. In the same way when journalists ask me about my politics, which I don’t have any, but they want it in the piece because they feel people can then judge where you’re coming from. There are certain things I won’t tell.
Q: Can you give me a potted history of your life?
A: Basically I went to the University of California at Santa Barbara and got a degree as a criminologist and sociologist. I was really into street-level problems and crime. I thought it was going to be really interesting. And then a friend of mine got a grant to go to Nigeria during the Biafra war, 1969-70, and offered me a job as a research teaching assistant. I was married at the time. I was very young. But we went to Nigeria as a year. I really didn’t do a lot of teaching. I collected art and hung out and played a lot of guitar, but by hanging out with the academic people I decided that wasn’t going to be the life for me. It bored me to tears, they bored me to death academic people. So I knew I wanted to be around musicians and ever since I saw Bob Dylan perform I thought that’s really what I am, a songwriter. I just didn’t have the guts to do it.
I came back from Africa and lived in Vancouver because we had friends there. I began playing in really bad Skid Row bars, six sets a night doing Hank Williams songs, Rolling Stones, and I worked my way up through there and started writing songs. I moved to Austin in the mid-70s when it was just being set up as a centre for alternative songwriters. Willie Nelson had just moved there, and Guy Clark. I recorded two albums with Patricia Hardin. We came very close to getting a major recording deal. I moved to San Francisco and recorded a record there and then we broke up and I moved to New York and kind of dropped out of the music scene. I had a developmental deal as a novelist with the William Morris Agency for a while, they shopped some of my manuscripts and not much happened, and I drove cab. That’s when I met Andrew Hardin, my guitar player. He was driving cab. He said "we’ve got to get out of this, you’re a great songwriter." I’d already written some pretty good songs like Gallo del Cielo.
The meat of the story is one night I picked up Robert Hunter, the lyricist of the Grateful Dead, and we started talking in the cab and I sang this song I’d written about cockfighting. He was stunned. He had me sing it again and again. The upshot of that was he got me up on stage a month later and said "I want to introduce you to a taxi driver who wrote this song," introduced me to a Grateful Dead audience. Got me back in the business really because he hired me and Andy to open some shows for him in New York, I mean top-level shows, out of the blue. So we instantly had an audience and we instantly were working and we’ve been working ever since – the last 20 years we’ve been touring 200 days a year.
I’ve made 18 records since then, all different kinds of records. I never ran into Robert Hunter again but I always point to him as one of the few people in this business that actually did something. Everybody promises something but he actually did something for me. He went off to England and for a couple of years I heard people say that he would sing the song and say "I learned this from a cab driver."
And then I stayed in New York 15 years. I finally had a novel published in Norway, eight years ago, a crime novel, and then I published a book with Sylvia Tyson on songwriting quotes that’s still available. Finally I got tired of New York five or six years ago. I was living with a woman in New York and she was born in El Paso, Texas, so we moved out to El Paso and found this beautiful, historic adobe house. And the relationship broke up – we weren’t used to seeing each other that much – and I kept the house and she moved back to New York, and that was about six years ago. I feel pretty firmly based there because it’s a semi-isolated place in the desert and I have three acres and my art studio and my writing studio. It’s not Austin, it’s not New York, it’s not San Francisco, and yet it’s one of the most historic towns in America and it’s right on the Mexican border, of Juarez, Mexico, and there may be two million people right across the border. A lot has happened. That’s my capsule bio.
Tom Russell, Bern, Switzerland, June 3, 2004:-
… accompanying a book I have coming out of my letters and interviews with Charles Bukowski. He was sort of a wild, edgy, American, working-class beat poet that I became familiar with in the 70s and we had a correspondence and I interviewed him. Anyway he has become quite famous after he passed away and they’re putting out a book of my correspondence with him and letters and interviews. It’s not enough so they got me to write some – quote unquote – poetry, which I don’t consider I do. Basically they’re small short stories about a life on the road. So that’s coming out and now they came up with the idea of putting a CD with it of myself and maybe some actors and musicians reciting either Bukowski poems or some of the material in the book. We’re working on that. I’ll probably have that firmed up within two weeks. We’ll have to do that when I’m back in the States and then after that I’m touring again behind this cowbody record and working on a double album, Love and Fear I call it right now, it’s a working title. Hopefully that’ll be a bigger record. It’ll be out next year about this time.
I’ve neglected Switzerland, Austria and Germany for a couple of years and we used to do pretty well over here when I was with the Tom Russell band and the country rock scene was happening more than ten years ago you had the Frutigen festival, you had about ten major country festivals. That’s kind of on the wane since Nashville has killed country music – I have a lot of theories on that – but now there’s this alternative songwriter scene that’s surfacing big time in the UK. Uncut magazine did this review. It’s filtering here. Somebody handed me the German Rolling Stone yesterday and there was a four-star review on the cowboy record. The guy said they usually don’t care about this but because they’ve heard of you before. There is a growing awareness and interest here. We played Freiburg the other night and it was full. Uncut magazine said this guy is the heir to Johnny Cash, which of course is mighty big boots to fill. Also I think ten 15 years ago when I first started coming over here there was a language barrier on what I did so that I had to stick to really up-tempo country songs. Now that language barrier, I think with the European Union, with more awareness of American roots music. I can actually say a lot more on stage and I’m selling a lot more records and getting a lot more airplay, so that Switzerland is just as viable an audience for me, almost, as the UK. All of a sudden.
Q: What sort of people are your fans here?
A: It’s like the UK. It’s a cross-section of older people who liked country music 10 years ago but have become disenchanted with it but knew that I wrote songs for Suzy Bogguss and Johnny Cash, and people that have seen and come to festivals. But also younger kids – this is what’s exciting me. Everybody from 20 up to 35 who are sort of Springsteen-type fans, the younger, alternative rock and roll fans who like the lyrics because they’re hip enough to understand them, that these aren’t regular American lyrics, they have an edge to them. They have a political – they’re not so political but they have an interesting view of America that isn’t quite middle-of-the-road, to say the least.
Q: As an American artist coming to Europe, did September 11 affect you and the things that happened afterwards?
A: A little bit. They didn’t affect me per se. I toured, I did that tour with Nanci Griffith right after September 11, she was one of the few people who didn’t cancel her tour. You could definitely see a difference in security, getting out of America and coming into America and Americans being really freaked out about it, that security had been breached in such a wild way, but it didn’t really affect me. Even now, there is a lot of anti-American stuff going round, especially in the UK. People were trying to make me make statements about Bush. It’s too easy for journalists to do that, I told them look, I think it’s an unfortunate situation but I’m not really a political person, you know I don’t even vote. If I was really into it I would give you a more informed answer about American politics. But I see people treat me pretty well, one-on-one, not as an American but as a writer, composer who has something to say. And I’ve never written exclusively about America anyway, I wrote the Angel of Lyon and I wrote songs that took place in Norway and Spain. So I’m not a truly Americana writer. I don’t think America’s the center of the universe by any means.
Fifteen or twenty years ago Americans didn’t want to come over here. Major country artists and major folk artists thought the whole market was in North America. Well we had the opportunity to come over to Norway in the early 80s and then over to Switzerland to the first Frutigen festival, helped develop this roots awareness in Switzerland. Still people look on us as well why are you working Switzerland, because you can’t work in the US? Now 15, 20 years later all these acts, alternative country, straight country acts that aren’t at the top of the charts, want to tour Europe. They’ll go to my website, call up my agent and say can we open for Tom. In other words they’re not so proud any more or so chauvinistic because people basically are people. A good audience is a good audience. Actually you sometimes get better audiences in Europe because you’re actually outside of that American umbrella of hype that tells you what’s hip to listen to on the radio and what isn’t hip to listen to. Americans are really robots in a lot of ways about television, radio, print media. If you get away from that, it’s a fresher environment because the press is generally more unbiased and better over here, especially the UK.
I’m proud that we broke a lot of ground. I started playing a saloon in Interlaken, the Western Saloon, I think it was on the side of a disco, in 1981. You had to play Kenny Rogers songs and whatever was current on the country charts or nobody listened to you. That changed after six or seven years until today I think I’m one of the few artists that plays acoustically that sings in English that people really listen to over here, because we put the 20 years of work in. Whereas others come and go. I think the whole country festival thing, the country club with people dressing up as cowboys and Indians and firing a gun, I think that all died out a little bit, here and in the UK. This is more like a carnival routine. It’s back now to the basic roots of the music, which is the song.
Q: Tell me about the Bukowski project, how you knew him.
A: To be honest I didn’t know him that well, but I met him once and I corresponded with him. The importance of Bukowski: first of all, he was born in Germany, his father was German his mother was American and he ended up in the states, in LA, and he was abused by his father. He grew up an outsider and a loner. The important thing about Bukowski is he didn’t come out of the university system or the straight academic system. He came out of the post office – he worked in the post office for 20 years – so his angle is something peculiarly unique in America, of a working-class poet, which is really looked down on because American literature is controlled from either academia or the New York Times, the top papers, saying what is hip, what isn’t hip. Well he didn’t come from that. He came from the post office and skid row and he drank a lot. He didn’t affiliate with any scene, even the beat scene. A lot of women would consider him a misogynist because he spoke a lot about sex. It was all very tongue-in-cheek. When I met him he was very kind. I met him on the street in Hollywood. He was with his wife Linda, who handles his business now. He was sober and he was very polite, soft-spoken and was very thankful to me because I had given him some old columns of his that he didn’t own. They made a book out of it called Notes of a Dirty Old Man. He did something funny that day. I was with this woman I was singing with at the time, Patricia Hardin. He neglected to introduce us to his wife when we met him on the street. I said do you want to go have a drink and he said no, no we have to go home. We said goodbye, we gave him a record and we took off in our car. About ten minutes later this little Volkswagen came racing up to the side of us and he rolled down the window and he got my attention. I said do you want to go have a drink. He said no, this is Linda over here, and he introduced us to his wife. She had probably given him a lot of trouble. He came across as very human and his letters to me were very human. I liked his attitude. He had a very rock-and-roll attitude for an older guy. He would do these wild, drunken readings in front of students. He could be very – use any cursing, you know, in the book, just to shock, but if you got through all that he was actually a very good poet – sometimes. And I recorded I think one of his best poems "Crucifix in a Death Hand," a poem about old Los Angeles where I was born. I recite it with some musical backing, which is sort of what we’ll try to do in the record. And there are some Quentin Tarantino actors interested, Michael Madsen and maybe David Carradine. Our only stopgap here is we have to get permission from Linda, his wife. She’s already given me permission to publish the letters. It will be a very interesting project.
A lot of people are underground Bukowski fans, even women, because he loved women, even if he spoke a lot about sex or his lack of sex for many years. Later on – he was sort of, I hate to say ugly, he had a real pockmarked face. But women liked that, it was like he was the monster with the big heart. It was very unique that a guy like that would come out of the American scene and never be destroyed, and I was very drawn to him. I mean I wouldn’t want to write totally like Bukowski because of the shock value, but anybody who can survive the scene in America – because our regular poets really stink, and more recently our writers. We’re not producing great novelists or songwriters since the 60s.
Q: What’s the name of the book?
A: I think it’s called California Blood Lines: Charles Bukowski and Tom Russell. We’re shooting for Nov. 1 at the latest. The press right now is called Black Shark Press, it’s a small literary press in California. People can also check my website.
Q: CD at the same time?
A: Yeah. I have a lot of studio time booked in July. I want to work on these new love songs, but if we get the readings done in the next couple of months I can do the music pretty quickly because I have it in my head. It’ll be very unique project one way or the other. I think it’s gonna happen. But what form it will take requires me to talk to his wife. I may have to drive over to her house in Long Beach and talk to her. She’s very protective of his stuff, which is fine. It depends what we can use. I’m 90 percent certain the CD will come out in some form. Ten years ago there was a movie, Barfly, with Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway.
Love and fear. I’m calling it that now. Who knows what it’ll end up being called. I just started painting again eight months ago. I painted the last cover, for what it’s worth. Of course it’s very na๏ve, but I love folk art. I see the projects now in terms of songs and painting. I just see this big, primitive looking art, one side’s cracked, you know, but it has love and fear, the two sides of human experience basically. Myself I’ve been through three relationships in the last five or six years that have been eye-opening experiences, and a lot of that ends up on the records, like Borderland had a lot about the relationship with this woman I moved out to El Paso with six years ago, and it ended kind of strangely. And I just ended a relationship – or we mutually ended a relationship – with a musician, just because she lived in Austin, I lived in El Paso. She wanted a husband and kids and I think I’m over that. But it was a hurtful thing, so it’s kind of triggered these new love songs.
Q: So does that mean that the cowboy songs are on the back burner?
A: No, not at all, but I don’t want to be totally identified with that, it’s a side job for me. It’s amazing this record is getting the recognition it did, because to be honest I was going to put it out on my website as a little reward for my cowboy fans. Hightone Records wanted to put it out desperately, and it’s gotten more recognition right out of the gate than any record I’ve had out, except maybe The Man from God Knows Where. But no, I’m not done with the cowboy thing, in fact the biggest project, that I’ve been working on for five or six years, is like The Man from God Knows Where. It’s a history of the California West sort of through the eyes of woman, who happens to be my sister-in-law, my brother’s second wife. She grew up on a historic Spanish land-draft ranch, a very large ranch in California, has virtually lived round there all her life and is the sort of woman that’s had to kill two bears that got in her house. It’s like interviewing someone from 180 years ago. She has all the history of her family there, she has all the photos. She can tell you everything about the environment and the history of the ranch and she has a very, very articulate point of view about women and the west, so I’m going to base this sort of cowboy folk opera around her point of view. But it’s also going to be a book, so it’s taking a lot longer than I suspected. To me that’ll be the ultimate cowboy record. And I’m in no hurry because I’m going to have to spend at least another two years putting that together. So I’m not really done with the cowboy thing.
Q: You seem to have a huge number of projects going on, and yet you’re on the road so much. How do you fit it all in?
A: You know, I’ve really had to get a lot of things in my life together. One of them is being in between relationships has helped. I’m not going to rush back into a relationship because that’s just one more thing. You can’t have a girlfriend without devoting enough time to try to make it work. So I want to relax on that for a while. I’ve cut out drinking a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t a huge drinker, but again it was another thing that got in the way. I’m really very focussed on my writing and painting. That’s what I get the most enjoyment out of and that’s what I’m meant to do, and I really have these projects I want to do. I’m not a normal person, let’s face it. I don’t need to be in a marriage. I have a wonderful house out in El Paso that needs a lot of work all the time, and I can do that. I have a painting studio and a writing studio and that’s what I want to do. The next five years I really want to devote my life to these projects. I’m able to get some of it done on the road.
I’m coming to the end of this kind of touring, I think, playing the smaller joints. I think if I come out with a bigger record – the Bukowski record then the bigger record and then the western record – I should be doing small theatres. I don’t need to be on a level with Bruce Springsteen or even Nanci, but I’d like to be up in 300-400-seat theatres all over the world, playing to serious audiences. That would be fine for me. Tour in large blocks, but less, you know, tour Europe and then take two months off. Now I have to do it this way. I put two records out in 10 months and the only way you’re going to sell them and get publicity is to tour every time. But it’s working. I did the David Letterman show last May with Nanci and he saw the Uncut review and now I’m going to do it again in September, and that goes out to 40 million people worldwide. It’s too small now, I mean I’ve done it. If I keep playing at this level I’m hitting my head against the ceiling. The records are selling more and more. I’m really beyond all boundaries of age or anything else, it’s up to me now to take it to another level. I’m talking to a friend of mine to manage my affairs and make the press kit bigger and do more TV and radio, but the bottom line is I have to deliver the record that I think will resonate with more people, in the way that certain heroes of mine do, Leonard Cohen and Dylan. You can do articulate, dark, meaningful songwriting and reach an audience without being a pop star. You remain a private individual.
It’s fascinating. I don’t even know either. I love the song. Most people think Rosemary killed Big Jim but I always think why is Lily taking the dye out of her hair. Did she impersonate Rosemary and set her up. Anything can happen. It’s an extremely well-written song for, like, a western song. It’s great that people debate it. It means they’re listening, trying to listen.
There’s something special about it because of the workshops during the day where we just talk like I’m talking here and people ask questions and songwriting and stuff, which I don’t really dig talking about, but it’s kind of call and the food’s really good, but the atmosphere is unbelievable.
Q:I need to check a few basic things. Your age?
A: I’m not going to tell you that.
Q: On your website it says you were born in 1950.
A: That’s pretty accurate. That’s about it. Let me just tell you why, in a way, because I’m superstitious. I could figure out how old I am because obviously I know, I don’t know because I stopped counting, but I know the year I was born, but I don’t like it put in pieces. I don’t think you have to tell a journalist anything you don’t want to tell, and I think it’s a negative factor in a piece because it influences what younger people think. In the same way as if you play something on the radio and younger people say "What was that?" But then they find out that this guy’s in his sixties, and they think well that couldn’t be hip. The more you can get away from typecasting and just getting people to listen to what somebody says, because in my country everything is youth-oriented. I could be on a bigger label but it’s a youth-oriented market. They don’t know that I’m going to do 10 more records. They think a guy like me is going to retire. So I don’t tell. It’s too bad because you’re just heading towards that, and then you get an obituary when you die. It’s just counting something that I don’t feel I’m a part of, to be truthful. And if I did believe it I’d be looking a lot older than I do. I just don’t see it as being accurate anyway. You could interview another guy who was born in 1950 and he would seem like he was 80, you could interview another guy and it would seem like he was 32, so I just don’t believe in the barrier. In the same way when journalists ask me about my politics, which I don’t have any, but they want it in the piece because they feel people can then judge where you’re coming from. There are certain things I won’t tell.
Q: Can you give me a potted history of your life?
A: Basically I went to the University of California at Santa Barbara and got a degree as a criminologist and sociologist. I was really into street-level problems and crime. I thought it was going to be really interesting. And then a friend of mine got a grant to go to Nigeria during the Biafra war, 1969-70, and offered me a job as a research teaching assistant. I was married at the time. I was very young. But we went to Nigeria as a year. I really didn’t do a lot of teaching. I collected art and hung out and played a lot of guitar, but by hanging out with the academic people I decided that wasn’t going to be the life for me. It bored me to tears, they bored me to death academic people. So I knew I wanted to be around musicians and ever since I saw Bob Dylan perform I thought that’s really what I am, a songwriter. I just didn’t have the guts to do it.
I came back from Africa and lived in Vancouver because we had friends there. I began playing in really bad Skid Row bars, six sets a night doing Hank Williams songs, Rolling Stones, and I worked my way up through there and started writing songs. I moved to Austin in the mid-70s when it was just being set up as a centre for alternative songwriters. Willie Nelson had just moved there, and Guy Clark. I recorded two albums with Patricia Hardin. We came very close to getting a major recording deal. I moved to San Francisco and recorded a record there and then we broke up and I moved to New York and kind of dropped out of the music scene. I had a developmental deal as a novelist with the William Morris Agency for a while, they shopped some of my manuscripts and not much happened, and I drove cab. That’s when I met Andrew Hardin, my guitar player. He was driving cab. He said "we’ve got to get out of this, you’re a great songwriter." I’d already written some pretty good songs like Gallo del Cielo.
The meat of the story is one night I picked up Robert Hunter, the lyricist of the Grateful Dead, and we started talking in the cab and I sang this song I’d written about cockfighting. He was stunned. He had me sing it again and again. The upshot of that was he got me up on stage a month later and said "I want to introduce you to a taxi driver who wrote this song," introduced me to a Grateful Dead audience. Got me back in the business really because he hired me and Andy to open some shows for him in New York, I mean top-level shows, out of the blue. So we instantly had an audience and we instantly were working and we’ve been working ever since – the last 20 years we’ve been touring 200 days a year.
I’ve made 18 records since then, all different kinds of records. I never ran into Robert Hunter again but I always point to him as one of the few people in this business that actually did something. Everybody promises something but he actually did something for me. He went off to England and for a couple of years I heard people say that he would sing the song and say "I learned this from a cab driver."
And then I stayed in New York 15 years. I finally had a novel published in Norway, eight years ago, a crime novel, and then I published a book with Sylvia Tyson on songwriting quotes that’s still available. Finally I got tired of New York five or six years ago. I was living with a woman in New York and she was born in El Paso, Texas, so we moved out to El Paso and found this beautiful, historic adobe house. And the relationship broke up – we weren’t used to seeing each other that much – and I kept the house and she moved back to New York, and that was about six years ago. I feel pretty firmly based there because it’s a semi-isolated place in the desert and I have three acres and my art studio and my writing studio. It’s not Austin, it’s not New York, it’s not San Francisco, and yet it’s one of the most historic towns in America and it’s right on the Mexican border, of Juarez, Mexico, and there may be two million people right across the border. A lot has happened. That’s my capsule bio.
Friday, October 15, 2004
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Good news, thanks to a tip from Exit O, the Steve Earle mailing list. New West records has the rights to the Austin City Limits archive for CD and DVD release.
Steve Earle and the Dukes setlist from 1986 for the CD and DVD
1 – Sweet Little `66
2 – Goodbye's All We Got Left
3 – Guitar Town
4 – Hillbilly Highway
5 – Good Ol Boy ( Getting' Tough )
6 – My Old Friend The Blues
7 – Think It Over
8 – Little Rock `N' Roller
9 – State Trooper
10 – Nowhere Road
11 – The Week Of Living Dangerously
12 – Angry Young Man
13 – Fearless Heart
14 – I Love You Too Much
15 – San Antonio Girl
16 – The Devil's Right Hand
17 – Down The Road
Steve Earle and the Dukes setlist from 1986 for the CD and DVD
1 – Sweet Little `66
2 – Goodbye's All We Got Left
3 – Guitar Town
4 – Hillbilly Highway
5 – Good Ol Boy ( Getting' Tough )
6 – My Old Friend The Blues
7 – Think It Over
8 – Little Rock `N' Roller
9 – State Trooper
10 – Nowhere Road
11 – The Week Of Living Dangerously
12 – Angry Young Man
13 – Fearless Heart
14 – I Love You Too Much
15 – San Antonio Girl
16 – The Devil's Right Hand
17 – Down The Road
This is becoming a Bob Blog which it isn't meant to be, however I did buy Chronicles yesterday (very reasonable $29.95 from Borders) and it is, indeed, brilliant. I'll share just a little. I've chosen this part because it is on topic, but there are examples of wry humour and thrilling prose on each page. Go to Expecting Rain for links to heaps of glowing reviews.
Train Song festival
Once I was in the kitchen listening to Malcolm X talking on the radio. He was lecturing on why not to eat pork or ham, and that a pig is actually one third cat, one third rat, one third dog --it's unclean and you shouldn't eat it. It's funny how things stick with you. About ten years later I was having dinner at Johnny Cash's house outside of Nashville. There were alot of songwriters there. Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Harlan Howard, Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newberry and some others. Joe and Janette Carter were also there. Joe and Jannette were the son and daughter of A.P and Sarah Carter and cousins to June Carter, Johnny's wife. They were like the royalty of country music.
Johnny's big fireplace was blazing and crackling. After dinner, everybody sat around in the rustic living rooms with high wooden beams and wide plate-glass windows that overlooked a lake. We sat in a circle and each songwriter would play a song and pass the guitar to the next player. Usually, there'd be comments like "You really nailed that one." Or "Yeah, man, you said it all in them few lines." Or maybe something like "That song's got a lot of history in it." Or "You put all of yourself into that tune." Mostly just complimentary stuff. I played "Lay, Lady, Lay" and then passed the guitar to Graham Nash, anticipating some kind of response. I didn't have to wait long. "You don't eat pork, do you?" Joe Carter asked. That was his comment. I waited for a second before replying. "Uh, no sir, I don't," I said back. Kristofferson almost swallowed his fork. Joe asked, "Why not?" It's then that I remembered what Malcolm X had said. "Well, sir, it's kind of a personal thing. I don't eat that stuff, no. I don't eat something that's one third rat, one third cat and one third dog. It just doesn't taste right." There was an awkward momentary silence that you could have cut with one of the knives off the dinner table. Johnny Cash then almost doubled over. Kristofferson just shook his head. Joe Carter was quite a character.
Train Song festival
Folk and blues artists belted out songs about train rides such as Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues," using instruments like a harmonica, upright bass and trombone.
As they performed classic rail tunes, a rare 1907 steam train ran along the 4.5 acre park's perimeter. Red-sashed bandits from the Apache Canyon Gang hijacked every other trip, allowing parents who feared the skit would upset their children to catch the next ride.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
I'm A Dylan Tragic, Who The Hell Are You?
Senator Helen Coonan is the Federal Communications Minister (for now). Her address is senator.coonan@aph.gov.au. I urge everyone -- here in Australia or overseas -- to write to her and insist that when cross media laws go on the block a provision is inserted which forbids the new owners of Fairfax publishing any more than, say, three Bob Dylan and/or Bob Dylan-fan bashing articles a year.
That seems fair. Sure it's a deep cut to their usual hectic pace but think how it will free up space for less hackneyed topics.
Seriously, non-Sydneysiders may think I am exaggerating. I am not. It really is an obsession with the Sydney Morning Herald, when Bruce Elder is unavailable they swipe an article from overseas like today's by London Telegraph hack Sam Leith. Read it if you must. It is such a lazy article, even for the Smartarse Anti-Bob genre. It has absolutey nothing new to offer.
In the interests of full disclosure: you won't be surprised to know I qualify as one of these much-maligned "Dylanologists." I have all the albums, some singles and promos, some bootlegs, the movies, about a dozen books (Marcus, Heylin and others but no Motion or Ricks), posters, t-shirts, ticket stubs, photos. I travelled to Germany solely to see Bob. I even went to Tamworth. I love Masked and Anonymous. And every month I go to Dylan "meetings" with fellow tragics here in Sydney. I am not middle aged or a man, or a middle aged man, but I suppose the SMH would say the exception proves the rule.
So blogger.com may not be as august a forum as our nation's oldest newspaper but if I may I would like to put our side of the story. This is not to defend Bob Dylan, if you don't like him, fine, whatever. That just means more room on the rail for me. This is to defend us.
Simply put, whenever I read these articles I never see myself or my friends reflected. Clearly all these journos have had the terrible bad luck of meeting only the most boring of sad bastards among our ranks, and not the other 98% who are pefectly well adjusted socially and not only that, are some of the most interesting, caring and hilariously funny people you could ever meet.
And when I say "funny" that includes a very healthy sense of humour about our own obsession, rather than being the dour boffins of the popular journalististic (lack of) imagination. According to Leith and the others in the SMH, for us joking about Bob is heresy. Not so. In fact, it is almost complusory. After all, who better than a real "Bobcat" to make jokes about Bob? Believe me, we really know where the bodies are buried. If the worst Leith can come up with is Shot of Love, he just ain't trying. [2]
I have no empirical evidence for this but based on my knowledge of the world of Bob obsession around the world, I suspect the "gatecrashers, spooks, trespassers, demagogues" Leith refers to (and Bob writes about in Chronicles) are not the same people who are in the top rank of devotees today. The sort of fervour which motivates freakery like that tends to burn bright then flicker out or move on. It is too rigid to survive the hairpin turns of Bob's career. I could be wrong but I imagine those people dropping Bob as soon as someone more ambitious in the role of Saviour came along (like, say, Charlie Manson.) In 2004 in fact they are more likely to resent him for his unwillingness not to change or to answer their call. You need a sense of humour to be a Bob fan, which is an anathema to that kind of self righteousness.
Yes, we love to scruitinise the lyrics and his life. Yes, we love to argue about the relative merits of the '66, '82, '87 and 04' versions of The Ballad of Hollis Brown. Yes, we follow him around on the "Neverending bloody Tour", analysing set lists and harp breaks, deciphering his instructions-by-eyebrow to Tony and argue, oh how we endlessly argue, about the drummers.
But you know what? We do it because it is a bloody load of fun. We do it for the same reason footy fans paint their faces, dye their hair team colours, make silly banners, scream their lungs out and abuse the ref. Sure, you can sit back and cooly observe the play but that, surely, misses the point. There is a place for Richie Benaud, but also for the Barmy Army.
Every sporting league in the world has a Roosters/insert appropriate AFL team here. Collingwood?/Yankees/Man Utd -- a team everyone else loves to hate. [3] We have Joan (Oops. Sorry.) Why?
Because it makes it more fun. It's more fun to watch a big game surrounded by passionate supporters and friends than it is to stay at home by yourself. So, we Dylan Tragics also congregate to support each other and recap the match. So do cricket tragics, political tragics, Jane Austen tragics, blogging tragics and Australian Idol tragics. And, thank god, I say for people who are actually passionate about something.
We do it, too, because of the other people involved. I have friends on three continents other than this one because of our shared passion and a warm and welcoming circle here. And I have enjoyed some of the richest moments of my life with them. I still remember a place called Green Valley, where ... oh, sorry. Wrong emotional speech, but you get my meaning.
We do it too, because we can. Almost uniquely among popular musicians, Bob provides constant fodder for discussion. He has been releasing new material and playing dozens of live shows a year for over 40 years. What he is doing now is very different than what he was doing 10, 15, 20, 30 or 40 years ago. Bob has been academically and intellectually pummelled constantly from every angle and has emerged intact, always with something new to offer. No amount of overanalysis can scratch his surface. Well, we can scratch it, but we can't leave a mark. His own self has never been lost. He can cope with Christopher Ricks.
This human attraction to obsession and tribal formations, I'm sure there is a vital evolutionary reason for it (I'm sure someone knows). At any rate, it isn't us who need to "get over it", it's the journos who find something offensive about the way other people choose to make the most out of their lives.
The SMH is welcome to attend our next social gathering (As is everyone else: Monday, Oct 18th, Clare Hotel, Broadway, 7pmish) and get the facts. That, at least, would be a new angle.
[1] Oh and by the way, what's wrong with the sound of a digderidoo? Some people like it, you pommy tosser. Did the SMH endorse this insult to our iconic indigenous instrument?
[2] Sure, it's no Planet Waves, but any album which includes "Every Grain of Sand" and "The Groom's Still Waiting At the Altar" is hardly without merit.
[2] Joke: What three British football teams have swear words in their names? Arsenal, Scunthorpe and Manchester fucking United.
That seems fair. Sure it's a deep cut to their usual hectic pace but think how it will free up space for less hackneyed topics.
Seriously, non-Sydneysiders may think I am exaggerating. I am not. It really is an obsession with the Sydney Morning Herald, when Bruce Elder is unavailable they swipe an article from overseas like today's by London Telegraph hack Sam Leith. Read it if you must. It is such a lazy article, even for the Smartarse Anti-Bob genre. It has absolutey nothing new to offer.
Dylan can't sing - check. [1]
Books with pretentious names have been written about Dylan - check.
"Bobsessives" treat Dylan like god - check.
Old hippies need to get a life! - check
Dylan made some bad albums in the 80s - check.
No really, those albums really sucked - check
Mention something obscure like Shot of Love just to show what a real pro you are - check.
And, can you believe, he actually became a Christian? - check
String together some unsupported generalisations on those topics and you too can be published in the city's journal of record.In the interests of full disclosure: you won't be surprised to know I qualify as one of these much-maligned "Dylanologists." I have all the albums, some singles and promos, some bootlegs, the movies, about a dozen books (Marcus, Heylin and others but no Motion or Ricks), posters, t-shirts, ticket stubs, photos. I travelled to Germany solely to see Bob. I even went to Tamworth. I love Masked and Anonymous. And every month I go to Dylan "meetings" with fellow tragics here in Sydney. I am not middle aged or a man, or a middle aged man, but I suppose the SMH would say the exception proves the rule.
So blogger.com may not be as august a forum as our nation's oldest newspaper but if I may I would like to put our side of the story. This is not to defend Bob Dylan, if you don't like him, fine, whatever. That just means more room on the rail for me. This is to defend us.
Simply put, whenever I read these articles I never see myself or my friends reflected. Clearly all these journos have had the terrible bad luck of meeting only the most boring of sad bastards among our ranks, and not the other 98% who are pefectly well adjusted socially and not only that, are some of the most interesting, caring and hilariously funny people you could ever meet.
And when I say "funny" that includes a very healthy sense of humour about our own obsession, rather than being the dour boffins of the popular journalististic (lack of) imagination. According to Leith and the others in the SMH, for us joking about Bob is heresy. Not so. In fact, it is almost complusory. After all, who better than a real "Bobcat" to make jokes about Bob? Believe me, we really know where the bodies are buried. If the worst Leith can come up with is Shot of Love, he just ain't trying. [2]
I have no empirical evidence for this but based on my knowledge of the world of Bob obsession around the world, I suspect the "gatecrashers, spooks, trespassers, demagogues" Leith refers to (and Bob writes about in Chronicles) are not the same people who are in the top rank of devotees today. The sort of fervour which motivates freakery like that tends to burn bright then flicker out or move on. It is too rigid to survive the hairpin turns of Bob's career. I could be wrong but I imagine those people dropping Bob as soon as someone more ambitious in the role of Saviour came along (like, say, Charlie Manson.) In 2004 in fact they are more likely to resent him for his unwillingness not to change or to answer their call. You need a sense of humour to be a Bob fan, which is an anathema to that kind of self righteousness.
Yes, we love to scruitinise the lyrics and his life. Yes, we love to argue about the relative merits of the '66, '82, '87 and 04' versions of The Ballad of Hollis Brown. Yes, we follow him around on the "Neverending bloody Tour", analysing set lists and harp breaks, deciphering his instructions-by-eyebrow to Tony and argue, oh how we endlessly argue, about the drummers.
But you know what? We do it because it is a bloody load of fun. We do it for the same reason footy fans paint their faces, dye their hair team colours, make silly banners, scream their lungs out and abuse the ref. Sure, you can sit back and cooly observe the play but that, surely, misses the point. There is a place for Richie Benaud, but also for the Barmy Army.
Every sporting league in the world has a Roosters
Because it makes it more fun. It's more fun to watch a big game surrounded by passionate supporters and friends than it is to stay at home by yourself. So, we Dylan Tragics also congregate to support each other and recap the match. So do cricket tragics, political tragics, Jane Austen tragics, blogging tragics and Australian Idol tragics. And, thank god, I say for people who are actually passionate about something.
We do it, too, because of the other people involved. I have friends on three continents other than this one because of our shared passion and a warm and welcoming circle here. And I have enjoyed some of the richest moments of my life with them. I still remember a place called Green Valley, where ... oh, sorry. Wrong emotional speech, but you get my meaning.
We do it too, because we can. Almost uniquely among popular musicians, Bob provides constant fodder for discussion. He has been releasing new material and playing dozens of live shows a year for over 40 years. What he is doing now is very different than what he was doing 10, 15, 20, 30 or 40 years ago. Bob has been academically and intellectually pummelled constantly from every angle and has emerged intact, always with something new to offer. No amount of overanalysis can scratch his surface. Well, we can scratch it, but we can't leave a mark. His own self has never been lost. He can cope with Christopher Ricks.
This human attraction to obsession and tribal formations, I'm sure there is a vital evolutionary reason for it (I'm sure someone knows). At any rate, it isn't us who need to "get over it", it's the journos who find something offensive about the way other people choose to make the most out of their lives.
The SMH is welcome to attend our next social gathering (As is everyone else: Monday, Oct 18th, Clare Hotel, Broadway, 7pmish) and get the facts. That, at least, would be a new angle.
[1] Oh and by the way, what's wrong with the sound of a digderidoo? Some people like it, you pommy tosser. Did the SMH endorse this insult to our iconic indigenous instrument?
[2] Sure, it's no Planet Waves, but any album which includes "Every Grain of Sand" and "The Groom's Still Waiting At the Altar" is hardly without merit.
[2] Joke: What three British football teams have swear words in their names? Arsenal, Scunthorpe and Manchester fucking United.
Monday, October 11, 2004
A cheering thought.
Remember: whatever happens, however bad things get:
we will always have Bob
Zoilus on Chronicles.
Remember: whatever happens, however bad things get:
we will always have Bob
Zoilus on Chronicles.
Friday, October 08, 2004
Please note the time for Morna's gig on Sunday is 3pm, not 8 as I had it. Hope to see you there.
Song for Weekend: Jim Reeves classic He'll Have to Go
An excellent venue for celebration or commiseration:
Song for Weekend: Jim Reeves classic He'll Have to Go
An excellent venue for celebration or commiseration:
Don't sit at home this Saturday night (October 9) worrying about what might be or what might have been. Come on down to the Bald Faced Stag (on the corner of Parramatta and Balmain Rds - just one block on the city side of Norton St, Leichhardt) for a night of pure country honky tonk with the marvellous Murray Hillbillies and special guests, including Mark Lucas. If all's well with our preferred society we'll get a rousing version of He's In The Jailhouse Now along with four hours of the songs of Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Wayne Hancock, Slim Dusty, Jimmie Rodgers, Webb Pierce and more!!!
Guaranteed to touch the centre of your country-music soul - starting at 9 pm and rollicking all the way through to 1 am on Sunday morning.
This venue is being touted as a possible country music venue if the numbers are encouraging and that's something we need given the recent decline in venues for country/hillbilly/bluegrass music. Please pass this message along and hope to see you there.
Ray.
The Murray Hillbillies line-up:MURRAY HILL - Vocals and rhythm guitar
ROD COE - Double bass, backing vocals
GARY BROWN - Slide guitar, Dobro, steel guitar
LES SCOTT - Lead guitar and backing vocals
ROBBIE SOUTER - Drums
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Blogs make Jeopardy. Tony Barber hosts a short lived series of it here, wish they'd bring it back.
Son Volt reforming and new album. Sort of.
More info:
Ex-Uncle Tupelo member Jay Farrar, as previously reported by Filter, is re-entering the studio with his band, Son Volt. While that plan remains intact, the band itself has not.
Farrar has announced that negotiations with original Son Volt members have not come to fruition, and a new line-up is in place, featuring musicians who have played with the Meat Puppets, Calexico, and Ryan Adams.
Farrar is set to enter the studio October 12, under the guidance of producer John Agnello. Playing with him are Brad Rice (guitar--Tift Merritt, Ryan Adams), Andrew Duplantis (bass—Jon Dee Graham, Meat Puppets, Bob Mould), Eric Heywood (pedal steel—Calexico) and Dave Bryson (drums—Canyon). As reported, the sessions will be available for live viewing, at jayfarrar.net/webcam.
In other Son Volt news, an anthology is planned for 2005 release, alongside the new album and tour. The anthology will cull material from Son Volt's three Warner Brothers albums, in addition to previously unreleased materials.
Son Volt reforming and new album. Sort of.
More info:
Ex-Uncle Tupelo member Jay Farrar, as previously reported by Filter, is re-entering the studio with his band, Son Volt. While that plan remains intact, the band itself has not.
Farrar has announced that negotiations with original Son Volt members have not come to fruition, and a new line-up is in place, featuring musicians who have played with the Meat Puppets, Calexico, and Ryan Adams.
Farrar is set to enter the studio October 12, under the guidance of producer John Agnello. Playing with him are Brad Rice (guitar--Tift Merritt, Ryan Adams), Andrew Duplantis (bass—Jon Dee Graham, Meat Puppets, Bob Mould), Eric Heywood (pedal steel—Calexico) and Dave Bryson (drums—Canyon). As reported, the sessions will be available for live viewing, at jayfarrar.net/webcam.
In other Son Volt news, an anthology is planned for 2005 release, alongside the new album and tour. The anthology will cull material from Son Volt's three Warner Brothers albums, in addition to previously unreleased materials.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Talkin' Bivariate Correlation Matrix Blues
From blog The Virtual Stoa, thanks to Carl Wilson for the tip. More on the country music-suicide story below. For me, good music is never depressing, whatever the subject matter. Simply by existing and being good, art is inherently life-affirming.
However, that said, for wonks this is fascinating. Statistics are not my thing though. Surely the correlation between trawling through statistics and suicide is undeniable.
In a follow-up 1994 paper ("'An Achy Breaky Heart' May Not Kill You") published in the same journal, Social Forces, a team of social scientists from Utah State University led by Gary W. Mauk mounted a fierce critique of Stark and Gundlach's findings: problems with ecological inference, they contended, were compounded by a weak causal model. It looked pretty convincing to me, anyway, on a quick skim. Here's the best bit:
Reassessing the Link Between Country Music and Suicide paper from Social Forces journal.
It seems likely any correlation with country music listening is a spin off from more solid predicators such as socio-economic and lifestyle (such as gun ownership) factors. As for making romantic conflict and suicide more normal and attractive, we can hardly single out country music for that.
You know who you are Shakespeare.
Or Charlotte Bronte.
Or the Bible.
However, that said, for wonks this is fascinating. Statistics are not my thing though. Surely the correlation between trawling through statistics and suicide is undeniable.
In a follow-up 1994 paper ("'An Achy Breaky Heart' May Not Kill You") published in the same journal, Social Forces, a team of social scientists from Utah State University led by Gary W. Mauk mounted a fierce critique of Stark and Gundlach's findings: problems with ecological inference, they contended, were compounded by a weak causal model. It looked pretty convincing to me, anyway, on a quick skim. Here's the best bit:
Further, while Stack and Gundlach found a relationship between amount of country music airtime and suicide rates... they have not accounted adequately for directionality... Likewise, one cannot determine (1) whether whites who are divorced tend to listen to country music, (2) whether listening to country music tends to cause their noncountry music fan spouses to divorce them, or (3) whether country music makes romantic conflict and divorce seem more normal for those individuals who are contemplating suicide, thus increasing the likelihood that they will attempt suicide...
Reassessing the Link Between Country Music and Suicide paper from Social Forces journal.
It seems likely any correlation with country music listening is a spin off from more solid predicators such as socio-economic and lifestyle (such as gun ownership) factors. As for making romantic conflict and suicide more normal and attractive, we can hardly single out country music for that.
You know who you are Shakespeare.
Or Charlotte Bronte.
Or the Bible.
A novel for all you uncultured swill who drop by here.
The author's [Silas House's] lifelong love of music runs through "The Coal Tattoo," from Buddy Holly and Hank Williams to Janis Joplin and The Beatles. House writes frequently for No Depression, the Nashville-based magazine devoted to the new traditionalist or "alt country" music scene, and has interviewed the likes of Hank Williams III and Lucinda Williams.
"I was just raised to really respect music. It was always present. I can't remember ever a time when I was a child when there wasn't some form of music going on. My mother was a gospel singer, so I traveled all over the region with her when she was singing. My aunt was a wild rock-and-roller, so she would take me to Bob Seger concerts and honky tonks when I was about 14.
Then my dad always really loved classic country music, so we were always listening to that on the radio in his truck when we were cruising around. And I had several family members who played the banjo and the fiddle, so I was exposed to all kinds of music. I use it a lot in my writing. It makes it so much easier to get to know a character if you know what kind of music they like. I show a lot about a character that way."
Saturday, October 02, 2004
All's Wrong With the World
There was a distressing story the other day about how perky country music had become. Instead of dwelling, as it should, on the general misery of our short sojourn in this valley of tears, today's country needs to be constantly uplifting.
Sadly academia has provided evidence that seems to confirm this worrying trend: country music no longer saps your will to live.
There is no-light at the end of the tunnel, however. Listen to real country music and you should still experience that glorious depressive effect.
A friendly warning: Don't turn on a mainstream country radio station unless you're prepared to be assaulted by uplift, pummeled with positivity. One hit after another will grab you by the collar, demanding that you value your precious, dwindling days on earth, embrace your loved ones while you can and, generally, seize the day.
Sadly academia has provided evidence that seems to confirm this worrying trend: country music no longer saps your will to live.
Jim Gundlach of the University of Alabama said he got hate mail when he first published his study showing that people who listen to country music have higher rates of suicide.
He said it does not hold true any more.
"The country music that we have today is not the same kind of country music that was related to suicide back when we did this," he said. "When we did that, there were songs like D-I-V-O-R-C-E. It was predominantly tears-in-the-beer types of music."
There is no-light at the end of the tunnel, however. Listen to real country music and you should still experience that glorious depressive effect.
More Buddy and God
The Return of Junior Brown He went away?
But the raging volcano on the album is a nine-minute-plus version of Bob Dylan's "With God on Our Side." Miller sings it with a weariness born out of sorrow, but the song escalates in tempo and volume until his guitar is raging mad and driving his vocals, and the words fairly leap out of the speakers and grab you by the throat. Dylan wrote it in 1963 when the Vietnamese war was escalating into the quagmire it became, but it pretty much applies to any wars in progress. So now as I'm leavin' I'm weary as hell/The confusion I'm feelin' ain't no tongue can tell/The words fill my head and fall to the floor/If God's on our side he'll stop the next war. The words alone cannot conjure up the majesty and the fury in Miller's delivery.
The Return of Junior Brown He went away?
Friday, October 01, 2004
Kansas City Star Q&A
Q. When is Lucinda Williams’ new live CD coming out? – Willie
A. Her record label, Lost Highway, isn’t saying anything; nor is amazon.com; nor Ice magazine. I’d be real surprised if it isn’t out in time for the Christmas rush, though.
Q. When is Lucinda Williams’ new live CD coming out? – Willie
A. Her record label, Lost Highway, isn’t saying anything; nor is amazon.com; nor Ice magazine. I’d be real surprised if it isn’t out in time for the Christmas rush, though.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Big Bugs
The Sydney Morning Herald is advertising an interview with Bob Dylan for Spectrum on Saturday. Presumably this will be a repeat of the Newsweek interview, and not some Bruce Elder exclusive.
One of the most annoying cliches in rock is "Bob Dylan, voice of a generation." Don't get me bloody started. Anyway, in the except of his book which accompanied the Newsweek piece, he talks about how ridiculous it was for him -- anyone -- to be dubbed "the voice of his generation" as if a lowly song and dance man was some kind of conduit for the conscience of society.
And so how does the Herald advertise its story?
Exclusive interview with the voice of a generation.
Sigh.
One of the most annoying cliches in rock is "Bob Dylan, voice of a generation." Don't get me bloody started. Anyway, in the except of his book which accompanied the Newsweek piece, he talks about how ridiculous it was for him -- anyone -- to be dubbed "the voice of his generation" as if a lowly song and dance man was some kind of conduit for the conscience of society.
but the big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. That was funny. All I'd ever done was sing songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new realities. I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of. I'd left my hometown only ten years earlier, wasn't vociferating the opinions of anybody. My destiny lay down the road with whatever life invited, had nothing to do with representing any kind of civilization. Being true to yourself, that was the thing. I was more a cowpuncher than a Pied Piper.
And so how does the Herald advertise its story?
Exclusive interview with the voice of a generation.
Sigh.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Newsweek interview with Bob Dylan and excerpt from the book.
Looks like Chronicles is really happening but this is Bob we're talking about so I'll believe it when I have it in my hands. New album! Woot!
Seems like a good excuse to post maybe my favourite Bob picture. From Houston 2002. The ladies sure do love Bob.
Come gather 'round cowgirls, wherever you roam: During the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo at the Astrodome Bob Dylan sat a spell with Junior Miss Texas Rodeo pageant winners Stephanie Scogin (left) and Lisa Goe. The urbane cowboy performed in the arena later that night -- after it was cleared of bulls and calves.
Looks like Chronicles is really happening but this is Bob we're talking about so I'll believe it when I have it in my hands. New album! Woot!
The photo on the cover of "Chronicles" shows Times Square in 1961, the year he came to New York, but as a kid, he says, "I had no idea of what a city was like. And I think it probably made me who I am today. The country where I came rom—it's pretty bleak. And it's cold. And there's a lot of water. So you could dream a lot. The difference between me now and then is that back then, I could see visions. The me now can dream dreams."
Seems like a good excuse to post maybe my favourite Bob picture. From Houston 2002. The ladies sure do love Bob.
Come gather 'round cowgirls, wherever you roam: During the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo at the Astrodome Bob Dylan sat a spell with Junior Miss Texas Rodeo pageant winners Stephanie Scogin (left) and Lisa Goe. The urbane cowboy performed in the arena later that night -- after it was cleared of bulls and calves.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Two Thoughts on Tim McGraw, Composed After Listening to His Greatest Hits
1) Is Indian Outlaw the worst song ever?
2) Lynn from Lindsborg, Kansas says it best on her Amazon review: Tim McGraw is my FAVORITE "artist", in the entire world. His talent and "charisma" is captured in every note he sings!! "artist" and " charisma" indeed, never have quotation marks been used with greater insight.
1) Is Indian Outlaw the worst song ever?
2) Lynn from Lindsborg, Kansas says it best on her Amazon review: Tim McGraw is my FAVORITE "artist", in the entire world. His talent and "charisma" is captured in every note he sings!! "artist" and " charisma" indeed, never have quotation marks been used with greater insight.
Saturday, September 25, 2004
For Yom Kippur:
Longtime pals Richard “Kinky” Friedman (author, magazine columnist, singer/songwriter) and Farouk Shami (founder, chairman of Farouk Systems) have launched this new product to show the world that deep friendships between Jews and Arabs are possible. The premium, first cold pressed, extra-virgin olive oil is sourced from both Israel and Jordan. 100% of after-tax profits will be donated to children’s charities such as Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam (Oasis of Peace in Hebrew and Arabic). $5.99
More on that and Kinky's bid to become Governor of Texas
Images stolen from Kinky's site. Go buy some stuff.
Trip to the library yesterday yielded two more for Hot Country research.
Greatest Hits
Tim McGraw
Honky Tonk Sonata
Jason McCoy He looks like a George Michael impersonator but I like the title
Honkytonkville
George Strait
plus ones I know I'll like
Shock Country Sampler Heartaches and Highways Vol III
the first two volumes from Shock were essential and I've always gone out and bought at least several of the artists featured (which I guess is the point). I might be making up some ground, as there's only one this time (Danni Leigh) I've never heard of or don't own. There are no helpful liner notes on each artist like in vols 1 and 2 though.
Blugrass No 1's
from Rounder. Excellent liner notes, I'm pleased to say
Longtime pals Richard “Kinky” Friedman (author, magazine columnist, singer/songwriter) and Farouk Shami (founder, chairman of Farouk Systems) have launched this new product to show the world that deep friendships between Jews and Arabs are possible. The premium, first cold pressed, extra-virgin olive oil is sourced from both Israel and Jordan. 100% of after-tax profits will be donated to children’s charities such as Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam (Oasis of Peace in Hebrew and Arabic). $5.99
More on that and Kinky's bid to become Governor of Texas
Images stolen from Kinky's site. Go buy some stuff.
Trip to the library yesterday yielded two more for Hot Country research.
Greatest Hits
Tim McGraw
Honky Tonk Sonata
Jason McCoy He looks like a George Michael impersonator but I like the title
Honkytonkville
George Strait
plus ones I know I'll like
Shock Country Sampler Heartaches and Highways Vol III
the first two volumes from Shock were essential and I've always gone out and bought at least several of the artists featured (which I guess is the point). I might be making up some ground, as there's only one this time (Danni Leigh) I've never heard of or don't own. There are no helpful liner notes on each artist like in vols 1 and 2 though.
Blugrass No 1's
from Rounder. Excellent liner notes, I'm pleased to say
Friday, September 24, 2004
My People Will Talk to Your People
I have been trying to expand my knowledge of the murky world of Top 40 country. The latest acquisition is Brad Paisley's Mud on the
My first thought is this: He looks eerily like a WASP-y version of Michael Imperioli from The Sopranos. Which got me thinking, there has got to be a sitcom in there somewhere.
Here's my pitch: Through some kind of weird set of circumstances (I'm just the ideas girl, they have writers to do the leg work) a set of twins are split at birth, one grows up a coal miner's son in West Virginia, the other a wiseguy in NYC. Then along comes another weird, yet sharply comic, set of circumstances and they are reunited. They have to live together. Perhaps there is a child involved, differing standards of parenting are always a hoot. A kooky neighbour. An ethnic minority (but just the one.) Brad is an aspiring country singer, Mikey a made guy going straight. At first that seemed improbable but then I had a flash of inspiration: witness protection! Yes, he is in witness protection and since no one knows about the long-lost hick brother, it is the perfect cover. Lots of misunderstandings between gangters and rednecks: sit back and watch the comedy gold flow! I think there was a Bette Midler/Lily Tomlin movie along these lines but originality can only count against us with the execs so we should play that up.
In fact I was so engrossed with the idea I didn't really take much notice of the music. The only song I had previously heard was Celebrity, I tracked down the video online because of William Shatner. The idea seems to be that to get to somewhere worthwhile you have to get off the beaten track sometimes but there's nothing mud-splattered about this journey. It's more like jumping in the Lexus at ten to three and driving four blocks to pick your kids up from school.
It will probably grow on me though, most things do. I'll listen some more.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Excellent Gillian Welch article in the New Yorker
Now online, saves me a trip to Borders.
Holly Williams
Loretta Lynn shares recipes, life in new cookbook
Johnny Cash musical to hit Broadway in 2006
Elvis Costello's new double album features duets with Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams.
Steve Earle brings Townes Van Zandt's ghost along on Silver City's magical mystery tour
Now online, saves me a trip to Borders.
Holly Williams
So what does the granddaughter of Hank Williams, the daughter of Hank Williams Jr. and the sister of Hank Williams III sound like? If her bloodlines are any indication, she sounds fantastic.
Loretta Lynn shares recipes, life in new cookbook
Johnny Cash musical to hit Broadway in 2006
Elvis Costello's new double album features duets with Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams.
Steve Earle brings Townes Van Zandt's ghost along on Silver City's magical mystery tour
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Listenings:
A few folky chicks for your consideration.
I first heard an Amy Rigby song on internet radio somewhere, the domestic anthem Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?
What happened to babe and stud?
Too much KFC and Bud
I shout it out into the wind
Are we ever gonna have sex again?
Come here baby, scratch my itch
Or I’ll show you one mean ass bitch
I’m so tired of acting Zen
Are we ever gonna have sex again?
Then I bought the album Till The Wheels Fall Off which is chockas with little gems of the middle-aged life. A Mojo review says it well:Amy Rigby is a 44-year -old divorcee with a teenaged daughter. Her mind is sharp, her voice is strong, her hormones are coursing and her breasts are hanging in there. Her demographic needs all the music it can get, and she's been writing songs from its evolving perspective since 1996's inspired Diary of a Mod Housewife - songs so heartfelt, pointed and shapely that by now her marginality is an ageist outrage. She also duets with Todd Snider on one song. I was listening to the album alot at the same time as Uncut favourite Thea Gilmore's Avalanche and the Marge and Lisa Simpson image occured to me. Thea's definately a gal Lisa could love, more serious, alot younger (25) but ploughing the same catchy-profound-pop-folk-roots territory. Her Brit accent cuts through strongly which gives the tracks a no-nonsense flavour which emoting young women on record often lack.
Zoilus is the website of Carl Wilson a music critic at Canada's Globe and Mail and he mentioned me. Good chap. There is alot there I'm working my way through, but in particular this article from September 12th grabbed my attention.
News about Iris DeMent's long awaited (eight years!) new album Life Line is trickling out, it is said to be a return to the stripped back style of her first two albums. Due out October 19th.
A few folky chicks for your consideration.
I first heard an Amy Rigby song on internet radio somewhere, the domestic anthem Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?
What happened to babe and stud?
Too much KFC and Bud
I shout it out into the wind
Are we ever gonna have sex again?
Come here baby, scratch my itch
Or I’ll show you one mean ass bitch
I’m so tired of acting Zen
Are we ever gonna have sex again?
Then I bought the album Till The Wheels Fall Off which is chockas with little gems of the middle-aged life. A Mojo review says it well:Amy Rigby is a 44-year -old divorcee with a teenaged daughter. Her mind is sharp, her voice is strong, her hormones are coursing and her breasts are hanging in there. Her demographic needs all the music it can get, and she's been writing songs from its evolving perspective since 1996's inspired Diary of a Mod Housewife - songs so heartfelt, pointed and shapely that by now her marginality is an ageist outrage. She also duets with Todd Snider on one song. I was listening to the album alot at the same time as Uncut favourite Thea Gilmore's Avalanche and the Marge and Lisa Simpson image occured to me. Thea's definately a gal Lisa could love, more serious, alot younger (25) but ploughing the same catchy-profound-pop-folk-roots territory. Her Brit accent cuts through strongly which gives the tracks a no-nonsense flavour which emoting young women on record often lack.
Zoilus is the website of Carl Wilson a music critic at Canada's Globe and Mail and he mentioned me. Good chap. There is alot there I'm working my way through, but in particular this article from September 12th grabbed my attention.
News about Iris DeMent's long awaited (eight years!) new album Life Line is trickling out, it is said to be a return to the stripped back style of her first two albums. Due out October 19th.
Friday, September 17, 2004
Who held a gun to Leonard Cohen's head?
70 In 1994, Cohen said: "If you're going to think of yourself in this game, or in this tradition, and you start getting a swelled head about it, then you've really got to think about who you're talking about. You're not just talking about Randy Newman, who's fine, or Bob Dylan, who's sublime, you're talking about King David, Homer, Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, you're talking about the embodiment of our highest possibility. So I don't think it's particularly modest or virtuous to think of oneself as a minor poet. I really do feel the enormous luck I've had in being able to make a living, and to never have had to have written one word that I didn't want to write.
"But I don't fool myself, I know the game I'm in. When I wrote about Hank Williams 'A hundred floors above me in the tower of song', it's not some kind of inverse modesty. I know where Hank Williams stands in the history of popular song. Your Cheatin' Heart, songs like that, are sublime, in his own tradition, and I feel myself a very minor writer. I've taken a certain territory, and I've tried to maintain it and administrate it with the very best of my capacities. And I will continue to administrate this tiny territory until I'm too weak to do it. But I understand where this territory is."
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Weekend Ideas
Top line up at the Hank Williams birthday bash: Bill Chambers, Hunter and Suzy, Moonshine, Reno Nevada, Buddy Cartwright and others.
Serena Ryder was out here opening for Steve Earle earlier this year. Impressive folkie singer songwriter.
The Lovebites:
Featuring JASON WALKER ( deadset alt-count legend, published author, Gram Parsons obsessive) KERRYN STANTON ( Scrub Hornets, Rock Queen of Surry Hills) and MARK CORNWALL ( 50 M Beers), the LOVEBITES perform their debut gig on Sunday 19 Sept at the Excelsior Hotel, Bridge Rd, Glebe ( not to be confused with the Surry Hills franchise), from 6 PM. Three lead singers, 3 songwriters, 3 titanic egos- be there just for the onstage punchup! Also playing the Exy that nite is GEOFF HOLMES' CUTTIN' EDGE OLD BASTARDS. Alert readers will recall Holmesy's fine work in deadset Rilenesque legends X. Free in, see youse there on the 19th.
Oh, and Will Oldham of course.
Unfortunately I won't be around again. Anyone know what's on in Bathurst?
Blog news: Any bloggers or free webpage people out there, try Reinvigorate for your hit details. Way better than Sitemeter so far.
I like these stupid personality tests, can't help myself.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Some housekeeping: The Damn Right I'm A Cowboy show I mentioned earlier has been resceduled for the 20th October on ABC. I'll remind you again closer to the date.
News about Leone Becker, ex-Helldorado from Audrey Auld's Country Update page:
Another Ausie who's carving out a groovy niche for herself in the US is Leone Becker (ex Helldorado, Sydney). She's operating the Texas Music Cafe in the heart of Austin serving up fresh southern food and great music.
"Texans are a pretty laid back bunch like us Aussies. They love my accent even though a lot of them don't even know where Australia is. There is a certain novelty to being an Australian here. They want to know how the hell we know about honky tonk, so far away. It's pretty easy to put a great band together here because there are so many amazing musicians in this town, and they all want to play!"
The Texas Music Cafe is right next door to the Famous Continental Cafe on Congress, so stop in and say "G'day" when you're in town.
Thanks to Ron for the info.
Thinking of the Helldorados reminded me of Midwest Obsession and the good old days they use to alternate Saturday nights at the Enmore. You remember, back when that premises was a proper pub, before it became the S** F** (may its blonde wood spontaneously combust and its stainless steel corrode) and another little part of Sydney died.
So, anyway, after far too long away Mary Heard is back with "a new low key acoustic group" and purveyors of fine hillbilly folk, called Moonshine. Says Mary, "We are having so much fun finding material from the Carter Family to 70s Folk revival stuff from New York and San Francisco. Les Scott is playing guitar with us and Gary Brown on dobro. " They are doing the Hank night at the Bridge this weekend, then Almost Acoustic in Rozelle -- avert your eyes left for all the details.
News about Leone Becker, ex-Helldorado from Audrey Auld's Country Update page:
Another Ausie who's carving out a groovy niche for herself in the US is Leone Becker (ex Helldorado, Sydney). She's operating the Texas Music Cafe in the heart of Austin serving up fresh southern food and great music.
"Texans are a pretty laid back bunch like us Aussies. They love my accent even though a lot of them don't even know where Australia is. There is a certain novelty to being an Australian here. They want to know how the hell we know about honky tonk, so far away. It's pretty easy to put a great band together here because there are so many amazing musicians in this town, and they all want to play!"
The Texas Music Cafe is right next door to the Famous Continental Cafe on Congress, so stop in and say "G'day" when you're in town.
Thanks to Ron for the info.
Thinking of the Helldorados reminded me of Midwest Obsession and the good old days they use to alternate Saturday nights at the Enmore. You remember, back when that premises was a proper pub, before it became the S** F** (may its blonde wood spontaneously combust and its stainless steel corrode) and another little part of Sydney died.
So, anyway, after far too long away Mary Heard is back with "a new low key acoustic group" and purveyors of fine hillbilly folk, called Moonshine. Says Mary, "We are having so much fun finding material from the Carter Family to 70s Folk revival stuff from New York and San Francisco. Les Scott is playing guitar with us and Gary Brown on dobro. " They are doing the Hank night at the Bridge this weekend, then Almost Acoustic in Rozelle -- avert your eyes left for all the details.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Are You Sure Kasey Done It This Way?
More Country Stars Emerge from Down Under
Reuters article about Australian country artists trying to make it in the USA.
Of course "insiders" and execs would say that but I disagree. If the song is good enough, is the use of "ute" not "pickup" really going to be a barrier to success? No. The accent thing is maybe a bit more significant but it's not make or break and neither is the syntax if the hook is catchy enough. What does having a syntax problem mean anyway, using more subjunctive tenses to make the Yanks feel at home?
And what "Australian themes" are these? The MacIntyre system of working out the NRL finals? The Pacific solution? Richard Butler's payout? Duckworth Lewis? The Melbourne gangland war? Sitting in the front seat of taxis? Latham's man boobs? I believe most Australian country songs are about such staples as love, regret, lost love, hard times on the land, I'm glad it's the weekend and let's get drunk tonight, I love my horse and my dogs, my friends are also great, people in the city aren't half as real as people from the country, the Anzac spirit, don't fence me in and the drought really sucks. In short, exactly what the Yanks sing about.
The fact is, mainstream chart Australian country acts are really doing the same thing as the mainstream chart American acts, except not as well. Why are you going to seek out Lee Kernaghan when you have a Wal Mart full of Tim McGraw, Alan Jackson and George Strait on every corner. Why are the record companies, promoters and radio jocks going to push so-so MOR Australian country when they get a bazillion so-so MOR American CDs thrown at them each week. Of course that argument also goes for American singers trying to break into the market.
Keith Urban and Sherrie Austin moved to Nashville and toiled away there for years before becoming overnight successes, so their situation can't be compared to an established Aussie star trying to launch from here. Adam and Troy, what are you waiting for?
One of the reasons Kasey Chambers has had success in the US is that she is pitching to a niche market of "alternative country" (whatever that is) fans who are more likely to seek out new things themselves (because if you want that kind of music, CMT isn't going to hand it to you on a platter) and is hooked into the tight knit incestuous (in a good way) world of OKOM; record a Fred Eaglesmith song, do a duet with Lucinda Williams, praise Miss Emmylou in interviews, get Steve Earle to say you are a fuckin' great girl hillbilly singer and bang you're in the club. Next thing you know you're doing a shoot for the front cover of No Depression, Village Records stocks your album and the word gets round. Kick arse female country singer-songwriters are not the dime-a-several-dozen the Garth clones are.
Of course one of the other reasons is that she has a bucket load more talent and personality than the rest of them.
Reuters article about Australian country artists trying to make it in the USA.
But Australian country music executives acknowledge that domestic sales do not automatically translate to American success.
"The problem is that many Australian singers tend to sing about Australian themes," says Clive Hodson, managing director of Sydney-based ABC Music, the most prominent Oz country music label.
Insiders agree that U.S. country music audiences and radio formats can have a problem with strong Australian accents and peculiarly Australian names. "We sing about 'utes,' but (in the United States) they have 'pickups,"' Hodson notes. "We have a syntax problem in some of the material. So (artists) have to learn to write generically, without using slang."
Of course "insiders" and execs would say that but I disagree. If the song is good enough, is the use of "ute" not "pickup" really going to be a barrier to success? No. The accent thing is maybe a bit more significant but it's not make or break and neither is the syntax if the hook is catchy enough. What does having a syntax problem mean anyway, using more subjunctive tenses to make the Yanks feel at home?
And what "Australian themes" are these? The MacIntyre system of working out the NRL finals? The Pacific solution? Richard Butler's payout? Duckworth Lewis? The Melbourne gangland war? Sitting in the front seat of taxis? Latham's man boobs? I believe most Australian country songs are about such staples as love, regret, lost love, hard times on the land, I'm glad it's the weekend and let's get drunk tonight, I love my horse and my dogs, my friends are also great, people in the city aren't half as real as people from the country, the Anzac spirit, don't fence me in and the drought really sucks. In short, exactly what the Yanks sing about.
The fact is, mainstream chart Australian country acts are really doing the same thing as the mainstream chart American acts, except not as well. Why are you going to seek out Lee Kernaghan when you have a Wal Mart full of Tim McGraw, Alan Jackson and George Strait on every corner. Why are the record companies, promoters and radio jocks going to push so-so MOR Australian country when they get a bazillion so-so MOR American CDs thrown at them each week. Of course that argument also goes for American singers trying to break into the market.
Keith Urban and Sherrie Austin moved to Nashville and toiled away there for years before becoming overnight successes, so their situation can't be compared to an established Aussie star trying to launch from here. Adam and Troy, what are you waiting for?
One of the reasons Kasey Chambers has had success in the US is that she is pitching to a niche market of "alternative country" (whatever that is) fans who are more likely to seek out new things themselves (because if you want that kind of music, CMT isn't going to hand it to you on a platter) and is hooked into the tight knit incestuous (in a good way) world of OKOM; record a Fred Eaglesmith song, do a duet with Lucinda Williams, praise Miss Emmylou in interviews, get Steve Earle to say you are a fuckin' great girl hillbilly singer and bang you're in the club. Next thing you know you're doing a shoot for the front cover of No Depression, Village Records stocks your album and the word gets round. Kick arse female country singer-songwriters are not the dime-a-several-dozen the Garth clones are.
Of course one of the other reasons is that she has a bucket load more talent and personality than the rest of them.
NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?
The man in black whose legend lives on
Nice article but requires registration.
Whitley discovers life after Americana
Chris Whitley, that is.
Live Farmaid webast
My Story of the Day (the same column has Bobby Bare/Johnny Cash/Willie Nelson stories too ):
Kressley dishes 'Queer Eye' for Nashville guys
In November of 1974, Hank Williams' first wife, Audrey Williams, put a hand-lettered sign out in her Nashville front yard that read "Garage Sale. Tour Buses Welcome. Souvenirs." She charged $2 admission to the garage sale. She was broke, but she still had some Hank totems to peddle. "I was married to a legend," Audrey said. "What else am I gonna do?"
The man in black whose legend lives on
Nice article but requires registration.
Cash’s most famous line, which might have been penned by Dostoevsky - if the Russian had been born of cotton-picking folks in Arkansas - came in Folsom Prison Blues, a song he wrote while stationed in Germany on his national service. Cash - a Morse code decrypter, who decoded the message that Stalin had died - had seen a documentary about Folsom Prison, and tried to imagine the world from the viewpoint of a remorseless killer who had murdered for the worst possible reason: "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die."
By the end, singing was all he did. The force of his baritone had dwindled, but such was the richness of the Cash persona that his frailty seemed profound. Everything became Biblical, whether it was pop, rock or bubble gum. He was reaching for humility and scenting decay.
On last year’s Unearthed boxed set, he delivers many epitaphs. To take just one: "I’m not a saviour, and I’m not a saint/The man with the answers I certainly ain’t/I wouldn’t tell you what’s right and what’s wrong/I’m just a singer of songs."
That, I think, is Johnny Cash. Modest and boastful, humbly proud.
Whitley discovers life after Americana
Chris Whitley, that is.
In 1991, Chris Whitley made "Living With the Law" (Columbia), a CD that is as important as anything done by Gillian Welch or Lucinda Williams in establishing the genre known as Americana. His career since then is a cautionary tale for anyone who thinks one big hit means you're set for life.
Live Farmaid webast
My Story of the Day (the same column has Bobby Bare/Johnny Cash/Willie Nelson stories too ):
Kressley dishes 'Queer Eye' for Nashville guys
Kressley, who called from Dallas, where the show's been filming for next season, might have begun noticing this during one of his many trips to town. ''I remember going to Nashville as a little kid, wandering the streets looking for Tammy Wynette's house,'' he said. ''I've always been a big country fan.''
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Melancholy weekend for many reasons, let's just concentrate on the one that is easiest to take and also on-topic.
There will be many tributes over the weekend but I am heading to Wollongong for some maekju and sorority so this will be it until Monday (possibly Sunday.)
Here is one tribute.
Johnny Cash Spent His Final Days Getting Close to God (although these rituals don't sound particularly bizarre to me)
Jailhouse rock -- includes the text of a 1969 Ralph Gleeson article about the San Quentin show. Highly recommended.
Southern hospitality rocks film cast Requires registration.
The official Johnny Cash site
And to get you in the mood for the Welch/Rawlings tour, a review. This could require registration too.
Johnny Cash
February 26th 1932 ~ September 12th 2003
There will be many tributes over the weekend but I am heading to Wollongong for some maekju and sorority so this will be it until Monday (possibly Sunday.)
Here is one tribute.
Johnny Cash Spent His Final Days Getting Close to God (although these rituals don't sound particularly bizarre to me)
Jailhouse rock -- includes the text of a 1969 Ralph Gleeson article about the San Quentin show. Highly recommended.
Southern hospitality rocks film cast Requires registration.
Playing Luther Perkins was a treat for Dan. "That was kind of a dream come true just 'cause I was always a huge Johnny Cash fan," he said. "And that kind of guitar playing seemed to be equally important to the sound as Johnny Cash's voice. Just that real simple elegance. It was just so sturdy and distinctive and simple and really beautiful."
The official Johnny Cash site
And to get you in the mood for the Welch/Rawlings tour, a review. This could require registration too.
Friday, September 10, 2004
Don't we all: Kris Kristofferson still grieves loss of Johnny Cash.
"It's hard to believe that it's been a year," Kristofferson said recently from his home in Hawaii. "It's still painful that he's gone. I think about him a lot."
'He will never die or be forgotten - even by persons not yet born'
Reprint of tributes from last year (Dylan, Bono, Jerry Lee Lewis among others)
West Texas Musicians Shine in Lubbock Lights
More Lubbock-ania: the Buddy Holly Symposium.
Superstars ride to rescue of country
Groove to the Gourds
Robbie Fulks: Keeping Country Real
Earl Scruggs in concert.
What the critics are saying about Loretta Lynn and Steve Earle.
"It's hard to believe that it's been a year," Kristofferson said recently from his home in Hawaii. "It's still painful that he's gone. I think about him a lot."
'He will never die or be forgotten - even by persons not yet born'
Reprint of tributes from last year (Dylan, Bono, Jerry Lee Lewis among others)
West Texas Musicians Shine in Lubbock Lights
Lubbock Lights, a documentary, shares the philosophies and thoughts of various West Texas musicians. Joe Ely, Terry Allen, Butch Hancock, and Tommy Hancock are just a few of the West Texas musicians highlighted in Lubbock Lights, a documentary exploring music on the South Plains.
More Lubbock-ania: the Buddy Holly Symposium.
Superstars ride to rescue of country
The incomparable Dolly Parton will release a concert disc, "Live and Well,'' and a companion DVD of the same name on Sept. 14. Bluegrass aficionados are also eagerly awaiting the our-CD collection "Can't You Hear Me Callin' -- Bluegrass: 80 Years of American Music'' (Sept. 21), Ricky Skaggs' "Brand New Strings'' (Sept. 28) and a 1963 concert set from Bill Monroe titled "Live at Mechanics Hall'' (Oct. 5).
Groove to the Gourds
Describing the Austin, Texas-based Gourds is no easy task. In short, they are a Louisiana tinged Texas rock band with a little south of the border and Appalachia thrown in for good measure. In long, they are so much more. A live Gourds show is like free beer: it gets better and better as the night goes on and, no matter how late it gets, you’re always left wanting more.
Robbie Fulks: Keeping Country Real
Earl Scruggs in concert.
What the critics are saying about Loretta Lynn and Steve Earle.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Finally got the August issue of Uncut with the Americana CD. Might write a bit more about it later, it sorta sums up alot that frustrate/bores me about so-called "Americana". Anyway, the song that did grab me right away was the Josh Ritter song "Mona Lisa." It reminded me a bit of Butch Hancock. Here is a nice little article about him.
Merle Haggard typically straight talking in this interview.
Hank Williams Snr museum.
That's the official one, this one is unofficial.
Can't sleep, Hank'll eat me: Recently, he added the first in a series of hand-made Hank Williams porcelain dolls.
Nashville That Says No
Merle Haggard typically straight talking in this interview.
Hank Williams Snr museum.
That's the official one, this one is unofficial.
Can't sleep, Hank'll eat me: Recently, he added the first in a series of hand-made Hank Williams porcelain dolls.
Nashville That Says No
But there's another side to Nashville, and two new records from Middle Tennessee residents operating outside the country-music machine offer an alternative. Onetime Memphian Todd Snider's career-best East Nashville Skyline makes his dissent geographically specific -- praising an artist-heavy neighborhood away from Music Row that the rich avoid at all costs. Steve Earle signs off from Fairview, Tennessee, in the liner notes to The Revolution Starts Now, his one-man-527 attempt at influencing an election. But he's been battling Nashville's conservatism for years en route to becoming the American musician most likely to be seen sparring with Bill O'Reilly on national television.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Thank you to Drum Media for getting back to me with confirmation, and passing this on ...
GILLIAN WELCH
TOURING IN NOVEMBER
Well folks, this time the rumours are true, GILLIAN WELCH, will be here in November for what is certain to be the roots tour of theyear. Accompanied
by David Rawlings, partner/producer/multi instrumentalist and singer, this will be the pair's first visit downunder.
Armed only with two guitars, a banjo, two voices and a big bag of songs that sound as old as the Appalachian mountains, Welch andRawlings manage to
ignite their remarkable chemistry every time they walk out in front of an audience. Their performance is so beautiful and intense that their
presentation of their bleak emotional tunes somehow has an effect thatis never less than uplifting.
The tour is a mix of intimate venues, seated theatres and bar room dancehalls booked to accommodate Gillian's very mixed fan base. With her
admirers coming from her own work, through to the Grammy Award winning'O Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack and the numerous collaborations with
everyone from Emmylou Harris to Ryan Adams.
Gillian's most recent record, "Soul Journey", was released in 2003. She calls it "the sunniest record I've ever made". A collection that offers much
of what we've come to associate with her style, stark but powerfulstories set to music whose bare intensity conveys an almost unbearable beauty.
If you care for real music, these shows are not to be missed.
Dates as follows....
NOVEMBER
Monday 1st (Cup Eve!): THE TIVOLI, BRISBANE, QLD (General admission seated show)
Tickets from Ticketek.
Wednesday 3rd: GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL, BYRON BAY, NSW (General admission standing show)
Tickets from the Great Northern and Ticketek.
Friday 5th: THE ROXY, PARRAMATTA, NSW (Reserved seating show)
Tickets from Ticketek.
Saturday 6th: THE METRO, SYDNEY, NSW (General admission standing show)
Tickets from Ticketek and The Metro.
Thursday 11th and Friday 12: THE PRINCE, ST KILDA, VIC(General admission standing show)
Tickets from Ticketek GaslightMusic, Polyester Records, Greville Records, Basement Discs, Princepublic bar and www.princebandroom.com.au
Saturday 13th: THE PALAIS, HEPBURN SPRINGS, VIC (Reserved seating and general admission standing show)
111 Main Road, Hepburn Springs Vic 3461 Tel 03 53484849 Tickets from The Palais Tel 03 53484849
Sunday 14th: MEENIYAN HALL, MEENIYAN, VIC (General admission seating)
Tickets from Ticketek.
LOVE POLICE PRESENT
for the first time in Australia...
for the first time in Australia...
GILLIAN WELCH
TOURING IN NOVEMBER
Well folks, this time the rumours are true, GILLIAN WELCH, will be here in November for what is certain to be the roots tour of theyear. Accompanied
by David Rawlings, partner/producer/multi instrumentalist and singer, this will be the pair's first visit downunder.
Armed only with two guitars, a banjo, two voices and a big bag of songs that sound as old as the Appalachian mountains, Welch andRawlings manage to
ignite their remarkable chemistry every time they walk out in front of an audience. Their performance is so beautiful and intense that their
presentation of their bleak emotional tunes somehow has an effect thatis never less than uplifting.
The tour is a mix of intimate venues, seated theatres and bar room dancehalls booked to accommodate Gillian's very mixed fan base. With her
admirers coming from her own work, through to the Grammy Award winning'O Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack and the numerous collaborations with
everyone from Emmylou Harris to Ryan Adams.
Gillian's most recent record, "Soul Journey", was released in 2003. She calls it "the sunniest record I've ever made". A collection that offers much
of what we've come to associate with her style, stark but powerfulstories set to music whose bare intensity conveys an almost unbearable beauty.
If you care for real music, these shows are not to be missed.
Dates as follows....
NOVEMBER
Monday 1st (Cup Eve!): THE TIVOLI, BRISBANE, QLD (General admission seated show)
Tickets from Ticketek.
Wednesday 3rd: GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL, BYRON BAY, NSW (General admission standing show)
Tickets from the Great Northern and Ticketek.
Friday 5th: THE ROXY, PARRAMATTA, NSW (Reserved seating show)
Tickets from Ticketek.
Saturday 6th: THE METRO, SYDNEY, NSW (General admission standing show)
Tickets from Ticketek and The Metro.
Thursday 11th and Friday 12: THE PRINCE, ST KILDA, VIC(General admission standing show)
Tickets from Ticketek GaslightMusic, Polyester Records, Greville Records, Basement Discs, Princepublic bar and www.princebandroom.com.au
Saturday 13th: THE PALAIS, HEPBURN SPRINGS, VIC (Reserved seating and general admission standing show)
111 Main Road, Hepburn Springs Vic 3461 Tel 03 53484849 Tickets from The Palais Tel 03 53484849
Sunday 14th: MEENIYAN HALL, MEENIYAN, VIC (General admission seating)
Tickets from Ticketek.
TICKETS ON SALE MONDAY SEPTEMBER 13th
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Stop Press!
The Drum Media out today reports "Gillian Welsh" is touring in November with dates in Parramatta, The Metro and Canberra. A Google search fails to bring up any notable musician of that name, do they mean .... deep breath .... "Gillian Welch"?
Nothing about it on Pollstar or at Gillian's webpage as yet.
And no I am not being snarky, people with blogs should not call the kettle black about typos. I am just as excited as can be. She says, quickly reaching for the Edit Post button to change "came " to "name."
The Drum Media out today reports "Gillian Welsh" is touring in November with dates in Parramatta, The Metro and Canberra. A Google search fails to bring up any notable musician of that name, do they mean .... deep breath .... "Gillian Welch"?
Nothing about it on Pollstar or at Gillian's webpage as yet.
And no I am not being snarky, people with blogs should not call the kettle black about typos. I am just as excited as can be. She says, quickly reaching for the Edit Post button to change "came " to "name."
Diary It
Courtesy of Gil at Black Routes:
Damn Right I'm a Cowboy is a 56 minute doco on Adelaide community radio program the Hillbilly Hoot Radio Show. The program goes live from an Adelaide front verandah with a roving cast of amateur and professional musicians. Effectively the program is fed live to air without interruption from 8 pm to 9 pm on the day of broadcast but apparently the music starts earlier and doesn't finish until the neighbours start complaining.
Damn Right I'm a Cowboy was screened at last years Adelaide International Film Festival to much acclaim. It screens into your loungeroom at 11 pm next Tuesday September 14 on ABC TV.
First Impressions
I have been a Steve Earle fan since "Copperhead Road" crossed over in 1988, an auspicious year (my 13th) in this musical journey since it was also the year the Traveling Wilburys first taught me to hate Bob Dylan's voice, to love Roy Orbison's. I got over that first immature reaction, obviously. I had bought my first LP the year before, and, as the top singles for the year show, it was a most glorious year for music. I haven't thought of it since but knew every word to the Stutter Rap (hey, do you think it could be, like Randy Newman's "Short People", a sophisticated and ironic comment on the nature of prejudice? No? OK.)
Anyway, enough nostalgia. As anyone unfortunate enough to have caught me after a few drinks knows, I wasn't much impressed with Jerusalem, Steve's last album. It suffered tremendously in comparison to Springsteen's The Rising which came out at a similar time, both as a memorable musical document and as a reaction to current events. It has the distinction of containing the only Steve Earle song that actually makes me cringe: the title track. Really, the Middle East situation is bad enough without making it worse with horrendous cliches ("I don’t remember learning how to hate in Sunday school." As they say in the classics, gag me with a spoon.) "John Walker's Blues" was a fair attempt at some Boss-esque psycho-mythologising, but then Bruce goes and writes "Paradise" and it is game over, gentlemen. Musically, it was nothing remarkable, nothing that kept me going back and repeated listenings in the last 18 months confirmed me in my reaction. Not a bad album, a good one actually but we expect more of Steve.
I have been a Steve Earle fan since "Copperhead Road" crossed over in 1988, an auspicious year (my 13th) in this musical journey since it was also the year the Traveling Wilburys first taught me to hate Bob Dylan's voice, to love Roy Orbison's. I got over that first immature reaction, obviously. I had bought my first LP the year before, and, as the top singles for the year show, it was a most glorious year for music. I haven't thought of it since but knew every word to the Stutter Rap (hey, do you think it could be, like Randy Newman's "Short People", a sophisticated and ironic comment on the nature of prejudice? No? OK.)
Anyway, enough nostalgia. As anyone unfortunate enough to have caught me after a few drinks knows, I wasn't much impressed with Jerusalem, Steve's last album. It suffered tremendously in comparison to Springsteen's The Rising which came out at a similar time, both as a memorable musical document and as a reaction to current events. It has the distinction of containing the only Steve Earle song that actually makes me cringe: the title track. Really, the Middle East situation is bad enough without making it worse with horrendous cliches ("I don’t remember learning how to hate in Sunday school." As they say in the classics, gag me with a spoon.) "John Walker's Blues" was a fair attempt at some Boss-esque psycho-mythologising, but then Bruce goes and writes "Paradise" and it is game over, gentlemen. Musically, it was nothing remarkable, nothing that kept me going back and repeated listenings in the last 18 months confirmed me in my reaction. Not a bad album, a good one actually but we expect more of Steve.
The Revolution Starts … Now is Steve Earle is rocking mode like never before on an album, with Roscoe's chainsaw lead guitar taking centre stage. It also continues his infatuation with manipulating his voice with studio trickery -- echo-y Steve, digitised Steve, scratchy Steve. It reminds me a bit of watching the video from my high school formal, all those snazzy effects straight out of the Wuthering Heights video clip. Very pretty, quickly dated and to no great purpose.
But I like the album, on a few spins so far. Particularly the country rock of "Home to Houston" and "Rich Man's War." Nothing out of the box, but solid. "Condi, Condi", surprising, I liked although I'm pretty unsure of its political intent. Anyway, nothing wrong with a bit of hillbilly reggae. Pretty catchy actually. First thoughts anyway, more perhaps to follow.
Last week brought the tantalising news about Steve heading into the studio with the Bluegrass Dukes. Now, that's definitely something to get out into the streets about.
If anyone knows what is coming up at the Coopers Arms on Sundays, can you please let me know. I went there last week to get the details and asked again on the weekend and they were supremely unhelpful. Not like I'm trying to give them publicity or anything. It's a cool little venue actually (despite that freaky red-amber-green sound monitor above the door; makes me nervous), particularly being situated amid the blonde-wood-and-stainless-steel pub scene on King St.
Sympathy for the Slave
Stephen Collins Foster is back on earth, wrestling with race: the entity in the woodpile
Country music not just for hicks In New Zealand.
Gillian Welch
Emmylou and Buddy Miller
If only the boys back at the old mill could see Earl Scruggs now
Sympathy for the Slave
Stephen Collins Foster is back on earth, wrestling with race: the entity in the woodpile
Though Foster's songs course through the culture from Derby Day to doorbells, they're rarely performed by contemporary artists. Previous collections by legit singers Joan Morris and Jan DeGaetani inflated Foster into a capital-C composer; Beautiful Dreamer attempts to haul him back to earth. The two instrumental pieces here sound irrevocably dated (despite Henry Kaiser's scorched-earth solo on "Autumn Waltz"), but the vocal works adapt well to a range of rootsy but not wholly retro styles: country (Raul Malo, Grey De Lisle), folk-rock (Roger McGuinn's gauzy "Jeannie"), and, too often, public-radio Americana ("Slumber, My Darling," with Mark O'Connor, Allison Krauss, and Yo-Yo Ma). If this disc proves anything, it's that the reasons musicians avoid Foster aren't musical.
Country music not just for hicks In New Zealand.
Gillian Welch
Emmylou and Buddy Miller
If only the boys back at the old mill could see Earl Scruggs now
On Saturdays, Earl Scruggs worked second shift at the mill in Shelby, N.C. From 2 p.m. until 10 p.m., he was a spare hand. Sometimes, he'd be in the spool room. Other times, somewhere else.
The best part of the day was dinner break. That was when he could get a little pickin' in.
''Me and Grady Wilkie would sit in the back seat of my '36 Chevy and play music,'' Scruggs said, sitting in a small room at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, a place that will present four weekly concerts from Scruggs, his family and his friends beginning Tuesday. At those shows, he'll display the same groundbreaking, rocket-speed banjo style that he perfected in the back of that Chevy.
Saturday, September 04, 2004
Friday, September 03, 2004
Sign Real Country Music's petition to protest the CMA overlooking Loretta Lynn and Van Lear Rose for a nomination. Mind you, if you were going to protest every stupid thing the CMA did you wouldn't have time to fit in much else.
Review of Kasey Chambers in the SMH. We have been down this road before: if you like the music, just damn well say so, without trying to cover your hipster arse by assuring us no, no, she isn't really country. I mean, what earthly reason is there to mention Shania Twain and linedancing in a review of Kasey Chambers? "Hokey cliches" are to be scorned in popular music apparently, but still OK in popular music hackwork.
I look forward to the live reviews of Jet which deny they bear any resemblance to Mark Holden and of James Morrison, who redeems jazz from Kenny G.
Review of Kasey Chambers in the SMH. We have been down this road before: if you like the music, just damn well say so, without trying to cover your hipster arse by assuring us no, no, she isn't really country. I mean, what earthly reason is there to mention Shania Twain and linedancing in a review of Kasey Chambers? "Hokey cliches" are to be scorned in popular music apparently, but still OK in popular music hackwork.
I look forward to the live reviews of Jet which deny they bear any resemblance to Mark Holden and of James Morrison, who redeems jazz from Kenny G.
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Drillin' in the Wall
Ripped from the headlines:
Police then entered the building to find a hole with bricks knocked out in a wall between the bank and an adjoining vacated bookshop.
It's suspected the gang had laid in wait for hours for staff to arrive after a resident two levels above the branch reported having heard drilling at 3.30am yesterday.
Sound familiar?
Police then entered the building to find a hole with bricks knocked out in a wall between the bank and an adjoining vacated bookshop.
It's suspected the gang had laid in wait for hours for staff to arrive after a resident two levels above the branch reported having heard drilling at 3.30am yesterday.
Sound familiar?
The Man in Black Bloc at the RNC in NYC.
The website mentioned in the article: Defend Johnny Cash
Roseanne Cash's view:
The American Gas Association and the Nissan Motor Co. had arranged a swank party to honor Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander and his state's delegation to the Republican convention. And, since the event was being held at Sotheby's, which will be auctioning Cash memorabilia in mid-September, it was decided to make the event a "tribute" to the singer.
To a lot of Cash fans, however, that sounded like claiming that the Man in Black was a Republican.
And those were fighting words for folks who recall that it was Cash who sang: "I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down/ Livin' in the hopeless hungry side of town/I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime/But is there because he's a victim of his times."
The website mentioned in the article: Defend Johnny Cash
Roseanne Cash's view:
There is no need to 'defend' my Dad against the Republicans, or against anyone, for that matter, as some over-zealous types would have you believe. You can rest assured that if anyone needs to 'defend' my Dad against improper usage of his name or image, that we, the family and the estate lawyers, are on the case, usually long before the rest of the world finds out about it. It is our honor and our duty to protect the legacy of my father, and we all take this very seriously, and we are empowered to the nth degree to do so.
So, please, rest easy. If you feel the need to protest something, allow me to give you directions to Madison Square Garden.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Brilliant.
The Other Side of Country blog has a rejection letter a country music station today might write to Hank Snr.
The Other Side of Country blog has a rejection letter a country music station today might write to Hank Snr.
Take heart, though. We believe you can still make it as a country performer. You have several songs that mention drinking; maybe you should consider adding Captain Morgan, Jose Cuervo, or Jack Daniels to one of your songs so that we might better develop some “alternative income streams” for your songs and thus profit doubly when giving you airtime. Maybe you could consider picking a truck brand too. Other artists, such as Kenny Chesney and Garth Brooks have done well for themselves in that area. For example, cleaning up the English a little, adding a more popular boy's name from today and a brand, you could change "Jambalaya" to something like:
Good-bye Shane
Down the lane
In your Volvo
Lucinda Williams' planned double live CD has apparently been delayed due to unhappiness with the original mastering job. Read something she wrote here.
Authorized Cash Biography Due Sept. 13
Later this month, Sony is releasing another in its The Essential ... series: Merle Haggard. No playlist yet that I can find, but it covers the early Epic years and based on the others in the collection it should be great.
Authorized Cash Biography Due Sept. 13
A new Johnny Cash biography, authorized by his family, will arrive in bookstores on Sept. 13. The Man Called CASH: The Life, Love and Faith of an American Legend, written by Steve Turner, includes interviews with all of Cash's children and many of his close friends. Kris Kristofferson wrote the foreword. It will be published by W Publishing Group, a division of Thomas Nelson Inc.
Later this month, Sony is releasing another in its The Essential ... series: Merle Haggard. No playlist yet that I can find, but it covers the early Epic years and based on the others in the collection it should be great.
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