Easy Ed’s American Roots Music Broadside: March 2021

Used by Pixabay License

The Return of Easy Ed’s Broadside? 

Indeed. Get ready for a more consistent monthly dose of new releases, music that’s been lost and found, philosophical rambling, cultural insights, news, views, videos, humor and more.

How Was Your 2020?

So yeah….this was supposed to be a monthly column after I retired from doing my weekly gig at No Depression’s website last August. But life got in the way of that idea. Between the stress and anxiety of working from home, isolation save the weekly trip to Trader Joe’s, the rhetorical political theater – spewing angst and hatred to a divided nation – I simply lost interest. Not in music, for it’s been a period of intense exploration and discovery, but in doing anything that involved much thinking or an attempt at creativity. I’ve fallen into a long season of passivity, satisfied with endless hours of watching films from Scandinavia to Korea, Germany to Hollywood. And those television mysteries from the BBC that seem to use the same actors like secondhand retreaded tires, and fascinating but soon forgotten documentaries about this, that and whatever. No comedy specials though. I lost my will to laugh. But the penlight is getting brighter and yesterday I was actually accused of sounding chipper. A first time for everything.

Please God…I Never Want To See Another Livestream Concert Again!

As I sit here punching above my weight, certain states that look more red than blue are tossing the masks and reopening the bars, restaurants, gyms and theaters. Down in Austin and Nashville where there are more unemployed musicians than grains of sand on a wide Hawaiian beach, a majority of club owners are not yet rushing to begin booking concerts. Optimism easily obscures reality and we’re likely another few months away from live entertainment. So at least for a little while longer we’re left with these sometimes interesting yet hardly satisfying live sets from empty stages and living rooms. I know it’s gotten bad when a favorite artist with hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook only managed forty-two viewers on their recent weekly broadcast.

Got Any New Music You Can Share?

Sure. I’ve been trolling along with the last of the great music bloggers, seeking out those albums and songs that I have never known of, and scouring the rolling waves of new releases that came out in the wind and left in a whisper throughout these past months. When you put everything you got into an album with the hope of touring and getting noticed, it’s been a friggin’ heartbreak after heartbreak. A hundred years from now some ethnomusicologist will no doubt write a successful book on the lost music of 2020.

I know…it’s not a live performance and what does it have to do with roots music? Whatever. I like the song and the whole album and I like this guy even though I am one of the last people on Earth who seems to know of him. His album Songs for The Drunk and Broken Hearted is his thirteenth. I got myself the bonus recording where he does a whole band thing followed by an acoustic version. Brilliant music. And he does a lot of livestreams. Passenger is the name he records under, but he’s Mark David Rosenberg.

Dirk Powell is – damn, it’s a lot easier if I just quote his allmusic.com biography:

Dirk is considered one of the world’s leading experts on traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo styles, along with carrying on the traditions of his late and legendary father-in-law Dewey Balfa, as well as the accordion player in the Cajun group Balfa Toujours. 

As you can hear above, the new album When I Wait For You is much more in the singer-songwriter category than his band work and it’s truly a beautiful work.

This is The Kit’s fifth album Off Off On is in heavy rotation here at my abode. Fronted by English singer and songwriter Kate Stables, who is based in Paris, her exceptional musical exploration includes whomever joins her in the moment. She’s often playing a banjo, and reviewers just can’t seem to put a tag or genre on her.

Cordova’s Destiny Hotel was a great find from this Tennessee-based band that features vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Joe Firstman, keyboardist Sevans Henderson, guitarist/vocalist Lucca Soria and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Toby Weaver. They sound and look like a throwback to the Sixties that seems to be brought up in every article and review written, which probably pisses them off to no end. I feel for these folks since they are road hogs who have established themselves a large fanbase with nonstop touring. Morton

Morton Valance is simply indescribable and irresistible. A London-based duo who’ve released eight albums in fifteen years, I have never heard them until Bob & Veronica’s Great Escape was released. Th3e video is sort of an outlier on the album, but it truly shows their creativity and ability to step out, as the majority of the songs are slow tempo with tight and intricate harmonies. The duo features Ann Gilpin and songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Robert ‘Hacker’ Jessett. Along with this album, in 2020 they wrote and directed an autobiographical film documentary entitled ‘This Is A Film About A Band’ that was premiered at the Doc’N Roll Film Festival in London. Can’t wait to find it.

Australian singer-songwriter Emma Swift released an amazing – one more time – amazing album of Dylan cover songs titled Blonde On The Tracks. Based in Nashville and recorded with her partner Robyn Hitchcock and featuring Wilco’s Patrick Sansone, it’s pretty hard to believe this is her first full length album. Before becoming a musician, she was a radio broadcaster in Australia, hosting an Americana music show In the Pines. 

Almost At The End…..Shameless Self-Promotion

Well that was fun. So here’s the deal: As most of you may know, I run a Facebook page and a Flipboard e-magazine that are linked here on my website. Every single day I scour the internet for music news and articles of interest, so you don’t have to. Every night on FB I also post a video to close it out. (This moth I’ve dedicated myself to finding 31 John Prine performances.) If you haven’t visited, please do. I should mention the Flipboard has over 3,000 articles including many that don’t get posted on Facebook, and is a great way to pass the time. Download the app or visit on your computer or tablet.

 One More Thing…March is Women’s History Month!

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history.

 

 

 

 

 

Easy Ed’s American Roots Music Broadside: September 2020

Used Via Pixabay License.

Greetings…I’m back after a few weeks of getting my head cleared and I’m ready to share some of my latest favorite Americana and roots music songs and videos, news, events and whatever other stuff pops into my head. As many of you know, I have left No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music to get off the treadmill of having a weekly column deadline, and to allow myself to focus on other areas of interest. Without going into some rant you don’t need to hear, we’ll leave it that I am very fearful of the future not only in America, but throughout the world. From climate to pandemic, politics to racism, divisiveness to income inequality…we are not living in the best of times. And so we escape into a world of comfort and familiarity, riding it out as best one can. Music, sweet sweet music.

Nashville’s Sunday Someday

The gracious and excellent guitarist/singer Annie McCue reached out to me late last night to share something she helped put together. Sunday Someday is a jam band that was formed by a very busy group of side-musicians and singer-songwriters who under normal times have played Sunday brunch gigs at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in Nashville. They played monthly and often asked special guests to play and sit in with them, covering artists such as Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, Fleetwood Mac, Mississippi John Hurt, also dipping into the original songs they had all been writing over the years. It was a Sunday kind of thing.

A couple months into the quarantine with Dee’s still closed, McCue suggested they start working on a song. She sent out a basic track with guitar and vocals and everyone passed it around a few times, adding parts and harmonies until they decided one day it was finished. McCue then compiled video footage and pulled it all together and here they give you their version of George Harrison’s Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth). The other musicians are Megan Palmer, Jason Quicksall, Bob Lewis, Erin Nelson and Johnathan Beam.

‘This beautiful song is of this time,’ says Annie. ‘It’s exactly what we all need right now.’ I agree.

People We’ve Lost: Justin Townes Earle and Toots Hibbert

You’ve likely read the news, and know they’re gone. Justin’s loss hit me hard, for not only that we share the disease of addiction, but because the music he could have, should have, and would have given to us will never be heard. Cole Louison published a remembrance of Justin circa 2010, titled It’s As Hard As You Make It: The Legacy of Justin Townes Earle. An interesting read; it made me shudder to think that by twenty-eight he had made thirteen trips to rehab and overdosed five times. Otis Gibbs has put up a video eulogy that I’d like to share with y’all, and a song if you don’t mind.

And from NYC/2010:

 

Frederick “Toots” Hibbert, the lead singer and songwriter of Toots and the Maytals and one of reggae’s foundational figures, was seventy-seven when he passed. A few weeks earlier he had just released his first new album in over a decade. His NPR obituary offers a brief but notable survey of his life and career, and he left a huge body of work for us to have. Two days after the release of Got To Be Tough, Hibbert was admitted to Kingston’s University Hospital of the West Indies. If you have the time, the BBC did a documentary on Toots and the band and you can watch it here.

Live at the Winterland, San Francisco, CA on November 15, 1975.

Toots performing “Pressure Drop” on Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny-2010/2011, backed by the Rhythm & Blues Orchestra

New Music….Or At Least New To Me

This first one comes  with a giant thank you from one of my Broadside followers. Rob Oakie is the executive director of Music Prince Edward Island, and he sent me a note sharing that I may have missed an album from the past year titled Coyote, the seventh studio recording by the award winning folk musician Catherine MacClellan. He was right, and although I knew her name I honestly didn’t know her music. So I’ve been exploring all of her work and fallen in love.

There’s a bit of Canadian musical legacy in her family, as her father was legendary Canadian songwriter Gene MacClellan, who wrote the megahit “Snowbird” that was covered by everyone from Anne Murray to Elvis Presley. Catherine has followed in her father’s musical footsteps, winning the 2015 Juno Award for Roots & Traditional Album.

Not on the album, I found this song which appears to have been recorded less than a month ago. I would imagine even on Prince Edward Island they are feeling the impact of the pandemic, and musicians are sadly shuttered down from the road.

The Avett Brothers‘ album The Third Gleam is in rotation on my main playlist. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Seth shared this about the songs:

“We touch on historical prejudice, faith, economic disparity, gun violence, incarceration, redemption, and as is increasingly standard with our records, stark mortality. This is by no means a record defined by any specific social or cultural goal, nor is it informed by a singular challenge posed to humanity. It is merely the sound of my brother and I in a room, singing about what is on our minds and in our hearts at the time…sharing it now is about what sharing art is always about: another chance that we may partake in connecting with our brothers and sisters of this world, and hopefully joining you in noticing a speck of light gleaming in what appears to be a relatively long and dark night.”

Transmigration Blues is singer-songwriter Ryan Gustafson’s fourth album as The Dead Tongues, and it was recorded back in 2019 but only came out earlier this past summer. Living in Western North Carolina, he’s been making music for almost twenty years under different names or with various collaborators, spending time on the road with Hiss Golden Messenger and Phil Cook. This is a video from the album, followed by one of Louden Wainwright III’s best, “The Swimming Song” along with Mandarin Orange.

The Most Important Thing You Will Do In Your Lifetime

Over on The Real Easy Ed Facebook page, I often sprinkle in politics and satire with the music. Here, I’m not going to preach or holler. But I will share that I believe we not only must exercise our right to vote, but that we need to preserve the health and welfare of our children. A deranged autocrat running a racist and facist state with a cult-like band of gunslinging disciples does not make for an open and safe society. So I know many of you might have second thoughts about Biden/Harris and will either sit it out or look for Kanye or someone else to register a vote of protest. No. It will will not help your cause. You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution, so suck it up and vote this piece of garbage out of office. Here’s how to register or check to see if you already are: CLICK HERE!

A Daily Broadside From 9/11/20

Sunrise Between Twin Towers, World Trade Center, New York City, NY,designed by Minoru Yamasaki, International Style

Here in NYC today the local TV stations have, as they do every year on this date, suspended programming and are broadcasting the reading of the names of all who perished on 9/11. It’s usually done live, but this year the audio track was prerecorded. There’s another tragedy playing out this year in the form of a virus that has changed up the day’s usual memorial ceremonies. Nevertheless, it is a solemn day here as the memories of that horror come flooding back. And the loss of human life beyond that day have continued, as thousands of first responders have developed ravaging diseases that have left a long train of continuous pain, suffering and death.

You might think the country would take care of the men and women who put their lives on the line not only on that day but in the months that followed to search for survivors and clean the pile of rubble left in the wake. Yet the Victims Compensation Fund has always been a thorn in the side of Republicans and three times they’ve tried to eliminate it. Imagine. They have expressed concern over their fiscal responsibility and the cost. Famously, just last year Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee blocked the latest funding extension.

Luis Alvarez, a first responder, came to Congress to plead for help. “I will not stand by and watch as my friends with cancer from 9/11 like me are valued less than anyone else because of when they get sick. You made me come here the day before my 69th round of chemo. I’m going to make sure that you never forget to take care of the 9/11 responders.” Three weeks later he died, at age 53. The Senate ultimately passed the bill, that now guarantees funding through 2092.

On this date it is often pointed out as a point in time in our nation’s history when we all united together in our anger, rage and mourning. And It did seem like that for a month or two, but eventually the fractures in that myth rose back to the surface. And nineteen years later the country should collectively look at itself in the mirror today and recall that moment of unity, when for a brief time we each came together in our loss. It will likely never repeat itself. Some believe that the wars that began soon after 9/11 and still continue today were payback, yet I think most of us now know that it was built on a lie, as most wars are.

What 9/11 has left us with is a nation in pieces, torn apart by political divisiveness, racial injustice, corruption of power, an inequality of wealth and a pandemic that has traded the lives of almost 200,000 people for the benefit of an autocrat and his disciples. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures or cartoons of a man with a sandwich sign board over his shoulders that reads “the end is near”. Most of us take that as being humorous, but here on 9/11/2020 it is closer to the truth than ever before. I’ll leave it at that

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

 

No Depression at 25: A Time to Come, A Time to Go

Photo by Arifur Rahman Tushar via Pixabay

All good things must end, and after a dozen years as a contributor to No Depression, the Journal of Roots Music’s website, I decided to step back from the grind of the weekly deadline. Rather than just fade off into the sunset, I wanted to thank those who have followed me through the years, reminisce a bit, tell you what my plans are and how to keep up with my ramblin’ thoughts and writing. Easy Ed’s Broadside is now right here, at therealeasyed.com.

In the winter of 1993 I traveled from Los Angeles to Tahiti and for the trip I jammed a couple dozen CDs into my backpack along with my Sony Discman. It’s hard to recall everything I was listening to back then, but there are two albums that remain stuck in my memories because I played them over and over: The Breeders’ Last Splash and Uncle Tupelo’s Anodyne. While some might think they were worlds apart in tone and texture, I felt the connection. It was no different from the days when I was making mixtapes; dropping in Al Jolson or Dean Martin tunes along with the Fabulous Baggys, Lefty Frizzell, and Gong. Or listening to the Burritos while lighting up that first joint, and moving on to early Gil Scott-Heron on Flying Dutchman for the second one. Music was always just music. Genres were how you promoted it to radio stations and marketed it with little plastic signs at retail. Rock, jazz, country, folk, blues, soul, oldies, vocals, easy listening, classical, whatever.

A few years later I was at a record store somewhere in America waiting to take the manager out to lunch, and I wandered over to the long magazine rack against the back wall. Moving from left to right I scanned the covers as if they were candy bar wrappers at a movie theater concession stand, and when I got to the section where the music rags were displayed, I picked up No Depression. The tagline under the title wasn’t what longtime readers may recall, because it changed from issue to issue. This one said: “We Could Always Call It The Alternative Country Bimonthly.” The paper they used felt different than other magazines, the graphics reminded me of Crawdaddy, and it kicked off with a column by Grant Alden called “Hello, Stranger” and ended with “Screen Door” by Peter Blackstock. One guy lived in Nashville, the other in Seattle. Kyla Fairchild handled advertising and distribution, and their email address was “nodepress” at America Online.

I was a maniacal reader, going from front to back, back to front, reading every word, studying every ad. And there were lots of those. I’d been working in indie distribution for over 25 years at that point and somehow Kyla discovered labels that nobody ever heard of. Outside of the occasional full- or half-page major record label ad, and Miles of Music, a pre-Amazon mail order record company, there were dozens of quarter-page ads from new acts I’d never heard of, and they were DIY to the max. Since No Depression came out only every other month, each issue was on the table next to my bed for two months and I never got tired of reading the same stories over and over again. It helped to open me up to greater exploration and home in on discovering my passion for American roots music.

Skipping over a dozen years, give or take, technology eventually steamrolled the paradigm and record companies no longer needed, nor could afford, print advertising. If you’re reading this column today, it’s because No Depression stopped the presses, shifted to the internet, made adjustments, changed out people, changed out ownership, and eventually became part of a larger nonprofit organization that has a multiple tentacles, like a baby octopus. And although it’s not even close to being what it started out as, it nevertheless will be celebrating 25 years of survival and growth.

My career in the music industry peaked as vice president of sales at a small indie label and it coincided with the end of No Depression as we had known it. Living in California at the time, I began to actively comment and post stories to the new website. Most were not that good and were completely unedited. Peter had left for Austin, Kyla was paying the bills and scrambling for ads in Seattle, and Grant hung around and tried his hand at writing in a different medium, where people give you instant feedback and draw you into conversations. He wrote some amazing articles back then, before going off and doing full-time chicken farming or something like that, and becoming a bookstore owner in Kentucky.

Easy Ed is a pen name I have been using for 50 years. In high school I started my own alternative monthly printed on a mimeograph machine, and in college I was the senior editor and columnist for the school newspaper as well as a musician in a band that played psychedelic country rock at events including the Communist Workers’ May Day celebration. Throw in the stories I wrote about Nixon, Vietnam, and hints on where to get high on campus, and it all earned me a wiretap on my parents’ phone, surveillance by guys in black suits, and somewhere in Washington today there is probably a microfiche file stored inside a dusty box about a Jewish kid from the white suburbs of Philadelphia who was dangerous only to himself.

Kim Ruehl worked with Kyla to re-form No Depression into a community website that anyone could post stories to. And there were comment sections, from which many online communities were organically created, with threads that were often dozens of pages longer than the stories that started them out. For several years, it was a helluva lot of fun if you were a music freak who was seeking out like-minded people. Almost everybody had been original magazine subscribers in the beginning, and it was an early experiment in social media that was not financially sustainable. Kyla sold it, Kim did the day-to-day, some new folks joined management, people left, people came, the site was redesigned once, and redesigned twice.

I’d like to think that over time my writing got a little better or at least more interesting to read, and eventually I became a featured contributor, an occasional social media moderator, and for the past five or six years a weekly columnist who actually gets paid for what I do. I came up with “Easy Ed’s Broadside,” using the name of a small defunct magazine that printed lyrics from writers and folkies such as Dylan, Ochs, Rush, Paxton, Seeger, Guthrie, Reynolds, and so many others. It was named out of respect to the founders, Sis Cunningham and her husband, Gordon Friessen, and their daughters, who helped them put it together. A joint autobiography, Red Dust and Broadsides, is out of print but you can track it down. If you’re interested in the history of American folk music, protest, and change, it is essential reading.

Several years ago, soon after the website dropped the comments feature, I started up a Facebook page for lost and lonely No Depression folks who still wanted to continue connecting and conversing. I played around with the format, and realized I enjoyed aggregating music stories and features from all over the web and curating music videos. I also created my own website as a companion, along with a Flipboard e-magazine, and it’s all just a non-commercial home for musical beings. It’s simply a hobby, yet a rewarding one I will continue.

And so that brings us up to today.

If you’ve been following me over the years, you know I stand to the left of center. Having to live these past three years under a mentally ill autocrat, racist, womanizer, and pathological liar who is set on destroying American democracy and the rule of law is a bitter pill to swallow every day. Now in the midst of social awakening and a deadly pandemic running through our country with no leadership or resources, no empathy or care, I’ve had enough. And so I’m stepping down from my weekly column to put more of my efforts toward a better tomorrow. I’ve got a vote and a voice, and I need to use them.

It’s become hard to watch musicians and their support systems lose their livelihoods, with no way back at this point. I still plan to stay in that game and help where and when I can, but the weekly grind of creating a palatable word salad that offers nourishment is wearing thin and needs to be put aside. Y’all know where to find me — all of my columns here feature my various points of contact — so please feel free to reach out.

I have loved working for No Depression over the years and congratulate the current team on keeping it alive for a quarter century. Stacy Chandler has been a most outstanding keeper of the website, who has challenged me to reach higher, and kindly has proofed and edited my columns each week. And I thank her for her friendship as well. And also Kim Ruehl, who I credit with encouraging me to do what I do, whatever that is. Finally, I am most grateful to Grant Alden, Peter Blackstock, and Kyla Fairchild for their vision and working long and hard days to publish an amazing magazine, which I keep next to my desk. Thank you all for making my life brighter. No Depression has inspired and supported an incredible musical ecosystem that one day will come roaring back. I can’t wait for live music again!

Peace be with you, over and out.

This was originally posted as an Easy Ed’s Broadside at No Depression: Journal of Roots Music’s website. 

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Beyond The Top 10: Americana and Roots Music

CHUM Radio Hit Parade

It’s August 2020 and when I first pulled together this massive list it was about forty days ago. A lot has happened since then. The pandemic has simply gone away, nobody is wearing masks anymore, kids are going back to school safely, live music is back again and nobody is dying. Oops…sorry. That was a cut and paste from the Trump campaign’s Twitter account. The reality is that things still are very scary, people are dying every day, it’s too soon to know about school resuming and live music has not only completely stopped, but we’ve come to experience that live streaming is not as warm and cuddly as we thought it could be. 

Other life changing events that have impacted this list include Taylor Swift’s musical adulthood and the beautifully written and produced “folklore”, Gillian and Dave have begun to release all sorts of recordings that were almost lost in the tornado, Lori Mckenna’s album is an absolute contender for top ten, Joan Shelley and Bruce Springsteen both released live albums that are stripped down and delicious. And there’s a bunch of other new things recently released, but I’ll save those for the next time. 

I rarely rank titles, but in a moment of weakness the first ten here are (or were) my favorites of 2020, back in June. It might not have changed all that much, but in the end, who cares? I’m sharing this to help with your own musical exploration, not tout my own. I’m just a guy who has time on his hands to dig through the virtual wooden crates of albums and this is all stuff I’ve found and like. Maybe you will too.

Nathan Rateliff – And It’s Still Alright
Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit – Reunions
Logan Ledger – Logan Ledger
Bonnie Light Horsemen – Bonnie Light Horsemen
William Prince – Reliever
J.S Ondara – Folk n’ Roll Vol.1: Tales of Isolation
Tre Burt – Caught It By The Rye
Gil Landry – Skeleton At The Banquet
Eliza Gilkyson – 2020
Bonnie “Prince” Billy – I Need A Place

 

In absolutely no order whatsoever, neither alphabetically nor by release date because that was way too hard to do, here’s the rest of recent stuff I dig. And this is obviously not all that I listen to. I spend about half the day with these,  and the rest of the time I listen to a lot of older material. For example, lately I’m enchanted by Hawaiian slack key guitar, and jazz from 1940 to 1960. But those aren’t listed here. That’s another column or two. You are getting pure 100% Americana…whatever that is. I think.

Drive-By Truckers -The Unraveling
Jen Starsinic -Bad Actor EP
David Mayfield – Boy Howdy!
Nora Jane Struthers – Bright Lights, Long Drives, First Words
Sierra Hull -25 Trips
Love Me In The Dark -Love Me In The Dark
Buck Curran – No Love Is Sorrow
Honey Harper – Starmaker
The Mastersons – No Time For Love Songs
Brandy Clark – Your Life Is A Record
Steve Earle – Ghosts of West Virginia
The Mammals – Nonet
John Moreland – LP5

The Deep Dark Woods – Broadside Ballads Vol. 2 EP
Mark Mandeville & Raianne Richards – Road May Rise
Ray Remington – Texas Rose EP
Joe Edwards – Keep On Running
Teddy Thompson – Heartbreaker Please
Sarah Jarosz – World On The Ground
Mapache – From Liberty Street
The Secret Sisters – Saturn Return
Rose Cousins – Bravado

Jake Blount -Spider Tales
Tessy Lou Williams – Tessy Lou Williams
Jason Wilbur – Time Traveler
Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
Neil Young – Homegrown
Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways
Jonathon Wilson – Dixie Blur

The Hanging Stars – A New Kind Of Sky
Mark Erelli – Blindsided
Fairport Convention -Shuffle and Go
Dave Simonett – Red Tail
Jim Lauderdale – When Carolina Comes Home Again
Watkins Family Hour -Brother Sister
Clem Snide – Forever Just Beyond
Lilly Hiatt – Walking Proof
Swamp Dogg – Sorry You Couldn’t Make It

Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud
James Elkington – Ever-Roving Eye
100 Mile House – Love and Leave Me
Laura Marling – Song For Our Daughter
Laurie Lewis -And Laurie Lewis
Western Centuries – Call The Captain
Lucinda Williams – Good Souls Better Angels
Chatham County Line – Strange Fascination
The Lowest Pair – The Perfect Plan
Joe Ely – Love In The Midst of Mayham
Mr. Alec Bowman – I Used To Be Sad & Then I Forgot

Steve Forbert – Early Morning Rain
Damien Jurado – What’s New, Tomboy?
Gretchen Peters – The Night You Wrote That Song: The Songs Of Mickey Newberry
Krista Detor – Chocolate Paper Suites
Emily Duff – Born On The Ground
Pharis and Jason Romero – Bet On Love
Caleb Caudle – Better Hurry Up

Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band – Just Like Moby Disc
The Haden Triplets – The Family Songbook
Marcus King -Eldorado
Dayna Kurtz & Mamie Minch – For The Love of Hazel: Songs For Hazel Dickens EP
Charles Wesley Godwin – Seneca
V/A – Strut My Stuff: Obscure Country & Hillbilly Rockers
Vera van Heeringen – Won’t Be Broken
Norma MacDonald – Old Future
Zach Aaron – Fill Dirt Wanted

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Help! There’s An Elephant In My Music Room!

Illustration/ Pixabay License

I’m not sure where it’s hiding at the moment, but there’s an elephant in the room where I do most of my writing, as well as the day job, snacking, sleeping, music making and listening. Please note that I purposely avoided using any gender pronouns, as we’ve not yet had that conversation.

There are three guitars each tuned differently resting on their stands, a dulcimer, banjo, five harps in various keys, lots of capos, and a couple of high-priced speakers that I stream my music through. I’m using a MacBook Pro 13-inch at the moment, which sits next to an iMac 27-inch desktop, and somewhere on the floor is an iPad on which I might one day record one of the greatest albums of music ever written. Or not. Got an iPhone sitting on a wireless charger, about a dozen books are scattered about, almost every issue of the original No Depression magazine (from when it was published by Peter, Grant and Kyla) which are neatly stacked in a wooden crate on the floor, and I’m staring at a large brown plastic bottle of Xanax.

When you write a music column each week it really helps to be passionate about your subject matter, or at the very least appear mildly curious to your readers. But since the Great New York Lockdown of 2020 began on March 12, I am struggling month after month with the elephant in the room to remain focused on music. And while I’m averaging 10 hours a day of listening, and exploring a wide range of new, old, lost, and found songs, my random crazy thoughts are beginning to take over. I don’t know if this will make it into the column on not, but maybe if I make a list of some of the stuff in my head it’ll be helpful, like therapy. As it’ll be totally random, don’t try to put too much thought into it.

For the past six weeks I’ve been working with my attorneys on my will, and writing letters to my kids about how much I love them and what they will need to do when I pass. I have converted the small amount of stock I own into cash just in case the banks fail, and I’m attempting to learn at least one Hawaiian slack-key song in taro patch tuning from beginning to end. I also watch quite a lot of Scandinavian crime dramas and wonder if there will be enough time left to view at least four or five Frederick Wiseman documentaries. Each one usually runs three to four hours. Doing stuff like that is good and keeps you busy, right?

If one day in the future somebody finds this article in some digital trashcan, please make note that this was written during the week when the total number of Americans who died from COVID-19 passed 150,000, and it was absolutely and totally avoidable. Our country went to hell in a handbasket when millions of y’all thought it made perfect sense to put a psychopath with a personality disorder and learning disability in charge of making decisions on your behalf. Reap what ye sow.

It seems to me that many professional musicians and other performers, including athletes, will need to find new jobs and learn new skillsets. Especially if you’re older, I doubt you’ll soon be able to safely go back to playing in front of an audience. How’s that Cayamo cruise sound to you right about now if you’re over 65, with a touch of emphysema from smoking too much weed and tobacco back in the day? I’m not making light of it, as it’s a tragic situation we find ourselves in, and I know so many people who earn a living playing, presenting, marketing, selling, and recording. Thinking of their pain and anguish is consuming. And hell, it ain’t just the arts, it’s our entire civilization.

Maybe this isn’t quite a top five problem, but a lot of people I talk to complain about not getting enough sleep and exercise. And if they have kids, they’re worrying that sending them back to school may not be a smart idea. Then there’s this mask vs. no mask tug-of-war between the sane folks and the crazy-as-a-loon Republicans and Libertarians who see absolutely no harm to society by strapping on a hand gun and slinging a semi-automatic rifle on their backs when they need to run down to Walmart and pick up some of that hydroxychloroquine. You people actually believe a guy whose top medical expert is a woman who has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches? She also has said that the government is run in part not by humans, but by “reptilians” and other aliens, according to The Daily Beast. She might be right about that last part. This should clear up any questions about why I keep on hand the previously mentioned large brown bottle of Xanax.

On March 8 of this year, I took my last train and subway ride into Manhattan to see Coal Country. A play by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, with original music written and performed by Steve Earle, it’s the story of the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia that killed 29 men and tore a hole in the lives of countless others. It’s probably one of the finest and moving theater performances I’ve seen, and within a few days it closed up and Earle and his youngest son left town for his house in Nashville. I didn’t know until this week that this project took four years to write, produce, and get onstage. And unless something happens, fewer than 1,500 people in the whole world will have had the chance to hear and see And that is a tragedy about a play about a tragedy.

I think this is a good place to stop. You probably have got the gist of it, that my mind is running around in circles and I need to take a vacation. I’m too late for heading to Florida’s beaches, I suppose, and I hear they are cracking down on boat parties on the Lake of the Ozarks. I really can’t fly anywhere, and buses, taxis, Uber, subways, and trains are all out of the question. Checked on some nice local bed and breakfasts up in the Catskills, but I can’t find any that will let me bring my elephant.

So I’ve decided that I’m just going to chill a bit for the rest of this long hot summer, until I get this pachyderm out of here. In closing, I’d like to leave you with a couple of musical thoughts, tips, and tricks. Ready?

I love Taylor Swift’s new album, recommend you check out what Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams are doing on their Facebook page, I want you to listen to the latest album by Tessy Lou Williams (no relation to Teresa) and agree with me that it’s the best country album of the year, make sure you are registered to vote and request an absentee ballot, skip getting tear gassed by the leader’s secret army, and please consider a donation to the Equal Justice Initiative. Stay safe!

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here and at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Musical Possibilities and Innovations

Used With Pixabay License

Y’all remember the Black Death? It was also known as the Plague and the Pestilence, and that particular pandemic peaked between 1347 and 1352, killing anywhere between 75 million and 200 million people. Not having the scientific tools that we have today, there were no means for coming up with an accurate number of those who caught it and passed away, but the US Census Bureau maintains an historical estimate of the world population over the centuries based on various sources, and in that time period, which also includes the Great Famine, it appears that the population dipped from 475 million to 350 million people in just one hundred years.

As pandemics go — and please don’t take this the wrong way or consider me insensitive — our COVID-19 is a cakewalk compared to what those poor souls went through. Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio wrote, “At the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits … waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils.” According to The History Channel, “Blood and pus seeped out of these strange swellings, which were followed by a host of other unpleasant symptoms — fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains — and then, in short order, death.” As neither Clorox injections nor tanning beds had yet to be invented then, physicians used bloodletting, boil-lancing, superstitious practices such as burning aromatic herbs, and bathing in rosewater or vinegar to treat their patients.

 

 

That lovely piece was written by the French poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut, who went into isolation during the plague and began experimenting with new sounds and rhythms.

While clearly affected by what was happening in the world around him, he refused to let the Black Death seep into his work. “Music is a science which asks that one laugh, and sing, and dance. It does not care for melancholy, nor for the man who is melancholy.” I read that quote in an article from The Guardian, which speaks of music surviving for 2,700 years through all sorts of catastrophic events. Dr. Chris Macklin, a former professor of musicology at Mercer University and an authority on plague music — yes there is such a term — has written “Music was not a luxury in times of epidemic uncertainty — it was a necessity.”

As we fast forward to 2020, an entire community of musicians and those who support them must feel as if they are in free fall. As social media is bursting at the seams with home-based concerts and larger platform streaming, and with new music continuing to be released with no option to tour, sell, and earn a return on investment, let alone a profit to pay for basic needs, it’s no wonder we see daily headlines of doom and gloom. But is there something on the other side, something that when we do come out of this is even better than what we had before?

 

 

English singer-songwriter Laura Marling’s latest album, Song for Our Daughter, had been scheduled for release next August. Changing course and with only a week’s notice, she decided to release it immediately. “In light of the change to all our circumstances, I saw no reason to hold back on something that, at the very least, might entertain, and at its best, provide some sense of union. … An album, stripped of everything that modernity and ownership does to it, is essentially a piece of me, and I’d like for you to have it.”

During her time in isolation, Marling has been very active on her social media account. Not only does she perform songs from home, but her guitar lessons are exceptional. As someone who has been playing for many decades, I am surprised that I never explored DADDAD tuning, and it’s allowed me to pass hours lost in my own creativity. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, Marling announced the first major geo-blocked concert of this year and sold it out within days. Ticket holders will watch the show via YouTube, using a private link they’re receive just before showtime. According to a Variety writeup, a small number of staff and crew will help produce the show. Out of despair, comes opportunity.

For more thoughts on that, look no further than right here at No Depression, with musician and The Long Haul columnist Rachel Baiman’s latest piece, titled “Stepping Back, Taking Stock.” I think it’s a must read for any touring musician who may be pondering a path forward. Her words really struck me, and I shall leave you by sharing her final paragraph.

“I heard once that an interruption of routine is the best path to innovation, and never have I felt that to be the case more than now. Touring being canceled for the foreseeable future may just be the tipping point we musicians need when it comes to realizing how much we’ve been cheating ourselves financially this past decade. I still love live performance above all, and I will be thrilled when I can hit the road again. But I’m going to make sure I do it on my terms this time — when and how I want to, and in a safe and sane way.”

 

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, herealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Larkin Poe and Other Online Finds (But Mostly Larkin Poe)

Photo from Larkin Poe Instagram

Sometime during my first week of our pandemic lockdown I was mindlessly surfing through Facebook, as one does, when I came across two women playing and singing in a casual setting with minimal production value but pretty good audio quality. Larkin Poe. Name sounded familiar, but I don’t think I’d ever heard them play before. They were doing this cover version of a ZZ Top song that I’ve never really liked, so I moved on. Thirty seconds later I went back to watch them finish it. And then I watched it again.

Since March 12, I have listened to what seems like several thousand hours of music; watched Scandinavian television shows; sampled films from South Korea; did the Tiger King boogie in one sitting; started, stopped, and started again to binge Ozark; read three different books simultaneously; and have tried hard to play guitar at least an hour a day. I’ve risked my life for a dozen bagels and a bag of Oreos. Stood in line for over an hour to buy a dozen bottles of sparkling water and a carton of almond milk that did not feature the faces of any missing children on the side. Once, I repeatedly refreshed the Costco app on my iPhone over a 36-hour period without any sleep until it finally allowed me order a case of Bounty paper towels, which I patiently waited four weeks to receive. I’ve bought two black handmade face masks from a woman in Latvia named Veronika who posted them on Etsy, and she has sworn to me that they were sent to me over a month ago. And I believe her.

Have you ever heard of a band called Severe Tire Damage? Me neither. On June 24, 1993, they were the first band to perform live on the internet, beating out The Rolling Stones by a year. In 1995, RealNetworks streamed the first baseball game: the New York Yankees versus the Seattle Mariners. And in 1998 Dale Ficken and Lorrie Scarangella stood in a Pennsylvania church as the Rev. Jerry Falwell sat in his office in Lynchburg, Virginia, and officiated their wedding over the web. It wasn’t until 10 years later that YouTube hosted its first livestream and opened up a new media format for live music, sporting events, original programming, gaming, pornography, and things we’ve never imagined and are still evolving.

Two months after watching that first Larkin Poe livestream, which has since been viewed over one million times on Facebook, I am still enchanted by this sister duo. I’ve watched Megan Lovell play a duet with her musician husband, and watched her DIY slide guitar lessons. I have seen Rebecca Lovell’s kitchen and grabbed my guitar while she taught us a blues riff from one of their new songs. I’ve heard them cover Black Sabbath and sing a Bill Withers song when he passed, and they’ve talked about their new album, Self Made Man, that comes out June 12 and the worldwide tour that was planned and is obviously in pause mode.

It was only when I followed the trail to Larkin Poe’s Wikipedia page that I realized I had once known them as The Lovell Sisters, an acoustic roots band from Georgia that included their older sister Jessica, who performed together from 2005 through late 2009. I’d heard them on Prairie Home Companion and there’s a hard drive in my apartment that I’m pretty sure contains their two albums. As teenagers they were road warriors, touring in a minivan and playing up to 200 dates a year. When Jessica left the band, the other two formed Larkin Poe in 2010 and their music has since evolved into a hard-charging Southern blues, rock, and roots orientation.

Rebecca and Megan released several projects on their own and played as backing musicians on a number of tours with Elvis Costello, Conor Oberst, Keith Urban, Kristian Bush of Sugarland, and others. They were tapped by T Bone Burnett as players in the band for Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes in 2014 and made their debut at the Glastonbury Festival that summer. Their fourth album, Venom & Faith, reached number one on the Billboard Blues Chart in November 2018 and received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album.

Each of the Larkin Poe videos above were originally streamed on Facebook and Instagram during the lockdown. Both sisters are social media savvy, and for years have built a loyal following around the world by letting their individual personalities shine through the screen and interacting in a very natural way. They have certainly brightened my two months at home, and it feels like I’ve made two new friends who have broken the fourth wall.

Now living in Nashville, the sisters say this is the longest period in 15 years that they have not been on the road. And it comes at a particularly important time in their career, with Self Made Man scheduled for release next month. If you head over to their website, you’ll find links to the weekly livestream concerts they’ll be doing in May and June, along with tour dates – fingers crossed – that follow.

This was originally published at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.