Tag Archives: Merle Haggard

Easy Ed’s Broadside Outtakes #5

sandydyas_katy RPM5

Easy Ed’s Broadside column has been a fixture for over ten years at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

New Music Rising: A Family Album of Close Harmony and Tasty Covers.

BarberBorn in Mississauga, Ontario, Matthew Barber is three years older than his sister Jill. Over the years they’ve enjoyed separate music careers that have taken them down different roads. Each have released multiple acclaimed solo albums, but they are stylistically different with Matthew the more hyphenated folk-pop-roots-singer-songwriter, while Jill zigs and zags across the genre-landscape of jazz, pop, chansons, old school soul and torch ballad country.

The Family Album is their first album as a duo, and features three originals from Jill, two from Matthew and cover versions of songs written or recorded by Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zandt, Bobby Charles, Ian Tyson and Gene MacLellan. In addition to an eclectc song selection, the sibling close harmony with arrangements and instrumentation in the roots-folk tradition make this an absolute standout.

The entire recording process took only a week at a Toronto studio, and for many in America this may be your first introduction to the Barbers. And while songs like ‘Comes A Time’, ‘If I Needed You’ and ‘The Patrician’ might seem to some as being endlessly reworked in the past, these arrangements come off sounding to my ears more as well done redefinitions and less the usual note for note reworking.

There are about a dozen tour dates scheduled in Canada over the next month or two, and June gigs in NYC and Boston. Hoping that The Family Album creates a big buzz so that these two will wander across the border a little more often, and fly over the ocean.

Every Picture Tells a Story.

Sandy 2The image at the top of this page was shot by my long-time-we’ve-only-met-online friend Sandy Dyas, who is a visual artist based in Iowa City that I’ve written about often. You can visit her website here and check out her work, books (buy them…really) and blog. And more of her images can be found on this site….like this one

Jason and the Scorchers…Another in a Series of ‘Great Rock Bands From The Eighties’.

I happened to come across an article in The Guardian this past week from Michael Hann about Jason and The Scorchers, a band that for a brief moment in time back in the mid-eighties stood on the edge of immense possibility. Fronted by Jason Ringenberg who moved to Nashville in 1981 with the dream of starting up a high energy roots band, he found three musicians who were more interested in playing power-punk than twang. The blend was almost indescribable.

Hann’s memory is far better than mine, but like him I also got the chance to see them play during that summer of 1985 at Nashville’s Exit/In. I equate it to that moment when you tug on the seat belt as the roller coaster starts to climb and it’s too damn late to get off. It was a confluence of sound and energy that I’ve never seen before nor since.

Here’s just a few excerpts from Hann’s article. It’s really a great story, and so I encourage you to read it all here.

There are only ever a handful of names that get mentioned when the idea of “the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world” is raised. Actually, there have been dozens of greatest rock’n’roll bands in the world, but most of them never get recognised – because they were only ever the greatest band for a week, or a month, a summer.

Jason and the Scorchers made music that sounded like no one else, a berserk, overdriven racket, in which country covers and Ringenberg’s originals were played with Never Mind the Bollocks power by the other three.

As you’ll already have guessed, the moment of greatness was brief. The Scorchers became less Ringenberg’s band than Hodges’, as EMI ushered them towards big hair and big makeup, to go with the big guitars. If the Pistols at the Opry worked, Poison at the Opry most certainly didn’t. Their next album, 1986’s Still Standing, might have been better retitled Going Backwards. One more record, Thunder and Fire, and the Scorchers were no more.

Back in 2004 there was a documentary released called The Appalachians which tells the story of the people and the land of Appalachia. The film uses interviews with ordinary people, scholars, and musicians like Loretta Lynn, Marty Stuart, Rosanne and Johnny Cash, and others. Dualtone Records put out a soundtrack, and Jason, by then a solo artist, contributed ‘The Price of Progress’ which has always been my favorite from him. 

Steve Earle On Getting Beat Up and The Importance of Merle Haggard To Him.

This was published on April 12, 2016 by The New York Times as an Op Ed, and I’ll cut and paste the first few paragraphs along with the link to the entire essay that was written by Steve. Not only does he have a way with lyrics and music, but Earle is a fine wordsmith.

In late 1969 and early 1970, when “Okie From Muskogee” was blaring from every jukebox in every beer joint, truck stop and restaurant in my hometown, San Antonio, I wanted, sometimes very much, to hate Merle Haggard.

I say blaring because that’s the kind of record “Okie” was. The kind that, when it dropped into place on an automated turntable or crackled from the speakers of an AM radio, you wanted to turn it up.

Well, not me. I was pretty much a rock-and-folk guy, but this was Texas at the height of the Vietnam War, and San Antonio was a military town boasting five Air Force bases and an Army post, so I’m pretty certain I was in the minority. There were kids in my high school who took pride in listening to nothing but country music. Whether Hag intended it or not, his blue-collar anthem became a battle cry for Vietnam-bound working-class youths with a snowball’s chance in Saigon of a student deferment. Music to kick some hippie butt by. Click here for the full story.

Heartworn Highways Deluxe

Light In The Attic Records put together a 40th Anniversary Edition Box Set of Heartworn Highways a few years ago with restored image and sound, and a whole bunch of extras. The documentary was shot in late 1975 through early 1976, and  covers singer-songwriters whose songs are more traditional to early folk and country music instead of following in the tradition of the previous generation. Some of film’s featured performers are Guy and Townes as well as other ‘outlaws’ such as Steve Earle, David Allen Coe, Rodney Crowell, Gamble Rogers, Steve Young and The Charlie Daniels Band.

I think the best of the bonus items in this set is an 80 page book with exhaustive 20,000 word essay by Sam Sweet interviewing artists, documentary creators and crew, including ephemera and over 100 unseen photos taken during the making of the film. Oxford American posted an excerpt this week on their website titles  From Houston to Long Beach to Old Hickory Lake and it’s one great story. Here’s just the opening, and I’ll link it below.

Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt met during what Clark later called “the great folk scare.” Houston in the early 1960s had a folk community that paralleled those in Cambridge, Minneapolis, or Los Angeles—only smaller and with better bluesmen. The musicologist John Lomax ran the Texas Folklore Society and would arrange for veterans like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb to play concerts at the Jester Lounge on Westheimer, where they would turn Kingston Trio fans onto something tougher. As Lomax’s son, John Lomax III, put it, “Lightnin’ was as electric as you could get with an acoustic.” Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt were among the room’s transfixed teenagers. Click here to read the rest.

Videos You Wouldn’t Know Existed, Unless You Found Them By Mistake.

Easy Ed’s Broadside Outtakes #4

Chevy in Air

Easy Ed’s Broadside weekly column is found at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

New Music Rising: Brennen Leigh Sings Lefty Frizzell

And when I say ‘new’ I mean new to me. There’s also good chance it might be new to you too. Seems like on any given week there are hundreds of websites all talking about the same three or four titles. I could follow that path, but it seems pointless. Sometimes I’d rather just offer up music that might have slipped through the cracks or is far from the beaten path.

This week I want to talk about an album that was released last November. Brennen Leigh Sings Lefty Frizzell is a project from an Austin-based musician and songwriter whom I admittedly had never had heard of until recently. Check this out.

A founding member of the band High Plains Jamboree, she tours throughout Texas and across America often with her frequent writing and touring partner, guitarist Noel McKay. In her travels and tours in Europe, Scandinavia and South America, she has slid into that cult status zone. Her songs have been recorded by Sunny Sweeney, The Carper Family, Norway’s Liv Marit Wedvik, and Lee Ann Womack. She has also collaborated with Jim Lauderdale, John Scott Sherrill and David Olney.

My friend, writer Terry Roland, did a story on her for No Depression last year, so I’ll let him do the heavy lifting:

Brennen Leigh is not a household name. Her 2009 solo album, The Box, stands as a classic of the form, with original songs that are as close to the bone of traditional country music as you’re likely to find east or west of the Mason-Dixon Line. It is among the best Americana albums of the decade, an overlooked gem.

In 2013, she released the critically successful Before the World Was Made with singer-songwriter Noel McKay. This album was compared by the Chicago Tribune with the duets of John Prine and Iris Dement and George Jones and Melba Montgomery.

Leigh’s new album demonstrates an unbroken line of the influence of Lefty Frizzell on this young, innovative artist. Here’s how she came to his music:

Before this, I wasn’t that familiar with the bigger part of his work. I got a copy of his box set and I also stumbled onto a compilation on vinyl from the ’60s. I’ve imitated him vocally in a superficial way for years. There is just something in his delivery. He was able to express what was going on in his brain. He must have worked at it for years. It’s not only his voice, but in his approach. He changed the way I sing.”

I’ve dropped in a couple of audio samples here from the album, and below is from a concert she did with Noel. You can find this album to stream or buy from all the major digital platforms, but I’d bet Brennen would appreciate it if you head over to her Bandcamp page and do it there.

Every Picture Tells A Story

SandyThe image at the top of this page was shot by my long-time-we’ve-only-met-online friend Sandy Dyas, who is a visual artist based in Iowa City that I’ve written about often. You can visit her website here and check out her work, books (buy them…really) and blog. And more of her images can be found on this site….including this one originally published back in January 2014 at No Depression dot com.

A Ray Charles Primer: 25 Great Tracks and Photo Gallery

Ray Charles

Martin Chilton, who is the Culture Editor for The Telegraph website, put together a list of his favorite tracks accompanied with really striking images from the collection of Joe Adams, Charles’ long time friend and manager. Taken from the book/DVD collection Ray Charles Yes Indeed! that came out in 2009, it features a forward by Bill Wyman and thoughts from Ray’s closest friends – including Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jones and Willie Nelson.

Here’s the link to Chilton’s list. And here’s Ray with Johnny Cash doing a Harlan Howard song y’all know.

A Few Words About Merle Haggard 

As I was getting ready to hit the button and publish this week’s update, I heard the news that Merle had passed on. I recall seeing him at The Spectrum in Philadelphia around 1972, and we long-hairs got hassled first by the police and then jostled a little in the crowd when he broke into ‘Okie from Muskogee’. The Grateful Dead had released a version of ‘Mama Tried’ and that was my on-ramp to his music. Had a chance to meet him in Las Vegas about fifteen years ago give or take, but he was in a foul mood that night. He was struggling with his voice, and I think he just wanted to be anywhere but in the desert.

About a month or two ago, he was interviewed by Rolling Stone Country about politics and Donald Trump. Thought it might be of interest to share his thoughts:

He’s not a politician. I don’t think he understands the way things work in Washington, that’s what worries me about him. I don’t think he realizes he can’t just tell somebody to do something and have it done, you know. I think he’s dealing from a strange deck.

What a great line. I think he’s dealing from a strange deck. 

I wanted to include an appropriate song or video of his, and came across this track from an album he did with his band The Strangers, Bonnie Owens and The Carter Family. The Land of Many Churches was released in 1971 as a double lalbum and collects four live performances: two are in churches proper, one at San Quentin’s Garden Chapel inside the prison, and one at Nashville’s Union Rescue Mission. The music offers a mix of country gospel and traditional hymns with preachers introducing some of the songs.

This is a favorite of mine and it sure fits this day.

Dori Freeman Melts My Heart With A Hank Williams’ Song

Last month when the Teddy Thompson-produced debut album from Dori Freeman was released, it was one of those titles that seemed to get picked up and reviewed by every media outlet who covers this type of music. Here’s just a few examples of:

The purity of Dori Freeman’s voice and the directness of her songwriting reflect not only her Appalachian hometown — Galax, Va. — but also a determined classicism, a rejection of the ways modern country punches itself up for radio and arenas. (Jon Pareles, New York Times)

It’s startling to hear such a fully formed singing and songwriting voice come out of nowhere. (NPR‘s ‘Songs We Love’)

A strong contender for Americana debut of the year. (Rolling Stone Country)

This week John over at Free Dirt Records invited me to see Dori at the City Winery NYC, where she opened up for her producer and Kelly Jones…whose new duets’ album I featured in RPM1. As Dori stood on that stage all alone with her guitar, I must admit I wasn’t expecting to hear a voice with such incredible strength and clarity that would soar above the din of the diners and drinkers. The crowd surely responded to her, and it seemed to me that this is a woman exceeds the accolades she’s been receiving and just exudes poise and potential. 

Kelly McCartney did an interesting and short ‘Q and A’ with Dori for Folk Alley that ran last week, and you can click here to read it. And here she is doing Hank Williams’ “Cold Cold Heart” wayyyyy back from 2012 at the Henderson Festival in Mt. Royal, Virginia. You should hear how she does it now…it’ll melt your heart too.

Guitar Town (Or You Never Know When You’ll Bump Into Steve Earle)

Just as Teddy Thompson and Kelly Jones stepped out onto the stage for their set, I looked up from my phone to find Steve Earle standing next to me checking out the gear on stage. I’m pretty sure Jones was using a Martin D-15M but I couldn’t recognize Thompson’s guitar, but I suspect it could have been a Lowden which his dad seems to favor. I was about to ask Steve but the lights went down and later in the evening I had to run out to catch a train before the encore was over. 

A few days before I was on Bleeker Street and stopped at Matt Umanov’s guitar shop to buy some strings. Several years ago I stood there with Steve and Matt as I considered buying the Martin M-21 that they had designed together. It was one of the last ones for sale, but after counting my pennies I went for the much lower priced 000-15M. I still like playing it a lot, but I sure do regret my decision. 

While Steve was touring Australia in March, he did an interview on The Music Shop with Andrew Ford and you can read it here or download the podcast. 

Videos You Wouldn’t Know Existed, Unless You Found Them By Mistake.

It’s All Going To Pot

Willie_Nelson_Its_All_Going_to_PotUnlike the other columnists here at No Depression, so far my articles haven’t been restrained to a particular topic. Lee writes about music from around the world, Ted is the bluegrass man, and Raina shares about the stages she has performed on. While I’ve tried hard to stay on the theme of “exploring music without a map,” a better phrase or tag-line might have been one that I’ve used off and on over the years: random thoughts … as if your own were not enough.

Anyhow, it was pretty hard to miss via social media in the past week that Tuesday was 4/20. April 20. Doesn’t register? It’s the day some celebrate getting high on weed. A brand new Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard collaborative song titled “It’s All Going to Pot” was released as a video, got itself posted all over inter-webs, was Tweeted and re-Tweeted, shared on Facebook by lots and lots of folks, including No Depression.

Tapping my feet and listening to the chorus while watching these two old dudes toke up, I realized that while I’m less tolerant of the “beer, whiskey and women” country-stereotype we often hear on the radio, I’m actually inclined to enjoy a good song about smoke.

Unlike a certain former president of the United States, I’ve no problem admitting that I inhaled. Frequently. And for a long, long time.

This July marks twenty years of me choosing to be weed-free. There were basically two reasons I gave it up.

First, I was living close to the San Andreas fault line. Whenever I got a buzz, I was sure the ground would open up, swallow me in, and I’d be in no condition to pull myself out of the abyss. The second reason was that my oldest son was about to celebrate his first birthday. In my all-too-real fantasy world, I just knew I’d take him to the supermarket one day, buy my Cocoa Puffs and Ring Dings, pay the cashier, and leave him strapped in the cart. So I gave it up. Couple of years later, I took the path to sobriety and stopped drinking as well.

It was coincidental that this week, and in fact on April 20, I finished Johann Hari’s latest book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. A London-based journalist, and a drug-user himself, Hari travelled the globe to research and write a pretty compelling story of how the American bureaucrat Harry Anslinger created the world-wide policy on how to deal with drugs. Anslinger’s solution has resulted in a complex set of laws and theories where the bad guys both run the game and profit from it. In the meantime, ordinary people are labeled criminals and law enforcement is relegated to spending a vast amount of money and resources on trying to control what is, frankly, unmanageable.

Hari presents a rather balanced view of the difference between looking at drug users as criminals, versus treating them like human beings who have a need or desire to live in some version of an altered state.

He also spends a great deal of time tracing the life, persecution, and death of Billie Holiday — a sad, sick tale. With a solid presentation of statistics and research, Hari shares the results of new social experiments in places like Vancouver, Portugal, England, Switzerland, and the state of Washington, where social scientists are turning conventional wisdom on its ears. Should you be so inclined, you’ll find info about it here.

Over time, I’ve gone up and down on the subject(s) of the War on Drugs, the ‘just say no’ policy, addiction, recovery, the glorification of intoxicants and legalization. Seems like it should be something we’ve figured out by now. You might recall that old public service announcement with the scary image — this is your brain, this is your brain on dope. But it’s really not like that for most recreational users. Unlike myself, the vast majority of people can pick it up and put it down with ease. So this week’s ramble is probably less an advocation and more of a reality check.

If we keep doing the same things over and over and it doesn’t work, why not change it?

This was originally published by No Depression, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.