Tag Archives: Ry Cooder

The Return of Easy Ed’s Broadside – February 2022

Photo by Easy Ed

A local and respected concert series has been going strong for years, and while they’ve maintained their home base at the local Unitarian congregation which was sadly unused for most of the pandemic, the building was severely damaged this past year in a storm.Now there’s a new home to hear music at a nearby church, albeit with a pandemic-era slimmed down roster of events. I’ve been both a patron and volunteer over the past ten years, and I admit that I much prefer being a paying audience member as opposed to selling at the merch table, seating guests or working the door.

The photo above was obviously taken from the stage a few minutes before a show was about to begin, probably sometime in 2015. Can’t recall who was playing, nor why I hopped onstage to take a snap of the waiting audience, because a photographer I am not. I actually enjoy taking pictures, but I just forget to do it most of the time. But this one has been sitting around in my library for too long not to share, so here it is for better or worse

A few years ago I submitted this image to No Depression to use for my then-weekly Broadside column and my editor rejected it. I think the main issue was that there was a child at the center, but there was a larger question of did I have permission of the other people in the frame to use it. Of course I didn’t, and it was not a huge issue for me to just pick something else. But II’ve always wanted to share it beyond the fleeting Instagram post, so here it is. I’m sorry that almost everyone in that one moment looks sad, but life isn’t all about smiling selfies.

For this concert, a one-off  venue was utilized. It was a once grand old building at the edge of the Hudson River, mostly abandoned and not in very good shape, The electricity and plumbing worked, and I’m sure there was an elevator, but the facilities were rather rough. We were using a room on the second or third floor, with maybe a hundred seats. With raw cement walls and an open ceiling exposing pipes, it seemed better suited for a hardcore show from the 70s or 80s instead of whatever folk or blues musician was headlining that night.

If not mistaken, it was a very successful evening. While I can’t recall who or what was presented, I have a vivid memory of the intermission where coffee and tea were sold, along with these really delicious brownies. There was quite a bit of conversation taking place, as this was a community event, and many people knew each other. It strikes me of something that we once had but has disappeared over the past two years. Small concerts, traveling musicians, a time for people to get out of their homes and into a crowd to interact in whatever way they choose, and an escape for a couple hours of the pressures of life that we endure.

I know that all around the world there are small to mid-size community venues that have brought so much joy to people in showcasing art, films and music, and it’s gotten away from us. The impact shows up in the latest conversations about the inability of earning an income in a digital world which pays a pittance for artistic creation. And for most musicians, they aren’t complaining much because they only got a check for $1.79 from Spotify last month, but that they aren’t able to safely put together a tour from town to town where they can earn money by selling tickets and merchandise. They can’t see the audience’s faces from the stage, or feel the energy. That’s the real loss.

So, that brings me back to the picture. I think it is a pretty good representation of life in early 2022. It feels to me that we are simply waiting, which as the man once sang, “is the hardest part”.

All The News You Already Know, Might Have Missed or Even Forgotten If You’re As Old As Me

American Songwriter reported that Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder have announced their new collaborative album, Get On Board: The Songs of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. The new LP, which is set for release on April 22, is the duo’s first collaboration in more than a half-century.

The two musicians have released a new live video for the song, “Hooray Hooray,” which y’all can watch below. “They were so solid. They meant what they said, they did what they did … here’s two guys, a guitar player, and a harmonica player, and they could make it sound like a whole orchestra,” Mahal said in a statement about his connection with Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. Added Cooder, “It was perfect. What else can you say?”

Don Wilson, the last remaining original member of The Ventures, passed away in January of 88. Along with guitarist/bassist Bob Bogle, they formed the Ventures in 1958 when they were both Seattle-area construction workers moonlighting as musicians; just two years later, their electric guitar-led rendition of Johnny Smith’s “Walk, Don’t Run” rose to Number Two on the Hot 100. A quartet for most of its existence, they helped to popularize the electric guitar in the United States and across the world during the 1960s.

They were among the first to employ and popularize fuzz and flanging guitar effects, concept albums and twelve-string guitars in rock music. Their instrumental virtuosity, innovation, and unique sound influenced many musicians and bands, earning the group the moniker “The Band that Launched a Thousand Bands”. And one could argue that surf music was not a product of Southern California as much as it originated in the Pacific Northwest.

While their popularity in the United States waned in the 1970s, the group remains especially revered in Japan, where a reconstitued band tour regularly to this day. The classic lineup of the band consisted of Wilson on rhythm guitar,  Bogle (initially lead guitar but he switched to bass), Nokie Edwards (initially bass, switched to lead guitar), and drummer Mel Taylor.

From Getty Images/The Ventures, 1960. Don is second from the left.

Singer-guitarist Molly Tuttle has moved to Nonesuch Records, and will be releasing her new album “Crooked Tree” on April 1. No fooling. Rolling Stone reports that “The new album explores Tuttle’s bluegrass roots, which stretch back to her banjo-playing grandfather and music-teacher father.

Helping Tuttle craft those sounds are her new band Golden Highway (Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Dominick Leslie, Shelby Means, and Kyle Tuttle) and an all-star group of guests. In addition to Price, Strings, and Hull, contributors to Crooked Tree include Old Crow Medicine Show, Dan Tyminski, and Gillian Welch, along with co-producer Jerry Douglas.”

Here’s a video of the title track. This woman can shred.

That’s it for this month. Remember, I post multiple times every day at Facebook on The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily page.

And for even more stories, I am constantly updating my e-magazine on Flipboard, Americana and Roots Music Daily

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Favorite Un-Americana Music of 2017

Photo by Oliver Zühlke/Creative Commons

This is the season that I try to be the first kid on the block to beat out the barrage of those end-of-the-year lists from critics and pundits. At No Depression, and other like-minded music websites and magazines, the official music polls from readers, contributors, and reviewers will be coming in December. Had I been born a betting man, I’d lay down a few hundred bucks that there’ll be little variation or surprises between any of them. Ever since the term roots music has morphed into a more definable mainstream “Americana” tagline, diversity has seemed to have left the building. While you won’t get much disagreement from me on the quality and depth of music that has been released so far this year, it seems that I continue to find myself taking the road less traveled.

This year it feels as if I’ve been walking down the dark side of the street, whether we’re talking about  art, culture, politics, or simply life in general. There were health issues to deal with and the loss of a parent. I’ve found myself constantly concerned for my children that a madman lives in Washington who is one button away from annihilating the planet when he’s not chipping away at the fabric of our society by normalizing the abnormal. From the racist cries of “blood and soil” to an unjust justice system that tips to white skin and wealth to revelations of what we already know … that bad men do bad things to women and children … and to all the other natural and human disasters we’ve lived through so far, I’m only finding shelter by cocooning with music, books, and video.

So with that bright and shiny preamble, here’s some of my favorite aural oddities and mainstays for the year. As always, I use a different yardstick to measure and compile my list. This is what I have either discovered or gravitated to, undefined by such things as release dates. Whether it was brand new this year or merely recycled from the past, who cares?

The Entire Ry Cooder Catalog

I wish he would have titled one of his albums Pastrami on Ry, and I’m sorry that for most of his career I’ve largely ignored his solo work. Aside from a seemingly infinite number of songs he’s done session work on for others, the only albums I’ve really known inside out have been two from the ’70s: The Gabby Pahinui Band Volume 1 and his solo Bop Til You Drop. So now, thanks to the magic of touch and click streaming, I’m making my way through everything else. While skipping around and sampling from this era and that, I’m spending most of my time with Paradise and Lunch, Into The Purple Valley and Chicken Skin Music.

A Prairie Home Companion

While I know he’s trying his hardest and still growing into his role, Chris Thile’s voice reminds me of Opie Taylor and he’s yet to hone his comedic skills with timing and inflection. But on the other hand, he’s doing an amazing job at making great music with that killer band he’s assembled and presenting exceptional guests week after week. He’s going down the right path but one suggestion would be to please stop referring to Sarah Jarosz as “inimitable.” Why continually state the obvious? Finally, a note about Garrison Keillor. Over the years he’s entertained millions of us and his wit, humor and his support of musicians won’t be forgotten. And while it was sad to witness his termination played out in counterpoint to rapists and serial harassers , he had to go.

David Rawlings

I got a chance to see David and Gillian right before the release of Poor David’s Almanack, and it was the first time I’d ever seen them live in concert. Tickets have always seemed to get swallowed up the minute they go on sale and my budget doesn’t include StubHub. After 21 years of being a devout fan of their partnership, each and every note, song, and harmonic moment gave me a night of multi-orgasmic goosebumps.The album is simply perfect.

Freakwater and The Mekons

In September these two bands reunited as The Freakons and performed two nights in Chicago. Monica Kendrick for The Reader broke the news about a new album they’re now recording. She wrote that it’ll consist of “traditional songs about an industry that links the English Midlands, the Welsh valleys, and the ‘dark and bloody ground’ of Appalachia: coal mining. Haunting tunes in that vein came from both sides of the pond, and the Freakons take them on in the high-lonesome, rabble-rousing tradition of late West Virginian labor singer Hazel Dickens. Proceeds from the album, when it’s finished, will benefit Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a grassroots organization that promotes voting rights and opposes mountaintop-removal mining.”

Rodrigo Amarante

Gotcha … right? A Brazilian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Amarante is a member of Los Hermanos, a band that still plays live but hasn’t recorded since 2005. He partnered with The Strokes drummmer Fabrizio Moretti and American musician Binki Shapiro, who in 2008 released an album on Rough Trade as Little Joy. In 2015 he wrote and recorded “Tuyo,” which has been used as the theme song for the Netflix series Narcos. It’s an earworm.

Tom Brosseau

The ten songs on Treasures Untold were recorded live at a private event in Cologne, Germany. The album features six American folksongs and four originals. Brosseau was born and raised in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where in 2007 the mayor awarded him the key to the city. I think about that often. Since 2003 he’s lived in Los Angeles, has recorded a bunch of albums, and toured Iceland. Well … other places too.

 

Valerie June

I don’t pretend to understand her and I don’t listen to her albums. But I’ve seen her perform twice and she is the modern-day Nina Simone. Undefinable and undeniable.

Tom Russell

He celebrated his 68th birthday last March and has released 29 albums, two of which came just this year. The first was his tribute to his old friends Ian and Sylvia, and now he is out on tour supporting Folk Hotel, a collection of originals. Two shots here: Tom playing with Max De Bernardi “The Last Time I Saw Hank” at Knuckleheads Saloon in Kansas City, Missouri in  September 2017. And while I’ve been enjoying both new albums, I also want to share the song that was my first introduction to Russell and remains my favorite.

 

And to those who passed…

Down that dark side of the street we’ve lost too many folks this past year. I’m not going to list them all here, but we’ll close it out with this … a tribute to them all.

 

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