Tag Archives: Willie Nelson

Here Comes the Sun, There Goes the Sun

Sun-Maid Logo 1915 / Public Domain

In 1912 a group of raisin growers in California’s San Joaquin Valley got together and decided to form a collective but had no name or business plan. They soon became the California Associated Raisin Company, but a gentleman named E.A. Berg coined one of the most iconic brand names in American history: Sun-Maid. In 1915, Sun-Maid’s director saw a young woman named Lorraine Collett in a bright red bonnet drying her hair, and she agreed to pose for a painting that would become the company’s logo. That logo was featured on a little red box that my mom would put into my Roy Rogers tin lunchbox as my snack every day I went to school. That’s my first memory about the sun: It helped grow something sweet and satisfying.

Beyond raisins, I don’t recall ever spending much time thinking about the sun. You learn about it in science class and study the mythology, and it’s in the news whenever there’s an eclipse. It can burn you and make you sweat, it’s so gigantic that if it were hollow you could fit 960,000 planets the size of Earth inside, and it rises in the east, sets in the west. Stories, myths, legends, facts and fiction: A gazillion books, films, paintings, and songs have either made the sun their subject, or at minimum placed the three-letter word into the title. We love it, we fear it, and many worship it. We’ve been taught to travel far to take vacations in sunny places, and when we have outdoor plans we pray for a sunny day. And for those who can’t get enough of it, there’s a small town in Norway where the sun doesn’t set from April to August.

I have a strong recollection of getting sunburned when I was about five or six, when my family had rented a house for a week down the Jersey shore in a town called Ocean Gate. Back then most folks weren’t so conscious of the danger that the sun could cause, apart from warnings from the endless Coppertone suntan lotion billboards on the side of the highways that featured a dog pulling down a little girl’s shorts. At the end of my first day in the sand and surf, we came back at the house, washed off with a hose and saw that my skin was the color of a tomato. My mom told me I was going to be in a lot of pain and she sent dad to the local drugstore for a bottle of something called Solarcaine, which they slathered on me from top to bottom. It helped a little, but it hurt so bad that they rented a beach umbrella for me to sit under for a few days and I had to keep a shirt on and wear my Phillies baseball hat.

Speaking to both my ignorance and stubbornness, one might have thought I learned a life lesson. I didn’t. For the next 60 years I rarely would put on sun protection and pretty much hated wearing hats. I got sunburned many, many times until I figured out my own little method of soaking up just a little bit of sun during the first few days of summer or while on a vacation, “laying down a base,” as I called it, and eventually developing that healthy-looking dark tan. Worked like a charm most of the time and, besides, it was the sun: the source of life on Earth, providing humanity with food, shelter, warmth, and don’t forget those damn sweet raisins.

Last month I caught a bad cold that developed into bronchitis and went to see my doc. After she checked me out and wrote a prescription, I casually pointed to this spot on my arm that I had recently noticed and asked her what it was. “It’s a trip to the dermatologist,” she replied, and the next day I stood naked in front of a stranger who found a couple of suspicious looking spots. Let’s skip the gory details, but five days later I was diagnosed with not just one type of malignant skin cancer, but two. If I had any doubt to the seriousness of it, when I got the call it began with “I don’t want to alarm you, but tomorrow morning you’ll be seeing an oncologist.”

Cutting – I probably shouldn’t use that word – to the chase, in the past three weeks I’ve had two surgeries leaving me with a new fear of the sun, two long scars, and we’re still not finished. If you want the good news, it was caught before it spread and it looks like I’ll be sticking around for a while longer. The bad news is that I have to buy a hat and start wearing it. And put on sunscreen. And wear long-sleeved shirts with fabric that offers ultraviolet protection. And keep out of the sun from 10 to 4. Great.

I do not share this for empathy, but I’m up against a deadline and at the moment this is about the only thing on my mind. Songs about the sun seem to take a new meaning today, so there you have it. And listen, I ain’t one to be preachy, but it wouldn’t hurt you to get an annual skin check-up. Let me close this out not with a song about the sun, but one by Eva Cassidy who passed away at the age of 33 after her skin cancer spread. She had discovered the same sort of thing I have when she was in her late 20s, took care of it, and then blew off the follow-ups. In her death she has gained in popularity, especially for her version of “Over The Rainbow,” but this is the song that keeps playing over and over in my head.

After my picture fades and darkness has
Turned to gray
Watching through windows
You’re wondering if I’m okay
Secrets stolen from deep inside
The drum beats out of time

If you’re lost you can look and you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you, I will be waiting
Time after time

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

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 .

New Tunes For Old Ears

Photo: Creative Commons 2.0

‘How To Catch Fish And Music In The Stream’ was the working title to this one, but as you can see I focused on new tunes for old ears instead. While it’s pretty easy to discover music on playlists and from recommendations on most of the streaming services that I hop around on, I’ve honestly never caught a fish in a stream. Nor a river, creek or lake for that matter. And then I also realized that if I stuck with that headline, I’d better include some great recipes too. Of which I have none. So I went with an idiom that was likely first used back in 1616 by Shakespeare in his play Comedy of Errors.

I’m gonna guess that y’all aren’t that interested in idioms or their country cousin phrasal verbs, but damn if it didn’t capture my attention for a good 15 minutes. A few examples of the former would be things like: “add insult to injury,” “Elvis has left the building,” “once in a blue moon,” and “to make a long story short” … or in this case, a short story long. But I don’t want to just jump into the music without sharing some phrasal verbs: do over, give back, hang up, and take down are but a few. And some of you might recall this triple grouping from back in the ’60s: turn on, tune in, drop out. I’ll leave it at that.

Kate Wolf

I had sadly put Kate’s music in a corner of my mind until I came across a live clip of Nanci Griffith and Emmylou Harris singing what is likely her most popular song, “Across the Great Divide.” She left us early at the age 44 back in 1986, diagnosed with leukemia and passing away after complications from a bone marrow transplant. Her recording and concert career began in 1976 and she released seven albums while alive, and another six have since come out. There’s also a wonderful tribute album that Red House Records did in 1998, Treasures Left Behind: Remembering Kate Wolf. She was so well loved and respected in the folk community that each year since 1996 her family has hosted the Kate Wolf Music Festival in Northern California. If you’re looking for an entry ramp to her discography, I’m partial to Poet’s Heart and Give Yourself to Love.

The Other Years

The Other Years are Anna Krippenstapel and Heather Summers from Kentucky, and their self-titled album goes far beyond yet another collection of old-time music. Using only their voices, guitar, fiddle, and banjo, they complement each other as if they’ve been doing this forever and yet it’s Heather’s first group effort. Anna plays fiddle for Joan Shelley and Freakwater, and the group will be opening on Louisville’s Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s current tour.

Marc Ribot: Songs of Resistance 1942-2018

This album of 11 songs of original and traditional songs features a number of different guests and styles. Appearing are Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Meshell Ndegeocello, Justin Vivian Bond, Fay Victor, Sam Amidon, Ohene Cornelius, Tift Merritt, Domenica Fossati and Syd Straw.A seasoned guitarist with over 25 solo albums and an in-demand session player you’ve heard on dozens and dozens of recordings, Ribot gives this as his reason for releasing this compilation:“There’s a lot of contradiction in doing any kind of political music, how to act against something without becoming it, without resembling what you detest. Sometimes it is hard to figure out what to do, and I imagine we’ll make mistakes, and hopefully, learn from them. But I knew this from the moment Donald Trump was elected: I’m not going to play downtown scene Furtwangler to any orange-combover dictator wannabe. No way.”

Portions of the album’s proceeds will be donated to The Indivisible Project, an organization that helps individuals resist the Trump agenda via grassroots movements in their local communities. More info can be found at www.indivisible.org.

Laura Cantrell

Hard to believe that it’s been almost six years since Laura Cantrell last released an album. I’ve placed all five of her albums, as well as the five EPs she’s put out, on my current “crazy compulsive obsessions” playlist and have been playing the heck out of them. Laura is based here in New York and did gigs earlier this year in England, Ireland, and Spain, and she has a monthly concert series called States of Country that she does here at Sid Gold’s Request Room. She also hosts Dark Horse Radio, a program devoted to the music of George Harrison, on SiriusXM’s Beatles Channel.

Lindi Ortega

This year’s Liberty album has me totally entranced. I’ve gone back and revisited all of her past work and the only thing you really need to know is she’s from Canada, now lives in Nashville, and is doing stuff nobody else does. Brilliant work. Go forth and seek it out. Done.

And don’t forget … Willie’s reminder to vote:

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

Americana and Roots Music Videos: RPM 1

Pixabay License

An occasional series of Americana and roots music videos. Sharing new discoveries, and revisiting old friends.

It’s that time of the season again. Baseball and flowers blooming, fresh cut lawns and morning dew, new albums being released and music festival travel plans being made. Here in the beautiful Lower Hudson Valley it’s an eighty degree day and instead of cruising along the highway taking in the sights and new sounds, I’ve been struggling all day with a C-G-D-G-B-E tuning and a capo at the third fret while teaching myself some Hawaiian slack key. Somehow though it’s morphed into Richard Thompson’s ‘1952 Vincent Black Lightening’. So it’s time to take a break and share some new music that’s caught my fancy. I try to keep each song under three minutes….fat chance of that today.

Willie Nelson: An album of all-new recordings, God’s Problem Child adds 13 new songs to the artist’s repertoire, including seven recently written by Willie and Buddy Cannon, his longtime collaborator and producer. The album is Willie’s first to debut all-new songs since Band of Brothers in 2014. “He Won’t Ever Be Gone’ is a tribute to Merle Haggard.

Bonnie Prince Billy AKA Will Oldham: A longtime fan of the “Okie From Muskogee” Hall of Famer. Best Troubadour is the culmination of that decades-long love affair with Haggard’s music, featuring 16 tracks from various stages of Haggard’s lengthy career. Oldham recorded the songs in his home with the Bonafide United Musicians. (Rolling Stone Country)

Molly Tuttle: She’s going to be huge. Originally from the Northern California bluegrass scene and playing in The Tuttle Family with AJ Lee band, she graduated Berklee College of Music and moved herself down to Nashville. With a beautiful voice and her lightning speed flat picking style, she can pick more notes than the number of ants on a Tennessee ant hill. And she’s all over the place….touring with The Goodbye Girls, doing a duet with Front Country’s Melody Walker and getting ready for her own release in June. Here’s ‘Bigger Than This’….Molly on the left, Melody on the right…a great song from two outstanding talents.

Amelia Curran: A total shift of gears. One of my favorite singer-songwriters, Watershed is her eighth album in the past 17 years. An album with a specific theme, it ‘variously addresses her frustration with the established operating model of the music industry, with the systemic disadvantage at which that “intimidating and icky” model still places female artists and, by extension, with what the persistent sexism inherent in that model says about 21st-century human society’s treatment of women in general. Further simmering discontent arises from the added frustration Curran has come over the past few years since taking on the role of an activist fighting for better institutional treatment of and better attitudes towards the many fellow Newfoundlanders (and Canadians at large) living with mental illness.’ (thestar.com)

Aimee Mann: There is a thread to Curran’s themes, as Mann is ‘rightfully pissed that she’s nevertheless pigeonholed as a dreary fabricator of slow, sad-sack songs. So she’s answered her critics with her slowest, sad-sack-iest album yet, one populated by ordinary people struggling against operatic levels of existential pain at odds with their humdrum lives. Mental Illness is accordingly made of skeletal strings, coolly regulated commentary, and minimal drums. Juxtaposing elegant chamber folk against the discord of lives out of balance, it’s musically more delicate than even her soft rock models. (Pitchfork)

Peter Bradley Adams: I’m sure he hates it when people like me note in their first sentence that he was one-half of one of my favorite one-album duos, Eastmountainsouth, back in 2003. But I still listen to that album and I’ve been following him ever since, especially enjoying some recent collaboration with Caitlan Canty on a project called Down Like Silver. ‘On my previous albums, I had more of an array of players on the record and this one is kind of more my core group of people that I’ve been playing with and touring with. It’s a little bit more contained, which I think is a good thing. I’m always writing songs so there are a lot that get tossed aside and… these are the ones that I thought needed to be on it.’ (Fairfax Times)

Pieta Brown: I’ve spent years listening to and writing about Iowa City-based Pieta Brown. ‘Postcards features a number of Brown’s musical friends, including Calexico, Bon Iver, Mark Knopfler and the Pines. She compiled the album by writing simple acoustic demos of what would become the album’s songs, sending them to the musicians that make up Postcards‘ roster of guests, and having those artists finish the tracks. Brown and her collaborators never worked in the same room, which lent the album its distance-implying title.’ (American Songwriter)

Marty Stuart: I’ll admit not to loving every single track on this new album of his that’s just getting a ton of press. Marty has been around so long and has done so many amazing performances that it’s hard for me to buy into the hype. Nevertheless, this video from the Colbert show shows that he and his band rocks damn hard and I like it. Eighteenth studio album….Way Out West.

Well that’s all she wrote….I’ll leave you humming along to Koko the Clown’s version of ‘St. James Infirmary Blues’ and we’ll see you next season for more of my Picks to Click.

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

1975 Rewind: Pet Rocks & Bruce to Disco Tex & His Sex-O-Lettes

I doubt that anyone could have missed the news this week that, 40 years ago, Bruce Springsteen released his Born to Run album. Somebody somewhere was working hard behind the scenes, getting the word out. Stories popped up all over major television networks and cable channels, national magazines, local newspapers and morning shows, trade publications, websites, social media, and blogs. There were the usual suspects like Rolling Stone and Billboard magazines, as well as the unexpected mentions at Fox Sports and the Absolute Punk website.

I was 23 in 1975, and living in Philadelphia, which was close enough to Freehold and Asbury Park that we considered Springsteen a local boy. His first two albums were played in heavy rotation on our FM radio stations. He performed often in the area, up and down the mid-Atlantic coast. And in February of that year he and the band delivered a spellbinding set at Bryn Mawr’s famed folk club, The Main Point. It was broadcast live on WMMR, was instantly bootlegged, and, remarkably, is still readily available in both the US and UK on a large internet marketplace that begins with the letter A. And you can stream it on the ‘Tube. This clip was shot later that same year in London and the band was still raw and rockin’.

Although my long-term memory is usually laser sharp, when it comes to the mid-’70s, I admit to having a musically blank slate. I suppose we can just chalk it up to high times and one too many Dead concerts, but today I refreshed my brain by scanning all the releases from 1975. I also looked at the singles and album charts and read back issues of the industry trades. It took a little time of sifting through the mud to spot the gems.

The first release of that year was from Elvis Presley and the last in December was from the Bay City Rollers. The number one song was “Love Will Keep Us Together” by The Captain and Tennille (backed by The Wrecking Crew — catch the fabulous documentary film of the same name). At the bottom of the Top 100 for the year was….wait…I’ll get to it in a sec or two.

On a more roots music tip, a few artists released not just one, but two albums. Dylan had Blood on the Tracks and also The Basement Tapes with The Band. Emmylou Harris brought out Elite Hotel and Pieces of the Sky. Richard and Linda Thompson offered Hokey Pokey and Pour Down Like Silver. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Chip Taylor, and Joan Baez each delivered their highest charted albums. There were solo albums from Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, John Fogerty, Stephen Stills, and two from Neil Young.

John Prine, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Leonard Cohen, Judy Collins, Steve Goodman, Fairport Convention, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, The Strawbs, Steeleye Span. Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie all released albums that year. So did Patti Smith, Tom Waits, Burning Spear, Bob Marley, Jimmy Buffett, Hot Tuna, Little Feat, and Guy Clark. Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Charlie Daniels, Waylon Jennings, Stanley Brothers, Statler Brothers, Roy Clark, Conway Twitty, Dolly Parton, Porter Wagoner, Kris Kristofferson, and Chris LeDoux released new albums and Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger entered the world. All things considered, not a bad year at all.

Now if any of you out there remember Sir Monti Rock III, congratulations. You’ve managed to maintain your brain cells much better than I. Sitting at the bottom of the Top 100 was his band, Disco Tex and The Sex-O-Lettes. I share this video for educational purposes only, and please be advised of momentary nudity with Saturday Night Fever flashbacks.

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

It’s All Going To Pot

Unlike 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.

Will The Circle Be (Triple Word Score)

We were looking at an old Scrabble game the other night, one that was handed down through the years. The plain brown box was in pretty good shape, with hardly any rips or tears, and the glue that they used to hold it all together hadn’t come undone. It appeared from the markings to be at least 50 or maybe even 60 years old, and the colorful board was clean and crisp, the tiles and wood holders were spotless. I was told it was well used, but it obviously was also well made. It was a lot of fun for families and friends to play Scrabble together in the dining room or kitchen, but the board game business has likely taken a hit. Like music and video and books, and games and newspapers and magazines, we simply use apps these days. Staring at our little cell phone screens and electronic tablets, we either play against the processor chip or some faceless opponent on the internet.

Last month I went to the library. I still read books made of paper. My last holdout to the digital world. Everything else can reside on my hard drive, but I still like a book. I was there to pick up the latest mystery from Stephen White, the 20th and final novel in a series that takes place in Boulder. As I got ready to check it out (they scan barcodes these days–no more pockets in the front or rubber stamps that notate the due date), my eyes caught sight of an oversized book which I usually don’t ever read. They call them coffee table books. Being hard to hold and all, usually we think of them at Christmastime because they can be a cooler gift to give than a tie or pair of slippers. You leaf through them and look at the pictures. Hardly anyone ever reads them.

Will The Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music In America is different. Published back in 2006 by the Country Music Hall of Fame, our co-founder and former co-Editor Grant Alden wrote the review for No Depression in issue #65, and he liked it. Which, if you know him or have read Grant’s words in the past, is not a low bar to easily jump over. Edited by Paul Kingsbury and Alanna Nash, it is a series of essays and incredible visual representations. Grant noted that it was “written by some of the most respected scholars of country music, several of whom can be credited with creating the field: Bill C. Malone, Charles K. Wolfe, Ronnie Pugh, and Rich Kienzle among them. Other chapters come from comparatively younger pens, including Jon Weisberger and Peter Cooper. (And, yes, all those—save the late Professor Wolfe—have written for ND over the years.)”

While I have studied and read extensively about the history of music in America, I found myself thouroughly enthralled by the chronological details and stories that takes the reader all over the radar from minstrel shows to Tin Pan Alley to the Child and Broadside ballads to the Skillet Lickers and Plow Boys and Patsy Montana and the National Barn Dance and Louisiana Hayride and the Carters and Delmore Brothers and Hank and singin’ cowboys and Buck and Merle and Willie and Waylon and Elvis and Cash and Gram and Earle and Dylan, and on and on and on. A bonus that Grant points out: the modern day “hat acts” and “Garth era” take up barely thirty pages at the end. In addition to the interesting essays, photos, handbills and drawings, there are first person pieces from Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rosanne Cash and many others that really add perspective. The phrase “treasure trove” comes to mind.

The music.

After taking my ol’ sweet time to cradle and read this beauty, I went out to find the music. While I have a ton of audio files and all, what I wanted was to see and watch and experience the performances . Thankfully, we have You Tube. And sadly, we have You Tube. For every great show or clip you can find, there are others so laden with banner ads that it makes them unbearable. And so much is missing. Or never existed in the first place.

But we should be thankful for what we’ve got, and I’d challenge you to surf the search bar and see what you can come up with. The Grand Ole Opry has done a great job is preserving much from the early sixties, and you can watch many films of the era, including the full National Barn Dance release. There’s some great things found from the Johnny Cash Show, and many of the early variety shows from folks like Kate Smith and Tennessee Ernie Ford. I’ll drop in a few that I’ve found for you to check out below.

As the board games of our youth such as Scrabble slip away to the world of apps, the book world will eventually be completely digitized…and obviously its well on it’s way. Bookstores are few and far between these days. (Last time we checked in with Grant, I believe he was running one in Kentucky.) While it might be possible that this book is already out of print, I’ve found a few for sale and you will too if you just look around the interwebs. Better get it while you can.