The Man in Black
'All-Star Tribute to Johnny Cash' lives up to its title Claudia Perry * 04/08/99 The Star-Ledger Newark, N.J. (Copyright Newark Morning Ledger Co., 1999) The hair was gray, and the face was a little craggier than usual. But it was still Johnny Cash, front and center of the stage at the Hammerstein Ballroom Tuesday night, singing "I'll Walk the Line" with all the power and menace you remember. "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash," he drawled, and an audience that included Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and producer Rick Rubin leaped to its feet. Cash, who hadn't officially been onstage for nearly 19 months, was being celebrated with an all-star tribute, provocatively titled "An All-Star Tribute to Johnny Cash." The two-hour show will air on the cable channel TNT April 18 at 8 p.m. If you remembered that you were at a video taping session and weren't expecting the smooth transitions and crazy emotional peaks of a live concert, the three-hour-or-so event was fairly pleasant. It will be even more pleasant for viewers who won't have to listen to host Jon Voight re-do several intros. Nor will viewers have to be berated by an unseen director to applaud more loudly and enthusiastically. Those points aside, there were some inspired musical moments throughout the event. Wyclef Jean's reading of "Delia's Gone" was a show-stopping moment because it drew parallels between country and hip-hop that don't easily come to mind. Aided by Refugee Camp bassist Jerry "Wonder" DuPlessis, Jean sounded strong and assured. He also proved that a black cowboy hat is a nice accessory for dreadlocks. June Carter Cash, Johnny's wife of some 30 years, did a sweet version of "Ring of Fire" with Marty Stuart and her son, Jason, who * plays fiddle with bluegrass great Del McCoury. The other Jerseyan involved was Bruce Springsteen, who delivered a solo acoustic version of "Give My Love to Rose" on videotape. Springsteen sounded fine, and Cash's inspiration is obvious. What was less compelling was Springsteen's spoken intro about Cash's gifts. It sounded more thought than felt. U2 and Bob Dylan gave taped performances. U2's version of "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" had a reggae feel, but the band seemed disconnected from the performance. Bob Dylan expressed his love and respect for Cash before saying he was sorry he couldn't be there "but that's the way it is." Dylan performed a version of "Train of Love" that sounded, well, Dylanesque. Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, old pals of Cash, pulled off some entertaining moments. Nelson delivered a haunting version of "I Still Miss Someone." He teamed up with fellow Texan Lyle Lovett and Kristofferson to perform "Big River." Kristofferson required a do-over on "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," but the man's such an outlaw legend that nobody minded too much. Some did mind his attempts to sing harmony with Trisha Yearwood on his own "Sunday Morning Coming Down." Yearwood has a voice that inspires a combination of jealousy and awe, and Kristofferson didn't need to disturb her. Another peculiar combination, Nelson and Sheryl Crow doing a medley of "Jackson" and "Orange Blossom Special," grated because Crow is a serviceable but not particularly charismatic singer. When she teamed up with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Emmylou Harris to do "Flesh and Blood," it felt a bit cut-rate. But there was enough good music that tuning into the show would be advised. Chris Isaak did a delirious job with "Get Rhythm," whose speedy phrasing recalled the hell-bent fury of Cash's early recordings with Sun Records. Rosanne Cash, who didn't sing because of a throat problem, introduced a segment on her father's gospel leanings by saying he was raised Baptist, but "admitted a continuing attraction to the Seven Deadly Sins." Her remarks introduced the venerable black gospel group the Fairfield Four, which performed "Belshazzar" aided by former Cash band member Stuart. All of the performers, who also included the Mavericks (who served as the backup band), Brooks and Dunn (who roared through "Ghost Riders in the Sky") and Dave Matthews (who teamed up with Harris for a decidedly mellow version of "Long Black Veil"), came out to stand with Cash at the end.
Jones Fair, Vodka Bottle Doing Fine
JONES LISTED IN FAIR CONDITION * 04/08/99 The Ottawa Sun (c) Copyright 1999 The Ottawa Sun. All Rights Reserved. George Jones is back in the hospital, two weeks after being released following a near-fatal car crash. The country singer was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center on Tuesday and was listed in fair condition. "He was readmitted to Vanderbilt for an irregular heartbeat," said Wes Vause, spokesman for Asylum Records, Jones' record company. "They think it could be due to dehydration." Jones, 67, spent two weeks at Vanderbilt after nearly dying March 6 when he crashed his sport utility vehicle into a bridge near his Franklin, Tenn., home. He went home March 19. * Famed for country music hits like He Stopped Loving Her Today, Jones suffered a collapsed lung and severely lacerated liver in the crash. Friends said it happened because a distracted Jones was talking on a cellular phone and adjusting his cassette deck. A half-empty half-pint of vodka was found in the wreckage. A grand jury will consider next month whether Jones will face charges.
Jesse Stone
JESSE STONE AMONG FOUNDERS OF ROCK 'N' ROLL * 04/08/99 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Copyright 1999) Jesse Stone, a major influence on 20th-century music who wrote "Shake, Rattle and Roll" and helped develop many of Atlantic Records' biggest hits, has died. He was 97. Mr. Stone died Thursday after a long illness. As a writer, producer and arranger at Atlantic, Mr. Stone worked with artists such as Ray Charles, Big Joe Turner, the Drifters and the Clovers. Among his other famous songs were "Idaho" and "Money Honey." In 1974, Atlantic Records President Ahmet Ertegun said: "Jesse Stone did more to develop the basic rock 'n' roll sound than anybody else." Mr. Stone's widow, singer Evelyn McGee Stone, said that on March 27, the day her husband went into a hospital for the last time, he began writing a new song while she was playing with their dog. "I had been saying to the dog, ` That's it, that's it,' and he wrote a song and that's the title," she said. The grandson of Tennessee slaves, Mr. Stone had a career that spanned the spectrum: minstrels, folk songs, dance orchestras, rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll and jazz. Mr. Stone always was on the cutting edge, never quite achieving fame but highly respected within the core of the profession. He helped build Atlantic Records into a top rhythm-and-blues label in the late ' 40s and early ' 50s, signing such stars as Ruth Brown. "Her first record came out. Bang! It was a hit. We got a group called the Clovers. Their record came out. Bang! It was a hit," Mr. Stone said in a 1991 Associated Press interview. "Everything we touched after that went over big. Sometimes we had four or five records on the chart at the same time." It was Mr. Stone and Bill Haley, who had a Top 10 hit in 1954 with Stone's "Shake, Rattle and Roll," that paved the way for the acceptance among whites of what had been considered "Negro music." "A white man recording black music. That's when white people began to buy this stuff - they could hear it on the air," Stone said. Elvis Presley's nationwide success the following year cemented the RB-rock foundation laid by black singers and Haley - many with Mr. Stone's tunes and arrangements. Earlier, his jazz tune "Idaho" helped make Guy Lombardo rich and famous, selling 3 million copies in the mid-1940s. Benny Goodman and Jimmy Dorsey also had a hit with it. Born in Atchison, Kan., on Nov. 16, 1901, Mr. Stone - who also wrote under the name Charles Calhoun - started performing at age 5, touring with his family's minstrel show. In the 1920s, he led a jazz group that included future saxophone legend Coleman Hawkins. In 1936, Duke Ellington helped him get a booking at the Cotton Club in New York. He also worked at the Apollo Theater, composing and arranging songs as well as writing jokes and sketches. He was inducted into the Rhythm 'n' Blues Hall of Fame in 1992. At Mr. Stone's 95th birthday party, Ertegun read a letter from famed producer Jerry Wexler, noted: "From your vast experience with jazz, blues, country - in fact, every facet of American root music - you became one of the architects of the new urban music of black * folk, the music that came to be known as rhythm and blues. "You wrote the tunes and the arrangements; you assembled the players; you ran the rehearsals; you conducted in the studio. And it was your own continuing evolution that helped pave the way for the next great cultural tidal wave - rock 'n' roll."
Patsy Cline
Riffs, Rants, Raves, Reflections Crazy . . . for Patsy Cline, Always KENT ZELAS * 04/08/99 Los Angeles Times Copyright 1999 / The Times Mirror Company Patsy Cline's journey into American mythology began, like many, with a death by misadventure: a plane crash that killed her at 30, after an * up-and-down country music career, and brought a swooning crush of fans to her funeral. In some ways the swooning has never stopped. By way of memorials, 36 years later she has: * A 55-foot bell tower at the cemetery in Winchester, Va., where she's buried. * Monuments, official and home-made, at the site of her death near Camden, Tenn. * A highway, Route 522 in Virginia, named in her honor. * A U.S. postage stamp. * An annual festival in her hometown of Winchester, Va. * A Tabernacle Choir of impressionists, imitators and Las Vegas impersonators. * A soon-to-come (but seemingly long-in-coming) star on the Walk of Fame. * A three-hankie, star-vehicle, Hollywood biopic, "Sweet Dreams" (1985) and a memorable portrayal of her in another, "Coal Miner's Daughter" (1980). * A small library of books. * And, most recently, a touring stage production, "Always . . . Patsy Cline," that's stopping for a two-week run in La Mirada this weekend. The books, most of which followed the renewed interest in Cline inspired by the movies, are mostly a reaction to them. They purport to tell "the true story," or "the full story" or "the stories never heard before." As if we didn't already know her. As if we didn't know that she is sassy, brassy, lusty. Unlucky in romance. Long-suffering. Despairing, vulnerable but enduring. Earthy and honky-tonk angelic. That she goes walking after midnight. Is crazy for loving. And, occasionally, falls to pieces. That she sometimes wails but never sobs. And that, in a lot of important ways, she is a lot like us. We know it because we can hear it in the records, especially those that she recorded with Owen Bradley from '61 on, in which her voice is framed (but never overwhelmed) by Floyd Cramer's tinkling piano, a swelling and sighing string sectionand the genteel mourning of the Jordanaires. It's in the voice that reaches back to both Hank Williams and Bessie Smith and, like Elvis', burst the confines of "hillbilly music" and echoes across pop culture. It's a large voice from an era of large voices: Mario Lanza, Dinah Washington, Edith Piaf, Mahalia Jackson and Roy Orbison--instruments that cut through the AM static and could make your new stereo console throb across its entire dynamic range. Onstage, Cline looked like Annie Oakley, but when she opened her mouth she became Lucia di Lammermoor--a rhinestone Callas--and the model for singers from Linda Ronstadt to LeAnn Rimes. Despite all this, it would be easy to dismiss the continued interest in Cline as the hysteria of grief-stricken fans or the obsession of pop cultists. Except that she keeps making fans among people who haven't seen the movies or the musical, who know nothing of her life and death and who may * say that that they don't even like country music. Cline, a country cross-over artist, who never had a million-seller in her life, now easily sells more than that in a year and remains not only * an influence but also a rival to today's country-music performers. Don't believe it? Try to find a jukebox that doesn't have "Crazy" on it.
Booze and Music
Media Giants To Sell Music Online By SETH SUTEL * 04/08/99 AP Online Financial/Business Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. NEW YORK (AP) - Hoping to beef up their presence online, media conglomerates Seagram Co. and Bertelsmann AG are banding together to sell music over the Internet. Their efforts will face tough competition from the likes of Amazon.com and CDnow, however. The two companies, through their respective music subsidiaries Universal Music Group and BMG Entertainment, plan to leverage their relationships with hundreds of musicians to attract Web surfers with access to stars, video and audio clips and other proprietary content. The joint venture announced in New York Wednesday would add Universal artists to five existing Web sites run by BMG which cater to specific musical tastes, such as peeps.com for hip-hop artists and twangthis.com * for country music. The sites are linked to a new online music store, getmusic.com, which would also offer CDs from other labels. All the sites are currently running, but the companies expect to launch revamped versions this summer. Publishing under labels such as Geffen, AM, Arista and RCA, the two companies control about 40 percent of the American music market, representing artists across many genres including Beck, Kenny G, Motley Crue, Shania Twain and TLC. Record companies have been scrambling to come up with online music strategies as it becomes easier to download bootleg music from the Internet. They are hoping to agree on a digital standard that would allow them to control the downloading of music and ensure that the companies and artists receive royalties. So far the companies are not talking about letting users download music themselves, although the move to establish a platform in cyberspace could clearly set the stage for such efforts in the future. The announcement of the project received lukewarm views from industry analysts, who say that the effort may need to evolve before finding success with new consumers. "In terms of building an online sales site around specific music genres, record companies may be putting the cart before the horse," said Melissa Blane, an analyst with the Yankee Group consulting company in Boston. "First-time online music shoppers are more likely to go to a general music site." "If I were Amazon, I wouldn't be afraid right now," agreed James McQuivey, a senior analyst with the consulting group Forrester Research. One challenge for the companies is to make sure their online sales efforts don't hurt relations with their traditional sales outlets. Leading music retailer Musicland Stores Corp. said it didn't necessarily see the BMG-Universal project as a threat, but Tower Records vice president Mike Farrace said: "We're never happy when a supplier goes into competition with us. We think it's a bad idea." BMG already runs a mail order music club, which competes with the Columbia House direct sales unit run by Time Warner Inc. and Sony Corp. The online operations of BMG's music club would not be affected by the arrangement with Universal. In addition to BMG, Germany-based Bertelsmann also owns the publishing houses Random House and Bantam Doubleday Dell, and has a half interest in Barnes Noble's online bookstore. The Montreal-based Seagram, traditionally known as a whiskey maker, has been building up its entertainment holdings, which include the Universal movie studio.
The Final Clip
With some regret I must say it is time for me to move on and unsubscribe from P2. I say this for two basic reasons, 1) family and work is taking it's toll and both deserve my utmost attention (at almost 49 I can say that, but the 24 year old inside me still doesn't believe it), 2) my musical interests have drifted heavily to bluegrass and indeed playing that music (no not the CD player) and while the next insurgent release is of interest it will not hit the CD player as much as Flatt Scruggs, Reno Smiley and others Jon and others have turned me on to. Thanks for the interesting ride over the last 3 years and all the best to everyone on the list for all the music info that has resulted in me adding quite a bit of software to my CD collection. I'll throw a few posts over the wall from time to time and I may be back when family and work allow and interest and curiosity return. In the meantime, you are in very good hands with other 'clippers'. All the best folks - see you somewhere down the road, Phil Connor
Century of Country
Century of Country debuts Wednesday Newswire * 03/29/99 Lethbridge Herald All material copyright Thomson Canada Limited or its licensors. All rights reserved. NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Minutes into the 13-part Century of Country documentary, it's clear how broad an undertaking it is to even define * country music, much less tell its story. * "Country music is the same thing as the blues," Waylon Jennings opines. * "Country music is contemporary jazz," says singer Ray Price. "Basically, it's the people's music," says Harlan Howard, the great * country music songwriter (Busted, I Fall to Pieces). "We really do deal with divorces and tragedies and so forth. And sometimes people think we're * kind of hokey. But country music is here and it always will be." Based on previews of two episodes -- one covering pioneers like Jimmie * Rodgers and the Carter Family and the other on bluegrass and western swing * -- Century of Country captures the wide scope of country music and celebrates it. * The documentary touches on women in country music, rockabilly, bluegrass, western swing, the Grand Ole Opry and honky-tonk music. Many current stars are interviewed, and the lives of greats like Hank Williams Sr., Jimmie Rodgers and Patsy Cline are covered. The Nashville Network will air the first of 13 weekly one-hour segments of Century of Country at 6 p.m. MST Wednesday. The host is actor James Garner and CBS newsman Bob Schieffer narrates. Century of Country marks the first collaboration between TNN and CBS News. Westinghouse Electric Corp., which owns CBS, bought TNN in 1997. "I had more fun," said Schieffer, host of the weekly news show Face the Nation on CBS. "Maybe because it was such a break after covering Monica Lewinsky and Ken Starr. It was like a vacation to me. . .. "I really learned a lot. They have gone out and interviewed everybody that you ever heard of, and some that you've never heard of." Among the things Schieffer learned: "Apparently Jimmie Rodgers, who was the Singing Brakeman, was the first person to yodel," he said. "You would think it came from ranches or something western. "But apparently he heard some Swedish guy yodel," Schieffer said with a laugh. * The series is a step forward for TNN, whose claim to be THE country music cable station has slipped since it started showing a new version of Roller Derby and reruns of the Waltons. TNN has always been a Nashville booster rather than a critic, and Century of Country sidesteps anything that could dampen the party. The shows still are a lot of fun, however. For example, it's hard to resist the enthusiasm of singer Marty Stuart. "You can wear cool clothes," Stuart says in the opening episode, Celebration of Country. "You can wear your hair goofy. Girls like you. You get applause. You get to live this nomad lifestyle. And you get paid for it." * During the segment on bluegrass, 18-year-old mandolin player Chris Thile * pays tribute to late bluegrass founder Bill Monroe, then reveals he's * working on combining bluegrass and classical music. "I find there's an amazing energy in Bach that is kind of like some of the stuff that Bill Monroe was coming out with," Thile said. "I wrote a * song where I try to get some of that same energy with the bluegrass background in it -- sort of a 'grassical' song." Ricky Skaggs tries to explain how exciting Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys were in their heyday. "When they were on the stage it sounded like the Beatles were on stage," Skaggs said. "I hear these country people screaming at the top of their voices hearing this new music that no one had ever heard before. It was a new sound, it was a new day for this music." Schieffer said he came into the assignment thinking he knew something * about country music from a lifetime of listening. He saw Ernest Tubb perform when he was a boy in Fort Worth, Texas, then became a fan of Willie Nelson and Jennings. The assignment showed him he had much to learn. * "If you have just the vaguest interest in country music, you'll find this 13 hours just fascinating," Schieffer said.
Charles Sawtelle
Obituary: Charles Sawtelle Paul Wadey * 03/29/99 The Independent - London (Copyright 1999 Newspaper Publishing PLC) *THE SELF-proclaimed "Greatest Show in Bluegrass", Hot Rize was for 12 dazzling years amongst the finest outfits in the genre, marrying superb musicianship with showmanship. *Bluegrass was developed by the great Bill Monroe in the 1930s and 1940s and is characterised by "high lonesome" vocals, driving rhythms and instrumental virtuosity played out on fiddle, mandolin, guitar and dobro. Born out of the mountain music of the rural South and the blues and field hollers Munroe heard as a youngster, it has transcended its origins to become a universal form. The quartet of Tim O'Brien (mandolin, fiddle, vocals), Pete Wernick (banjo, harmony vocals), Charles Sawtelle (guitar, vocals) and Nick Forster (bass, vocals) came together as Hot Rize in 1978. O'Brien, Wernick and Sawtelle - a sometime steel guitarist from Austin, Texas - had been members of the Drifting Ramblers in 1976 and both Wernick and Sawtelle performed on O'Brien's Biscuit City album Guess Who's in Town. Working as a group seemed a natural progression, and with Forster on board in 1979 they cut an eponymous debut album for Flying Fish. In common with their later releases it expertly combined covers of standards with newer material, some of * which has now entered the bluegrass/acoustic repertoire. *Like many other bluegrass musicians, Hot Rize feted those performers who had given the genre its initial impetus in the 1940s and 1950s. They were particularly drawn to the music of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and took their name from "hot rize", the "secret ingredient" in Martha White Self-Rising Flour, which, through its sponsorship of their segment on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, became indelibly associated with Flatt and Scruggs. A sophomore effort, Radio Boogie was released to acclaim in 1981 and followed three years later with a fine live set, Hot Rize In Concert. In the meantime, they had unveiled their alter egos, Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers, a hot Fifties-style country swing band with a penchant for sunglasses and song titles like "Wigwam Wiggle". Sawtelle, masquerading as "Slade", contributed bass. Originally an amusing part of their live act, the Trailblazers took on a life of their own and cut two albums, Red Knuckles And The Trailblazers (1982) and Shades Of The Past (1988). In 1985, Hot Rize jumped labels to Sugar Hill and recorded Traditional Ties with its excellent version of O'Brien's "Walk The Way The Wind Blows". Ninety eighty-seven saw the release of Untold Stories, by which time O'Brien's other projects were taking up more and more of his time. Take It Home (1990), perhaps the band's finest album, proved its swansong and that same year they split. The band's members went on to enjoy varying degrees of success with O'Brien maturing into a top-flight singer-songwriter. Sawtelle * - long enigmatically nicknamed "the Bluegrass Mystery" - formed the Colorado-based Charles Sawtelle and the Whippets and began an association with fellow musician Peter Rowan that saw him become a * fixture of the bluegrass festival/concert circuit. Paul Wadey *Charles Sawtelle, bluegrass guitarist: born Austin, Texas 1946; died Nashville, Tennessee 20 March 1999.
Steve Earle
Recording Stars Sing Farewell to Major Labels By Brian Steinberg * 03/29/99 The Wall Street Journal (Copyright (c) 1999, Dow Jones Company, Inc.) * NEW YORK -- Before country-rocker Steve Earle planned his latest album for Time Warner Inc., its record division might have expected another disk full of loud guitars, insightful lyrics and attitude. Instead, Earle delivered soft music, rural musings and banjo strumming, which the label took as the aural equivalent of a slap in the face. *That, at least, is the gospel according to Steve Earle. The feisty musician said executives at Warner Brothers Records initially approved his project. Earle followed his muse and used Warner's money for studio time and the like. Finally, he said he told * the company, "Here's your $450,000 bluegrass record." But upon hearing the finished product, he said, Warner executives told him they were no longer interested. So he quickly negotiated his way out of his contract -- with his new album in tow. The episode illustrates an increasingly prevalent record-industry dilemma. Musicians are realizing they have an increasing amount of power and no longer need to hitch their hopes to a major label. "I don't even talk to lawyers most of the time," Mr. Earle cracked, "much less like having them involved in my art." *In late February, he released his Warner-financed bluegrass opus, "The Mountain," on his own label, E-Squared, which he started in 1995. The album sold more than 10,000 copies in the first week, said Earle's partner, Jack Emerson, more than Warner's first-week sales of "El Corazon," a 1997 Earle record recently nominated for a Grammy. Most of his albums have sold 250,000 to 1.5 million copies. Warner disputes Earle's version of events. The artist wanted to leave "before we knew what his next album was going to be," said label spokesman Bob Merlis. Other musicians are also taking matters into their own hands. E-Squared is just one of many independent labels striving to sell overlooked music to the masses. Dozens support ousted musicians, while others were formed by industry veterans fed up with music-business maneuvering. The "Artist," formerly known as Prince, left Warner in a widely reported huff in 1996 to record on his own NPG Records. Kelly Willis, an * alternative-country chanteuse, recently left the now-defunct AM Records and found other financing -- then gave the resulting work, released last month, to independent Rykodisc. Country veteran Emmylou Harris left a Warner-affiliated label to release a live album on a private label last summer. Ani DiFranco wins notice for promoting her hard-to-categorize sound through her own Righteous Babe Records, of Buffalo, N.Y. "For five years, there has been a great increase in the number of new independent labels," said Pat Bradley, executive director of the Association for Independent Music, "but that is counterbalanced by the fact that a lot of those that come along only exist for six months to a year." The Internet has made marketing easier, she said, giving everyone the same chance to lure consumers. But a backlash has already started. The rise of little independents is "just saturating the marketplace," she said, rendering record store space more difficult for all to nab. And since Seagram Co. acquired PolyGram NV in December, the company's immense Universal Music Group has been shedding enough employees and artists to staff a rival label. One artist dropped was Joel Ely, a 51-year-old Texas songwriter who makes albums filled with taut storytelling, cowboy philosophy and searing guitar. He has even flirted with punk-rock, opening concerts for The Clash in their 1980's heyday. None of these abilities stopped MCA from dropping him twice in a 20-year span. The lack of major backing hasn't fazed him, he said. "I've never felt more free to make music, and never have so many things come up to present themselves." He is writing songs for movies and seeking a way to sell a live album. Mark Olson left the Jayhawks, a band with country leanings, just after they released an album to the widest acclaim they had ever received. Now he sells his two homemade records via the Internet and mail-order. Mr. Olson, 37, said he has sold only about 10,000 records, but he gets to keep more of the money. *Warner had good relations with Steve Earle before the split. Since emerging from a decades-old heroin addiction and a long record-industry exile, the 44-year-old Mr. Earle transformed himself from musical outlaw to respected veteran, and released three Warner-associated albums to
Rosie Flores
Album Reviews Rosie Flores 'Dance Hall Dreams' showcases her tasteful guitar * 03/26/99 Chicago Daily Herald (Copyright 1999) Rosie Flores, "Dance Hall Dreams" (Rounder) * * * Somehow, while the New Traditionalist movement launched the careers of Dwight * Yoakam, Lyle Lovett, k.d. lang and Steve Earle, the fame train never let Rosie Flores aboard. That's a shame because the honky tonk queen has it all over the Nashville pinup girls on the charts these days. Not only does Flores write her own material - she wrote or co- wrote 11 of the 12 songs here - but she is also a first-rate guitarist. (Now how many of TNN's video vixens can say that!) Her tasteful guitar licks burn and her twangy voice sounds half as young as her 48 years, while her roots spirit recalls western swing and Sun Records. A few numbers too low key for their own good prevent "Dance Hall Dreams" from matching her best works, "A Honky Tonk Reprise" and "Once More With Feeling." But the album finishes with a flurry and shows why the "Rockabilly Filly" deserves to be more than a hep-cat secret. Flores sings about a pink Cadillac and playfully suggests "Why don't you come inside and hear my engine run?" in " '59 Tweedle Dee." "This Ol' Honky Tonk" is a traditional, heartfelt ode. The smart rave-up about Elvis, "It Came From Memphis," features a guitar line from John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillun" filtered through ZZ Top's "La Grange" and also pays tribute to Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sonny Burgess, Scotty Moore, Johnny Cash and Charlie Rich. The album ends on a mysterious note when the honkey tonk hymn "Dance Hall Dreams" abruptly ends, as if Flores awakes from a dream. A dream would be for Flores to plug in, crank it up and conjure country's spirited past with a rousing, full-fledged guitar album. - Dave Miller
Waco Brothers
Waco Brothers, Wacoworld (Bloodshot)
Curtis Ross
* 03/26/99
The Tampa Tribune
(Copyright 1999)
The biggest favor you could ever do a Waco Brothers CD is never to
see them live. In person, the Wacos come on like six banditos
trapped in the bunker with nothing to lose. They're surrounded and
they've got nothing left to do but spend all the ammo and leave as
many casualties as possible. Even if they ever make their own "Exile
on Main Street" or "Grievous Angel," they'll never capture that on a
5-inch silver platter.
So for recording purposes, the Wacos show they can do other
things: buoyant pop ("Day of the Dead"), steel guitar-drenched
weepers ("Hello to Everybody") and nasty, left-leaning social
commentary disguised as working man's blues ("Pigsville").
The eclecticism reflects this band's
* bizarre-for-even-alternative-country pedigree. Jon Langford is one
of the Mekons, who were pillaging country's roots a decade and a half
ago. But the respective outfits of Mark Durante (KMFDM?!) and Alan
Doughty (Jesus Jones?!) would seem to have little connection to the
Kentucky hills of Hank Williams.
It may be that outsider status that lets the Wacos take chances
* with country music that the crop of bimbos and bimbettes being
churned out by Nashville wouldn't dare, much less think of in the
first place. Hence the surf's-up guitar of "Good for Me" and the
sentiments of the same (I know what's good for me / But sometimes
it's good / To do all the other things).
The Clash-meets-Johnny Cash analogy has been overused to describe
this band (and probably ignores the fact that Cash got wilder and
crazier than the Clash ever did). But it gives a hint of what the
Brothers are capable of. Pray they visit Florida soon, and play
"Wacoworld" real loud in the meantime.
Odds and Sods
NEW ALISON KRAUSS ALBUM IN THE WORKS Tribune Media Services * 03/26/99 Sun-Sentinel Ft. Lauderdale (Copyright 1999 by the Sun-Sentinel) *Alison Krauss, who took an armful of titles at the 1995 Country * Music Association awards show, is finishing up another Rounder album that is reported to be amazing. *In alternating years, Krauss does traditionally bluegrass albums with the Union Station Band and the more eclectic "Alison Krauss albums." This is the year for an Alison Krauss album. Sony's independent-minded Lucky Dog Records, which for the first time has seen one of its singles (Charlie Robison's Barlight) hit the mainstream country charts, is amassing talent. In addition to Charlie and Bruce Robison and David Allan Coe, Lucky Dog is reported to have struck recent deals with Nashville singer-songwriter Jamie O'Hara, formerly half of the O'Kanes, and rising Texas singer-songwriter Jack Ingram.
Several Words on F
FREAKWATER DUO GOES THE DISTANCE FOR EACH OTHER Kevin McKeough * 03/26/99 Chicago Tribune (Copyright 1999 by the Chicago Tribune) Who says long-distance relationships don't work? Janet Beveridge Bean and Catherine Ann Irwin mostly have lived apart since a 17-year-old Bean left their hometown of Louisville, Ky., to follow a visitor back to Chicago. (He was Rick Rizzo, now Bean's husband and partner in the band Eleventh Dream Day). TD That separation hasn't kept Bean and Irwin from maintaining a musical partnership that began with the two singing old country songs together in Louisville and has continued with their singing old- sounding country songs together in Freakwater. "One of the reasons it's able to be ongoing is that we live apart," Bean says. "It's nice to see each other, but Catherine has a life down in Louisville and I have one in Chicago." Distance amid unity also is a characteristic of Freakwater's transfixing harmonies. There's an exquisite tension in the way that Bean's sweet, crying soprano and Irwin's cracked, drawling alto don't quite mesh, something haunting in the space left between them. Those harmonies, coupled with Freakwater's Appalachian melodies and old-timey instrumentation -- acoustic guitars, fiddle, steel guitar and upright bass -- have drawn comparisons to country legends the Carter Family, which Bean thinks are misguided. "Our references include the Carter Family," she says, "but they include a lot of things since the Carter Family." The Carter Family didn't sing much, for example, about religious skepticism. Or drug addiction. Or the decline of organized labor. Or Muhammad Ali. These subjects all crop up on "Springtime," the most recent of Freakwater's five records. Although Irwin has been the group's main songwriter, Bean provides her own input. The collaboration "takes place with Catherine and I just sitting and playing the songs. We have a sense of each other's styles and where we're going with the song." Having released its first record in 1989, Freakwater can claim to * be at the forefront of the alternative country movement, a thought that makes Bean shudder. "I'm sorry if we've dragged anyone down with us," she protests. "It wasn't a trail anyone should have taken." --
Hadacol
HADACOL "Better Than This" Checkered Past Geoffrey Himes * 03/26/99 The Washington Post Copyright 1999, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved Hadacol is a Kansas City quartet named after the alcohol-laden 24-proof "patent medicine" that sponsored Hank * Williams's radio show in the 1940s. Like most alternative-country acts, Hadacol mixes twangy guitars, drawling vocals and a thumping rhythm in a manner that sounds conversational and nervously urgent at the same time. Unlike most of its genre colleagues, however, Hadacol's songwriters -- brothers Fred and Greg Wickham -- know how to boil the usual Americana themes down to an ear-grabbing chorus melody and a stick-in-the-mind aphorism. As a result, the band's debut album, "Better Than This," rises above the cluttered landscape of "insurgent-country" discs. The two singer-guitarist Wickham brothers write songs separately but with a similar sensibility and standard of quality. Fred, for example, wrote the title tune, which refuses to whine about trailer-park life but in fact celebrates it in a rousing chorus. Even better is his "What You Wanted," an organ-fueled, Dylanesque folk-rocker about living with the consequences of your decisions. Greg wrote "Cheap Liquor," which sums up the limitations of the bar-band life in the priceless line, "All this barroom smoke feels like a girlfriend's arms." Giving all the songs the clarity of a three-minute, 1950s single is the production by fellow Missourian Lou Whitney of the Skeletons.
To Quote Jimmy Martin, 'I'd Like to Get Me a Piece of That
TRISHA JOINS OPRY BY AP * 03/16/99 The Toronto Sun (c) Copyright 1999 The Toronto Sun Singer Trisha Yearwood got a special gift after she was inducted as the newest cast member of the Grand Ole Opry. Before a full house Saturday, Opry star Porter Wagoner introduced the Georgia-born singer as "the best I've ever heard" in "any of the fields of music." TD Yearwood, 34, sang her hit Wrong Side Of Memphis and then Sweet Dreams, a signature song of the late Patsy Cline. Then, Cline's widower, Charlie Dick, presented Yearwood with a glass-encased silver necklace that belonged to Cline. "I want to tear it out of there and put it on," said Yearwood, who made her Opry debut in 1992. She's the 71st cast member of the venerable * country music broadcast.
Roger
A RISKY BEAUTY
WILCO WALKS ARTISTIC TIGHTROPE TO PRODUCE ...
BY JOSHUA OSTROFF, OTTAWA SUN
* 03/14/99
The Ottawa Sun
(c) Copyright 1999 The Ottawa Sun. All Rights Reserved.
SUMMER TEETH
WILCO
Sun Rating:
3 1/2 out of 5
* THERE ARE few oxymorons more glaring than alternative country. Except
* maybe the term "No Depression" to describe a country music movement.
Interestingly, both these epithets were designed to describe the
sounds of Wilco (and its precursor band Uncle Tupelo) and their
nonsensical quality is even more appropriate on the group's latest
offering Summer Teeth.
Coming on the heels of their great collaboration with Billy Bragg
* (Mermaid Avenue), this country-rock album sounds like nothing coming
out
* of either country or rock, driving down more unexplored avenues than
ever before while still maintaining links to contemporaries like Son
Volt and Vic Chesnutt.
From the piano-fuelled rave-up of the opening cut Can't Stand It to
the murder balladry of Via Chicago ("I dreamed about killing you last
night/and it felt alright to me"), the record combines traditional
rural
song structures with contemporary quirkiness, e-bow guitars with
synthesizers and atmospheric textures with timeless melodies.
While the record never quite attains the artistic heights it hints
at, occasionally exhibiting creative laziness or unwieldy sonic
messiness, the self-produced Summer Teeth remains a risky beauty that
should spark wake-up calls in both Nashville and New York.
For you song writers
This Web site, at www.outofservice.com/country, has one simple yet * amusing purpose: to generate lyrics in the style of a country music song.
Tom Russell
TOM RUSSELL'S HISTORY BY DAVID VEITCH* 03/14/99 The Calgary Sun (c) Copyright 1999 The Calgary Sun. All Rights Reserved. THE MAN FROM GOD KNOWS WHERE -- Tom Russell: The death of Russell's * father inspired this ambitious, 74-minute song-cycle/folk-music opera that both traces his family history and, on a more universal level, chronicles the plight of immigrants as they try to forge a new existence in America. Guest vocalists Iris DeMent, Dolores Keane, Sondre Bratland and others give voice to Russell's ancestors. They sing about whiskey and dashed dreams; estranged families and orphan trains; ruined crops and suicide; homesickness and inconsolable loneliness; all to music that demonstrates how Celtic folk was the seedling from which American * country music grew. Generally, the album is stirring and earnest, though Dave Van Ronk adds some bawdy humour and politically incorrect insight as The Outcast, who reminds Americans "your promised land was settled by bastards, drunks and thieves." A less-travelled path through American history and, quite simply, a remarkable achievement. SUN RATING:4 (OUT OF FIVE)
Family and Religion - hhhmmmmm!!!!
Family And Religion * Earle, McCoury -- bluegrass at its best Wayne Bledsoe, News-Sentinel entertainment writer * 03/13/99 The Knoxville News-Sentinel (Copyright 1999) *There are few things more shocking than seeing bad boy Steve Earle in a three-piece suit. Walking onstage with the Del McCoury Band Friday night at the * Tennessee Theatre, Earle dressed and played the part of a bluegrass lead singer. And even Earle's countryish rocker "Copperhead Road" * was transformed into a first-rate bluegrass number. Earle opened the show backed by the Del McCoury Band, minus lead singer-guitarist Del, and plowed through a selection from the new album "The Mountain," on which the McCoury group backs up Earle. The live performances of the album's songs generally exceeded the recorded versions. Highlights included Earle's "Dixieland" and a fine new train song, "Texas Eagle." Del McCoury joined the group for the song "I Still Carry You Around," and then Earle turned the remainder of the set over the McCoury and his band. Featuring mandolinist Ronnie McCoury, banjo player Rob McCoury (both sons of Del), fiddler Jason Carter and bassist Mike Bub, the * group is a bluegrass powerhouse. Despite the set being marred slightly by loud, obnoxious comments from inebriated audience members, the group still managed to shine. When Earle returned after intermission for an intimate solo performance, his chilling tale of a death-row guard, "Ellis Unit One," finally quelled the noisemakers. They remained relatively silent when the entire band returned for an excellent closing set. It was a shame that anything should detract from a concert that featured such pristine sound. Instead of the standard microphones and monitors for each band member, the entire group gathered around one central mike.The warm natural blend of the instruments and vocals more than made up for a lost sounds. Earle and the group finished the show (helped out by a tiny, but spunky, McCoury grandson) with a cover of Townes Van Zant's "White Freightliner Blues" and Earle's own "Hillbilly Highway." *Earle's foray into bluegrass may be a temporary thing since he's already planning a new rock album. But as long as he's engaged in * it, his excursion into bluegrass should not be missed.
The Man With Two First Names
Now playing the star: Joe Henry Joel Reese * 03/12/99 Chicago Daily Herald (Copyright 1999) Joe Henry is done with the earnest singer-songwriter acoustic guitar thing. Done, finished, finito. Close the book. Henry, the guy who recorded two albums with The Jayhawks as his backup band and has long been one of music's best-kept secrets, is now ready to hit the big time - complete with dapper suit and well- coiffed hair. He'll soon appear on "The Late Show with David Letterman," "The Rosie O'Donnell Show," and the pages of Newsweek. His new album "Fuse" (Mammoth Records) was mixed by T-Bone Burnett and Daniel Lanois, and boasts cameos by Jakob Dylan and guitar wunderkind Chris Whitley. "Fuse" also has a cool multimedia segment, with a droll interview with Billy Bob Thornton (posing as Henry) and footage of Henry in concert. And all of this is good. It's a good thing when people such as Henry become popular. The prevalence of The Backstreet Boys and Matchbox 20 merely proves that too many people don't know Shania from shine-ola. But when someone deserving such as Joe Henry makes it big, it's a victory for "our side." After all, he's one of the best songwriters around, with a Raymond Carver-like ability to capture heartbreaking loneliness and restlessness with a few lines. And his whiskey-rough croon is nothing short of a treasure. So this big media blitz is good, right? Well, kind of. There's just one problem: "Fuse," Henry's big breakthrough, isn't that great (. * * 1/2). Run, runaway In a recent interview from his home in Los Angeles, Henry says he intentionally moved away from his country-rockish past. "We call that running away," Henry says with a chuckle. But, as he notes, he recorded past albums mostly live in the studio "because I didn't know how to do anything else. That served my purpose for a brief time, but musically, ultimately, I found it very limiting." His 1996 near-masterpiece, "Trampoline," was a gigantic step in a new direction. Helmet axman Page Hamilton provided the guitarwork, and the songs bristled with a newfound intensity. "By the time I was ready to make 'Trampoline,' " Henry says, "I had decided to myself: if I can't find a new way to do this, if I can't find a new musical world to inhabit, I'd just rather not." He hadn't decided what he would do if his new album didn't speak a new musical language: "I was kinda thinking maybe a UPS man," Henry says with a slight hint of his native North Carolina drawl. "Because people are always delighted to see you coming." After "Trampoline" met with universal critical acclaim, Henry has continued his progress away from the alt.country sound with "Fuse." The star treatment As for his new media presence, Henry says he doesn't mind the big marketing push he's getting from his record company. "Believe me, nobody does this by accident," he says. "There are plenty of people who do it and like to complain about it. They say, 'Hey, I just do what I do, man, I don't care if anybody digs it or not.' I don't happen to subscribe to that way of thinking. There's nothing more vain than standing up there on the mountain and pretending to be un-vain." Henry realizes that the album's glitzy marketing and slick sound may lead some to accuse him of ditching his principles. And he has no problem with that. "People have a tendency to treat an acoustic guitar like it's the basket that floated the infant Moses down the river," he says. "There's nothing pure or natural about any of this, I don't care who you are. This idea that doing things with acoustic instruments is somehow more pure and more real - I don't have any interest in that as a notion." Musically, Henry describes his new record as "decidedly fragmented. I didn't want to make it do anything that sounded like a band. I'm a big fan of the collage approach of recordmaking. I like the disembodied sensation." And therein lies the rub. "Fuse" feels too fragmented, too cobbled together. Much of it, like the lackluster track "Fat," feels like studio trickery for its own sake. On this overproduced tune, a hip-hop beat and Henry's echoed singing backs a noodling electric piano. The fact that the song has too much going on - to little resulting effect - isn't the worst sin; that's making Henry's subtly soulful voice sound like it's sung into the business end of a tuba. The jazz-inflected "Want Too Much," mixed by studio maven Daniel Lanois, has a lonely trumpet wailing behind a wah-wah guitar and a dense wave
A Man With His First and Last Name Reversed
ELLIS PAUL // Folk singer coming to The Wire
Barry Fox
* 03/12/99
The Harrisburg Patriot
(Copyright 1999)
Like the athlete he once was, folk-star-on-the-rise Ellis Paul
feels like he is finally in `the zone.`
For the last seven years the Boston-based singer-songwriter has
been immersed in playing live, learning the guitar and honing his
stage presence. His once-sharp edges are smoothing out and he's
getting a firm grasp on his music.
`I'm an adult now and I can tap into that,` the 32-year-old said.
`Now I know what makes a story interesting and I know what kind of
songs I want to write.`
And, the success of four albums, 200-plus shows a year, seven
Boston Music Awards and a prestigious Kerrville New Folk Award has
bred financial security and the ability to navigate his own career
course.
`I'm ecstatic,` Paul said from his rarely visited apartment. `I
can back off and get the breathing room I haven't had for the last
seven years.`
Now, even with the critical and popular success of last year's
`Translucent Soul` disc, Paul said he wants to focus on his writing
and recording skills.
Given the pile of good words for his current album, that will not
be an easy task.
`Translucent Soul's` deeply personal 11 songs examine topics
ranging from Paul's recent divorce to racism to romance in a
beautifully written, powerfully sung package that has been acclaimed
by the CMJ New Music Report as `very special.` The Newhouse News
Service called it `one of the very best, if not the best, folk albums
of 1998.`
`I'm really happy where we're at with it,` Paul said of the album.
`You plan and you hope but someone once told me, 'You pray to God,
but you still keep rowing toward shore.' That's where I am with my
career.`
Addressing an intimate subject such as the demise of his marriage
in such a public way throws open the doors to his personal life
`which is a drag in a way,` he said. `But I'm the one to blame for
it. I knew people who've been through the big break-up, divorce
thing would relate to the album.`
And, as it is for many artists, writing about the divorce was a
catharsis.
`I could feel it physically taking care of me,` Paul said.
The arts have always been a creative outlet for Paul who was one
of those kids who won all the writing awards in high school. `As a
kid I just loved art and writing,` he said. `When I got older I knew
I wanted to work for myself and be creative.`
But he was also a talented runner who earned a track scholarship
to Boston College, putting his artistic pursuits on hold. `I was an
athlete to please myself, and my father,` he said.
An injury forced him to sit down, and to pick up the guitar.
Writing came naturally `but the real challenge was putting guitar
chords together and playing guitar,` said Paul, who has never taken a
lesson.
He started playing the fertile Boston folk scene, perhaps the
country's best, listening to and learning from Shawn Colvin, John
Gorka, Susan Werner, Dar Williams, Bill Morrissey and Patty Larkin,
who are among the dozens of folkies who are from or have adopted
Beantown as home.
`Boston is a real cradle for songwriters and poetry,` Paul said.
`I don't know why the rest of the country doesn't have a scene like
* we do. The big thing is radio puts folk {music} on and there is a
weird synergy between radio, clubs and the music.`
*And in the best tradition of folk music, and his guru Woody
Guthrie, Paul takes to the road to see America up close and fill his
journals with anecdotes and sketches of the personalities he meets
and experiences collected.
`I write what I want and get out in my car and play,` he said.
`It's such a joy and I'm thankful for it everyday. I meet people,
listen to the stories that touch them, and they touch me.`
Car-Mounted Vodka Bottle
Crash renews cell phone doubts // Singer recovering, but worries about driving distraction arise Patriot News * 03/11/99 The Harrisburg Patriot (Copyright 1999) *Country music giant George Jones, it now appears, will recover from serious injuries he received Saturday when he crashed his sport-utility vehicle into a bridge abutment. The future of yet another American legend, the car-mounted cellular telephone, is still in question. At the time of the accident, Jones was using his cell phone to chat with his stepdaughter. He lost control and collided with the bridge, sustaining injuries that left him in critical condition for at least 24 hours. It has not been determined yet if using the cell phone while driving was a contributing factor to Jones' crash, but the accident does focus attention on growing concerns about the safety of phoning and driving. In fact, a 1997 study cited by The New England Journal of Medicine found that drivers using a cellular phone were four times as likely to be in a motor vehicle collision than those who did not. Even more startling was the finding that the risk of using a cell phone while driving is about on par with that of driving under the influence when the blood-alcohol level is at the legal limit. This research and the Jones accident have raised anew questions about the safety, and ultimately, the legality of using the cell phone while operating a motor vehicle. On first examination, this appears a no-brainer. The comparison with drunken driving clearly weighs in favor of prohibiting cell phone use while driving. Who wants to risk being on the highway with more than 50 million cell-phone chatters whose chances of wrecking are four times greater than if they hang up and pay attention? But the reality is not so simple. The cellular phone is here to stay -- in the briefcase, in the shopping cart and in the car. It is one in a long series of liberating modes of communications for the 20th century. What's more, cellular phones have proved their worth in reporting accidents and other highway problems to authorities. This is another problem to assign to the Bureau of Common Sense. Because data show that most accidents involving cell phone use occur within five minutes of making a call, safety experts feel that the process of dialing and initiating contact are crucial. To this degree, it is best to pull over the to the side of the road to make the call. The New England Journal of Medicine study also recommends keeping calls short, interrupting conversations when necessary and taking extra precautions at night or in inclement weather. In short, the individual is as much as factor in these developments as is the cell phone itself. Perhaps highway safety and communications experts can come to some terms in the future on reducing the risk factor, but for now it's more or less up to the person behind the wheel to keep in mind that the No. 1 task at hand is driving -- not phoning.
Chris Wall
He Gave Music a Shot
Singer-songwriter Chris Wall was tending bar in Corona del Mar when he
heard the sounds that put him on the trail to a country career, hit
song
and his own record label.
JOHN ROOS
* 02/24/99
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 / The Times Mirror Company
It's hard to imagine anyone hearing his calling while tending bar. But
that's exactly what happened to Chris Wall 20 years ago while mixing
cocktails at the Quiet Woman in Corona del Mar.
"That's where I really got interested in music . . . seeing Hollywood
Fats, Steve Wood from Honk and guys from Kenny Loggins' band jam
there--they all played quite a bit back then," said Wall, a country
singer-songwriter now living in Austin, Texas. "That led me to the new
country stuff they were playing down at the Swallow's [Inn in San Juan
Capistrano] . . . like Rosie [Flores] the Screamers and [Fullerton-bred
steel guitarist and Dobro player] Greg Leisz."
TD
Wall left Orange County after the death of his father on Easter Sunday
1980 and moved to his uncle's ranch in Montana to "play cowboy for a
while." After working as a ranch hand, Wall moved to Jackson Hole, Wyo.,
to work as a bartender at the famous Million-Dollar Cowboy Bar. He began
writing songs, and after some prodding by friends, Wall decided to go
public.
Filling in for a lead singer with laryngitis, Wall joined the Western
band Pinto Bennett the Famous Motel Cowboys. Oddly enough, his first
paying gig in 1987 brought him back to the Swallow's Inn, where he had
also worked behind the bar for a spell.
Wall, who's lived in Texas since 1988, is excited about coming full
circle with his return to the Swallow's tonight, where he'll play with
guitarist Chris Claridy, bassist Gary Miles and drummer K.W. Turnbow.
"I really enjoyed Southern California," said Wall, 46, who grew up on
Balboa Island, graduated from Corona del Mar High, attended Orange Coast
College and received a master's degree in history from Whittier College.
He taught history and coached football briefly at Corona del Mar High
(1973-74).
The performer got his big break when he met acclaimed Texas
singer-songwriter Guy Clark in 1986 at the Northern Rockies Folk Festival
in Idaho. Later that night, the two swapped songs over dinner.
Clark was soon singing Wall's praises to his buddy, Jerry Jeff Walker,
who eventually caught one of Wall's sets in Jackson Hole, then invited
him to Austin to open some of his shows. Within a month, Wall moved to
the Lone Star State and was being managed by Walker's wife, Susan.
That association lasted three years, yielding two albums ("Honky Tonk
Heart," "No Sweat") and helping Wall build a cult following as he played
mostly in honky-tonks and Texas dance halls. Then tensions surfaced
between the Walkers and Wall over what Wall felt was inadequate promotion
of his music, prompting Wall to strike out on his own.
With no new album or tour in sight, Wall grew anxious. Then a novelty
song he had written years before rode to his rescue.
"Trashy Women," a tongue-in-cheek ditty about females sporting "tight
jeans and too much lipstick and rouge," became a No. 1 country hit for
Confederate Railroad in 1993.
*
Songwriting job offers suddenly came pouring in from Nashville. But
Wall instead used his songwriting royalties to start his own label, Cold
Spring Records. The roots-oriented company has released three of his
albums, including "Cowboy Nation" (1994), the live album "Any Saturday
Night in Texas" (1997) and last year's excellent "Tainted Angel."
Influenced by singer-songwriters from Ray Wylie Hubbard and Merle
Haggard to such contemporaries as Joe Ely, John Prine and Guy Clark, Wall
uses his whiskey-stained baritone to croon timeless tales of longing,
cheatin' hearts, busted dreams and dusty, endless highways.
He sings about how true love can give life purpose ("Better Things to
Do"). Then there's the one about the marginal musician who really just
longs for his wife and kids ("He Lives My Dream"). His stories of
gun-toting rednecks, town drunks and rodeo riders aren't pretty, yet
there's an underlying compassion for his characters.
"I'm just trying to do what all of these great Texans have done before
me . . . that is, write a good story that has a different spin on it.
Songwriters like Butch Hancock, Lucinda Williams and Robert Earl Keen
stand out because they bring people and places to life with vivid imagery
and strong melodies."
*
Cold Spring Records was originally intended only as a way he could
maintain creative control over his music. But Wall and his business
partner have since signed three other Texas-based acts to their roster,
including the Asylum Street Spankers, an acoustic-powered blues and swing
band; Reckless Kelly, young upstarts who backed
We'd Like to Introduce You to Our Friend .....
FARM AID co-founder Neil Young wins 1999 Patrick Lippert Rock the Vote Award * 02/23/99 PR Newswire (Copyright (c) 1999, PR Newswire) CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- MTV Networks' Rock the Vote honored FARM AID Co-founder Neil Young and his wife Pegi Young today for their activism. Neil Young, an outspoken supporter of family farmers, was recognized at Rock the Vote's 6th Annual Patrick Lippert Awards at the House of Blues in Los Angeles. Both Neil Young and Pegi Young were cited for their work with the Bridge School, a program for the communicative and educational development of children with severe speech and physical impairments. Along with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, Neil Young organized the first FARM AID concert in 1985, and has continued to serve on its board of directors. The three co-founders anchor every FARM AID concert. The longest- running of the "concerts for causes," FARM AID has created an ongoing support network for family farmers. "At every FARM AID concert, I count on Neil to speak his mind. Neil doesn't hold back when he blasts factory farms for polluting the water and soil. He's not afraid to point out Washington's farm policy failures. He's got courage, and I'm glad he's getting this award," said FARM AID president Willie Nelson. "Neil, Willie and I are not guys who give up easily. FARM AID is our way of fighting for family farmers." said John Mellencamp. "I hope this award helps put a spotlight on family farmers who struggle so hard to hold onto the land," said FARM AID Executive Director Carolyn Mugar. "Rock the Vote's new focus on community activism is exactly what FARM AID promotes. The only way we'll save family farms is when people say 'no' to factory farms and insist on safe food grown locally by family farmers." Mugar lauded Neil Young and his co-founders for their longstanding commitment. "Artists like Neil, Willie, and John inspire people to dig in and stay focused. The fight for family farmers is for safe food, the environment, and preserving the rural fabric of our nation. Neil doesn't give up on important goals like these." Mugar said in addition to years spent speaking out and supporting farm families against industrial agriculture, Neil delivers the gift of an extraordinary performance every year at the FARM AID concert. "Whether he's jamming with Phish, or reuniting with old friends like David Crosby, or joining Willie on stage, Neil always has the crowd transfixed," said Mugar. Long time friend and Nebraska family farmer Corky Jones thanked Neil Young for his loyalty to farmers. "No one deserves this award more than Neil. I love to see Neil get fired up. It gives farmers like me the extra fight we need to stay on another season. It gives us hope." * FARM AID's annual concert is televised live on CMT: Country Music Television. More than $15 million in FARM AID grants has been distributed to farm and rural service organizations across the country. Donors may call 1-800-FARM AID to make donations or to receive additional information. /CONTACT: Brenda K. Foster, 202-331-4323, for FARM AID/
Grammy Awards We'd Like to See
Grammy Awards we'd like to see RICK MITCHELL * 02/24/99 Houston Chronicle (Copyright 1999) Tonight's Grammy Awards celebrate the best, or at least the biggest, pop music had to offer in the past year. Not all of this year's 95 Grammy category winners will make it onto the televised portion of the program. Here's a sampling of "not ready for prime time" nominees in categories we'd like to see. The "Bono" award for acceptance speech most likely to require a parental warning sticker: Marilyn Manson; Courtney Love; Ani DiFranco; Wu Tang Clan's O.D.B; Rage Against the Machine. The "Don't Nobody Care" award for categories in which Lauryn Hill is not nominated: Best Rock Instrumental Performance; Best New Age Album; Best Instrumental Composition Written for Motion Picture or Television; Best Album Notes; Best Engineered Album, Classical. The "Boy Power" award for token-male album of the year nominees: Garbage men Butch Vig, Duke Erikson and Steve Marker; Shania Twain husband/producer Robert "Mutt" Lange; Lauryn Hill boyfriend Rohan Marley; Madonna's ex-boyfriend, whatever his name was. The "Soy Bomb" award for artist most deserving of a cream-pie-in- the-face: Celine Dion; Andrae Bocelli and Celine Dion; R. Kelly and Celine Dion; Luciano Pavarotti and Celine Dion; Bono, with or without Celine Dion. The "LL Cool J Give Us Prime Time Next Year Or We Boycott" award: Polka nominees Brave Combo, Lenny Gomulka, Walter Ostanek, Del Sinchak, Jimmy Sturr. The "Hanson" award for being allowed to stay up late on a school night: Brandy; Monica; the Backstreet Boys; the Sesame Street Muppets; the members of Kiss. The "Axl" award for people who should not be left in the same room together: Brandy and Monica; Courtney Love and Eddie Vedder; Courtney Love and Madonna; Courtney Love and Billy Corgan; Courtney Love and Courtney Love. The "We'll Take Our Five Against Y'all's Five" award for strongest lineup of nominees: Contemporary folk album nominees Billy Bragg * Wilco, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett and Lucinda Williams. The "Alamo" award for Texans who are making a stand: La Mafia, the Dixie Chicks, Kirk Franklin, Erykah Badu, Fastball. The "Domenico Modugno" award for reminding us that the Grammys still don't quite get it: Record of the year nominees Brandy Monica (The Boy Is Mine), Celine Dion (My Heart Will Go On), Goo Goo Dolls (Iris), Madonna (Ray of Light) and Shania Twain (You're Still the One). If these are really the five overall best records of the year, then Modugno's Volare really was a more worthy choice than Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel back in 1958. .
Son of Mr. Earle
* ALBUM REVIEWS | BLUEGRASS MIKEL TOOMBS * 02/25/99 The San Diego Union-Tribune (Copyright 1999) THE MOUNTAIN * STEVE EARLE AND THE DEL McCOURY BAND E-Squared * * * Country's hard-timer collides with the light-fingered pickers of * bluegrass' finest. * Steve Earle impishly introduces the album by threatening to recite the Mickey Mouse theme, then strums a few power guitar chords before he's trumped by the McCoury clan and band. At that point, everyone begins bringing it all back home. The Dylan reference is apt, because "The Mountain" recalls Bob's shocking rockin' folk forays of the mid-'60s (although, ironically, not his later, sweeter country efforts). The crude slur of Earle's vocals stands in contrast to the McCourys' subtle playing; at the * same time, his songs reflect a serious dedication to bluegrass and its founding father, Bill Monroe. (Earle, true to form, calls him Mr. Bill.) On the other hand, Earle is roundly outsung by the likes of Emmylou Harris, in the massive chorus for the all-star "Pilgrim," and Iris DeMent, who channels Linda Ronstadt as she duets on "I'm Still in Love With You."
Wintergrass
* BLUEGRASS FANS WILL GET AN EARFUL AT TACOMA FESTIVAL PATRICK MACDONALD * 02/25/99 The Seattle Times (Copyright 1999) --- Festival preview "Wintergrass," featuring Tony Rice, Peter Rowan, Chesapeake, IIIrd Tyme Out, the Laurel Canyon Ramblers, the Dry Branch Fire Squad, J.D. Crowe the New South, Cornerstone and the Gibson Brothers, today through Sunday at the Sheraton Tacoma Hotel Convention Center and the First Baptist Church in downtown Tacoma ($10-$75; 253-926-4164). --- Now in its sixth year, "Wintergrass" has become one of the * biggest bluegrass festivals in the country. The four-day event features five stages in two locations, some 50 music workshops, kids' activities, a "swingrass" dance, the Pizza Hut Showdown for amateur groups, vendor booths and lots of opportunities for jamming. "It's fairly unusual because it's inside," explained Patrice * O'Neill of the Wintergrass staff. "Most of the other bluegrass festivals are outdoors in the summertime." Wintergrass is also noteworthy in that it welcomes other styles. There's a Celtic show, a featured performance by bluesman Kelly Joe Phelps and another by acclaimed jazz guitarist Bill Frisell. * Two masters of bluegrass, acoustic flat-picker Tony Rice and guitarist-mandolinist Peter Rowan, both disciples of the late Bill * Monroe, Father of Bluegrass, will make rare appearances together tomorrow and Saturday. Rowan is a former member of Monroe's * Bluegrass Boys. Other featured performers include the Dry Branch Fire Squad, an Ohio group dedicated to the preservation of old-time Appalachian music; Chesapeake, a quartet known for taking a second look at great songs that have been performed over the years; and J.D. Crowe and * the New South, a top-notch progressive bluegrass band headed by influential banjoist Crowe. Newly featured this year are the Gibson Brothers, recently * named "emerging band of the year" at the International Bluegrass Music Association's Awards. The festival is musician-friendly, with workshops for amateurs and professionals and ample opportunities for playing with other musicians. "All day and all night, all over the hotel, you hear people jamming," O'Neill said. Fans are treated well, too, she added. "We spoil them to death," she said, with discounted accommodations at a variety of hotels and motels, plenty of room for RVs and trailers, and a shuttle-bus service running 20 hours a day. This year the festival's brochure was translated into Japanese and distributed in Japan. As a result, tour groups are coming from there, as well as from Germany, England, Switzerland and other countries. "We have a pretty big Canadian contingent," O'Neill said. Much of the festival is run by volunteer labor. "People who really love it are nurturing it and keeping it going for the next generation," said O'Neill. The festival welcomes children, with special activities for them all day. In addition to several stages in the Sheraton, the nearby First Baptist Church is also used for featured performances. The 900-capacity, turn-of-the-century building, originally built as a theater, has fine acoustics and sightlines, according to O'Neill. She compared it to the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, the original home of the Grand Ole Opry. "It feels intimate," she said, "it's quiet and peaceful." About 3,000 festival-goers are expected each day. Single-day and weekend passes are available, with reduced rates for children and seniors.
The Return of Mr. Earle
U. Texas-Austin: CD REVIEW: Steve Earl and the Del McCoury Band's 'The Mountain' * 02/25/99 (c) 1999 Copyright U-Wire. All Rights Reserved. By Will Furgeson, Daily Texan (U. Texas-Austin) * AUSTIN, Texas -- Singer-songwriter Steve Earle has never been content to stick with one type of music. Earle started his career in rockabilly, moved to country, then developed a rock sound on 1988's Copperhead Road. He got sidetracked with a drug addiction, but came out of rehab in 1994 and further expanded, recording with the likes of the Supersuckers and the V-Roys. In his latest incarnation, Earle has enlisted The Del McCoury Band to back him up on The Mountain, a * bluegrass album that finds Earle covering new ground yet again. The sheer talent of the Del McCoury Band alone could make this a * strong album. Regarded as one of the leading forces in modern bluegrass music, the group creates an authentic sound with their skilled instrumentation, but the main reason The Mountain works is Earle's songwriting. His ability to write heartfelt music that exploits the * strengths of the bluegrass genre without resorting to tired and overused cliches gives the album a distinctly modern sound while preserving musical tradition. On the title track, Earle tells the story of a man and his connection to his surroundings, showing his ability to use a common theme (man's companionship with nature) to produce a moving and original song. The album contains many other great songs, such as "Pilgrim," a song Earle wrote for the funeral of a close friend, but the high point of The Mountain is "I'm Still In Love With You," a tender duet between Earle and Iris Dement. The limitation of Earle's nasal drawl is exposed when matched with the angelic quality of Dement's voice on this beautiful tale of lost love and misunderstanding. But as a testament to his songwriting, the listener gets used to his voice over the course of the album and grows to like it. For all the superb songs on the album, there are unfortunately some duds, such as "Paddy On The Boat" and the obligatory open road song, "Long, Lonesome Highway Blues." Despite these few weak songs, the album * is a strong example of bluegrass music at its finest. In The Mountain's liner notes, Earle praises the work of one of his primary influences, the late, great Bill Monroe. He goes on to confess that his goal for this album was to write at least one song that would * become a part of the rich history of bluegrass music, a song that would * be performed at bluegrass festivals long after he was dead. After listening to the album, one can't help but think that Earle might have * succeeded. Anyone who thinks that real bluegrass died with Monroe need only listen to this rich collection of songs to know that the future of the genre is in good hands with gifted musicians like the Del McCoury * Band and songwriters like Steve Earle.
Mr. Earle Rides Again
* Bluegrass thrives, despite country aficionados calling it a weed Jim Patterson * 02/25/99 The Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Copyright 1999) *NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Not long before he died, bluegrass founder Bill * Monroe confided to country music star Ricky Skaggs that he was worried his brand of music was dying, too. *Monroe passed away in September 1996, but bluegrass hasn't. Skaggs and a handful of other well-known and not-so-well-known artists have seen to that. TD *Skaggs released his Bluegrass Rules! album in 1997 and followed it * up this year with Ancient Tomes. Nashville outlaw Steve Earle and * onetime Monroe band member Del McCoury also have new bluegrass albums that are superb. *Bluegrass has been stigmatized, Skaggs said. "It's Deliverance, it's The Beverly Hillbillies . . . * get-drunk-at-a-bluegrass-festival-and-fall-over kind of music. And it's not. There's so much more depth to it than that." Monroe should have known his music would survive. During his * lifetime, bluegrass weathered the rise of rock 'n' roll and the cold * shoulder of the country music industry, which still treats it like an embarrassing relative. *"This is the original alternative country music," Earle said. "It's fun. It's the most fun I have playing music." *Skaggs, 44, a former bluegrass prodigy who scored a string of No. * 1 country singles in the 1980s, said bluegrass deserves a larger role in the current country market. "Garth Brooks' music . . . may be the legs and the hands and the * head right now of country music, but I'm telling you, the heart and * soul of this music beats in tradition. It beats in bluegrass," said * Skaggs, whose new album includes updates of bluegrass numbers by Monroe and The Stanley Brothers. It got its name from Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, who invented the form in the 1930s. Fast, intricate and dominated by acoustic * strings and tight vocal harmonies, bluegrass became marginalized in * the 1950s when country music artists reacted to the rise of rock 'n' roll by putting more emphasis on drums and electric guitars. *Bluegrass, still primarily acoustic and drumless, benefited from * the folk music revival of the 1960s and has developed separately from * the rest of country music ever since. It is popular enough today to support more than 500 music festivals each summer. It's also blessedly free of having to kowtow * to radio programmers, because country music stations won't play * bluegrass. "Back in the '50s, you'd hear Bill Monroe and Flatt Scruggs and Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff all on the same station," McCoury said. * "Then, of course, bluegrass and country got segregated as years went by." The result is that outside of live shows and an occasional public * radio station broadcast, it's hard to hear bluegrass music without buying an album. That's a shame, given the deep talent pool in * modern bluegrass. New albums by McCoury, master dobro guitarist Rob Ickes and J.D. Crowe and the New South illustrate the diversity and excellence of * modern bluegrass. Ickes interprets Herbie Hancock on his jazzy Slide City album, while Crowe and his band play hard-country Merle Haggard and Charley Pride hits on Come on Down to My World. The Family, a new album by the Del McCoury Band, shows the best * current bluegrass band and singer at the top of their game. The Del McCoury Band also backs Earle on his album, The Mountain. *For Earle, a gifted songwriter who has hopscotched across folk, * rock and country over the years, making The Mountain presented a * writing challenge and an opportunity to record the kind of country * music he loves. Earle, 44, said he no longer cares about what's going on with * mainstream country music, and when he goes out in Nashville, it's to * listen to bluegrass. *For those looking to get a taste of bluegrass, a good starting place is the newly released second volume of Vanguard's Generations * of Bluegrass featuring everything from classics of The Osborne Brothers and Monroe to contemporaries like Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas and Skaggs. *"It's a little hard to convince people to give bluegrass a try," Skaggs said. *"Throw away everything you've ever heard about bluegrass. This is a new day, there are new musicians. You've got people like Del McCoury, Blue Highway, Alison Krauss - there's great musicians out there bringing a quality music that has substance, it has heart and soul. . . .
Bride of Mr. Earle
* Country-Rocker Does Bluegrass Proud
---
By Craig Havighurst
* 02/26/99
The Wall Street Journal
(Copyright (c) 1999, Dow Jones Company, Inc.)
* Steve Earle and Del McCoury make unlikely compadres, musical or
otherwise. Mr. Earle, 44, a veteran singer/ songwriter from the
* roughneck school of country-rock, has a ragged drawl and a past scarred
by heroin. Mr. McCoury, 60, could pass for an Ozark Mountain preacher
with his fabulous pompadour. His wondrously high, clear voice has
* distinguished him through a 40-year career in bluegrass that included
time in Bill Monroe's band. But by virtue of Mr. McCoury's ear for
great
songs and Mr. Earle's uninhibited enthusiasm for American roots music
of
all varieties, these two began to forge a friendship and a musical
alliance after Mr. McCoury recorded one of Mr. Earle's songs on his
1992
record "Blue Side of Town."
Both live in Nashville, and bridges were built between them by Mr.
McCoury's sons Ronnie, 31, and Rob, 27, who play mandolin and banjo
respectively in the Del McCoury Band. Ronnie would invite Mr. Earle to
sit in at live gigs and try out new songs, and when Mr. Earle recorded
his 1997 "El Corazon," he used the McCoury band to give one of the
tunes
* a bluegrass touch. All this collaboration has culminated in Mr. Earle's
driving, soulful new recording called "The Mountain," on his E-Squared
label. Almost simultaneously, the Del McCoury Band has released "The
* Family," the fourth CD in its current configuration, and a bluegrass
purist's delight.
TD Since 1995, when he completed a rehab program he says saved his
life,
Mr. Earle has been living through a personal and artistic renaissance.
"The Mountain" is the fourth in a string of exceptional records. "I
Feel
* Alright" and "El Corazon" were folk-rock projects that burned with the
same outlaw twang that infused Mr. Earle's best 1980s records,
"Copperhead Road" and his debut, "Guitar Town," but with a lyrical
grace
and depth that sent his stock soaring among critics and fellow
songwriters.
It was 1995's "Train a Comin'," however, that really demonstrated
Mr.
Earle's grasp of the primal American genres: folk, hillbilly and blues.
Because it was an all-acoustic album, executed with the help of some of
* the best instrumentalists from the caverns of real country music, it
offered a depth of texture that electric records can hardly muster.
Norman Blake played guitar. The equally sublime Peter Rowan chopped on
the mandolin. And the late Roy Huskey Jr., to whom "The Mountain" is
dedicated and who Mr. Earle calls "the best doghouse bass player that
ever lived," established the thundering bottom.
How do you get a better band than that? You strike a deal with the
Del McCoury band, who has the edge only in that it's been a unit since
1992 and plays with a drive and tightness that boggles the mind in a
live setting. Besides the father and sons, the group includes
26-year-old Jason Carter on fiddle and Mike Bub, 34, who looks like a
cheerful Irish linebacker, on bass. They wear dashing suits and play
* around one microphone, the way bluegrass was invented, adjusting sound
levels through proximity to the mike. The resulting trade-off of solos
is set to a graceful choreography of men weaving around each other,
keeping the instruments out of each other's way, leaning in close to
sing. It's an apt visual metaphor for the music itself.
After playing with the McCourys one night at Nashville's Station Inn
* ("bluegrass ground zero," he calls it), Mr. Earle made up his mind to
* make a record of all original bluegrass material. A man who takes the
craft of writing extremely seriously, he set a deadline for himself and
knocked out 14 top-notch songs.
The record kicks off with a locomotive of a song about a locomotive
called "Texas Eagle." Bright detail and well-earned nostalgia (the
story
is autobiographical in every detail) breathe new life into the
venerable
train song. And throughout the CD, we hear an insightful blending of
tried-and-true lyrical hooks and traditional melodies with Mr. Earle's
own gift for narrative. "Train a Comin'" contained a visceral, poetic
Civil War song, and so does "The Mountain": "I am Kilran of the 20th
Maine, and we fight for Chamberlain/ Cause he stood right with us when
the Johnnies came like a banshee in the wind."
Also worth noting is "I'm Still in Love With You," a lovely
honky-tonk song that doesn't put Mr. Earle's voice to best use but
nonetheless turns into something brilliant when duet partner Iris
DeMent, one of our most underappreciated singers, joins in.
*The McCoury record hews closer to bluegrass orthodoxy,
Grammy, What Big Ears You have ....
GRAMMY AWARD WINNERS * 02/26/99 York Daily Record (Copyright 1999) Complete list of 41st annual Grammy Award winners announced Wednesday: Record Of The Year: "My Heart Will Go On," Celine Dion. Album Of The Year: "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill," Lauryn Hill. Song Of The Year: "My Heart Will Go On," James Horner Will Jennings. New Artist: Lauryn Hill. Female Pop Vocal Performance: "My Heart Will Go On," Celine Dion. Male Pop Vocal Performance: "My Father's Eyes," Eric Clapton. Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal: "Jump Jive an' Wail," Brian Setzer Orchestra. Pop Collaboration With Vocals: "I Still Have That Other Girl," Elvis Cos tello and Burt Bacharach. Pop Instrumental Performance: "Sleepwalk," Brian Setzer Orchestra. Dance Recording: "Ray of Light," Madonna. Pop Album: "Ray of Light," Madonna. Traditional Pop Vocal Performance: "Live at Carnegie Hall - The 50th Anniversary Concert," Patti Page. Female Rock Vocal Performance: "Uninvited," Alanis Morissette. Male Rock Vocal Performance: "Fly Away," Lenny Kravitz. Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal: "Pink," Aeros mith. Hard Rock Performance: "Most High," Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. Metal Performance: "Better Than You," Metallica. Rock Instrumental Performance: "The Roots of Confidence," Pat Metheny Group. Rock Song: "Uninvited," Alanis Moris sette. Rock Album: "The Globe Sessions," Sheryl Crow. Alternative Music Performance: "Hello Nasty," Beastie Boys. Female RB Vocal Performance: "Doo Wop (That Thing)," Lauryn Hill. Male RB Vocal Performance: "St. Louis Blues," Stevie Wonder. RB Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal: "The Boy Is Mine," Brandy Monica. RB Song: "Doo Wop (That Thing)," Lauryn Hill. RB Album: "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill," Lauryn Hill. Traditional RB Vocal Performance: "Live! One Night Only," Patti LaBelle. Rap Solo Performance: "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It," Will Smith. Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group: "Intergalactic," Beastie Boys. Rap Album: "Vol. 2 . . . Hard Knock Life," Jay-Z. Female Country Vocal Performance: "You're Still the One," Shania Twain. Male Country Vocal Performance: "If You Ever Have Forever In Mind," Vince Gill. Country Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal: "There's Your Trouble," Dixie Chicks. Country Collaboration With Vocals: "Same Old Train," Clint Black, Joe Diffie, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Patty Loveless, Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, Pam Tillis, Randy Travis, Travis Tritt and Dwight Yoakam. Country Instrumental Performance: "A Soldier's Joy," Randy Scruggs and Vince Gill. Country Song: "You're Still the One," Robert John "Mutt" Lange Shania Twain. Country Album: "Wide Open Spaces," Dixie Chicks. *Bluegrass Album: "Bluegrass Rules!" Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. New Age Album: "Landmarks," Clan nad. Contemporary Jazz Performance: "Imaginary Day," Pat Metheny Group. Jazz Vocal Performance: "I Remember Miles," Shirley Horn. Jazz Instrumental Solo: "Rhumbata," Chick Corea and Gary Burton. Jazz Instrumental Performance: "Gershwin's World," Herbie Hancock. Large Jazz Ensemble Performance: "Count Plays Duke," Count Basie Or chestra. Latin Jazz Performance: "Hot House," Arturo Sandoval. Rock Gospel Album: "You Are There," Ashley Cleveland. Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album: "This Is My Song," Deniece Williams. *Southern Gospel, Country Gospel, Or Bluegrass Gospel Album: "The Apostle - Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture," various artists. Traditional Soul Gospel Album: "He Leadeth Me," Cissy Houston. Contemporary Soul Gospel Album: "The Nu Nation Project," Kirk Franklin. Gospel Choir Or Chorus Album: "Reflections," The Associates. Latin Pop Performance: "Vuelve," Ricky Martin. Latin Rock/Alternative Perfor mance: "Suenos Liquidos," Mana. Tropical Latin Performance: "Contra la Corriente," Marc Anthony. Mexican-American Music Perfor mance: "Los Super Seven," Los Super Seven. Tejano Music Performance: "Said and Done," Flaco Jimenez. Traditional Blues Album: "Any Place I'm Going," Otis Rush. Contemporary Blues Album: "Slow Down," Keb' Mo'. Traditional Folk Album: "Long Journey Home," The Chieftains with various artists. Contemporary Folk Album: "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," Lucinda Williams. Reggae Album: "Friends," Sly and Robbie. World Music Album: "Quanta
May Day!!
Ryan makes connection JEFFREY LEE PUCKETT * 02/26/99 The Courier-Journal Louisville, KY (Copyright 1999) When Matthew Ryan called from his Nashville home a few days ago, he had the new Paul Westerberg album spinning beautifully in the background. That kicked off an enthusiastic music-geek exchange that touched on the Replacements, Joe Henry, the Waterboys, Van Morrison, Tom Waits and - every once in a while - Ryan's own music. The subtext was clear: Ryan loves music that connects on a deeper level, that works as "a personal conversation" between musician and listener, and he has tried to achieve the same with his own songs. He succeeds often enough to wring fresh tears out of old heartaches. Ryan, 27, has been writing only since age 18 but has seemingly leapfrogged the awkward beginner's phase. His debut album, "May Day," was released in 1997 and is filled with songs that would make a veteran rock romantic proud. It's squarely in the familiar tradition of folks such as Westerberg, who has long dealt with love, loss and the search for self while hanging by a self-obsessed thread. Ryan, who grew up in bluecollar Chester, Pa., knows he's telling old stories but believes he's doing so with an honesty that makes them fresh. "A lot of love songs don't really tell the truth," he said. " `May Day' dealt with the placement of blame in a relationship when there's really nowhere to place it. Timing has just as much to do with things falling apart as something like infidelity. It's a big gray area. "Stuff like `My Heart Will Go On' is all just a big lie, and we shouldn't keep believing that lie because 30 years down the line we'll all be miserable." And then we can listen to "Certainly Never," in which Ryan captures in a few words one of those universal moments - when you stand at her front door, hesitantly determined to try a failing love one more time: "I gave it my most polite rap and wish / I held my heart loosely in my other fist." That's Ryan at his best. He makes the connection and has the conversation. It's why he started writing. "You write things to connect with those people you feel alienated from," he said. "When I first started writing, that was the moment I realized what my ambitions truly were. That's what writing was for me. The more I did it, the more I felt alive."
The Resurrection of Mr. Earle
Discs; Earle reaches `Mountain' * 02/26/99 Boston Herald (Copyright 1999) *STEVE EARLE AND THE DEL McCOURY BANDThe Mountain (E-Squared)4 stars *Singer-songwriter Steve Earle's near-miraculous personal and artistic recovery from the depths of heroin addiction culminates here * in a pure bluegrass album that's not only thoroughly authentic, but thoroughly great. *Joining forces with Del McCoury's Cadillac of bluegrass bands, Earle writes a passel of tunes that would have brought a smile to the face of the late Bill Monroe, who inspired them. Though these songs * are ever mindful of bluegrass tradition, they nevertheless are full of the drama, detail, violence and psychological insight that have always been Earle's stock in trade. Indeed, the "Harlan Man/The Mountain" suite is, as Earle asserts in the liner notes, one of the best things he's ever written. And while Earle's rot-gut-and-rusty-nails gargle might come as something of a shock to bluegrassers raised on generations of high lonesome tenors, it's a refreshing change for a genre in which adherence to tradition and polish can disguise a lack of soul. Earle proves conclusively that that's one problem he will never have. - KEVIN R. CONVEY
The Dr. Said to Give Him Jug Band Music, It Seems ........
Folk; Jim Kweskin and Co. catch the spirit with jug band DANIEL GEWERTZ * 02/26/99 Boston Herald (Copyright 1999) Jug band legend Jim Kweskin has a new band, yet he has hired neither a booking agent nor a publicist, and there's no immediate plans to record. Tomorrow's gig at Club Passim will be only one of a handful of dates this year for Jim Kweskin Samoa with the Swinging Tenants. "Music is not what I do for a living," said Kweskin this week from his commune home in the Fort Hill section of Roxbury. "I'm in the construction business. I mostly play music just for fun, on nights and weekends." The new band explores the old-time music for which Kweskin is known: vivid versions of pop, country, blues, swing and jug band songs from the 1920s through the '50s, from Mance Liscomb to Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith to Julie London. The Kweskin Jug Band of the '60s brought Maria Muldaur to prominence. The new band showcases another young female vocalist, Samoa, "an incredible singer," Kweskin said. Samoa has been living at the Fort Hill commune since she was a baby. The commune was once a public part of Boston life, publishing the city's first "underground" weekly paper, the Avatar, in the late '60s. At the center of the group was the late Mel Lyman, onetime harmonica player with the Kweskin Jug Band. "We were inaccurately called a cult. The word cult has an extreme connotation, and it has absolutely nothing to do with my life," said Kweskin. "Mel Lyman was an inspirational person who many people loved and gathered around." Though long out of the public eye, the Fort Hill group never disbanded, and now, in fact, exists in several locations: There are outposts in Los Angeles and New York City, and a farm in Kansas. "We're an extended family and the construction business has grown, too," said Kweskin, 58. "We were just voted the No. 1 residential contractor in Southern California." Kweskin claims the commune has no religious base, and the only connection it has to his music is a group spirit. "For my own personal well-being and happiness, I choose to live in a large group, and my favorite thing in life is to gather a large group of good musicians around me." The Swinging Tenants are mandolinist Bruce Millard, pianist Leo Blanco, bassist Matt Berlin, guitarist Titus Vollmer, drummer Paloma Ohm and harmonica player Geordie Gude, another child of the Fort Hill family. The vivacious, soulful music that Kweskin has always played first came into his life 50 years ago. "My father had an antiques store in Connecticut, and there were old 78s of Bessie Smith, Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller that I fell in love with at a very early age," he said. "It was only in the '60s that I found out all those songs could be played by a jug band." After dropping out of Boston University, Kweskin traveled the country, hooking up with other young unknowns such as Paul Butterfield in Chicago and Spider John Koerner in Minnesota. "In 1963, I was back in Cambridge, jamming with lots of folks at the Club 47," said Kweskin. "Maynard Soloman of Vanguard wanted to make a record with the `band' he heard one night, and I told him: `That's not a band. But if you give me three months, I'll get one.' " The Kweskin Jug Band, with Geoff Maria Muldaur, Richard Greene, Fritz Richmond and Bill Keith, became perhaps the most influential folk band of the 1960s. * * * * * *
Mr. Earle Strikes Again
* Bluegrass gets jolt from Ricky Skaggs and Steve Earle By Jim Patterson Associated Press writer * 02/27/99 Deseret News Copyright (c) 1999 Deseret News Publishing Co. * NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Not long before he died, bluegrass founder Bill * Monroe confided to country music star Ricky Skaggs that he was worried his brand of music was dying, too. * Monroe passed away in September 1996, but bluegrass hasn't. Skaggs and a handful of other well-known and not-so-well-known artists have seen to that. TD * Skaggs released his "Bluegrass Rules!" album in 1997 and followed it * up this year with "Ancient Tomes." Nashville outlaw Steve Earle and * onetime Monroe band member Del McCoury also have new bluegrass albums that are superb. * Bluegrass has been stigmatized, Skaggs said. "It's 'Deliverance,' it's 'The Beverly Hillbillies' ... * get-drunk-at-a-bluegrass-festival-and-fall-over kind of music. And it's not. There's so much more depth to it than that." Monroe should have known his music would survive. During his lifetime, * bluegrass weathered the rise of rock 'n' roll and the cold shoulder of * the country music industry, which still treats it like an embarrassing relative. * "This is the original alternative country music," Earle said. "It's fun. It's the most fun I have playing music." * Skaggs, 44, a former bluegrass prodigy who scored a string of No. 1 * country singles in the 1980s, said bluegrass deserves a larger role in the current country market. "(Garth Brooks') music ... may be the legs and the hands and the head * right now of country music, but I'm telling you, the heart and soul of * this music beats in tradition. It beats in bluegrass," said Skaggs, * whose new album includes updates of bluegrass numbers by Monroe and The Stanley Brothers. It got its name from Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys who invented the form in the 1930s. Fast, intricate and dominated by acoustic strings and * tight vocal harmonies, bluegrass became marginalized in the 1950s when * country music artists reacted to the rise of rock 'n' roll by putting more emphasis on drums and electric guitars. * Bluegrass, still primarily acoustic and drumless, benefited from the * folk music revival of the 1960s and has developed separately from the * rest of country music ever since. It is popular enough today to support more than 500 music festivals each summer. It's also blessedly free of having to kowtow to radio * programmers, since country music stations won't play bluegrass. "Back in the '50s you'd hear Bill Monroe and Flatt Scruggs and Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff all on the same station," McCoury said. "Then * of course (bluegrass and country) got segregated as years went by." The result is that outside of live shows and an occasional public * radio station broadcast, it's hard to hear bluegrass music without buying an album. That's a shame, given the deep talent pool in modern * bluegrass. New albums by McCoury, master dobro guitarist Rob Ickes and J.D. Crowe and the New South illustrate the diversity and excellence of modern * bluegrass. Ickes interprets Herbie Hancock on his jazzy "Slide City" album, while Crowe and his band play hard country Merle Haggard and Charley Pride hits on "Come on Down to My World." "The Family," a new album by The Del McCoury Band, shows the best * current bluegrass band and singer at the top of their game. The Del McCoury Band also backs Earle on his album, "The Mountain." * For Earle, a gifted songwriter who has hopscotched across folk, rock and country over the years, making "The Mountain" presented a writing * challenge and an opportunity to record the kind of country music he loves. Earle, 44, who said he no longer cares about what's going on with * mainstream country music, and when he goes out in Nashville, it's to * listen to bluegrass. * For those looking to get a taste of bluegrass, a good starting place is the newly released second volume of Vanguard's "Generations of * Bluegrass" featuring everything from classics of The Osborne Brothers and Monroe to contemporaries like Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas and Skaggs. Also worth seeking out is last year's "Clinch Valley Country" by legendary band leader Ralph Stanley. Country singers including Marty Stuart, Vince Gill and Patty Loveless perform on the double CD of duets. * "It's a little hard to convince people to give (bluegrass) a try," Skaggs said. * "Throw away everything you've ever heard about bluegrass. This is a new day, there are new musicians. You've got people like Del McCoury, Blue Highway, Alison Krauss -- there's great musicians out there bringing a
Dave Alvin
Well-traveled Alvin is poetry in motion Steve Dollar * 02/28/99 The Atlanta Journal - The Atlanta Constitution (Copyright, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution - 1999) Successful career strategies don't appear to have much of a place in the pop music industry anymore. The "build-'em-up, bleed-'em-dry" approach favored by record companies chews up new acts like breath mints, spitting out quickly forgotten hits for future K-Tel compilations. If you can buy that analogy, figure Dave Alvin for a jawbreaker. The 45-year-old singer-songwriter has done his time as an aspiring rock 'n' roller and seen the folly of certain kinds of crossover dreams. Along with older brother Phil, he founded the Blasters, an unlikely roadhouse band that brought a rowdy reverence to blues and rocka-billy-influenced songs amid the self-conscious nihilism of the late-'70s Los Angeles punk scene. Later, Alvin took his turn as a guitarist with X, that scene's most articulate and artful act. TD But for most of the past 15 years, Alvin's taken the troubadour route, embarked on the proverbial never-ending tour, playing guitar in front of small club audiences and recording a series of seven solo albums. "I keep my overhead low," explains Alvin, who performs Thursday at Variety Playhouse with his four-piece band, the Guilty Men. "In order to get the word out, you've got to take your face and pound it into the interstate." That hard-core work ethic has sustained a career that barely dents the pop mainstream. Stamina, and a sense of humor, underscore much of his approach to the business of musicmaking. Tom Russell, a friend and fellow songwriter, tells a revealing story about the time he invited Alvin to kick back on his farm near the Rio Grande. "I had Dave out once," Russell begins. "Fed him steaks. But he ended up having to dig water ditches. He looked up one time from the shovel and growled, 'Next time, get Bob Dylan!' I told him, 'That's the way it starts, man, back to the basics. You've got to earn your steak dinners.' " Along with such contemporaries as Russell, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Lucinda Williams, Alvin's been doing exactly that, making tough, honest music that refracts the richness of American music traditions * --- Dust Bowl ballads, country blues, country music's "Bakersfield" sound, Tex-Mex, folk songs --- through his own experiences and his focus on a specific sense of place. In his case, that place is Southern California and the semi-rural environs of Downey, probably better known as the working-class hometown of Richard and Karen Carpenter. "The edge of town now . . . it's just part of a massive sprawl," he says, recalling the 1950s, when "there were still mysterious, magical places like orange groves and bean fields and avocado groves. There was a cluster of little towns, and musically there was so much you could go see. Along that whole southeast side of L.A. County, there were a lot of migrations from the South. The music was there, whether it was country or RB or blues. You could access it. I don't know if that's true anymore. "When you can go to sleep one day and there's a forest outside your window and you wake up the next morning and there's a McDonald's . . . well, I don't want to be too depressing, but a lot of the modern American experience has to do with that: rootlessness, homelessness, disconnectedness," continues the singer, a fourth-generation Californian whose family settled in the Central Valley near Fresno in the 1870s. "One of the reasons I like traditional music is to use that as a way to underscore that rootlessness. It's like an echo of when things weren't that way." Alvin's albums, including last year's acclaimed "Blackjack David," summon that echo, but do so in a way that is neither cliched nor dryly imitative. "My brother and I knew there was more to the world than just what was presented to you," says Alvin, whose father was a union organizer who often took his sons along for summertime visits to mining camps across the Western states. "You just had to do a little digging. You could do a little digging and there was this whole other underworld. You learned there were more sides to the story. We got to see everyone from Rev. Gary Davis to Johnny Shines to Johnny "Guitar" Watson. Think about that now and, huh? There was a time when you could go see these guys. I talk to young musicians and they look at me like I was hanging out with Jesus and Buddha." In contemporary musical terms, he might have been. There's a strong feel in Alvin's performances --- the windblown ache in his
Ray Charles
Books: Reviews and Opinion SOUL SURVIVOR Uh-huh: Defying odds, Ray Charles became legend with his trademark blend of blues and jazz, breaking the color barrier without compromising Miriam Longino * 02/28/99 The Atlanta Journal - The Atlanta Constitution (Copyright, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution - 1999) REVIEW Ray Charles: Man and Music. By Michael Lydon. Riverhead. $27.95. 429 pages. The verdict: A thorough unmasking of a music icon. Ray Charles has been a part of the nation's culture for so long that it's easy to take him for granted. He seems to have been around forever, an ageless Muppet seated on a piano stool, rocking back and forth in a mask of black sunglasses and carefree grin, belting out his raspy blues. Yet, after more than four decades as a hitmaker, it's surprising how little most people really know about the 69-year-old man behind those shades. Where did he come from? How did he lose his sight? And is he really the smiling, "uh-huh" hep cat seen in soft drink commercials and on TV? In this ambitious biography, music journalist Michael Lydon has rummaged through Charles' mysterious past as if he were going through the singer's coat pockets, and what he has discovered is a stunning story of poverty, racism, greed, sex, wealth, opportunity and power. From the first, Ray Charles the superstar was never supposed to happen. Born in 1930 into barefoot poverty in the North Florida town of Greenville, he was raised in a "colored" neighborhood called Jellyroll, where women washed white people's clothes and men were largely absent. His mother, Retha, was 16, an orphan taken in by a local couple. His father was Retha's married guardian. Though not technically incest, the relationship was scandalous. On top of it all, Ray was handicapped, losing his sight at age 6 to congenital glaucoma. Although neighbors dismissed him to a future "with a tin cup in his hand," headstrong Charles had different ideas. After leaving the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, where he learned to read music in Braille and bang out tunes on an upright piano, 18-year-old Ray bought a one-way ticket to Seattle on a Trailways bus. In the Pacific Northwest, the young man found jazz music, racial tolerance and heroin. It was Charles' 16-year addiction to the seductive drug that shaped much of his musical style. Without inhibitions, he ran his long fingers over the keyboard night after night, fusing the smooth jazz of the day with the blues, gospel and country of his childhood. That is the signature sound fans would later hear on the radio, an absolutely fresh approach in which Charles would take standard pop melodies such as "Georgia on My Mind" or "America the Beautiful" or country tunes like the Don Gibson classic "I Can't Stop Loving You" and wrap them up in blues for a white audience. In Seattle, Charles also met 15-year-old Quincy Jones, who would become one of pop music's biggest producers and a lifelong friend. Lydon sets the stage for Charles' unlikely ascension to pop stardom by reminding us how very segregated the music world was in the late 1940s and early '50s. Routinely, Charles and his bandmates encountered Jim Crow on the road, in the form of racist cops and restaurants that had no "colored" seating. Record companies signed artists along racial lines, and radio was split into two distinct camps: white and black. The chapters dealing with Charles' professional breakthrough and rise to fame --- through songs such as "Hit the Road, Jack" and "What'd I Say" --- are the most compelling. In meticulous detail, Lydon, a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine and a musician, describes how Atlantic Records founders Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler encouraged Charles to drop his guard and sing with his initial abandon. In fact, the breakthrough happened when Charles recorded the sassy smash hit "I Got a Woman" at Atlanta's WGST studios in November 1954. Lydon writes: " 'I Got a Woman' " had hit written all over it. . . . The record blended elements like a hybrid flower. It had a dancing beat like a jump blues, but it was built on gospel's 'rise to glory' chords, and the cheerful lyric, infectiously delivered by Ray, gave that mix a pop music gloss. As a bonus, Ray repeated the title so often that 'I got a woman, way over town' might become a sing-along line people would plug nickels into the jukeboxes to hear over and over again. 'I Got a Woman' was a record for every happy couple in America, black, white and in-between." That tune became the first of a string of hot sellers for Charles, who
Roger, .....
WILCO GOES TO THE LIMITS `SUMMERTEETH' CHALLENGES BAND - AND SINGER * 02/28/99 Chicago Tribune (Copyright 1999 by the Chicago Tribune) Jeff Tweedy thought he had blown it. Tweedy and his bandmates in Wilco - Jay Bennett, Ken Coomer and John Stirratt - had just finished writing, arranging and producing their third album, "Summerteeth" (Reprise), due out March 9. It boldly transforms the band's roots- rock image by dipping their laid-back, countryfied melodies into a strange brew of warped keyboards, distorted sound effects and otherworldly atmosphere that suggests the influence of the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds," Brian Eno's "Another Green World" and Neutral Milk Hotel's "On Avery Island." But even as the band members were exhilarated about pushing their boundaries as songwriters and producers, Tweedy couldn't escape the notion that he hadn't lived up to his end of the bargain. "I apologized to the band," the singer-guitarist says. "We kept surprising ourselves in the studio, and I kept being surprised by the things coming out of my mouth as I was singing these songs. Just the worst things, which came out almost in spite of how (his wife) Sue would feel when she heard them, or my parents, or anybody." I dreamed about killing you again last night And it felt alright to me --"Via Chicago," by Wilco "It was like I was letting go of myself, and how I'm going to be perceived," Tweedy continues. The songs, and the sentiments in them, weren't necessarily autobiographical, says the singer. "It was just free expression, almost selfless, and I thought I had gotten closer to where I wanted to be as a writer. The feeling of being uncomfortable with what I had written -- that felt more real to me than anything I could have constructed. "But at the same time I felt like I had let the band down. We worked really hard on this record, and my contribution was this dismal stuff: `Oh, and here's another reminder of how terrible things are.' " Tweedy laughs, his voice a husky, nicotine-scarred baritone, a voice that contrasts sharply with his cherubic face and boyishly rumpled hair. He is upstairs in the Northwest Side home he shares with his wife, Lounge Ax co-owner Sue Miller, and their 3-year-old son, Spencer. The shadows obscure his face as the sun dips behind the midwinter horizon. But there is now a smile in his voice, as he thinks back on his bandmates' reaction. "They basically said I was crazy -- they didn't accept my apology," he says. "That was nice. They were so focused on the music that they didn't hear it that way at all. To them, the lyric writer was just some person who could be me, or never was me, saying all these things." In a separate interview, Bennett -- who worked up the array of vintage keyboard textures that helped define the record -- says Tweedy began to understand the record only after it was finished. "I think he realized then that it was this beautiful thing, not the wallowing record he thought it was," he says. "It has dark lyrics, but the music we made is almost a counter to that. And that wasn't a product of some master plan, it was more a case of, `The studio is a really fun place, and we're making a beautiful building here.' We wanted to take pride in every floor we made. And we were having fun doing it." Listening to Bennett and Tweedy talk, one begins to appreciate the yin-yang relationship that has taken Wilco to the next level as a band, from a respected tradition-bound combo to an exhilarating adventurous one. Years ago, Tweedy, Coomer and Stirratt were in Uncle Tupelo, a band in which Tweedy and Jay Farrar were the primary songwriters. Tupelo's approach was purist in the extreme, with country-inflected songs stripped to their essence in the studio. Any sort of studio tinkering -- overdubs, extra instruments, weird sound experiments -- was viewed as a heinous, avoid-at-all-costs excess. When Farrar left to form his own band, Son Volt, the other three carried on as Wilco and released a 1995 debut album, "A.M.," that did * not stray far from Tupelo's traditional country-rock sound or unadorned production. Then Bennett joined the band, hired for his skill as a guitarist to flesh out the songs in concert. But when it came time to make Wilco's second album, Bennett's experience in the studio with pop- rock bands such as Titanic Love Affair began to assert itself. "I was a little intimidated by these guys at first," Bennett recalls. "They had already had a sound that people really liked. But they also wanted to make pop records -- `A.M.' was supposed to be
Mr. Earle Strikes Yet Again
* Making Hay in the Field of Bluegrass
* Country stars Ricky Skaggs and Steve Earle go back to their roots with
releases that are indicative of the folk genre's rising status.
MICHAEL McCALL* 02/28/99
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 / The Times Mirror Company
NASHVILLE -- In the fall of 1997, Ricky Skaggs placed himself at a
crossroads that changed the direction of his career and his music. As
* Atlantic Records prepared to issue Skaggs' next country music album, the
Kentucky-born singer and mandolinist asked the record company if he could
* simultaneously release an all-bluegrass album on an independent label.
*Skaggs thought the bluegrass album might help raise his profile. His
record sales had slipped significantly in the 1990s, and the onetime
million-seller no longer received any significant airplay on the singles
he released to country radio.
TD
He hoped the concurrent release of two albums might stir interest in
him. Atlantic Records agreed and allowed the move to be made. The result
* surprised everyone, from country music insiders to longtime bluegrass
enthusiasts.
"Life Is a Journey," Skaggs' country album, was released by Atlantic
* in September 1997 and barely sold 20,000 copies. Meanwhile, "Bluegrass
Rules!" was released a month later in a joint partnership between Skaggs
and the independent label Rounder Records. It sold more than 150,000
* copies and received the Grammy for best bluegrass album on Wednesday.
"I am unbelievably overjoyed at what's happened," Skaggs says,
beaming. Because of those sales figures, Skaggs has left Atlantic and has
* devoted himself to playing bluegrass music full time again.
*For the bluegrass community, Skaggs' success is just one high-profile
example of a growing interest in the traditional American musical genre,
which was founded in the 1940s when the late Bill Monroe formed his famed
* Bluegrass Boys band, which included Earl Scruggs on banjo and Lester
Flatt on guitar and vocals.
*With Skaggs now fully back in the bluegrass fold, he has joined
singer-fiddler Alison Krauss as one of the leading young proponents of
the genre. But if Skaggs and Krauss are the modern-day king and queen of
* bluegrass, the dominion they rule is bigger and healthier than it has
* been since the early 1960s, when bluegrass' popularity spread beyond the
* Southeast as part of the folk-music boom.
*Dan Hayes, executive director of the International Bluegrass Music
Assn., characterizes the late 1990s as "a particularly golden time in
* bluegrass music history," adding that there is more good talent playing
to larger audiences and selling more albums than at any time in recent
history.
*Besides Skaggs' recently released album "Ancient Tones," the bluegrass
community will be watching closely the reaction to two other
just-released collections: the Del McCoury Band's "The Family" (on
* Skaggs' Ceili Music label) and Steve Earle's collaboration with the
McCoury Band, "The Mountain" (on Earle's own E-Squared label).
Earle's album is certainly the most surprising and talked-about
* bluegrass entry since Skaggs' return to the fold a year and a half ago.
*"The Mountain" pairs Earle with the most awarded bluegrass group of
the '90s. The acoustic album features a drum-less band, built
* bluegrass-style around mandolin, fiddle, banjo, acoustic guitar and
stand-up bass. All the songs were written by Earle, who penned most of
them with the McCoury Band in mind.
In their way, the three high-profile albums by Skaggs, Earle and the
McCoury Band are decidedly distinct from one another. Skaggs and Kentucky
Thunder's "Ancient Tones" collection looks backward by largely drawing on
* mountain music classics originally performed by such bluegrass patriarchs
as the Stanley Brothers, Flatt Scruggs and Bill Monroe. Rather than
calling on nostalgia, though, Kentucky Thunder plays the songs with a
dynamic intensity that highlights the timelessness of the music.
On the other hand, Earle's "The Mountain" features original songs
written by the singer-songwriter, who further displays his mastery by
* both perfectly mimicking archetypal bluegrass tunes ("Carrie Brown") as
well as expanding the genre to take on new topics and influences ("Paddy
on the Beat"). By coincidence, both Skaggs and Earle wrote a new
instrumental with a reference in the title to Connemara, a scenic rural
area in western Ireland.
The Del McCoury Band straddles Skaggs' classicism and Earle's forward
* progress. By combining a stunning vocal workout on the classic bluegrass
gospel song "Get Down on Your Knees and Pray" with a bristling version of
the pop oldie "Nashville Cats" and stellar new songs, McCoury pays
respect to the past while casting an eye to the future.
*"Bluegrass has been a component of my music for as long as I've been
* making records," Earle
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Is It or Is It Not?
There has been some interesting dialogue on BGRASS-L about Steve Earle, the new CD, and what bluegrass 'is' and what bluegrass 'is not'. Some opinion would suggest that Mr. Earle's new CD is only bluegrass when he is not singing. What follows is a few clips from some of the BGRASS-L discourse that ends up with me posing some questions to you folks in the hope that a thread will be generated to explore this issue. Start Clip 1 Just got home with my new copy of the Earle/McCoury album "The Mountain" My first few passes through this CD left me disappointed. Even though I'm a big Earle fan, he sounds like a drunk. (In other words...he sounds like he always did, which works fine in country rock or whatever it is he does) He's trying too hard to be mr. downhome bluegrass man. It's ain't workin. He made an album of what he thought bluegrass fans would like. His lyrics are bluegrass cliches about the deep dark mine and the old swimmin' hole, etc. etc. Sort of reminds me of the old Hee Haw show--let's hit all the hillbilly hotbuttons. I like "I'm Still in Love with You" with Iris Dement. Dixieland sounds almost exactly like Zevon's "Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner" (sp?) Pilgrim just goes on forever. And forever. That said, the McCoury boys are just superb. They really are at the absolute top of their game. In fact...during every song I'd say to myself, "I wish Del would take lead..." Sigh. I'll keep listening to it just for their music...and I hope Mr. Earle enjoys his ride on the coattails of the McCourys End of Clip 1 Start of Clip 2 Re: the Steve Earle/Del McCoury project: it's SO strange to hear the McCoury boys without Del singing lead the way only he can! I listened to it, and kept waiting for Del to slip in like he does with other projects he guests on like Bill Harrell And Friends, but it just doesn't happen like it should. This is a good CD, but a letdown for deep, died in the wool Del fans like me. End of Clip 2 Start of Clip 3 For deep died in the wool Del Fans there's The Family and Mac Doc and Del. Del does do some singing on The Mountain. Why can't Steve Earle get some respect for recognizing bluegrass as a great music genre? End of Clip 3 Start of Clip 4 What amazes is me is the narrow frame that Bluegrass folks are supposed to operate in. When someone like Alison Kraus goes outside the 'box', she is chastised. When someone like Steve Earle tries to get in the 'box', he is chastised. BUT, whatever Del McCoury does is fine. The Nashville BG Band used the Fairfield Four and I heard criticism. John Fogarty used the Lonesome River Band and I heard praise. Ricky Skaggs comes back to Bluegrass and he is chastised but everyone LOVED the CD! End of Clip 4 Start of Clip 5 Isn't it also amazing that, after going through all these threads of chastizing, people still wonder why bluegrass hasn't grown to the degree of popularity that it deserves. In order for the popularity to grow, you must welcome new artists (and their fan base) in and you must use your existing artists and take the music to new audiances. It's a wonder that bluegrass continues to make gains. Bluegrass can't be defined. This music was never written down with instructions on how it had to be played and/or sung. Can you imagine Curly Ray wondering which fiddle notes had to be played with an upstroke bow and which with a downstroke when he learned to play bluegrass? Bluegrass comes in the form of the interpretation of the player. That is one thing that makes this music so great. The way the music comes out of the instrument or the voice reflects the deep feelings the musician has for that song (some have more than others). Of course, talent has a lot to do with it. The musicianship and the history associated with bluegrass has gained much respect over the past few years. I hope there are always plenty of open doors in this wall that seems to be surrounding the bluegrass village. End of Clip 5 Questions a) is Steve's new album bluegrass or does it matter at all? b) do you buy into the fact that the reason bluegrass isn't more popular and widespread is that there is a very narrowly held opinion of what bluegrass is and isn't and those that are most vocal about this issue cannot agree amongst themselves (i.e., there is no clear definition of the genre, yet people will go to great lengths to defend their perception of the genre - somewhat similar to the rhetoric and behaviour surrounding the abortion issue). c) did the McCoury's 'make' (participate in) a bluegrass album or a folk album or an alternative country album or all three? d) did Steve appear on a McCoury album or vice versa? e) does any of this matter a tinker's darn? I'd be interested in a thread on this - hope you folks would be too. Take care, Phil
Don minus Phil
SWEET DREAMS AT DON EVERLY'S COUNTRY INN YOU CAN CLOSE YOUR EYES AND DRIFT BACK IN BOB ALEXANDER * 02/14/99 The Tennessean (Copyright 1999) Column: GETAWAY Kentucky You are the dearest land outside of heaven to me. Kentucky I miss your laurel and your redbud trees. I know that my mother, dad and sweetheart are waiting for me Kentucky I will be coming soon. Kentucky, by Carl Davis Don Everly, the country-at-heart half of the legendary Everly Brothers recording duo, has pined in song for his native Kentucky since his uprooted childhood. *And now he finally has a little place of his own in the Bluegrass State. "For years I had been looking for a cabin near where I was born, and I found one with 55 rooms!" the singer says with a laugh, relaxing before a crackling fire at his Everly's Lake Malone Inn near Dunmor. "I believe as you get older, you begin to appreciate your roots," says Don, who at 62 is two years older than his brother, Phil, who lives in California. "It's wonderful to sit around like this and talk, and go for little walks. It really uplifts my heart and spirit." A living museum The lobby of the rustic lodge is filled with guitars, autographed * photos of Don's heroes and friends from both the country and rock 'n' roll sides of the music business. It also boasts gold records from Everly Brothers hits, including Bye Bye Love, Cathy's Clown, Bird Dog, Wake Up, Little Susie and All I Have to Do Is Dream. One corner is reserved for family snapshots of the young brothers enjoying carefree summer days long ago poignant times captured in the lyrics of their ballads. Except for a few years when the brothers both lived in California in the 1960s, Don has been based in Nashville, where he is active in * the country music community. But he considers the Bluegrass State his spiritual home. The Everly Brothers' earnest version of the old ballad Kentucky, from the duo's album Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, has opened their live concerts for decades. In April, the brothers returned to the stage of Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, where they performed as Grand Ole Opry members in the late 1950s. After an emotional introduction by their mentor and friend, Chet Atkins, they opened the historic show with a captivating medley of their Kentucky songs, including their hauntingly beautiful Green River. "I'm a sentimental guy, and that was a very emotional night for us," says Don. A piece of home His Kentucky inn is about 15 miles south of Central City near Lake Malone State Park, a popular recreational area. It was built in 1974 by oil magnate Ray Ryan, who wanted a private hunting lodge and getaway for himself and his Hollywood friends, including Dean Martin, William Holden and Frank Sinatra. But when Ryan couldn't get a permit to build an airplane landing strip near the lodge, he opened it to the public. Don and Phil Everly were paying guests at the inn for years. It served as the brothers' base camp during their annual Everly Brothers Homecoming concerts, held each Labor Day weekend since 1988 in nearby Central City. When the property came up for sale, Don says he jumped at the chance to own a piece of his beloved Kentucky. The inn's restaurant serves country portions of home-style chicken and fish dishes, and its Lake Malone Old Kentucky Favorite Breakfast comes with sugar-cured ham and red eye gravy. Don, whose culinary talents are well-known among his friends, says he would like to introduce some of his favorite recipes to the dinner menu. "There's not a plate of pasta in Nashville that's better than mine," he brags. Everly's Lake Malone Inn is just down the winding road from the coal-mining hamlet where Don was born, and where he and Phil spent summers with relatives after the family left Kentucky in pursuit of radio jobs. The brothers come from a performing family. Their parents, Ike and Margaret, were well-known throughout the Midwest as country singers and musicians. As soon as Don and Phil could hold guitars, they became part of the family's radio show. The Kentucky inn is about an hour north of Nashville, and two or three times a month Don and his wife, Adela, drive up to their retreat. He says he enjoys playing the role of country innkeeper, particularly talking with guests, signing autographs, posing for pictures and leading walks through the rolling countryside. Strictly country On Friday and Saturday nights, guests are entertained by Big Willard and the Silvertones.
Mr. Earle amd Ms. Willis
EARLE CLIMBS THAT MOUNTAIN * TALENTED ARTIST TURNS HIS ATTENTION TOWARDS BLUEGRASS BY FISH GRIWKOWSKY * 02/15/99 The Edmonton Sun (c) Copyright 1999 The Edmonton Sun. All Rights Reserved. * THE MOUNTAIN: Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band (ADA) -- If you bought El Corazon in '97, one of the tracks you'll probably recall is I * Still Carry You Around, Earle singing with a competent bluegrass band in tow. This is an album full of just that, the band being Del McCoury's. TD This is not Copperhead Road. Earle is a strange animal. A song such as More Than I Can Do from I Feel Alright, for example, showed just how happy he was to be out of prison, rocking down the house. Last album he spent more than a little time mourning the death of folk icon Townes Van Zandt. The result was great. Now he's taken the Marty Stuart approach and immersed himself in a musical project. * If you like bluegrass, which you should, this a fine collection. The usual all-star cast is there: Emmylou and Gillian Welch, along with Stuart and Sam Bush on the subdued last track, Pilgrim. The tone is varied and the playing competent. Though Earle works best in a kind of Springsteen mode, harmonicas and guitars fighting for * attention, his nasally voice suits bluegrass, especially when McCoury joins him in harmony a la Bill Monroe or Flatt and Scruggs. It's a good album, but at the same time it's not going to be for everybody. * Music's past is filled with wonderful genres, and bluegrass is one of them, certainly better than the dorky anthems that proliferate the radios of North America at the end of this century. Earle told me once that he was going to do a CD this year about the path music had taken since Jimmie Rodgers left the scene. Looks like he stopped in the Ozarks for a while. Good on him. (4) - - - WHAT I DESERVE: Kelly Willis (Ryko) -- Kelly Willis is one of the very few artists (Emmylou Harris, Junior Brown, Lyle Lovett) who can please ears on both sides of the country fence. Her lyrics are straightforward enough to please hot country sensibility and deep enough to deserve a "yup" from the y'alternative pumpkin patch. It ain't all empty and happy, but it ain't all painfully gritty and real either. So what we have here is a sort of white flag, a truce between two distinct and uncommunicative sides. Which mostly turns out well. Kelly Willis is also a singer, besides all this labelling, and her voice, though decent, can take some getting used to. She has a meandering style, one that never strays too far, so there is also a homogeny to What I Deserve that requires a second or third listen to pick up on the subtlety. But Cradle of Love really shows off her voice with a kind of sentimentality (without the cheese) that Karen Carpenter often hit. She sings mostly about relationships, ill and healthy, newborn and gone, which is what all good country is about. There's a track called Talk Like That that hits your heart in a very different way than the next song, Not Forgotten You, but this is Willis's skill and though her overall punch is a little soft, this is still a hell of a record for any laid-back occasion. (3 1/2)
Ms. Willis
Kelly Willis all grown up; A new album. Her own songs. john t. davis * 02/18/99 Austin American-Statesman (Copyright 1999) `My Gawd," said Kelly Willis' luncheon companion. "The last thing I'd think you wanted to look at is another plate of barbecue." It was a reasonable enough assumption. Shortly after Willis blew into town in 1987, her band, Kelly and the Fireballs, landed a regular gig on the outdoor stage at Green Mesquite BBQ, on the corner of Barton Springs and Lamar. Willis herself, then on the shy side of 20, virtually personified the phrase "a mere slip of a girl," but she was the possessor of a Kelly-and-a-half voice that yanked enough heads sideways to make a chiropractor about two-thirds rich. (That voice was -- and remains -- a wondrous instrument, warmly flavored with a Southern purr, and as richly burled as walnut paneling. When Willis sings, it is the aural equivalent of a cat curling up in your lap.) All the same, there are only so many nights a girl wants to come home after midnight smelling like an ambulatory brisket . . . One couldn't blame Willis if she regarded what Little Richard used to call "bobby-cue" with ambivalence. "Naw," she said on this February day, as she tucked into a bowl of jambalaya crowned with a glistening hunk of Elgin smoked sausage. "God, you can't live in Texas and not like barbecue." Speaking of the Green Mesquite days, she sounded as though she were analyzing another girl's performance: "I was so self-conscious and scared that I don't even remember what happened . Other people go, `Oh, remember when this happened?' And I go, `Oh yeah. . .' But I would never have remembered it on my own because all my memories are about just being terrified." A decade-and-change later, at the ripe old age of thirty-and-a- half, Willis remains as burdened by fears, doubts, second guesses and insecurities as anyone in her audience. But she has uncovered a liberating secret. Well, it's not a secret, exactly -- it's just something everyone has to discover for themselves. Namely, that freedom only comes from taking chances, not from avoiding them. Onstage, she said, "I used to joke that I wanted to tell everyone to stop looking at me, `I know I'm in the middle of the stage here, but I don't want you to look at me!' " But, she continued, "The more you perform and the more you actually are bad or mess up, you come to realize it's not the end of the world. You get more confident. You get better. You get used to whatever it was you were afraid of." A similar revelatory process informed the making of her fifth (including the limited-edition 1996 EP, "Fading Fast") and long- deferred album, "What I Deserve." Not only is it her debut effort for a new label, Rykodisc, "What I Deserve" also features six songs written or co-written by Willis. She has never been as well- represented as a writer on an album. The remainder of the disc is fleshed out by songs from the late English songwriter Nick Drake, Austin's Damon Bramblett, Paul Westerberg (formely of the Replacements), Gary Louris of the Jayhawks, veteran RB master Dan Penn and a pair of tunes from her spouse, Bruce Robison. Measuring the artistic distance between "What I Deserve" and her last full album, 1993's "Kelly Willis," she said, "I think it's just the natural growth that anyone would have over five years, especially coming out of your mid-20s, when you're just figuring out who you are. Mostly, I think it's just that I got more confident. There's a point of view and a focus to this album that's a lot different for me. I take a long time to write a song, and that's usually because it's about something real, and I want it to end up sounding real." "Sounding real" is especially important to Willis, whose career has sometimes resembled a series of Procrustean beds. Guided for years, for better or worse, by other musicians, managers and producers (most notably country hitmaker and MCA Nashville president Tony Brown), Willis often found herself being twisted and stretched like a piece of State Fair taffy. If it serves no other purpose, "What I Deserve" will stand as her declaration of independence. From Willis' point of view, the title track and "Talk Like That" (her first solo writing credit on record) are the most important . The songs could not be more different. "Talk Like That" is a reminiscence, inspired by a show she played * with bluegrass virtuoso Ricky Skaggs, that illuminates the power that voices have to conjure up a sense of place. "I can hear my father/And his Oklahoma
Del
* The Del McCoury Band - Inside story: Taking bluegrass to the masses DAN FINK * 02/19/99 York Magazine (Copyright 1999) It's a hectic time for Del McCoury these days. In the past year, he switched to Ricky Skaggs' Ceili Music record label, signed on with new management, and has not one but two records out. *His collaboration with country rocker Steve Earle will put McCoury on - hang onto your hat - "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." *Bluegrass music on hip, late-night TV? What's going on here? *York County's most famous picker and one of bluegrass music's most honored players was typically low-key. "I guess every music has its day," McCoury said in his folksy drawl. "I've been around it since the '40s. I was never a big promoter. I just like to play and make records." At age 60, he's playing and making records as well as ever. He * and his band have won a slew of International Bluegrass Music Association awards in the past decade. Now comes the collaboration with Earle. The two men met about four years ago, and McCoury and his band recorded a cut on Earle's * 1997 bluegrass-flavored "El Corazon" album. About a year ago, Earle * and McCoury talked about another bluegrass record, one that would pay tribute to the spirit of the legendary Bill Monroe. "He said he wanted me and the boys to work on it with him, so I said sure," McCoury said. "We never thought it would be so quick, though. A couple of months later, he came back to us with a bunch of songs, and we did 'em. He's fast. And I admire him, too. He's a great songwriter." The result is "The Mountain," the latest in a series of records from Earle to be heaped with critical praise. The record is due out this month and Earle and the Del McCoury Band will head out on a world tour at the end of March. First, though, come a few local appearances. Saturday, Del and * the boys will be at the Strand (minus Earle) to headline Bluegrass '99. Joining McCoury for two shows will be Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver and the Lewis Family. This weekend, PBS's "Sessions at West 54th" will feature a performance of Earle and the band taped in New York last October (see it at midnight Sunday on WITF-TV). Rolling Stone's America Online Country Web site described the show as an "inspiring summit * between the genre-busting Earle and the finest bluegrass ensemble in the world." Next month, the Earle-McCoury tour kicks off with four sold-out shows in Nashville starting March 3. They make a stop in Philadelphia at the Theater of Living Arts on March 16 and squeeze in the appearance with Conan O'Brien on the 19th. Then they'll be on the road through at least June. *Bill Knowlton, host of "Bluegrass Ramble," a weekly music program on public radio station WCNY-FM in Syracuse, N.Y., said McCoury and Skaggs are nudging the music into the mainstream. *"They are kickin' butt in bluegrass right now," Knowlton said. "Del is the one making records. He's the one making the personal * appearances. He's bringing bluegrass to newer audiences, and he's * doing it while keeping the traditional bluegrass sound." It's all a far cry from the little farmhouse McCoury grew up in near Glenville in southern York County. Del and his brothers, Jerry and G.C., all learned to play music, thanks to their parents, Grover Cleveland and Hazel. "My dad was a good singer, but my mother had the instrument talent," Jerry McCoury said. "She played guitar, piano and a pretty good harmonica. Still plays harmonica a little bit." G.C. taught Del to play guitar, and they played together in a quartet while Del was still in his teens. That was right around the time Monroe added the legendary * guitar-banjo combo of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs to his Bluegrass Boys band. That band - Monroe singing and playing mandolin, Flatt on guitar, Scruggs on five-string banjo, Chubby Wise on fiddle and Cedric Rainwater on bass - is generally credited with inventing the * bluegrass sound: several acoustic string instruments, with lots of bluesy harmonies, fast tempos and high-pitched vocals. *"People say that was kind of the classic bluegrass band," Del McCoury said. "They set the standard. That's what made me want to do music." After graduating from Spring Grove High School in 1956, McCoury * played in a couple of different bluegrass bands as a banjo player * before heading to Nashville to hook up with Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys in 1963. Two years later, with his wife Jean homesick for Pennsylvania, he came back to York County. Initially, he worked in a sawmill through
Another Bluegrass Definition
* Basically Bluegrass/ Bluegrass goes slightly out of bounds with Northern Lights Tanya Bell* 02/19/99 The Gazette (Copyright 1999) *Many bluegrass bands are happy to stick to the traditional style started by Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys in the 1940s. But Northern Lights wants to give the sound its own twist. "A lot of bands want to preserve that exact sound, but that's not what I want to do," says Lights mandolinist and vocalist Taylor Armerding. The band will perform tonight at the Black Rose Acoustic Society. "The core philosophy of the band has been to try not to be totally bound to what would be the traditional * boundaries of bluegrass, but not out of the genre," he says. The band blends jazz, rock 'n' roll and classical influences into their original music, but they also * stick to the three-part harmonies that bluegrass is known for. *Conventional bluegrass is a style of American country * music that combines elements of dance and religious * folk music. The vocal range is usually higher than * most country music, and bands usually consist of guitars, banjo, bass, fiddle and mandolin. Northern Lights doesn't stray far, because that would take away from what they originally fell in * love with: the honest, earthy quality of bluegrass. "The speed element is very hypnotic to me. It's very homespun and not processed in any way. It's very real. You have a sense of what it's about," says Armerding. "It's very happy-sounding music." Formed in 1975 in New England, Northern Lights has had quite a bit of turnover. Since their first album release in 1976, the band has taken on many forms. For a while it seemed as though they broke up and reformed about every two to four years. Some members would leave to take on "real jobs," while others simply moved away. Armerding is the only original member. Now the group is made up of Bill Henry on guitar and vocals, Chris Miles on bass and vocals, Mike Kropp on banjo, and Armerding. Occasionally Armerding's son, Jake, joins the group on fiddle when he's not tackling college courses. Miles joined in 1996 and the rest of the bunch has been playing together since 1991. And for a traveling band, these guys maintain some pretty demanding "real jobs." Armerding is a newspaper editor in Andover, Mass.; Henry does engineering and draft work for nuclear submarines; Kropp sells music equipment and Miles does music session work and teaches bass. But with all of the changes in band lineup plus the members' demanding work schedules, they still have managed to maintain their own sound. "Every person has taken (the music) to a place it would have gone," Armerding says. The band is putting the finishing touches on an album to be released this spring. It's the eighth Northern Lights album, the second recorded by the current lineup. The lyrical themes are heavily steeped in relationships and life in general. "We just write from our own experience or the human * experience. We sing about classic bluegrass themes, * like life on the road - if you're singing bluegrass, you're not flying in jets." They spend about 60 days on the road each year. The band also is choosing cover songs not from the traditional repertoire, including the Beatles' "If I Needed Someone." Despite the new types of music being thrust into * the limelight these days, Armerding says, bluegrass has maintained a stable place in the music world. *"(Bluegrass) has a very intense and loyal following. You find thousands of people at festivals, but it's never going to be an arena type of music. It's not growing with great rapidity, but it has a good, solid niche."
Back in Black
Man In Black looks back * 02/19/99 Belfast News Letter (Copyright 1999) *JOHNNY CASH - country music's Man in Black - lived on the wild side of life over a large part of his singing career, and his reputation as a drug addict and acknowledged 'Outlaw' is part of American folklore. The Cash personal recollections on amercurial lifestyle and thoughts on his more famous contemporaries are related in an autobiography to be published on March 1. BILLY KENNEDY reports JOHNNY CASH was part of the "Millionaire Quartet" who recorded on the Sun label in Memphis during the 1950s. The other three were up- and-coming rockabilly guys who were all the rage at the time - Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. The four, according to Johnny, got along well while appearing at shows but only once did they come together for a recording session. That was with Elvis seated at the piano leading the other three in * renditions of bluegrass and gospel standards. All had come from a Southern gospel background, but each had to some degree strayed off the righteous path. Presley in the 1950s, says Cash, was a highly sensitive young man. "He was easily hurt by the stories people told about him being on dope and so on. I myself couldn't understand why people wanted to say that back in the fifties because in those days Elvis was the last person on earth who needed dope. "He had such a high energy level that it seemed he never stopped - though maybe that's why they said he was on dope. Either way, he wasn't, or at least I never saw any evidence of it. I never saw him use any kind of drugs, or even alcohol; he was alwaysclear-headed around me, and very pleasant. "Elvis was such a good guy, and so talented and charismatic - he had it all - that some people couldn't handle it and reacted with jealousy. It's just human, I suppose, but it's sad." The Cash-Presley relationship was cordial, but not that tight. "I was older than he was, for one thing and married for another. I took the hint that when he closed his world around him. I didn't try to invade his privacy. I'm so glad I didn't because so many of his friends were embarrassed so badly when they wereturned away at Graceland. "In the 1960s and 1970s he and I chatted on the phone a couple of times and swapped notes now and again. If he was closing at the Las Vegas Hilton as I was getting ready to open, he'd wish me luck, but that was the extent of it," recalls Johnny. "The Elvis I knew was the Elvis of the 1950s. He was kind when I worked with him; a 19-year-old who loved cheeseburgers, girls and his mother, not necessarily in that order (it was more like his mother, then girls, then cheeseburgers!). "Personally I liked cheeseburgers and I had nothing against his mother, but the girls were the thing. He had so many girls after him that whenever he was working with us, there were always plenty left over. "As an entertainer Elvis was so good. Every show I did with him I never missed the chance to stand in the wings and watch. We all did, he was that charismatic." The late Carl Perkins, whose big hit was Blue Suede Shoes, was very special to Johnny Cash, very close. "We'd been raised on the same music, the same work, the same fundamentalist Christian religion; we were in tune with each other. Carl was countrified and country-fried from south-west Tennessee, while I was a country boy from Arkansas. "We shared a lot in the Christian values area. Neither of us was walking the line as Christians, but both of us clung to our beliefs. Carl had great faith and at his depths, when he was drunkest, what he'd talk about was God and guilt - the samesubjects I would bring up when I was in my worst shape. "Whenever Carl drank, he's get drunk, and he drank often. It seemed like the Perkins car couldn't keep enough whiskey in it. And when he was drunk he would cry. "But he was man of his word. If you asked him for help and he agreed, he'd be there without fail. If he borrowed money from you and told you he'd pay it back Monday, that's when you got it," said Johnny. Jerry Lee Lewis, a performer with a wild reputation, was, as Cash recalls, one who took things seriously. "He'd just left Bible College when he first go to Sun Records, so we all had to listen to a few sermons in the dressing room. Mostly they were about rock 'n' roll leading us and our audiences to sin and damnation, which Jerry Lee was convinced washappening to him every time he sang a song like 'Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On'. "I'm out here doing what God don't
Mr. Earle
* SOUND CHECK // Steve Earle turns to bluer pasture * 02/19/99 The Orange County Register REVIEW COUNTRY * Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band "The Mountain," E-Squared *If you're going to cross the country-folk-rock line and do your * first pure bluegrass album, it doesn't hurt to bring along one of * the top bluegrass bands in the business. *Steve Earle's music has always had shadings that pointed to this, though, so it's no surprise that his latest effort, "The * Mountain," with the Del McCoury Band, is top-shelf bluegrass. It's a record that stands as much on the strength of Earle's songwriting as the McCoury family's fine pickin' and grinnin'. The genesis of the disc came in 1995 when Earle was touring with the acoustic combo of Peter Rowan, Roy Huskey Jr. and Norman Blake in support of his album "Train a Comin." Bill Monroe, the Father of * Bluegrass, strolled on stage one night uninvited and sang several songs with the band. Earle called it "the biggest thrill of my life" and probably would have dedicated this record to Monroe if not for the death of Huskey two years ago from lung cancer. At any rate, this music is worthy of Monroe, and that's no shallow compliment. Earle's best songs have always been exquisite in their * simplicity, a prerequisite to respectable bluegrass, and that quality abounds here, perhaps most strikingly in the title song. "The Mountain," a tale of life in the coal-mining business, resonates with a mournful blend of defiant pride and resignation. And Earle displays a knack for tapping into the cheerful desperation that has always defined southern mountain music in songs such as "Yours Forever Blue," "Leroy's Dustbowl Blues," "Lonesome Highway Blues" and "Pilgrim." Throughout, the instrumental work of the McCourys is exceptional, particularly the lead banjo breaks of Rob McCoury and the intricate mandolin work from Ronnie McCoury. The brightest light of the effort is "I'm Still in Love With You," a bittersweet duet with Iris Dement, whose sweet, fragile vocals draw a clever, comfortable contrast with Earle's gruff tone. Tongue in cheek, Earle says in liner notes he made this album for "immortality. I wanted to write just one song that would be * performed by at least one band at every bluegrass festival in the world long after I have followed Mr. Bill (Monroe) out of this world. Well, we'll see." *Chances are better than good that the close-knit bluegrass community will embrace this album and Earle will get his wish. *You might enjoy if you like: Bluegrass music, previous Steve * Earle. By GENE HARBRECHT The Register
MP3
Spinner.com to Offer MP3 Downloads; Leading Internet Music Service Adds Digital Download Capability to Its 100 Plus Channel Player * 02/22/99 Business Wire (Copyright (c) 1999, Business Wire) BURLINGAME, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 22, 1999--Spinner.com, the first and largest Internet music service, announced today that it will expand its streaming audio service to let users download licensed MP3 or other digital song files, making Spinner.com the first Internet music site to offer a complete Internet music solution. Spinner.com's current site lets listeners hear its growing collection of 150,000 whole songs on 100 plus unique channels, get artist and CD information, rate songs and purchase CDs. TD "Spinner.com will be the first streaming music site to let listeners hear an extensive collection of whole songs, and download licensed songs at a click of a button," said Dave Samuel, CEO and founder of Spinner.com. "This preview before you buy option is the most compelling way for listeners to know what they want to buy before downloading." "Offering the most complete range of legal music listening and buying options on the Internet is good for listeners and good for record labels," added Samuel. "Spinner.com has strong and symbiotic relationships with the major and independent record labels, and we're working with them to ensure continued trust and support for our venture." Earlier this month, Spinner.com closed a $12 million round of financing, led by Sony Music Entertainment, Intel Corp. and Amerindo Investment Advisors, Inc. These investors joined existing investors Allen Co., Arts Alliance, IDG Ventures, and Phoenix Partners. Spinner.com will remain digital format agnostic, offering MP3 or another standard, dependent upon which format emerges as the industry standard. It expects to launch digital download service in 2Q99. About Spinner.com Spinner.com is the first and largest multi-channel Internet music service with a database of 150,000 digitized songs delivered over 100 plus highly specialized music channels. Covering an unprecedented depth and breadth of * music programming -- with channels such as 90's Rock, Bluegrass, British Invasion, Chicago Blues, Top Pop, Great Guitar, Jungle and Latin -- Spinner.com reaches 2.5 million listeners worldwide, broadcasting 1.5 million songs per day and delivering 31 million audio sessions per month. Based in Silicon Valley, Spinner.com combines the power of the Internet with advanced digital audio technology to raise entertainment to a new octave. The Spinner.com music players -- the Web-based Spinner and the stand-alone Internet application Spinner Plus -- display song information as music is played, while providing dynamic links that enable online purchasing and real-time listener feedback. New listeners can visit Spinner.com and download a free player at www.spinner.com.
For Twangfest
Having trouble breaking the ice? Nothing stimulates good conversation and eventual friendship like the unorthodox opening of a beer bottle. A book titled "99 Ways to Open a Beer Bottle Without a Bottle Opener," and hawked by the site of the same name, is your perfect-bound ticket to increased popularity. And because the author lists ten tried-and-true methods on the site, you don't even have to buy the book to begin your more fulfilling social life--although we sincerely hope nobody ever hands US a beer opened with a public toilet. http://www.inch.com/~brett/
Lloyd Maines
GUITARIST MAINES PROUD OF DIXIE CHICKS DAUGHTER * Jack Hurst * 02/12/99 Chicago Tribune (Copyright 1999 by the Chicago Tribune) A Dixie rooster is coming to town. Lloyd Maines, influential Texas record producer and father of Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines, will arrive in Chicagoland this week for three shows -- at Schuba's Feb. 17, The Hideout Feb. 19 and FitzGerald's in Berwyn Feb. 20 -- and recording sessions with the Chicago band Trigger Gospel. On the performance dates the elder Maines will work as half of a duo with rising 30-year-old Texas singer-songwriter Terri Hendrix. The Hideout show will be with Trigger Gospel, while at FitzGerald's they'll open for Dave Alvin. "Terri and I've been doing gigs together for nine or 10 months," reports Maines, who also periodically plays pedal steel behind not only the Chicks but Texas rock or folk notables Joe Ely, Jerry Jeff Walker and Robert Earl Keen. "Her music is real fresh, positive material, and it's a fun thing to play because it's mainly acoustic. I play dobro and acoustic guitar. I'm actually going to have my pedal steel in Chicago, because Trigger Gospel wants me to play steel on a couple of their songs, so I'll probably set my steel up with Terri, too. I'll be playing more dobro than steel, though." Maines, 47, has been involved in the recording of albums for a horde of important independent acts operating out of Texas. Besides those already mentioned, the names range from James McMurtry, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Wayne "The Train" Hancock to the Bad Livers, Bruce and Charlie Robison and the Maines Brothers. The day of this interview, he was heading to Oklahoma City from Austin to conduct music for the second play he has been connected with. He first heard Hendrix, he says, when an engineer working on Wayne Hancock's second album gave him a guitar-vocal demo tape. He liked her songs "from the git-go" because they struck him as true-to-life. Eventually he produced her first album, "Wilory Farm," on her own Tycoon Cowgirl Records in San Marcos. "She actually was offered a few small-label deals, (but) she opted just to raise the money herself," Maines says, adding that Hendrix found investors among "a pool of friends" and already has paid them off. "The record's been out since June, and she's sold a bunch of copies already and hasn't even left Texas." Chicago will be Hendrix's first venture out, and Maines is using his West Coast connections to get together a California tour as well. He already has assisted in the leasing of her album to Continental Records in The Netherlands. By contrast, he indicates that his efforts in behalf of daughter Natalie have been much less aggressive. "I try not to be a stage father at all," he says. "I can't stand that." But he did produce the demo tape on which charter Chicks Martie Seidel and Emily Erwin first heard Natalie sing. He also gave them the tape, but in a very offhand way. Having played steel on previous Chicks albums, he had had them out to his house for dinner several times his wife and their daughter, so the other Chicks had known Natalie for years. They just didn't know she sang. Even the world now knows that she evermore does. Lloyd's daughter's chops and cool supplied whatever was missing from the earlier Chicks. Their 1998-released first Monument Records album, which was their initial effort with Natalie, has sold nearly four million already. Her father does acknowledge that she brings the group a hot presence. "When the Lord was passing out sass," he says, "Natalie was at the head of the line."
George Jones and Bluegrass
IT'S A TRADITION * GOOD IS GOOD, BE IT BLUEGRASS OR COUNTRY MUSIC, SAY THE ORGANIZERS OF * THE SUNSHINE STATE BLUEGRASS AND TRADITIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL Steve Webb * 02/12/99 Sarasota Herald-Tribune (Copyright 1999) *For a country music fan, it is a dream of a festival bill: The greatest living country singer (and maybe the greatest all time) * headlining a bill that also includes some of the best bluegrass talent performing today. Does it really tarnish that dream in any way that George Jones - the Texan honky-tonker who began his career on the fringes of '50s rockabilly and went on to define the potential commercial country * would have during the '60s and '70s - is headlining a bluegrass festival? "I'll bet you that the crowd around the stage on Saturday night, when George is playing, will be the biggest of the weekend," said Jim McReynolds of Jim and Jesse, whose Virginia Boys are returning for one of the guitarist's favorite festivals of the year. McReynolds describes a festival last summer where Porter Wagoner * was on an otherwise exclusively bluegrass bill. "He drew a huge * crowd, and it wasn't non-bluegrass fans," McReynolds said. "People * who like bluegrass like good traditional country singers." For their parts, organizers Bill and Charlotte Pattie are billing * this year's event as the Sunshine Bluegrass and Traditional Country * Music Festival to alert people that, yes, it's that George Jones playing alongside the Lewis Family, Jim and Jesse, and the others. *"One thing we've figured out is that it is a traditional country * music audience in the first place," Pattie said by telephone from his * Punta Gorda home. "They go to a bluegrass festival because bluegrass is part of traditional country in ways that modern country isn't." The Patties organize the festival both as a business - it interupts their regular business too much not to - and to raise money, back-to-school clothes and canned goods for various charity groups. "We've collected enough food to feed 100,000 people and have helped to clothe 15,000 needy school children," Pattie said with as much pride as when he describes the talent that will be on stage. "You can't get any bigger than George, and in Mike Snyder, we've * got the top draw in bluegrass right now," Pattie said. "Who's * probably got the best rendition of tradional bluegrass right now is Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys, along with that super harmonica player they bring with them, Mike Stevens." *The joke goes that it takes three bluegrass fans to change a lightbulb - two to assidiously research that the new bulb is an exact replica of the one before it, and one to then screw the bulb in (actually, "rolling" it in; three-finger-style is preferred). *This kind of logic, that bluegrass is a very specific musical form that must be kept unpolluted from either modernism or the traditions that came before it, really doesn't have much to do with the view Pattie always has maintained about the form. *"I wrote an article several years ago called `Bluegrass: America's Music;' it said that we would recognize America's original music from when the pioneers went west, and the camps of both sides in the Civil * War as bluegrass - banjo, fiddle, guitar doing the same things with * the same chords," Pattie said. "Bluegrass marched along with America since America was here, but a fellow came along in the '40s named Bill Monroe, and did such great things with the music with his Blue * Grass Boys that people just started calling it `bluegrass.' But you see an old John Wayne movie and what do they play at the campfire? * Bluegrass." A second view is that the distillation actually created a new form - that Monroe and the other members of his 1945 - 48 quintet all found new roles for their individual instruments that resulted in as bold a progression from traditional string-band music as the concurrent bebop movement was from swing or traditional jazz. *Jones' career fits into the second version of bluegrass better than the first. Many of his records have referred to country that came before him. His earliest recordings on Starday in the mid-'50s were the most-overt Hank Williams imitations this side of Bocephus: Jones strains to capture Williams' rough-hewn moan on the two-step cheatin' song that was his debut, "Why Baby Why." A year later, he built his own "Just One More" from that quintessential waltz of pain, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." The people around him, particularly his earliest labels, saw more potential than he did in the nascient rockabilly movement of the early '50s. But his
Jim and Jesse
JIM AND JESSE: * DEFINING BLUEGRASS, DEFYING CONVENTION Steve Webb * 02/12/99 Sarasota Herald-Tribune (Copyright 1999) Jim McReynolds, who with brother Jesse McReynolds formed one of * the earliest groups to perfect the high lonesome sound of bluegrass playing and singing, has a message about the style that, for years, has been celebrated as mountain music's chamber music, an oasis of consistency amid the ebb and flow of commercial country: It was never that simple. "We were inspired by Bill Monroe," McReynolds said of Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys' earliest performances in 1947, "but we were also very aware that we didn't want to sound just like Bill Monroe. We looked for different things we could do, and if you fail - well, you fail as yourself rather than have everyone listening and going, `Well, they just tried to imitate Bill Monroe.' " That meant that Jesse McReynolds would develop a cross-picking mandolin style that owed more to Earl Scruggs' banjo technique than to Monroe's mandolin style. It meant that other instruments would join the mix in the recording studio. And it meant that Jim and Jesse paid attention to having a contemporary repertoire, both for studio and concert purposes. "We were trying to go after something to make us stand out," Jim * said. "Remember, this was before the festival circuit. Bluegrass * musicians were part of country music and the goal was to impress the promoters handling country shows. The first thing they'd hit you with is, `What do you have on the charts?"' So they included a tympani on "Thunder Road," steel guitar on their version of "Truck Drivin' Man," and built a repertoire of truck and train songs epitomized by "Diesel on My Tail." Most notoriously, they were among the first country artists and * definitely the first bluegrass artists to record songs by rock pioneer Chuck Berry. "From time to time, some of the critics would be pretty harsh on what we were doing, but it worked for us," McReynolds said. "Those Chuck Bery songs - everybody loved those things. We still get requests for them. They worked for us." As does the performance by harmonica player Mike Stevens with the Virginia Boys. McReynolds said even that is not without its critics. * "Some people think it isn't a bluegrass instrument," he noted. "A lot of people don't remember Curly Bradshaw, who played harmonica on the National Barn Dance in Chicago, toured with Monroe. They forget DeFord Bailey, one of the original members of the `Grand Ole Opry.' Roy (Acuff) took DeFord on the road." It's like this: Guitar, banjo, mandolin, bass - they are all picked and strummed. If a group is to have any sustained notes or chords in its sound, the choices include fiddle, steel guitar or possibly a dobro, or some kind of wind instrument such as a horn or harmonica. The usual solution is to use a fiddle, but it isn't always the solution Jim and Jesse have chosen. "We toured with a steel guitar for a while," Jim recalled. "We've had fiddle players. Sonny James played fiddle on our first record. We had just hired a boy and he had a scheduling conflict for the session - I don't know what the conflict could have been; there was only one studio in Nashville in 1952. So Ken Nelson (Capitol Record's country producer) brought in Sonny." This was a year before James' recording debut as a singer and four years before his huge hit, "Young Love." "He had talent, but he was really more a showman than a player," McReynolds continued. He tells the story, in part, to contrast then with now. "It's a wonderful scene today. I can remember some years back that if you'd lose a band member, you'd spend forever finding someone talented to take his place," said McReynolds, who will celebrate his 72nd birthday on Saturday. "The festival scene has meant that, today, there's all sorts of talent out there."
E-X-H-U-M-E
SOUTH TENNESSEE MAY EXHUME TAMMY WYNETTE'S BODY * 02/09/99 Orlando Sentinel (Copyright 1999 by The Orlando Sentinel) NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The Nashville-area medical examiner said Monday * he would consider exhuming the body of country music star Tammy Wynette for an autopsy almost a year after her doctor declared her dead from a blood clot. Davidson County Medical Examiner Bruce Levy said Wynette's three daughters and their lawyer "raised several issues" in requesting the autopsy and that he would make a decision in the next day or two. Levy said he spoke to Wynette's physician at the time, and considering Wynette's medical history, thought that a blood clot was "not an unreasonable diagnosis to make. But questions have been raised since then about the medications she may have been on."
Emmylou
Emmylou Harris carries on crusade against music categories BRIAN MCCOLLUM * 02/07/99 The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Copyright 1999) What's in a name or a music category? You can bet that an Emmylou Harris song filed under any of them would sound as sweet. Harris, keen song interpreter and bearer of that golden voice, certainly knows something about getting pigeonholed across the musical map. Three decades into a versatile career, she can recite the definitions by heart. "If it sells, it's country," she said laughing. "If it doesn't, it's folk." Harris inhabits a dusky stylistic world that has long tripped up critics, a place that's both rural and cosmopolitan, traditional and progressive. Her name turns up in annals of rock, pop, country and folk, as she maintains her lifelong crusade, as she says, to "fight against categories." Meanwhile, as her adopted home of Nashville has turned its sights over the last decade toward younger, pop-oriented acts, it's not surprising that she's seen her place on the country charts usurped. Like so many who have idealized American roots music, Harris understands that her yearning for a richer culture might be hopelessly romantic in the face of commercial demands. *"I always had a vision of country music that never realized itself," she said. "It's odd. I never really came from Nashville. I live here, but I was always just circling." She's quit listening to country radio "maybe I'm missing something," she said diplomatically and keeps her ears tuned now to a modest but limber local station that plays everything from Fats Domino to Patty Griffin. "There are obviously a lot of talented people out there, but they're struggling," she said. "But, you know, music good music is always going to survive. And ultimately history will be the judge of what we remember and what touches us. I feel like there's fantastic music being made now, and always has been." Harris says she felt right at home last summer when she played a string of dates on the Lilith Fair tour, the traveling contingent of female artists that became the year's biggest rock festival. She immediately became a fan of left-field rocker Liz Phair and groove band Luscious Jackson. "It's great to be around creative people, to see the variety of music that's out there," she said. "You don't get a chance, when you're an artist, to see as many people live as you'd like. You're always on the road." Last year was supposed to be Harris' break from work. As it turned out, she said, "it became a kind of running joke about Emmy's year off." Not long after Lilith came the release of "Spyboy," showcasing Harris' concert work with her top-notch backing band, the album's namesake. As much a career retrospective as a concert disc, it featured a rare live recording of her legendary "Boulder to Birmingham," a track from the 1975 debut album she recorded shortly after the death of mentor Gram Parsons. So now 1999 is the official year off; aside from occasional gigs, Harris is keeping herself at home to write songs. Already recorded and due out soon is "Trio II," with Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton. *She says she envies artists such as country rocker Steve Earle, who "spoils it for the rest of us" by effortlessly writing on the road. "You can't wait around for that muse. This is a job," she said with a laugh. "But you do have to give yourself the time. You have to cordon yourself off from distractions and force yourself to wait for the muse."
Clips
I notice there are a number of people posting clips to the list and that has caused me to sort of have a hard look at what I have been doing in that regard. I say that because if 'we' all post clips together than there is a chance of overwhelming the list with traffic that just gets 600 plus delete buttons working. I am going to post clips once a week from now on and that will be on Sunday PM as late as I can so they can be printed or saved and then read at leisure without taking the 'prime time' list hours (I may switch to Saturday, if that is a less busy time on the list). I would also encourage anybody on the list to contact me directly if you would like to see something posted or if you have a personal request - I'll try my best. I am also going to narrow my scope a bit to focus more on clips that relate more directly to themes and discussions that have been taking place on the list, freeing up room for the other 'clippers' for the more readily available articles of interest. A couple of unrelated points. I notice that talk of TwangFest is starting up again and as much as I'd love to make it, for the 3rd year in a row it is the same week that I am in Knoxville and that leaves me out again - although I was there briefly for the first one - left a note, don't ya know. Based on what I have read here, I am really looking forward to the new ones by Olney, Russell, Skaggs, Blue Highway, J.D. Crowe, Longview, Midnight Storm and although not mentioned here, Mr. Young. One last note - I joined the list to learn about alternative country and that has lead me straight to bluegrass - you go figure. Take care, Cecil's Cousin PS - that story I promised you about Cecil and me and alternative country could arrive at any time, then again .
Cowboy Poets
COWBOY POETS TIP THEIR HATS TO LIFE IN '90S Tom Knudson02/01/99 The Sacramento Bee (Copyright 1999) Outside, the temperature hovered around 5 degrees. Ice clung like iron to sidewalks. Clouds of automobile exhaust drifted across frozen streets and parking lots. But inside the Elko Convention Center, there was the sweet smell of sage after a summer rain. The atmosphere was warm with words, lightened by laughter and touched, now and then, by tears. The occasion was the Western Folklife Center's 15th annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering, an event more worldly and important than it sounds. Not only has the festival -- which ended Sunday -- drawn national and international attention (Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a famous Russian poet attended two years ago; Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Annie Proulx showed up last year), it has moved beyond its cowboy roots to celebrate the spirit and diversity of the West and its wide-open space -- and chart some of its future, too. This past week, some of the most widely known names in Western folk and ranch life passed through Elko. Monty Roberts, author of the best-selling book "The Man Who * Listens to Horses," was here. So, too, was Ian Tyson, the Canadian folk singer; William McDonald, a fifth-generation Arizona rancher known for his pioneering efforts to make ranching and conservation work together; Henry Real Bird from the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana; Sourdough Slim, the yodeling cowboy from Paradise; and many others. Equally impressive was the crowd that came to see them. Roughly 9,000 people from 40 states and five foreign countries crammed into Elko, filling casinos and motels, increasing Elko's population by more than 30 percent and spending $1 million a day. What they found was a rendezvous more about the reality of Western ranch life than the romance, part free verse and part ballad and rhyme. They heard from ranchers who work with conservationists and the government to protect open space. They listened to speakers who mourned the recent killing of 34 wild horses outside Reno, to ranchers who are learning to live with predators, and to cowboy poets who are moving beyond ridin' and ropin' to write about such things as apartheid, the Holocaust and American Indian injustice. The morning after hearing (Czeslaw) Milosz, I wept tears in the Holocaust Museum, one for each mildewed shoe heaped in a musky dark exhibit . . . Now, I must sing to you of the bugle-beaded, horse-tracks- on-buckskin Sioux moccasin, so tiny against the black mountains of shoes -- one baby's bootee found frozen in the snow at Wounded Knee. -- Paul Zarzyski, former rodeo rider, Great Falls, Mont. Hal Cannon, founding director of the gathering, said he is not surprised that cowboy poetry is becoming more cosmopolitan. Ranch life is changing, he said, and poetry is a mirror for that. "One of my cowboy friends from Recluse, Wyoming, feeds cows in the morning and designs Web sites on the Internet in the afternoon," he said. "Another is a contractor from Utah. He rode 300 miles on horseback to be here. "A lot of people don't want to be categorized just as cowboys and ranchers anymore," Cannon continued. "They live in the modern world, too. And they write what's in their experience, from something they might see on TV to the politics of the day. It's impossible in the 1990s to be isolated." One thing has remained constant -- the need for camaraderie, a strand that -- in the Western states -- reaches to the fur-trading rendezvous of the 19th century. "My first year in Elko I expected to find a cowboy Disneyland," said California rancher and poet John Dofflemyer. "Instead, I found real, feeling, sensitive people with hands-on experience who came from the same culture I did." "People are drawn here for one reason," said Rick Crowder, who goes by the stage name Sourdough Slim. "It's because they have a deep love of the West. They have a bond with the land. It's an emotional experience." So we consume the foothills -- dig and blast speed our erosion up to pay the bills and truck the last harvest to towns hungry for another new place to park. John Dofflemyer, Settling The San Joaquin All is not well on the land these days. Low beef prices, development pressure, endangered species conflicts and declining productivity of grasslands are among the problems that have led some to say that Western ranching is doomed.
Unforgettable
* NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The 1998 songs that country music will be ... JIM PATTERSON * 02/05/99 The Associated Press Political Service (Copyright 1999. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved) *NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The 1998 songs that country music will be remembered for are "This Kiss" by Faith Hill, "Holes in the Floor of Heaven" by Steve Wariner and "Don't Laugh at Me" by Mark Wills. That's the verdict of fans and industry voters who picked the nominees for the TNN Music City News Country Awards, which were announced Thursday. Those three records picked up nominations for best single, song and video. Hill led all nominees with seven including best female artist. Winners will be announced June 14 at the Nashville Arena, during a ceremony broadcast on The Nashville Network. "This is especially thrilling since it comes from all the fans," Hill said. "What can I say but ... `You go, fans!"' The nominees for the top category, Entertainer of the Year, were George Strait, Alan Jackson, Shania Twain, Garth Brooks and Neal McCoy. McCoy won it last year. "This Kiss" is an ebullient love song. "Don't Laugh at Me" and "Holes in the Floor of Heaven" are heart-tugging ballads. The first takes an emotional stand against mocking the homeless and other unfortunate people, while Wariner's song is about dealing with death. "I like the fact that it ... talks about loss," said Wariner. "And everybody has gone through it, and if they haven't, they're going to go through it. It's just an inevitable part of our lives. So I think it really struck a chord." Hill was also nominated for best album for "Faith" and best song and vocal collaboration for her duet with husband Tim McGraw, "Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me." Joining Hill in the best female vocalist category were Twain, Reba McEntire, Martina McBride and Trisha Yearwood. Brooks, Vince Gill, Jackson, McGraw and Strait were nominated for best male vocalist. Strait and Jackson trailed Hill with five nominations each. In addition to his nominations for best entertainer and male artist, Strait was nominated for his album "One Step at a Time" and his single "I Just Want to Dance With You," which was also nominated as best song. Jackson's hit "I'll Go on Loving You," notable because he speaks much of the lyrics instead of singing, was nominated for best single and video. It will go up against another mostly-spoken record in the video category, Toby Keith's "Getcha Some." Billy Ray Cyrus, who won five awards last year, didn't score any nominations. Another oddity was the nomination of The Wilkinsons in the Male Star of Tomorrow category, even though the trio includes a female lead singer, Amanda Wilkinson. TNN officials said they allowed the nomination because two of the three group members are male. Fans vote for the TNN Music City News Country Awards through ballots in the fan magazine Music City News and True Value Hardware stores, a sponsor of the show. They also vote via telephone and the Internet. Industry voters were added to the nominations process this year, * including country music radio stations, booking agents, music distribution executives and trade magazines. TNN officials wouldn't say how votes from the different factions are weighted, but Music City News editor Mike Jones wrote in the February issue of the fan magazine that "as always, this is a fan-voted awards show with Music City News readers' votes carrying more weight than any other segment of voting." In the same article, Jones said the magazine has "taken steps to see that there will be no block voting ..." Artists with aggressive fan clubs have reportedly tried to stuff the ballot box over the years. Brian Hughes of TNN said the change was made to get "a much broader account of fan's taste." "These are people who live and die every day based on the consumer * having an interest in country music," he said. "I don't think it compromises the fan aspect of this at all." The change only affected the nominations process. Voting for the winners will be by fans only, Hughes said.
Vital Rock of the 60's - you had to be there man!!
GETTING BACK IN TUNE: VITAL ROCK OF THE '60S TV SOUNDTRACK TRIES TO CAPTURE THE PERIOD, BUT FOR THE RECORD, HERE ARE THE ORIGINALS JIM FARBER * 02/03/99 New York Daily News (Copyright 1999 Daily News, L.P.) No decade produced music more integral to its soul than the '60s. Songs of that time provided the glue between the sex, drugs and politics of the day, giving them more social relevance than the tunes of any other decade in this century. In the time since, lots of albums have tried to sum up that dense and charged time, from the soundtracks to "The Big Chill" and "Forrest Gump" to the new one, which hits stores this week, for NBC's "The '60s" miniseries. The latest attempt corrals the usual suspects, from "The Weight" by The Band, to The Temptations' "My Girl," to James Brown's "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud." There's just one fresh track: a nice re-do of Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom," sung by the bard and Joan Osborne. Still, as '60s sets go, it's a pretty flimsy primer. For those who want something broader, here's some must-own work from that war-torn, tie-dye time, beginning with the holy trinity: 1) Bob Dylan: The single greatest writer and innovator of the era. Buy everything, especially "Bringing It All Back Home" "Highway 61" and "Blonde on Blonde." 2) The Beatles. Again, you must own everything, but stress "Rubber Soul," "Revolver," "Sgt. Pepper," "The Beatles" and "Abbey Road." 3) The Rolling Stones: Their peak's on "High Tide and Green Grass," "Through The Past Darkly," "Beggar's Banquet" and "Let It Bleed." 4) Motown: Stick with greatest hits by The Supremes, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, etc. 5) Jimi Hendrix: The era's great guitar innovator, evidenced on "Are You Experienced?," "Axis: Bold as Love" and "Electric Ladyland." 6) Cream: The trio who turned psychedelic rock into free jazz on "Disraeli Gears" and the double set "Wheels of Fire." 7) Neil Young: Era's darkest guitarist and quirkiest singer, best on "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere." 8) Jefferson Airplane: The peak of S.F. psychedelia. Buy "Surrealistic Pillow" for the songs. "Bless Its Pointed Little Head" for the jamming, and "Volunteers" for its defiance. 9) Janis Joplin: Rock's most passionate blues belter. Her "Cheap Thrills" offers anything but. 10) Santana: Latin fire combines with rock on self-titled '69 debut. 11) James Brown: The creator of funk; caught an early peak on 1963's "Live at The Apollo" 12) The Beach Boys: 1966's "Pet Sounds" remains the acme of Brian Wilson's nexus of emotional innocence and technical sophistication. 13) Led Zeppelin: Blues music encased in cement, creating heavy metal and so much more. Both "I" and "II" still sound new. 14) Van Morrison: He created Celtic soul on "Astral Weeks." 15) Aretha Franklin: The title "Lady Soul" says it all. *16) The Byrds: Gospel of folk-rock drives LPs like "Turn, Turn, Turn." 17) Sly and The Family Stone: The group that made funk go pop on LPs like "Stand." 18) Creedence Clearwater Revival: Voodoo blues as catchy as Top 40 on LPs like "Willie The Poorboys." 19) Fairport Convention: This group birthed British-traditional- * folk-rock on the indelible "Liege Lief." 20) MC5: The Detroit group set the blueprint for '70s punk on 1969's "Kick Out the Jams."
Jon Randall
Former Nash Rambler Randall starts a new `Morning' * 02/03/99 (c) Copyright 1999 BPI Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. BPI Entertainment News Wire Feature (600) By DEBORAH EVANS PRICE Billboard * NASHVILLE (BPI) -- Jon Randall is known as one of country music's most accomplished musicians, having earned a name as a member of Emmylou Harris' famed Nash Ramblers while barely in his 20s. With his Feb. 9 Asylum debut, "Cold Coffee Morning," Randall hopes to complete the move from sideman to center stage. "The hard part about this record was to make a record that was different than everything out there and still appeal to radio and the mass audience," says Randall. "That's not an easy marriage." A Dallas native, Randall began looking to create that perfect musical blend when he moved to Nashville after high school. At 20, he landed a gig with Harris, performing with her ensemble for nearly six years. His talents caught the attention of major record labels. In 1995, RCA released his album "What You Don't Know" and was preparing to release a second album when they decided to part company. "It was frustrating," Randall admits. "By the time we started on the second record, they wanted me to be something else." Randall says he withdrew after the RCA deal ended. "I just went into hiding and was writing songs," he says. He adds that his wife, artist Lorrie Morgan, "had a lot to do with reminding me why I loved music and that I really loved being in the studio. She lit another fire under me -- that coupled with the fact that Evelyn [Shriver] and Susan [Nadler] took over Asylum Records and said, `We love what you do. Come over here and make a record, and we'll leave you alone on the music side.' " To capture the sound he was looking for, Randall recorded live with a hand-picked group of musicians. "So much of the same is going on in Nashville, and I wanted to use some different players that aren't playing on all the other records," he says. "They are all incredibly talented musicians, but they're from different areas of the business. I booked them for the week, and we just went and played music." Co-produced with Jerry Taylor, the resulting album, "Cold Coffee Morning," features guitarist Kenny Vaughn, bassist Dave Pomeroy, keyboardist Steve Khan, drummer Brian Barnett, steel guitarists Al Perkins and Sonny Garrish, mandolinist Sam Bush, and fiddler Stuart Duncan. The project also includes guest appearances by Willie Nelson on "Reno Me" and a duet with Morgan on "Knowing You're There." Randall wrote or co-wrote five of the 11 songs on the album, including "I Can't Drive You From My Mind," penned with Rodney Crowell and Kevin Montgomery, and the title cut, which he co-wrote with Bill Anderson. He and Anderson also collaborated on the album's closing tune, "I Can't Find An Angel." "I've been writing for a while, and a couple of these songs are songs I've had for a while," he says. " `Cold Coffee Morning' is the most recent I've written." Randall says he learned about songs from working with Harris. "Emmy cuts really integrity-driven albums," he says, "and I learned a lot about picking a song for its depth and not just necessarily for its mass appeal. She picks songs for the lyrics and how they touch her. I've never heard Emmy go, `Oh, this song is a hit.' I've never heard her pick a song because it was a hit that could get played." Randall has chosen the songs that move him, and he's hoping audiences will respond likewise. "I just hope it touches people," he says. "I tried to produce it in such as way that it wasn't too slick. I want people to sit in their car and feel like I'm singing to them."
Steve Earle
PLUCKING AT HEARTSTRINGS * STEVE EARLE'S FINE BLUEGRASS JIM FARBER * 02/02/99 New York Daily News (Copyright 1999 Daily News, L.P.) *STEVE EARLE AND THE DEL McCOURY BAND "The Mountain" (E-Squared) *Steve Earle likes to rotate the records he makes, splitting them between folk songs, rock songs and country songs. For his latest * release he confined himself to bluegrass songs, channeling the spirit of genre genius Bill Monroe through melodies and lyrics of his own. *To back him up, Earle chose the four-piece bluegrass Del McCoury band, making energetic use of its prickly mandolins, scratchy violins and high-strung banjos. (The singer and band perform this material and more at Town Hall on March 20.) Earle has a natural affinity for these twangy sounds. He can mine the style of Kentucky mountain music without sounding like he's playing a character. The traditional tales of doomed coal miners, lonesome train riders and jealous murderers come naturally to a voice like his, which can capture any hard life. The music's pleasure provides a sweet contrast to the lyrics' pain there's such zest to the playing of a song like "Carrie Brown," you may not notice at first that it tells the tale of a guy who killed his lover in a jealous fit and now stands ready to hang. There's a special dignity to these songs. They speak of people with little money and few prospects, who never let such things spoil their capacity for joy. Somewhere, Bill Monroe must be grinning.
Internet Jock
THE INTERNET JOCK STATIONS AROUND THE WORLD CAN BUY FOUR-HOUR SHOWS; FROM THIS OREGON AIR TALENT - AND DOWNLOAD THEM FROM THE WEB Steve Woodward * 02/01/99 The Spokesman Review SPOKANE (Copyright 1999 Cowles Publishing Company) Bob Ancheta - The Big B.A. - is Bend's No. 1 radio disc jockey during weekday afternoon drive time. No mean feat, considering that Ancheta, geographically speaking, is nowhere near Bend. "I'm up skiing last week," Ancheta recalled recently in his Beaverton, Ore., home office/studio, "and I hear myself on the radio while sitting in the parking lot." Credit his mysterious double life to the magic of a Web site, MP3 audiotechnology, $5,000 worth of gear, a major-market radio voice and a 9-month-old business called The Internet Jock. "They can put me on from 12 midnight to 6, and I don't care -- because I'm not there," said the 37-year-old blues aficionado. Ancheta's 29-year radio career nearly hit dead air during the past three years, when he was fired, twice, by a Pennsylvania radio conglomerate that bought seven Portland-area stations. Determined to stay in radio, Ancheta and engineer friend Jack Edin hatched an idea that, according to a leading national researcher, is new to the radio industry. They would create customized, four-hour shows, complete with station breaks, announcements and current weather reports. Ancheta would prerecord the shows as digital files and upload them each day to a Web site. Clients would download them into their station automation systems, which would play Ancheta's voice and music at the proper, preprogrammed times. "We will make it sound like we're sitting at your control board in your city," Ancheta declares on the company's Web site (www.internetjock.com). No more live disc jockeys. No more big salaries. No long-distance phone calls or tapes to mess with. No more grumping about music playlists. *"It can be Bavarian folk music as far as I'm concerned," Ancheta said. "I can do it in my bathrobe." So far, only one station has become a believer: Rock 98.3, a.k.a. The Twins, in Bend. But it's a strong believer. The latest ratings place Ancheta's 3 to 7 p.m. show significantly ahead of the competition for adult listeners age 25 to 49. And the station's switchboard continues to light up as listeners call in with song requests for The Big B.A. All for only $500 a month. "It gives me unprecedented control over programming," said The Twins' program manager, Ron "Air Guitar" Alvarez, who also does a live morning drive-time show with Ancheta's former Portland on-air partner, KC Caldwell. Alvarez can drop in listener requests and his own preferred songs between Ancheta's recorded introductions. "It makes it affordable for us in a smaller market to hire big- market talent," he said. "The first day he was on the air, we got a ton of calls saying, `Hey, B.A.'s here.'" But B.A. was not "here." He was in a spare bedroom of his Beaverton split-level home while he recorded that and other shows. Surrounded by a collection of 1,400 CDs and dozens of celebrity photos, he spends a mere 20 minutes each weekday morning recording a show that runs four hours, including music. Ancheta said he needs only half a dozen daily client stations -- out of about 6,700 potential client stations -- to produce a comfortable income. That means he's not particularly worried about the competition that's almost certain to materialize. "A lot of radio groups are planning to do the same thing themselves," he said. "Word of mouth is what's going to make this work."
Bottle Rockets
Doolittle's Bottle Rockets spark interest on the road By DYLAN SIEGLER Billboard * 02/01/99 BPI Entertainment News Wire story (c) Copyright 1999 BPI Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. * NEW YORK (BPI) -- Country rock outfit the Bottle Rockets are living Willie Nelson's "On The Road Again." After a disenchanting trip down the major-label highway, they're insisting that the world keep turnin' their way -- and their way, of course, is on the road again. "We were sitting around for a long time, and we got cabin fever," says drummer Mark Ortmann. Front man Brian Henneman adds, "After some time off (we) . . . got back on the road. It was fun, just like the old days, four guys in a hotel room." The group was dropped by TAG/Atlantic after releasing its 1996 album, "24 Hours A Day," which has sold 16,000 units, according to SoundScan. The act recently hooked up with Austin, Texas-based Doolittle Records, which released the Rockets' "Leftovers" set in November. "Leftovers," according to the band, was intended to bridge the gap of more than two years between the last studio album and a new release planned for this spring on Doolittle. "We just wanted something out there in the meantime," says Ortmann. Henneman says that "24 Hours" was meant to be geared toward radio. He says some of the tracks recorded -- the "leftovers" -- didn't fit into that plan. "There was some great material from the last recording session that the band wanted to put out," says Jay Woods, vice president of sales and marketing at Doolittle. "So we decided to use it as a setup piece, competitively priced, and we've had great success getting it into the market and selling it through." "Leftovers," which carries a suggested list of $8.98, includes the humorous rockabilly ditty "Coffee Monkey," the dirt-kicking roadhouse number "Dinner Train To Dutchtown," and the classic "Get Down River," which is also featured on the Smithsonian Folkways collection "River Of Song: A Musical Journey Down The Mississippi." The band appears in the PBS series of the same name and played in the series' recent launch concert. "My Own Cadillac" is the Festus, Mo.-based band's homage to automobiles. "Cars are an American subject," chuckles Ortmann. "Even Chuck Berry did it." The Bottle Rockets' success so far is due in no small part to the loyal audiences they've earned on tour. "When you have a band that tours extensively, you can rely on that touring fan base," says Woods. Fans in Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Austin, Texas, have been especially receptive, he says. "These guys are not a shoegazing band; they're not tragically cool," Woods says. "When they play live, they leave nothing in the bag. Their fans recognize that." Terry Currier, owner of the Music Millennium store in Portland, Ore., says that although "Leftovers" was marketed toward the group's core fan base, "it's good enough that new fans could be picked up with it." The band is now in Springfield, Mo., recording the yet-untitled work with longtime producer Eric "Roscoe" Ambel, who also helmed the band's acclaimed 1994 set, "The Brooklyn Side," on East Side Digital. Describing the band's relationship with Ambel, Henneman says, "While I consider it a great take if we make it from the start of a song to the finish, Roscoe's the detail man. I'm impressed by that." "The new one is going to be a real rock album," adds guitarist Tom Parr. Songwriting duties are shared by Henneman and the band. "When we write songs, it's like everyone brings in their own tree, and we all decorate it," explains Henneman. The label intends to take it straight to rock radio. The Bottle Rockets will continue to tour, depending on the new album's release schedule, and they'll likely be hitting Europe in June. The life the Bottle Rockets love, they say, is makin' music with their friends. And they can't wait to get on the road again.
The Opry
HOW THE OPRY CAN RETURN TO ITS HEYDAY
JIM PATTERSON
* 01/30/99
The Plain Dealer Cleveland, OH
(Copyright (c) The Plain Dealer 1999)
"The Grand Ole Opry" is getting creaky with age.
America's longest continuously running radio program has changed
little in 73 years, and with attendance down, it's time for a reality
check.
For starters, the show might consider moving from the suburbs back
to its original home, the historic Ryman Auditorium in downtown
Nashville.
It also should be televised in its entirety on The Nashville
Network. And how about finding new talent outside normal channels,
or at least making sure the biggest stars do more than a cameo each
year?
"I think that unfortunately the tendency out there is for
everybody to embrace it when they need it," said Vince Gill, one of
the few big stars who performs often on the show. "As soon as
everybody's records stop flying up the charts, and nobody wants to
give them a zillion dollars to {perform}, then they'll go do the
Opry."
It wasn't always that way. For many years, the Opry was the place
for a country artist to be. Before videos and country-pop crossover
artists came along, the Opry could single-handedly fuel record sales
and up the earning power of its stars.
That is now a thing of the past. The Opry needs big stars like
Gill more than he needs it. And "Grand Ole Opry" cast members like
Clint Black and Garth Brooks rarely perform there, sometimes not even
meeting their obligation to show up four times a year.
Since its inception in November 1925, the show has been broadcast
every weekend on Nashville's 50,000-watt WSM-AM.
The Opry is where Porter Wagoner still struts in rhinestones,
where the great Connie Smith belts out tunes, and where the Melvin
Sloan Dancers square dance.
It's deliberately unsophisticated, using a barn as a stage
backdrop. One of the sponsors is a drink called "Jogging in a Jug."
It's a fun tradition that connects us to our parents and
grandparents.
It's worth preserving.
But change is needed.
"Grand Ole Opry" stalwarts like Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff have
died. Cast members who appear regularly, like Wagoner and Little
Jimmy Dickens, are aging.
To thrive rather than just survive, the Opry should take some
chances. Here are four suggestions:
Move back to downtown Nashville to the Ryman Auditorium, at least
part-time.
The 4,400-seat Grand Ole Opry House, home of the Opry since 1974,
is set in suburban north Nashville. That made sense as long as
downtown, and the Ryman, were in decay. But downtown Nashville has
been revitalized and the intimate 2,100-seat Ryman reopened in 1994
after renovation.
The Opry's well-received return visit to the Ryman on Jan. 15-16,
its first show there in 25 years, underscored the point: The Opry
would benefit from being back in the hustle-bustle of the city.
Despite such drawbacks as a shortage of dressing rooms and parking
spaces, the idea should be considered, said singer Lorrie Morgan,
whose late father, George Morgan, was an Opry star.
"I'd be all for it," Morgan said. "But I just know that my dad
and some of the other members ... were so happy about the new Opry
House. They were so proud that finally we were recognized as an
industry and we got a great building.
"I say switch back and forth, six months do it here, next six
months do it there, and see what happens."
Televise one of the two Saturday night shows in its entirety on
TNN.
TNN airs only an hour from the Saturday night show. Carrying the
whole show would give artists more exposure, increasing the Opry's
booking clout.
Yes, "The Grand Ole Opry" and TNN no longer are owned by the same
company (the Opry is owned by Gaylord Entertainment, which sold TNN
to CBS). But TNN is supposed to be the cable channel of record for
* country music fans, and the Opry should be its can't-miss show.
Mix it up musically.
Wouldn't it be great if "The Grand Ole Opry" became a musical
leader again?
It could happen by tapping the talent that's always bubbling under
* the country music mainstream. Buddy and Julie Miller, Iris DeMent,
R.B. Morris, Gillian Welch and Don Walser are all talents worthy of
the Opry.
Also, why not seek out noncountry artists who come through town?
A Bob Dylan or Yo-Yo Ma may very well appreciate the history of the
show enough to want to do it.
Require country stars to do their bit.
In the old days, the Opry had the muscle to insist its cast
members appear 26 weekends a year. Now it's down to four and some
What Country is Really All About
HEE HAW GETS THE HEAVE-HO AS COUNTRY ACTS LOSE THE GINGHAM FOR THE GUCCI Jeff Houck * 01/30/99 The Palm Beach Post (Copyright 1999) *No doubt about it. This was a seminal moment in country music history. Two weeks ago at the American Music Awards, the Dixie Chicks had just been named the favorite new country artist. That they won was not a surprise. The talented - and beautiful - trio of Natalie Maines and sisters Martie Seidel and Emily Erwin had earned the honor by selling 3 million copies of their critically acclaimed album Wide Open Spaces. They hiked up the hems of their satin and beaded designer gowns to climb the stage. Maines, the platinum-blond lead singer and the first to arrive at the podium, took charge of the microphone. Most artists who win awards thank their manager, record label or album producer. Maines went another direction. "We want to thank our makeup artists and hair stylists - because that's what it's all about!" "I was stunned when she said that," Renee Fowler says a few days after the awards show. Fowler is the Chicks' stylist, the one who helped mold them into one of Nashville's fashion trend setters. "I asked them afterward about it and they just said it was a fly- by-the-seat comment," she said. "But that's who they are, vivacious and full of spontaneity." The group's energy was something Fowler wanted to capture when she was asked to revamp their image. In mid-1997, the group signed with Sony's Monument records, and both artists and label wanted to ditch the Dale Evans look the group had worn for close to a decade. Greater competition among female singers and a more liberal mentality in Nashville called instead for higher hemlines, designer fashions, exposed belly buttons and racier lyrics. Compared to today's styles, the corn-pone, countrified heydays of Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn and Minnie Pearl seem like a century ago. Today's female country stars - with their empowering lyrics (Patty Loveless) and sexy stage acts (Shania Twain) - now appeal to a younger, wider audience. Toward that goal, the Chicks decided they needed a makeover. "They had a lot of pizazz when I first met them - Natalie is especially a little tiger," Fowler said. "You never know what's going to come out of her." So Fowler began selecting clothes that were colorful, vivacious and "fashion forward." Their long, flowing, California beach girl curls were cropped, bobbed, streaked and layered. Cowgirl skirts, fringe vests and cowboy boots gave way to short skirts, slinky tops, bell-bottoms and leather pants. "Their hairstyles are very now and obviously very `Chicks' " Fowler said. "They don't follow a trend. They do what they feel. And each one has a different style." Cutting-edge fashion designers were beckoned to dress them for this year's major events. Anna Sui designed their American Music Awards gowns. Todd Oldham's doing their outfits for the Grammys in February. Stage costumes are done by Cynthia Rowley and Betsey Johnson. Not every female country artist can afford designer clothes and an entourage of stylists, but the Chicks' success bought them a newer, younger look that the label was happy to pay for. "Natalie, Martie and Emily love to push the envelope, and they get away with it because they can carry it," Fowler said. "That's what's been so great: They trust me to do it." Why the change? Take a look at the country as a whole and see how it has morphed. The Deep South was much more isolated from the rest of the country in 1968 than it is in 1998. Back then, there was a much greater difference between Janis Joplin and Loretta Lynn than there is between Alanis Morissette and Shania Twain. Styles worn by Nashville stars tended to stay in Nashville. Today, with videos and full-time country cable channels, women from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore., can identify with music coming out of Tennessee. Proof of how far country has drifted from its Western and Southern styles is evident by those at the top of the charts. Shania Twain, wearing cropped tops and Spandex bottoms, tours with a band adorned in vinyl shirts and running pants. LeAnn Rimes, the 16-year-old phenomenon who moans about not being able to "go through one night without you," wears trendy slip dresses while covering Prince's Purple Rain on her latest album. Trisha Yearwood does Discover Card commercials in hip, baggy jeans and platform shoes. Mindy McCready's trademark is a bellybutton ring. Deana Carter performs barefoot, her blond hair long and hippie-style,
16 Reasons, All In A Line ....
* 16 REASONS TO BE EXCITED ABOUT COUNTRY MUSIC IN '99
Gordon Ely
* 01/24/99
Richmond Times-Dispatch
(Copyright 1999)
Even as perpetually paranoid business types search for the next
* big thing in country music with a do-or-die urgency, the fact is
commercial, hit-driven country is financially thriving, and
overflowing with more great artists, songs, producers and albums
than ever.
*The sounds run from pure, traditional country to rock and pop
revisionism, almost approaching the wonderful, wild diversity of
*'60s Top 40 music, when the strength of a song mattered more than
adherence to narrow dictates of style.
*Here are 16 terrific reasons to be excited about country music,
1999.
DEANA CARTER: The best of the best. Her two albums brim with
CB
soul-baring lyrics, delivered with the plaintiveness of
country, the so- phistication of pop, and a good rock wallop to
keep it kicking. Carter is perhaps the most important new artist
of the *'90s.
BROOKS DUNN: Finally released from the mindless, boot-
scootin' constraints of the waning country dance craze, this duo has
matured into one of country's landmark acts. The two still know how
to rock, but now there are equal doses of brains, breadth and - dare
I say it - brilliance to go with the boogie
THE WILKINSONS: This Canadian father, son and daughter are the
most unlikely looking candidates for stardom imaginable. But Dad
Steve (who looks more like the group's accountant than its leader) is
a terrific songsmith; a clever craftsman, commercial but never
cloying, and com-
CB
* fortable combining touches of folk, country and rock. And
daughter Amanda Wilkinson is destined to be one of country's greatest
singers. The most original act and album ("Nothing but Love") of the
decade.
THE DIXIE CHICKS: Take three women who were born to sing together.
Give them an album of strong songs, from irresistible, frivolous fun
* to blood-and-guts forthrightness. Add equal parts bluegrass, country
* and rock, and shake well. What you get is the Dixie Chicks, the
major success story of the late *'90s. Their debut album, "Wide Open
Spaces," is fresh as sea-breeze blowing through a stale, boarded-up
barroom.
SARA EVANS: A singer to hold her own with Patsy Cline and a writer
with the womanly wit of Loretta Lynn and hard-won wisdom of Kris
Kristofferson, Evans is as staggeringly gifted a talent as country
has ever produced. Her 1997 debut, "Three Chords and the Truth," was
shamefully ignored, but its follow-up and the title-song single, "No
Place That Far," are shaping up to be the hits a talent this
arresting demands.
COLLIN RAYE; TY HERNDON; MARK WILLS: These three acts have a lot
in
CB
common. None are songwriters, but each is a singularly gifted
singer and dead-on interpreter of some of the best songs the
Nashville writers' community can turn out. The productions are
polished but never plastic, and every note rings as true and tasty as
a homegrown tomato.
BILLY RAY CYRUS: Wipe that smug grin off your face and check out
Cyrus's new "Shot Full of Love." No longer carrying the baggage of
being a 15-minute-Elvis, Cyrus for the first time turns to the
best of country's writers, players and producers for collaboration.
The result is a high-energy, heartfelt foray into contemporary
country at its finest. Forget "Achy Breaky Heart." This is one of
the most astonishing revelations and reinventions of an artist I have
ever heard.
TRISHA YEARWOOD; MARTINA McBRIDE; PAM TILLIS: Few artists have
gone farther in redefining country to fit their own image, taste and
talent, with all the soul of country and the sensibilities of
precocious pop/rock progeny.
TIM McGRAW; ALAN JACKSON; PATTY LOVELESS: These are three of
traditional country's tallest torch-bearers. McGraw, in his youth,
obviously slipped in some Aerosmith with his George Jones, while
Jackson and Loveless never got any rockier than Merle Haggard, Johnny
Paycheck or Tammy Wynette. Never mind. I can think of no better
examples of just how wide and wonderful the tent that covers
* country music has grown.
GARTH BROOKS: Give the man his due. After he emerged victorious
from his much-publicized snit with his record label two years ago,
the "G- Man" uncorked "Sevens," the artistic triumph of his career,
and the 12-million-and-still-smoking "Double Live," a two-disc
* summary of just how Brooks almost single-handedly has made country
* the music of the masses.
Laurie Lewis
* BLUEGRASS STAR FOCUSES ON THE HERE AND NOW Jenifer Howk * 01/29/99 ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS (Copyright 1999) Laurie Lewis has a yodel that can bring the house down. "I do yodel on occasion," Lewis said from her Berkeley, Calif., home. "My dad keeps telling me I should do an all-yodeling album. That would really put me over the top." Most critics might argue that Lewis is headed over the top anyway. She has received a Grammy nomination and gushing reviews in * publications from the Boston Globe to Bluegrass Unlimited, and won * international recognition from the Bluegrass Music Association. And, to top it all off, she's headlining the Anchorage Folk Festival this weekend as a guest artist. Lewis was inspired as a teenager in the '60s by the Berkeley Folk Festivals and, in 15 years, has released 11 albums. She's just finished another, due in May on Rounder Records, that she says is * "definitely a straight-ahead bluegrass album." The spirit of a folk festival drawing from many different backgrounds appeals to Lewis. "I love that they're often such a mixture." Like the festivals she visits, Lewis' music is quite a mixture. A vocalist, guitarist and widely acclaimed fiddle player, Lewis is the first to admit her tunes aren't easy to describe, though she lists influences from the Beatles to Billie Holiday. "It's a real melting pot," she said. "It's acoustic roots music." Utah Phillips, a legendary singer-songwriter, said of Lewis: * "Whatever country music is supposed to be, she's at the center of it." Lewis has been to Alaska before, in 1979. And while she expects the cold weather to keep her mostly indoors, she said she's still looking forward to returning. "Alaska seems to have gotten further away since 1979," she said. Lewis was in a serious car accident in 1994 and, through her recovery, has embraced a new personal and musical philosophy. "I'm looking at the here and now more than anything else," she said. "I don't do a lot of planning. I try to stay in what's happening now." That philosophy is reflected in her recent music. A track from her 1998 album "Seeing Things" called "Kiss Me Before I Die" begins: "The Lord giveth and he taketh away/ I might not be around later today." Lewis speaks fondly of singing partner and mandolinist Tom Rozum and bassist Todd Phillips, both of whom share her happening-now take on life and will be appearing with her in Anchorage. "There's always a musical conversation going on with these guys," she said. "It's always fresh -- you never know what's going to happen. "I think it's unusual to find musicians who stay in the moment with music -- it should be that way all the time. It should be a given."
Lucinda
ROCK'S RADIO-UNFRIENDLY SUCCESS
WILLIAMS FLOUTS CONVENTION
By JIM BECKERMAN
* 01/29/99
The Record, Northern New Jersey
(Copyright 1999)
MUSIC PREVIEW
LUCINDA WILLIAMS: 8 tonight. Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place,
Manhattan. (212) 777-6800. Also performing: 8 p.m. Saturday. John
Harms Center, 30 N. Van Brunt St., Englewood. (201) 567-3600. Both
shows sold out.
Lucinda Williams just isn't able to sabotage herself.
Lord knows she's tried. She's argued with producers. She's
gotten herself dropped from labels. She's refused to make her songs
"radio-friendly." She's released albums six years apart.
A lot of good it did her.
Her latest album, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," won rave
reviews and appeared widely on 1998 year-end "10 Best" lists. Now
she's up for her second and third Grammy (best female rock
performance and best contemporary folk album).
"It's all in spite of myself," says the genre-stretching artist
* _ "alternative country" is the most used label _ who performs
sold-out shows this weekend at Irving Plaza and the John Harms
Center.
Though she's released only six records in her 20-year career,
Williams always had a large cult following, particularly among other
performers. (It was Mary-Chapin Carpenter's cover version of
"Passionate Kisses" that won Williams her first Grammy, for
songwriting, in 1992.)
Now the response to "Car Wheels," her first album since 1992's
"Sweet Old World," has upped the ante for this fiercely independent
singer-songwriter. Success at last, a final O. Henry twist to a
career that's been spent flouting the rules in the name of principle.
"That's what rocks my world, all those critics' lists," she says
from her home in Nashville, sounding more bemused than boastful.
"I love music critics, I do," she says. "Some of my best
friends are music critics. I think part of it is the writing part,
because I'm so used to being with writers."
Pain, longing, loss _ those are Williams' subjects, delivered
with the melancholy twang of a singer weaned on Robert Johnson and
Hank Williams, and written with the vivid economy of a poet.
Her father, in fact, is a poet _ Miller Williams _ and she
spent her youth in the company of writers like Charles Bukowski, John
Ciardi, and James Dickey.
From her father, she learned about words. From his migratory
existence, traveling from city to city as teaching jobs materialized,
she learned about the blues.
She also learned something else: how to question authority.
"It's in my blood," she says. "I was brought up that way. My
dad was that way, and his father was that way. My grandfather was a
conscientious objector in World War I, which was unheard of. That
was very brave back then."
At high school, in New Orleans, she was a rebel. Well, it was
the Sixties.
"I was suspended indefinitely, kicked out twice," she says.
"That would have been 1968, or '69. It was the height of the
anti-war movement. The first time I was kicked out, it was for
distributing SDS {Students for a Democratic Society} literature on
campus. I got sent to the office for that, and when I was in the
office I refused to say the pledge of allegiance."
She was suspended a second time after taking part in a civil
rights protest.
"In order to be reinstated in school, you had to go in, one at
a time, and agree never to be in another demonstration again for the
rest of the year," she says. "I never finished high school."
That same feisty independence followed her through her recording
career, beginning in 1979 on the Folkways label, and continuing
through stints on Rough Trade, RCA, and Chameleon records.
"It's a hard process. It's hard making a record," says
Williams, who, on two occasions, has scrapped completed albums and
started over. "When you've been in there a lot and gotten used to
the process more, you learn what's important and what's not. What's
worth worrying about."
When it's worth worrying about, she's immovable.
For instance, there was the RCA executive who wanted to remix
her songs _ push the bass and drums up and pull the vocals back _ to
make them more "radio friendly."
"He's jumping up and down in his Gucci shoes, and he says `Come
over and listen,' and I went and listened and I hated it," she
recalls. "He said, `Doesn't this sound great? It sounds like a real
record!' And I said, `No, I don't like it, I hate it.' They couldn't
do anything to change my mind. Nothing got on the radio."
The moral of the story: so what?
"It's not a
Gillian
Pop: Not so simple country folk Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are the country duo from hell. They write grim songs about mining and rape, and you can't line-dance to them. Andy Gill * 01/29/99 The Independent - London (Copyright 1999 Newspaper Publishing PLC) For a couple of years now, Gillian Welch has been on a quest. Her personal grail? To write the dumbest, most ignorant chorus possible. "I mean that in a good way," she adds, mysteriously. She finally called off her quest when she came up with the chorus to "Miner's Refrain", so dumb they named the song after it: "I'm down in a hole, I'm down in a hole, I'm down in a deep, dark hole", sung in due deep, dark tones. "It tickled me that it was so plain, almost stupidly simple," explains Gillian (the "G" is hard). "So then we set about writing the rest. It started out as a fairly legitimate mining song, until it was pointed out to me that I knew very little about mining." Welch's songwriting and performing partner, David Rawlings, didn't know much more about mining than she did, except for what he had learnt when travelling next to a gung-ho executive from Addington Resources, the strip-mining company. "We've got a machine that can slice the top right off a mountain," she had boasted, explaining how the tyres for this behemoth cost about a million dollars each. "Unbelievable stuff!" marvels Rawlings. "They're all driven by camera now, robotics - the guys don't even have to get in the machines." How on earth do you write a mining song when all the miners are machines? This is the type of problem that faces the contemporary neo-traditionalist country songwriter, a profession as much a prey to the grim vicissitudes of industrial style as those once employed in that industry, before the robots were brought in. Accordingly, the song turned into something even deeper and darker, Welch and Rawlings using the refrain to lament the deep, dark hole in every troubled man's soul. It's a neat solution, perfectly in accord with the songwriting tradition they espouse. *Rooted in the bluegrass sound of older country acts such as the Carter Family and the Stanley Brothers, the music that Welch and Rawlings make has a timeless, evocative quality that is hard to pin down. Certainly, you're never far from the thematic staples of sex, death, and God. The duo's 1996 debut, Revival, and last year's Hell Among the Yearlings are full of songs about bar girls and miners, drifters, still- houses and murders, and how sometimes the devil gets inside of you and makes you do the darnedest things. To the lay listener, this may sound traditional, though Welch is keen to stress the songs' contemporary nature. "There's a very strong appeal in the challenge of writing in an established, almost stereotypical form," she admits. "Can I write one and not have it be boring? Can I bring something new to it?" She can: "Caleb Meyer" is a murder ballad that is steeped in antique harmonies and pungent banjo tunings but, unlike most murder ballads, it's not the woman who dies here but the eponymous rapist, stabbed with a broken bottle by his intended victim. Welch denies any underlying agenda to this post- modern twist: "I didn't have any higher motive or anything." "But when that started to happen," adds the laconic Rawlings, "we both chuckled and went, `Oh, that's fine'." Welch's penchant for old-time music came as something of a surprise to her adoptive parents, a pair of showbiz songwriters who worked on The Carol Burnette Show. "I could always hear them in the back room, working," she recalls. "The kind of music they do is pretty different from what I do - musically, it's as if they found me in a basket on the doorstep. They don't really understand where my * love of bluegrass and old-time music came from. But they should, because they're the ones who enrolled me in a progressive, liberal school started by some old hippies. Every day we had music class, and they taught us Carter Family and Woody Guthrie tunes." Although she learnt to play many of those old songs back at school, it was only when Welch went to college and shared a house * with a country- music DJ that she heard the original artists performing them. "First off, it was their songs that influenced me, because that's how I learnt them. Later on, when I eventually heard the records, it became their sound. The Stanley Brothers were a huge influence on the sound I wanted to make, especially Ralph Stanley's singing - that's about as good as it gets for me." Welch and Rawlings met at Berklee College of Music
For Brad
SLACK-KEY PLAYERS BRINGING A BIT OF HAWAII TO TACOMA PAUL DE BARROS * 01/21/99 The Seattle Times (Copyright 1999) Last year, when Cyril Pahinui gave a workshop on Hawaiian slack-key guitar in Nashville, guitar guru Chet Atkins himself came up and asked what he was doing. " `Pops,' I said," Cyril recalled by phone from his home in Waimanolo, Hawaii, " `that's an open-C tuning.' " "An open C tuning?" replied Atkins. "What's that?" Now there isn't too much Chet Atkins doesn't know about guitars, so when he gets stumped, it's worth noticing. Hawaiians like Cyril - and his late father, the great Gabby Pahinui - have been fiddling with guitar tunings for over a hundred years now, developing personal styles that only recently have come to the attention of the rest of the world. The Hawaiian name for their music is Ki ho'alu, or slack-key, which refers to how the players loosen, or slacken, the strings of the instrument. If you've never heard slack-key, you should check it out. It's * a sweet, cleanly played folk music, featuring beautiful voices and quietly complex acoustic guitar sounds, a great antidote to the commercial hotel music relentlessly marketed as "Hawaiian." Pahinui and two other slack-key stars - George Kahumoku Jr., and the Reverend Dennis Kamakahi - will give an object lesson in just how beautiful their music is, at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at Tacoma's Rialto Theater. A discussion session at 6:30 p.m precedes the show. Pahinui, 48, has been playing slack-key since he started jamming with his father and friends at the age of 7. "I miss all that today," confessed Pahinui. "My father would say to one of us, `OK, brudda, take a solo!' It took some courage, but you played what you could play, and it was all right." There was a time when slack-key players guarded their tunings like family recipes. Today, they share more readily. Still, there is a limit to how much they'll tell you. "I can show you the tunings," says Cyril, notorious for his sophisticated, jazz-like chords, "but I won't tell you how to play." Can't other players just study his hands? "They don't have no chance to study," he answers cannily, "because they got to keep their mind on what they're playing, or I throw them off!" Pahinui records for Dancing Cat, a slack-key specialty label started in 1994 by New Age pianist George Winston. The company has sold more than 300,000 albums, and moved slack-key out of small clubs and into concert halls. This tour hits 18 U.S. cities, from Tacoma to New York. In spite of the fact that he has played Carnegie Hall, Pahinui still has a nine-to-five job, like most folk musicians. By day, he is a diesel-fuel truck driver for the city of Honolulu. He made his first slack-key album in 1966; his debut album for Dancing Cat, "6 12 String Slack Key," won a Hoku award, a sort of Hawaiian Grammy. His 1998 recording, "Night Moon," showcases his upbeat, aggressive style, particularly on 12-string guitar, which he can make sound like a whole band. His warm, hoarse baritone can be rousing on upbeat numbers, or high, gentle and sentimental on ballads. For tomorrow's show, Pahinui and fellow Dancing Cat artists Kahumoku and Kamakahi each play a solo set, then join for a jam. George sings pastoral songs in a high, nostalgic tenor. Kamakahi took over the slack-key spot held by Gabby Pahinui in a group called The Sons of Hawaii and has become one of the music's most important composers. Tacoma hula dancers Healani Kekela and Kanoelani Gliza will interpret some of the songs.
Review
this week's pop cd releases: H Indispensable Excellent HHH Good HH Mediocre H Appalling * 01/22/99 The Guardian Copyright (C) 1999 The Guardian; Source: World Reporter (TM) New Highway Return To Viva Americana * (Boka Discs) If you want country music these days you have to go looking for it with backpack and machete. . . or you could have it delivered to your door by the New Highway folks, who have compiled another treasurable compilation of American music. The 16 artists here include classics like Billy Swan, nearly-Nashville types like Tammy Rogers, a British expat in Chicago (Jon 'Mekons' Langford), some Irishmen and numerous American misfits. Slobberbone play arresting 'country grunge', Missouri's Nadine are both bluesy and soulful, and Canada's Neko Case could well be one of the voices of the millennium. It's the antidote to Garth.
Writhe and Fall
'Careless Love': The Writhe and Fall of Elvis Richard Harrington * 01/24/99 The Washington Post Copyright 1999, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved What started for Peter Guralnick as liner notes for the 1987 CD reissue of "The Complete Sun Sessions" has ended 12 years later with the publication of "Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley." The new book, the second volume of Guralnick's massive biography, is a sobering follow-up to his 1994 critically acclaimed "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley." Like its predecessor, "Careless Love" is assiduously researched, meticulously assembled and beautifully written, equal parts Shakespearean tragedy and psychological mystery. The book delineates the decline and fall of an American icon with musical, social and psychological details that will appeal to both Presley die-hards and doubters. Guralnick says he never intended to write two books totaling more than 1,300 pages. But the more he investigated the parameters of Presley's life, the more apparent it became that the story was best told as a two-act drama in which an initial arc of triumph and invention gives way to musical diminution and social dissolution. According to Guralnick, those two distinct acts were separated by a curtain that fell in 1958, when Presley's beloved mother, Gladys, died, and he went into the Army for two years. It's at that crucial junction that "Last Train to Memphis" ends and "Careless Love" begins. "If you look at Elvis before he goes into the Army, he has a true belief in himself," Guralnick suggested on a recent book-signing stopover in Washington. "Things are falling into place in the way that they were meant to, in some mystical way, and then two things happen to really challenge that belief. One is Gladys dies, which is traumatic far beyond her being the person he was closest to in his lifetime. It challenges his belief in the justice of the universe. Elvis genuinely felt that all of his success was for a purpose and if his mother is taken away from him at the moment of his greatest success, what does that say about the purpose of his life?" At the same time, Guralnick adds, the poor boy born in a shotgun shack in Tupelo, Miss., a cherished only child who spent hardly a night away from home until he started making records, suddenly finds himself alone, in the Army and overseas. "He's thrown into a world where he's in the company of strangers," Guralnick explains. "He recognizes that these strangers are waiting to see him fail, and is desperate to prove them wrong, desperate to prove himself. I believe at this point he creates the persona of Elvis and he's stuck with it." It's during his two-year stint with the 32nd Tank Battalion in Bremerhaven, Germany, that Presley begins to isolate himself within the nexus of family and friends that eventually came to be known as the Memphis Mafia. It's also in the Army that he is introduced to amphetamines--by a sergeant while on maneuvers. Guralnick notes that the pills left Presley "so full of energy he never had to slow down," but they also set the stage for a tragic finale in which an increasingly lazy, passive Presley succumbs to nightmares about being poor, alone and deserted. He numbs his paranoia and self-hatred with women, food and the drugs that finally left him dead on the floor of his Graceland bathroom, "his gold pajama bottoms down around his ankles, his face buried in a pool of vomit on the thick shag carpet." No fall from a throne was ever so dramatic, and Guralnick clearly feels that the story of Presley's failure is ultimately as worthy of exploration as the story of his success. The man who transformed popular culture was ultimately unable to transform himself, and according to Guralnick, "there is no sadder story." What's remarkable is how compassionately Guralnick tells it, with a depth and wealth of material that illuminate the complexity of that story. And as well known as the elements of that story are, Guralnick manages to maintain dramatic tension. "I wanted to establish a condition of suspense about what's going to happen next," Guralnick explains. "Not in the sense that we could ever forget or obliterate our knowledge of what was to come, but in the same sense that when you watch a movie that you love a second or third time, you're so caught up in the action that not only do you set aside what you know, you also hope that it's not going to happen." Guralnick's meticulously documented work aims not only to examine the complexities of Presley's life but also to reclaim his
Bluegrass Sees Lift
* Bluegrass sees lift in 3 albums -- Earle, Skaggs, McCoury By JIM BESSMAN Billboard * 01/18/99 BPI Entertainment News Wire story (c) Copyright 1999 BPI Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. NEW YORK (BPI) -- With the possible exception of Alison Krauss, the * "high lonesome" bluegrass genre has remained lonely indeed -- at least in the mainstream music marketplace. * But three high-profile bluegrass releases due this quarter are raising * hopes that the jazzy, old-time acoustic folk music, which is rooted in the Kentucky hills of the '30s, is on the verge of major visibility. The albums are Ricky Skaggs' "Ancient Tones," which Skaggs Family Records (SFR) releases Jan. 26; the Del McCoury Band's "The Family," out * Feb. 9 on Skaggs' new label, Ceili Music; and Steve Earle's "The Mountain," due Feb. 23 on his E-Squared Records. * Country rock renegade Earle -- a major McCoury fan -- used the McCoury Band as the backup on his new disc and will also tour with it, beginning with a Nashville showcase in March. * "To me, bluegrass is stronger than ever since I started in the late '50s," says McCoury, who played in the late pioneer Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in the early '60s and is seen by many as the genre's current standard-bearer. "I've seen it go to a certain level and drop back and depend on those [core] fans for several years and then get new fans again, but it's grown so much in the last five years, with the IBMA [International * Bluegrass Music Assn.] and its award show established, radio play getting better than it was, and so many young people coming into the music as listeners and players," McCoury adds. * Skaggs cut his teeth in bluegrass with the legendary Ralph Stanley's Clinch Mountain Boys in the early '70s, before evolving his sound into major country success in the '80s. He seconds McCoury's assessment of * the state of bluegrass music. "I'm seeing a real change in the wind, and what's blowing is a more traditional, rootsy, gutsy sound," says Skaggs, whose 1997 album * "Bluegrass Rules!," his first full-fledged bluegrass set in 12 years, foreshadowed the current commotion. It also has just been nominated for * a Grammy Award as best bluegrass album. "Maybe it happens every 10 or 15 years, but when I first came to Nashville in '80 and '81, there was a real desire for that old sound to * come back into country music, and I think it's still there today," Skaggs adds. "People like Steve Wariner and Clint Black and Joe Diffie have come up to me and said, `Man, I love what you're doing, and it's exactly what you're supposed to be doing -- carrying on the tradition and sound and kicking it up a notch and taking it to the next millennium.' " * Peter Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited and a former chairman * of the IBMA board of directors, senses a bluegrass buzz from roots radio stations, combined with a "general disinterest in what's coming out of the country market." He also notes the amazing achievement of Stanley, whose "Clinch Mountain Country" album, featuring such mainstream country guests as Vince Gill and Patty Loveless, earned him Amazon.com's country artist of * the year honors and also is up for the best bluegrass album Grammy this year. "All those country acts being on Ralph's record shows where their * hearts are," says Kuykendall. "Also Lyle Lovett had [bluegrass stars] Mike Auldridge and Victor Krauss and Sam Bush out on the road with him a * lot last season, and Alison was on `The Prince Of Egypt' [country music soundtrack] and the national TV show [promoting the movie], so a lot of * the underground [bluegrass] stuff is starting to see the broader world." * Echoing Kuykendall is Doug Tuchman, for 27 years a key bluegrass radio DJ and concert promoter in the New York area. He says that the music is more popular now than at any time in his recollection, and he also points to the eagerness with which so many top country artists flocked to the Stanley project. "It reflects their willingness to show the public how much they * genuinely like bluegrass and gives the music credibility," says Tuchman. "But I also think that few modern country acts are really selling and that much of their new audience has little understanding of the music and is therefore transitory, whereas the traditional end of the music has maintained a solid core and built steadily upon it." Stanley's "Clinch Mountain Country," on Rebel Records, has become the * best-selling album in the small bluegrass label's 38-year history, according to marketing and public relations director Greg McGraw. * Bluegrass, he believes, "fills the need
Ray Price
Ray Price * Country music singer Ray Price. He was a close friend and protege of Hank Williams. Price's hits include "Talk to Your Heart," "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes," "I'll be There," "Crazy Arms," "For the Good Times," and more. In 1996 he was inducted into the * Country Music Hall of Fame. His latest album "Ray Price: The Other Woman." Terry Gross, Washington, DC * 01/19/99 Fresh Air FEATURE (c) Copyright Federal Document Clearing House. All Rights Reserved. TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. * When Ray Price was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996 he was described by Kris Kristofferson as a living link from Hank * Williams to the country music of today. Price was Hank Williams' protege and roommate in the early '50s after Price moved to Nashville. Soon after, Price helped give several country performers their starts. Early in their careers; Willie Nelson, Roger Miller, Johnny Paycheck, and Johnny Bush played in Price's band The Cherokee Cowboys. Price was born in Cherokee County Texas in 1926. His country hits have included "Crazy Arms," "Release Me," "Heartaches by the Number," and "For the Good Times." In a "Washington Post" review of a concert last year, Price was praised for singing ballads with a quiet soulfulness that now sounds refreshingly old fashioned. You can hear that for yourself on his forthcoming CD. From it, this is "Rambling Rose." * (BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- COUNTRY MUSIC SINGER RAY PRICE PERFORMING "RAMBLING ROSE") Rambling rose Rambling rose Why you ramble No one knows Wild and wind blown That's how you've grown Who can cling to A rambling rose Ramble on Ramble on When you're rambling Days are gone Who will love you With a love true When you're rambling Days are gone Rambling rose GROSS: That's Ray Price from his new CD. Ray Price, welcome to FRESH AIR. I'm really anxious to hear why you decided to record "Rambling Rose," and I'll preface my question by saying that, you know, I know Nat King Cole's recording. And although I love Nat Cole, that's one recording I never loved. Yet I really love the way you do the song. So, what did you hear in the song? * RAY PRICE, COUNTRY MUSIC SINGER: Well, it's just a great song really. It's kind of like a young girl that might be heading in the wrong direction, I think. And that's the way I look at it. I'm trying to make it sound as real as I can. GROSS: Mmm-hmm. Let's talk a little bit about your past. I know you grew up in Texas. Where did you grow up, and what was that community like? PRICE: Well, I was -- I came from northeast Texas, which was then Wood County and Upshire County. It's a rural area, and my family -- we're all farmers on both sides. And then my mother and dad moved to Dallas, and of course I went to Dallas with them. And I was raised in Dallas -- went to college in Arlington, Texas. But I'm back in east Texas now, living. So it's a pretty part of the state. GROSS: One of the people who helped you a lot early in your career was Hank Williams, the great country singer. How did you meet him? PRICE: Well, the music publisher in Nashville who got me a contract with Columbia Records, got me on one of Hank's radio shows. Every Friday night in Nashville they would -- if the stars were in town they would be on their own radio shows at WSM in Nashville. And I was a guest of the music publisher -- Troy Martin had gotten me a spot on his show. And we became real close friends, and he got me on the Grand Ol' Opry. And he and his wife were getting divorced... GROSS: ...Hank Williams got you on the Grand Ol' Opry. PRICE: Yes. GROSS: Uh-huh. PRICE: Then we lived together. We had a house there in Nashville, and I would stay -- I had the upstairs. He had the house for about a year and then of course he passed away. GROSS: You're saying that you started living together after he and his wife separated? PRICE: Oh, yeah. He had to have somebody. He had a problem with alcohol, and we were real close. I had to take care of him. Everything was fine. GROSS: What would you do for him? PRICE: Oh, just whatever needed to be done. I might go to the store and things like that. GROSS: Would you try to keep him from alcohol or keep him comfortable with it? PRICE: Yeah, you just don't -- oh, no, I wouldn't give him anything. No way. But, you know, like any of your friends if they got into it too far you would try to help them if
Whisperin' Bill
By JIM PATTERSON Associated Press Writer * 01/20/99 AP Online Entertainment Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - When Bill Anderson was asked to make his first album in eight years, he thought it was a joke. "I'm like, `Yeah, sure - where's the punch line?"' Anderson said. During a career that started 42 years ago and produced seven No. 1 hits, the 61-year-old Anderson learned how fast one can fall out of fashion. He'll never forget the day in the mid-1980s when he excitedly pitched a new song to a publisher. "I said, `I think I've got a smash hit for a girl!' Without even listening to it, he looked up at me and said, `Who do you want me to play it for, Kitty Wells?"' Anderson recalled. (Wells, born in 1919, had her heyday in the 1950s and 1960s.) "And everybody in the room laughed." Anderson said. "I carried that hurt with me for a while." While he continued performing, Anderson accepted the harsh * assessment: He was out-of-touch with the younger generation of country * music fans. "Looking back on it now I kind of tucked my tail between my legs and went and sat in the corner and pouted for about 10 years," he said during a recent backstage interview at the Grand Ole Opry House. So he had reason to be cautious last year when his friend, country singer Steve Wariner, approached him on behalf of Jim Ed Norman, who runs Warner Bros. Records in Nashville. Now he's clearly tickled to have a new album, "Fine Wine," to promote. The former Georgia sportswriter and disc jockey broke into the music business in 1957 when he recorded his song "City Lights" for a small Texas record company. Nashville star Ray Price heard the song, recorded it, and took it to No. 1. Anderson soon scored a recording deal with Decca. He got the nickname "Whisperin' Bill" for his relaxed, conversational vocal style, which was born of necessity - his airy tenor is short on range and power. But he was a strong songwriter and natural entertainer, writing smashes like "Still" and "Mama Sang a Song" for himself, as well as hits for Connie Smith, Lefty Frizzell, Roger Miller and others. By the time his string of hits ran out in 1982 with "Make Mine Night Time," he'd had 37 Top 10 records. "My last contract was up, and they (MCA, which had acquired Decca) * didn't renew it," Anderson said. "I could feel country music changing. * Country music in the early- and mid-1980s, if you remember, had a decidedly pop feel to it." He continued to perform his old hits on the Grand Ole Opry radio show and on tour. He hosted the game show "Fandango" on The Nashville Network from 1983 to '89 and now hosts "Backstage at the Opry" each Saturday night on TNN. Then Wariner took Anderson's 1960 hit "The Tips of My Fingers" to No. 3 in 1992. "The first time I heard that record on the radio my stomach did flip-flops," Anderson said. "I hadn't felt this in a long time, and I would look in Billboard and I'd see it going up the charts ... and all of a sudden it was 1963 again. "When I was doing the game show and all that stuff, I was enjoying all of that, but I didn't realize that that part of me was missing until I found it again." He sought songwriting collaborators and hooked up with Wariner and Skip Ewing. "Getting with Vince (Gill), I think, was probably the thing that put me over the hump," Anderson said. "He was the first one that we really had some success, with `Which Bridge to Cross (Which Bridge to Burn),"' a No. 4 hit for Gill in 1995. Gill helped him modernize his lyrics. "There's just certain things today that you don't write about that they wrote about back in the '60s. You don't write a song today that puts a woman down - women write songs and put men down," Anderson said with a chuckle. Wariner produced "Fine Wine," and country stars Hal Ketchum and Lee Ann Womack co-wrote songs with Anderson. The album is vintage Whisperin' Bill, especially on genteel love songs like "Good Love and a Bottle of Wine" and "Now That's Love." There's a redo of "The Tips of My Fingers" featuring the four other singers who've scored a hit with it: Wariner, Roy Clark, Eddy Arnold and Jeanie Shepard. Warner Bros. is marketing the album on television, over the Internet, and in magazine and direct mail advertising. There's not much hope of getting his new material played on the radio, Anderson concedes. "If they're not going to play George Jones and Merle Haggard, they're not going to play Bill Anderson," he said. "But I'm very active, I still work the
Gene Clark
'No Other' The late Gene Clark, co-founder of the Byrds, was a unique man and talent BRIAN BURNES * 01/17/99 The Kansas City Star (Copyright 1999) On Aug. 4, 1944, Kelly Clark and his wife, Jeanne, several months pregnant, attended a circus at Camp Bowie, Texas, where Kelly was stationed. At one point the audience stood to listen to ``Taps'' and honor those who had died in the invasion that had begun on the coast of France almost two months before. It was a bad moment for Jeanne. ``I just had the feeling that something had happened,'' she recalls. It wouldn't be until later that they'd learn how Kelly's brother, Harold Eugene, an Army paratrooper who had landed in France on or just after D-Day, had been injured, taken prisoner and finally died on Aug. 4. On Nov. 17, 1944, Jeanne Clark was back in her hometown of Tipton, Mo., near Jefferson City, when she gave birth to a boy. They named him Harold Eugene Clark. He grew up in Raytown and Bonner Springs. He left the Kansas City area in 1963 to pursue a career as a musician in California and achieved spectacular success. Yet after he died of a heart attack in May 1991 in his Los Angeles area home, he was buried back in Tipton, as he had wished, his full name carved on the headstone. There are also these words: ``No Other.'' That was the title of a record album he released in 1974. It's a record that, this past summer, a journalist with The Guardian in London declared ``one of the boldest, most brilliant and ... near perfect pieces of work in the history of pop music.'' According to authorities such as The Guardian's critic and an emerging chorus of others, Harold Eugene - known to the larger world as Gene Clark - changed the sound of modern music. Genre guru In 1965, as a co-founder of the Byrds, Gene Clark helped invent * folk-rock, recording Bob Dylan folk songs like ``Mr. Tambourine Man'' with guitars that plugged into amplifiers. On the Byrds' first album of the same name, Dylan wrote four of the songs. Clark wrote or co-wrote five. In 1966, Clark helped kickstart psychedelia as the principal author of the Byrds song ``Eight Miles High.'' In 1967, when he released his first solo album, ``Gene Clark With * the Gosdin Brothers,'' Clark helped create the genre of country rock. Music historians routinely trace all its permutations and performers since - including Gram Parsons, the Eagles and Dwight Yoakam - to Clark. ``Very few musicians had as much influence in creating new styles of music as Gene Clark,'' according to the All Music Guide, a popular music reference. Lately, the din of such admiration has been increasingly loud. Today, more than seven years after his largely unnoticed death, Gene Clark is enjoying a sudden, unimagined revival. He is huge in England. A new two-CD career retrospective, Flying High, appeared there late last year. This past summer a British music magazine, Mojo, featured Clark on its cover, with the banner headline of ``American Giants.'' In an art designer's idea of a rock Rushmore, Clark appeared on the Mojo cover with Mac ``Dr. John'' Rebennack, Randy Newman, James Brown and even The Artist, formerly known as Prince. Clark also lives on in cyberspace. At least two Web sites (www.GeneClark.com and ps.ket.kth.se/gc/) are devoted to him. The latter, maintained in Sweden, includes photographs of Clark's grave site in Tipton as well as photos of his last concerts in Los Angeles in April 1991. An adjacent bulletin board, a few clicks away, serves as a campfire for fans who debate Clark's apparent preference for using ``whom'' rather than ``who'' in his songs; the precise sequence of guitar chords on his 1969 ballad ``Polly''; and whether Clark is using the world ``pulsate'' instead of the phrase ``go safe'' in his 1971 song ``Spanish Guitar.'' Last year Scott Page, president of the Tipton Chamber of Commerce, who also maintains the organization's Web site, noticed an increasing number of e-mails requesting the precise location of Clark's grave site. Now Tipton is preparing to act as host for the first memorial Gene Clark concert, tentatively scheduled for August with performers as yet unannounced. 'My kid' All this, meanwhile, is a bit hard for the elder Clarks to grasp. ``He was just my kid,'' Jeanne says. The recent surge of recognition for their beloved Harold Eugene compels members of the Clark family to describe the boy and the man they knew best. To his parents and to the 12 brothers and sisters
Emmylou
Emmylou Can't Stay Away Ray Purvis * 01/15/99 The West Australian Copyright West Australian Newspapers Limited, all rights reserved. Between guesting on other people's albums and touring, the First Lady * of contemporary country music, Emmylou Harris, finally found the time to make her own record. She tells RAY PURVIS how she's always done her own thing. LOVE or hate the music industry, sometimes you just can't get away from it. Emmylou Harris's recent well-earned sabbatical turned out to be not only a busman's holiday-from-hell but one of the most intensively creative periods in her glittering career. "It ended up to be 12 months of full-on work," she says by telephone from her home in Nashville. "We'd just spent nearly two years on the road touring (her last album) Wrecking Ball and I figured it was time to slow down, take some time off and get some material together for the next record. But it just didn't work out that way." Within the space of the year - besides taking part in last year's US celebration of female artists called Lilith Fair - the prolific, angelic-voiced singer confirmed her commitment to the new (and not-so-new), breed of roots-based musicians by guesting on more than a half-a-dozen albums, as well as finishing some projects she was developing. This new body of work is now starting to filter through to the record shops. The list of CDs is startlingly impressive. There's the brilliant new McGarrigle Sisters album (The McGarrigle Hour) on which Emmylou is described in the liner notes as an "honourable McGarrigle". She sings backing vocals on Willie Nelson's atmospheric new Teatro and performs a guest vocal on her Nashville neighbour - 'we only live two doors away from each other" - Lucinda William's triumphant album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. Add to that backing vocals for Nanci Griffiths (Other Voices, Too), Vic Chesnutt (The Salesman And Bernadette), Kate Campbell (Visions Of Plenty), Patti Griffin (Flaming Red) and duets with longtime friend and contemporary Linda Ronstadt (Tammy Wynette tribute album) and actor Robert Duvall (The Apostle soundtrack). Also awaiting release are a Gram Parson's tribute album (with contributions from Beck and Sheryl Crow), a duet CD with Linda Ronstadt as well as Volume 2 of the successful Trio album (released in 1987) with Ms Ronstadt and Dolly Parton that features a surprise appearance of now Zen Buddhist monk Leonard Cohen. Somewhere among this mind boggling array of projects, the workaholic, singer-songwriter found time to compile a new album - her first live CD * since the traditional, bluegrass-sounding Live At The Ryman (1992) recorded with her then band the Nash Ramblers. Called Spyboy, the new album features the same exceptional musicians - * Buddy Miller on guitars (seen in Perth early last year with Steve * Earle), Daryl Johnson on bass and Brady Blade on drums. Blade accompanied Emmylou on her 1997 Australian tour. "Well this album was the top priority for me," says the fine looking, naturally grey-haired 51-year-old singer about the sparse, exciting Spyboy CD. "It is both a souvenir of the Wrecking Ball tour as well as a chance to sing some of the songs from my past. I also very much wanted to record our version of Daniel's (Lanois) song The Maker that we'd been performing on the tour. These guys in the band (except for Miller) played on Wrecking Ball and that was a ground-breaking step for me, so I wanted to capture the live splendour of the shows." Harris says her desire to record with Lanois - best known in the pop world for his work with U2 (co-producing The Joshua Tree) and Peter Gabriel - dates back to hearing his production on Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy, The Neville Brother's Yellow Moon and Lanois' own 1989 debut Arcadie. "I put myself in his hands. I wanted him to take my voice and my vision and make me part of his landscapes, another colour in his palette, so to speak. I knew that no matter how far out he gets it's the melody and the song that's at the centre of it all." Her much acclaimed singing on Wrecking Ball (1996) - her first album away from Warner Bros and Asylum - won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. It also revitalised a career that is full of crossover appeal and has spanned nearly 30 years and over 25 albums. * In some regards this watershed alternative country/pop album is reminiscent of her early 70s dark, transcendental music with her mentor Gram Parsons, the man about whom she later wrote the song Boulder To Birmingham. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Emmylou Harris grew up in Washington, where she was a
Mac Wiseman
* MAC WISEMAN TO STAR AT BLUEGRASS AND FIDDLE FEST * 01/15/99 Orlando Sentinel (Copyright 1999) *Mac Wiseman happens to be the man who put bluegrass music on the map, so it's easy to see why his humility can surprise anyone who reads his long list of accomplishments. And boy, is it long. In addition to singing, the 73-year-old has acted and picked guitars for more than 55 years. His 1971 album Lester N' Mac, recorded with duet partner Lester * Flatt, became the first bluegrass album to make Billboard magazine's * Top 100. In 1992, his album Grassroots to Bluegrass was nominated * for a Grammy. He is a founding member of the Country Music Association and current president of ROPE (Reunion of Professional Entertainers). He has also appeared on several TV shows, such as Grand Ole Opry Live, Crook Chase and Nashville Now. Wiseman, a Virginia native, looks forward to his Jan. 23 * performance in the 5th Annual Bluegrass and Fiddle Championship at Yeehaw Junction. "The majority of my concerts are made up of requests from the audience," he said. High up on the request list are "Jimmy Brown the Newsboy" and "Love Letters in the Sand." In the eyes of many of his fans, nobody can do it like Mac. His distinctive voice, often unsuccessfully imitated, has become his trademark. If it will ever give out seems to be the question of the * century for bluegrass fans. "I've been trying to retire for the past 10 years," Wiseman said. "The harder I try, the busier I get. As long as health permits, I'd still like to do more concerts." *Another headliner in the upcoming Bluegrass and Fiddle Championship is Gilbert Hancock. A native of Polk City, Hancock mastered the five-string banjo at the tender age of 7. He became a * member of the Bluegrass Little Bits Band that played throughout Georgia and Florida. Now, the 30-year-old has mastered his own style. "I take all of these different styles and put them together," he said. "I do a lot of joke telling and storytelling. It's kind of like down-home humor." After the festival in Yeehaw Junction, he plans to put together a * band, called the Bits of Bluegrass. Meanwhile, he's making * preparations to put on an admirable performance at the Bluegrass and Fiddle Championship. "I hope I can take them away from their problems a little while," he said. "I like to make people laugh. I just like to get up there and have a good time." *Wiseman's advice to any bluegrass musician who wants to make a mark is all about staying grounded. "It takes an awful lot of dedication. It's difficult for any new artist to get started," he said. "They can do it as long as they enjoy it, but don't quit your day job. It's a rewarding career, but not an easy one." *Despite the lack of airplay, bluegrass music, often considered the * roots of country music, has made a comeback the past few years. Its bluesy harmonies, rapid tempo and high-pitched vocal and instrumental sounds have been attracting a large crowd of younger, more contemporary followers. "I see that we're making inroads into the more metropolitan areas * and the bluegrass festivals get bigger and bigger every year," said Wiseman. "We're making progress, but I don't see us giving Garth Brooks any trouble anytime soon." *The 5th Annual Bluegrass and Fiddle Championship will be Thursday through Jan. 24 at Yeehaw Junction on the grounds of the historic Desert Inn. Show times are from 4 to 11:30 p.m. on Jan. 22, from noon to 11 p.m. on Jan. 23 and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Jan. 24. Tickets cost from $9 to $28. Tickets for children ages 6 to 12 are $2 per day or $5 per weekend. Parking is $1. Mail any ticket request to Steve Dittman, 4210 Breezewood Drive, Zephyrhills, 33540. For more information, call (813) 783-7205.
Lone Justice
ALBUM SPOTLIGHT JOHN SOEDER * 01/11/99 The Plain Dealer Cleveland, OH (Copyright (c) The Plain Dealer 1999) *Artist: Lone Justice Title: "This World Is Not My Home" Label: Geffen *Comments: If there were any justice, Lone Justice would have been huge. Long before today's bumper crop of alt-country acts such as Wilco and Son Volt came along, this critically slobbered-over but commercially inconsequential band from Los Angeles worked the middle ground between country and post-punk rock 'n' roll, to wonderful effect. "This World Is Not My Home" provides a long-overdue overview, but it hardly qualifies as a greatest-hits package. Feisty singer- guitarist Maria McKee and her musical sidekicks notched only a couple of minor hits during their short time together. "Shelter," the sublime title track of the group's 1986 album, should ring a bell. You might also remember the rollicking "I Found Love" and "Ways to Be Wicked," a somebody-done-somebody-wrong song co-written by Tom Petty. Well worth a listen are some of the more obscure tunes and previously unreleased material here, including "Rattlesnake Mama" and "Drugstore Cowboy," a twangy outtake from a 1983 demo. You can skip the live cover of the Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane," which turns into a shouting match between McKee and breathy guest star Bono of U2. Not to be missed, though, is "Go Away Little Boy," penned by Bob Dylan and originally released as a B-side in the United Kingdom. Dylan sits in on the song, as does Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood. *Thanks for the memories, Lone Justice. Now, would a reunion tour be asking too much?
For a Rocker
Rocker left far too soon CURTIS ROSS * 01/13/99 The Tampa Tribune (Copyright 1999) He looked like a mid-'60s rock star with his blond, bowl haircut and permanent pout, as if the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones had been a Beach Boy. But Bryan MacLean's life didn't follow any of the standard rock star trajectories. And when he died Christmas Day of an apparent heart attack at the age of 52, he left behind a handful of beautiful tunes and a great deal of unfulfilled potential. MacLean grew up privileged in the Hollywood Hills, thrilling to Broadway show tunes. As a teenager, he turned to folk and became a roadie for the Byrds. He then teamed up with Arthur Lee in the brilliant but doomed band Love. "If Arthur Lee was John Lennon, Bryan MacLean was Paul McCartney," Kevin Delaney writes via e-mail. Delaney is compiling an oral history of Love, "Between Clark and Hilldale." The two couldn't have been less alike. Lee was black, grew up in one of L.A.'s tougher neighborhoods and played gritty RB. MacLean's first composition was the amazingly ornate "Orange Skies," one of only four of his songs Love recorded. "Arthur had the dominant personality, so his songs got done," MacLean told Mojo writer Barney Hoskins in 1996. "I was writing prolifically all through those years, but when we went into the studio, he'd say no to every song." Lee certainly learned a lot from MacLean. By 1967's "Forever Changes," Love had fused psychedelic and easy-listening music into one of rock's few truly unique sounds. MacLean quit the next year. Two solo projects were aborted and MacLean, after embracing Christianity in 1970, left the music scene. He continued writing, placing one of his songs, "Don't Toss Us Away," on the 1985 eponymous * debut album of Lone Justice, led by his half-sister Maria McKee. Patty Loveless later scored a country hit with the song. MacLean's prolificacy was revealed on 1997's "Ifyoubelievein," a collection of forgotten demo recordings discovered by his mother. Recorded between 1966 and 1982, the tunes are full of warmth and depth, carried by MacLean's fluid guitar playing and crystalline voice. MacLean had just completed an album of Christian music before his death, Delaney says, but its release status is uncertain. MacLean had much to be bitter about - he reportedly saw few royalties from Love's albums. But he chose to focus on moving forward. "The best is yet to come," Delaney quotes him as saying. "He said something to me one time that I think really sums up his whole approach to life," Delaney writes. " "Give,' he said. "Just give. It makes everything so much simpler.' "
Serious Criticism
DEAN OF ROCK CRITICS TACKLES HIS SUBJECT FROM CULTURAL STANDPOINT CLEA SIMONTHE BOSTON GLOBE * 01/13/99 REVIEW COLUMN (Copyright 1999) Forget the Hall of Fame. The proof that rock 'n' roll has come of age is that serious criticism has arisen around it, schools of thought and discussion that weigh its popular appeal against its artistic merit, its influences, and its international range. "It's got a beat, and you can dance to it," the famous Dick Clark line, may still represent the primary criterion in some forums, but in many others, rock as art has become the rule of the day. Therefore, if anyone is looking for "Grown Up All Wrong," Robert Christgau's compendium of critical essays, to be a fun, light read - a pop single of a book - that reader should turn the page. Hailed by many as the dean of American rock criticism, Christgau, senior music critic of The Village Voice, is arguably the person most responsible for making such criticism a serious discipline. And after 27 years at that paper, the operative word is "arguably," because for all his brilliance, Christgau has always approached the music with as much brain as heart, as much outrage as fandom, and as much downright orneriness as love. Unlike Greil Marcus, a writer who has long been more poet than critic, Christgau lays out clear tracks for his cerebral, history- laden trains of thought; unlike the late Lester Bangs and his gonzo descendants, he makes it seem that the gray matter between the ears counts for as much as the ears themselves. It is as a cultural critic, therefore, rather than as a "rock writer," that Christgau tackles popular music. Although "Grown Up All Wrong" is a series of essays (culled from throughout his career) ostensibly about artists from George Gershwin through KRS-One, it is also about our times. Eschewing the standard line that rock was born * from a union of blues and country music, Christgau looks to more mainstream traditions of popular music, and reflects on Nat King Cole and blackface vaudevillian Emmett Miller to find the reasons for our contemporary tastes. Poking behind the myths (that Janis Joplin's recordings never matched her live shows, or even the long-discounted line that the Rolling Stones were working class), he seeks to decipher why we love this music - or why we ought to. Discussing contemporary acts, he sets out to explain context as much as sound. And while that can get a tad too philosophical (when he chews over the concept of a young band learning to invent itself in his essay on Sleater-Kinney), he also lovingly depicts scenes to which fans of any sound can relate. In doing so, the author often takes a godlike stance, proclaiming that an artist is brilliant, or that a fellow critic is not. He also likes to put himself into the artist's head, writing, "Pete Townshend didn't really think `Tommy' was an opera, he was just having his little joke," and declaring that the intentionally ambiguous artist Prince's " `Purple Rain' is about what to do with . . . maturity." But as these fairly straightforward sentences indicate, he has a clear (if sometimes vicious) prose style. Technical terms (such as timbre) are not defined, but in context are easily understandable. Therefore, when he pushes the reader past established boundaries (he is, after all, the founder of the Voice's cross-genre "Pazz and Jop Poll"), he takes us with him. Of course, riding along with the crotchety old dean may not be everyone's idea of fun. But for them, as Christgau himself says, "When all else fails, there is always jazz."
Re: If You Ran into Garth .......
Part of what Jon said, I could go album by album and point out stuff on each and every one of them that is more hardcore country than about half of the P2 top 10 albums all put together, by just about any standard you can think of. More part of what Jon said, However, please note that I and others who seem not to see Garth as outstandingly awful are not the ones who keep bringing him up and discussing him; I agree with Jon. I have all of his stuff - some used; some new and I enjoy it and I enjoy him and I still fail to understand how he has managed to inherit the role of 'poster boy' for all 'that's wrong' with 'country' music, or 'music' in general for that matter. I cheered for Mr. McGwire and I am hoping Mr. Brooks achieves his goal as well. I believe that this man's ultimate influence on the music industry has yet to be felt - there will come a time when artist turns to 'owning and influencing' and I truly believe when he does this, he will truly become one of the most powerful and positive music forces we have ever seen. This man will not stand still. Anyway, we shall see .. Cecil's Cousin PS - Ever notice how much The Gourds remind you of The Band?
Bill and Business 101 - Giving the People What They Want
CDs at 10: Altering music industry's track // Battle brews over used discs // Distributors and artists resist trend David Zimmerman * 08/03/93 USA Today (Copyright 1993) Compact discs are one of those near-perfect products. They never wear out. That - plus the fact that they're not cheap to buy new - is why used CD outlets are popping up in strip malls and as a controversial sideline in major record stores. TD "Customers demanded used CDs," says Bill Lavery of Village Records in Shawnee, Kan. "They were popping in the front door saying `Do you carry used CDs?' and then leaving. After six months of this and business going down, you don't have to be a genius to know what you have to do." Even big retailers are jumping into the used-CD business. In retaliation, four major music distribution companies, worried that used CDs may cut into new CD sales, have withheld millions of dollars in co-op advertising support from retailers who sell used CDs, including Wherehouse Entertainment Inc., which has used CD sections in 260 of its 339 stores. Two weeks ago, Wherehouse filed a lawsuit against distribution giants CEMA, Sony, Uni and WEA, saying that withholding ad support from some stores and not others is a violation of antitrust laws. Wherehouse lawyers say they'll also argue the companies are trying to restrict used CDs to maintain high prices for new CDs. Independent store owners, hit hard by losing ad support, have reduced orders and stopped promotions and discount pricing for new releases from the four distributors. But those on the other side of the issue, including Peter McCann of the Songwriters Association International, say if secondhand CDs reduce sales of new CDs, "the public eventually is going to be hurt." McCann, who wrote the Jennifer Warnes hit The Right Time of the Night, says used CD sales don't compensate those "at the end of the food chain," which means less support for new songwriters and artists. Songwriters and the publisher, McCann says, split a maximum of about 6 cents per song per CD sold. Most of today's songs are co-written. When the songwriter share is split three ways, McCann says, a songwriter will make $16,000 on a million-seller. Those who sell used CDs argue that they don't necessarily reduce sales of new CDs. Wherehouse CEO Scott Young says "used compact discs help stimulate additional sales of all CDs - both new and used." But Bob Freese of Liberty Records says secondhand sales "are beginning to take a bite out of our business." So Garth Brooks' upcoming Liberty CD won't be distributed to stores that deal in used CDs. "The way Garth and I feel is that it takes away money from the songwriters and people in his band and people in the back rooms in the management office," Freese says. Erik Flannigan of the CD-specialty newsletter International CD Exchange says it's hard to argue against used CD sales "when there's a secondhand market for so many things like cars and books."
