Steve Earle – 3/13 – New York City

About four days ago I was flipping through the Village Voice to see what shows were coming up. I was zipping through the club listings and stopped when I thought I saw a picture of Steve Earle gazing out at me. Sureenough , there it was. Steve Earle at the Blue Note. “Nah, that can’t be” I thought. The legendary Blue Note is better known for it’s improvisational jazz greats like Miles Davis and John Coltrane rather then hillbilly showcases but there it was on the Blue Note website, a two-night four show stint with opener (and 6th spouse, seventh marriage) Allison Moorer.

The 8:30 show was optimal for me but of course already sold out. I posted to Craig’s List pleading for a single ticket but it’s such a small venue I knew the odds were against me. Then something random and fantastic happened. Out of the blue my buddy Jim hooked me up to a with a reserved table seat right near the stage. Damn near enough to make me a believer. Allison Moorer opened and was funny, gracious and gorgeous. Her voice was warm and crystal clear. She performed the amazing”A Soft Place To Fall” and a few songs off her new CD, Getting Somewhere, New Years Day and and the title track.

After a brief break the man himself full-bearded and be-speckled ambled through the tight-packed and onto the tiny stage. He breaks into signature song “Hard Core Troubadour” and moved right into “More Than I Can Do” from 1996’s I Feel Alright. Wailing on the harmonica that would periodically pluck hairs from his face (Earle mentioned that he couldn’t shave due to a part he was playing on HBO’s the Wire that wasn’t finished filming.) “That’s why Dylan’s beard always looked so straggly.” he joked.

The polite crowd adored the man as he plowed through the Mountain, a song dedicated to miners digging for coal and risking thier lives and classics like Rich Man’s War and Jerusalem which he introduced as a song of innocence.

I’ve always said that “Americana” is country music for Liberals (I mean that in a good way). Of course Earle embodies this and had a few choice words about the Bush administration. As far as musicians commenting on politics, Earle has always struck me as a guy that really does his homework. He also commented on Greenwich village where the Blue Note is located and near where Earle and Moorer have set up house. “I buy light bulbs right next door.” He laughed.

The encore was the song that broke Earle to the word “Copperhead Road” and he rocked it up as well as an acoustic guitar can.

As much as a love seeing Steve Earle in New York City he always seems like a fish out of water. Like an oddity, a Texas commie to be observed and entertained by. As a liberal Texan I think it’s a bit a bit sad he felt he had to move so far form home to be content. Though the City may align with his progressive sensibilities there something too genteel for his shows. Too accommodating, too polite for what was taking place on stage. I saw Earle a few times in Dallas and the shows where more powerful, more electric. I think I prefer to see him in a more rowdy environment that a rooom full of hillbillies (Earle included) can conjure.

Willie Nelson Forms Pedernales Records

From Country Standard Time – Willie Nelson will announce the formation of Pedernales Records at a press conference during the annual South By Southwest Music & Media Conference, his publicist said Monday. Nelson will introduce his company, top executives and the first artists signed to the independent label.It was not clear if Nelson would be on the label himself. He currently is signed to Lost Highway Records and had Kenny Chesney produce an upcoming album this winter.

Pedernales Records takes its name from the river that flows by Nelson’s home and headquarters outside of Austin, where he also owns Pedernales Country Club and founded Pedernales Studios (now owned by his nephew Freddy Fletcher), where Nelson has recorded as well.

Charlie Louvin Plays New York City

I won’t be making it back home to South By Southwest this year and one of the things that made that a crappy deal was missing Charlie Louvin the surviving half of the legendary Louvin Brother when he plays there to support his great new self-titled which was produced by Mark Nevers (Lambchop, Calexico, Candi Staton) and Charlie Louvin, and was recorded in Spring/Summer 2006 in Nashville. It features guest performances by Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy, Will Oldham, Tom T. Hall, George Jones, Bobby Bare Sr., Tift Merritt, Marty Stuart, David Kilgour, and members of Bright Eyes, Lambchop, Superchunk, Blanche and Clem Snide, among others.

Well it seems My Louvin will be making a stop in New York City (see the banner above and click for details) just to quell my sadness. Catch this elder statesman while you can!

RIP Dr. Gonzo

It was two years ago today that Hunter S. Thompson took his life. “Football season is over.” his suicide note stated matter of factly. In repect I am posting a note from his son:

It has been two years since my father, Hunter S. Thompson, ended his life. I still miss him very much. I have thought a lot about him over the past two years as I’ve written about him, talked about him, read old letters, and gone through a significant portion of his papers. I’ve been trying to understand him more clearly, as my father, a writer, and a man. Though there are many things about him I miss, there are three qualities especially: his idealism, his sense of fun, and the warmth of his love.

It may seem strange to many people to think of Hunter as an idealist, but that was one of his defining characteristics. He had strong and clear ideas about the promise of our political system, about the need to act rather than be a passive victim of the greedy and power-hungry, and about the need to vigorously defend individual freedom. The disparity between the ideal and reality made him angry, and he was a man of action, a warrior and a leader. In an earlier age perhaps he would have been taken up arms, but in this age he chose the written word as both his weapon and his art. It was part of Hunter’s gift to distort the actual facts of a situation to reveal its essential truth. He had the talent, skill and convictions to draw you into his moral vision, and that vision was stark and uncompromising. There was good and there was evil, and there were no bystanders. To those that agreed with him, he gave the chance to be part of something important, to do something meaningful with their time, money and talents. That kind of clear moral vision has tremendous power and appeal in our time of great moral confusion. When he called on his friends and acquaintances to help him with the Lisl Auman case, he was calling them to battle a great wrong. Lisl was not just an unfortunate legal mishap; what happened to her was Wrong, and we had the chance to make it Right. Nixon was not just one more crooked politician; he was the apotheosis of the arrogant, ruthless tyrant and the flagrant betrayer of the hope of the American political experiment. Our society in the age of so-called global terrorism is not a society somewhat more concerned with security than with civil rights; he called it ‘The Kingdom of Fear.”

And he was right. I miss his vision, and the boldness, humor and conviction with which he described it to us. There are never enough such people, and now there is one less.

I miss his sense of fun. Hunter liked to have fun. Having fun was serious business, because for him life without fun was no life at all. I remember the folder of fake fax forms which included insect extermination notices, international stock transactions, court summonses, lingerie order confirmations, and fake fax error sheets. Late at night he would fill out one of the forms and fax it to the home or office of a friend or acquaintance, and laugh as he imagined how they would explain it to their wives, bosses, or lawyers. I remember the story of a practical joke gone horribly wrong, that of Jack Nicholson and the bleeding Elk Heart, in which Jack cowered in the darkened house with his children, his phone cut off by awful coincidence, listening to the gunshots and the screams of a wounded pig played over and over through a megaphone outside the house. I remember the story of the time his Japanese publishers came to visit and were given a demonstration one night of what Hunter said were nuclear-tipped bullets. A friend secretly ignited a stick of dynamite under the target, a large aluminum beer keg, at the same moment Hunter fired the stainless-steel, scope-mounted, .454 Casull pistol at it. There was a tremendous explosion and the beer keg flew several hundred feet in the air, over the heads of the awestruck visitors who had never seen a gun before, much less nuclear-tipped bullets. He was a fine storyteller, and enjoyed recounting the tale as much as he enjoyed the prank itself. There are stories of fireworks, of bullets fired through the ceiling of the kitchen, of shotguns fired across the room. He loved masks, fireworks, fire, smoke bombs, hammers that screamed or made the sound of breaking glass when struck. Just about everyone who ever met Hunter has a story about his sense of fun, though not all of them laughed at the time.

I think for Hunter fun was also political, and therefore about more than just fun. His sense of humor often exceeded the boundaries of law, convention, and good taste, and his enjoyment came as much from breaking boundaries as from the reaction of his victims. It was fun for the hell of it, but it was also to shake people up, rock the boat, wake people from their routines, and make them uncomfortable or scared for a moment. That kind of fun requires a larger vision. He was a kind of mad trickster whose madness conveys wisdom. I think at bottom fun was a kind of practice for him that kept him in touch with the real and vibrant pulse of life, and to be in proximity to him was to be in proximity to that pulse. I miss that.

Finally and foremost I miss the warmth of his love. I miss sitting in the kitchen at Owl Farm watching a football game or an old Bogart movie, or talking to him on the phone about the latest political insanity, or driving up the Lenado road for a late-night swim. We didn’t talk about our relationship, we simply enjoyed being together. It took a long time to get to that point, a lot of hard and unspoken work on both our parts over many years, but we got there, so that by the time he died we knew where we stood with each other and we were satisfied.

He was a complex man with many, many facets. One of those aspects was his great tenderness. He had the capacity for tremendous generosity, compassion, and personal loyalty when it cost something to be loyal. When he gave his love it was intense and pure, and I felt blessed. God knows he was no saint, but his love was the real thing, not the cheap watered-down imitation most of us are familiar with. I miss the warmth of his love.

But these are just my recollections and opinions. Fortunately, Hunter S. Thompson was first a writer, and that is what how he wanted to be remembered — as a Great American Writer. He left a substantial body of work. Whatever you might think of the preceding paragraphs, I ask you to read what he wrote — start with Hell’s Angels — and decide for yourselves who he was, what was significant about his work, and what is worth emulating and carrying on. In my opinion his achievement and talent were considerable, but you will have to make up your own mind. He certainly did.

-Juan Thompson

June Carter Tribute Planned

Billboard reports that Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Emmylou Harris and Brad Paisley are among the stars appearing on the June Carter Cash tribute album “Anchored in Love,” due June 19 via Dualtone. The release will coincide with a biography of the same name penned by Cash’s son John.

With the exception of Ralph Stanley, who recorded “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” at the southwest Virginia home of the Carter Family, “Anchored in Love” was recorded throughout 2006 on the Cash family property in Hendersonville, Tenn.

On it, Costello tackles the iconic “Ring of Fire,” while Nelson and Crow team up for a duet on “If I Were a Carpenter.” Carter Cash’s stepdaughter Rosanne performs the spiritual “Wings of Angels” and Lynn offers a version of “Wildwood Flower.”

Carter Cash died May 15, 2003, after complications from heart surgery.

Here is the unsequenced song list for “Anchored in Love”:

“If I Were a Carpenter,” Sheryl Crow and Willie Nelson
“Jackson,” Carlene Carter and Ronnie Dunn
“Wildwood Flower,” Loretta Lynn
“Far Side Banks of Jordan,” Patty Loveless and Kris Kristofferson
“Keep On the Sunny Side,” Brad Paisley
“Wings of Angels,” Rosanne Cash
“Ring of Fire,” Elvis Costello
“Road to Kaintuck,” Billy Bob Thornton and the Peasall Sisters
“Big Yellow Peaches,” Grey De Lisle
“Kneeling Drunkard Plea,” Billy Joe Shaver
“Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” Ralph Stanley
“Song to John,” Emmylou Harris

Johnny Cash 75th Birthday Bash – Brooklyn

Calling all hillbillys and yankees that love the Man In Black, the Brooklyn Country Music in association with BAM Brooklyn Next presents The Johnny Cash 75th Birthday Bash featuring Alex Battles’ Whisky Rebellion, The Lonesome Prairie Dogs, Louisiana Emily, Eli Smith, Jessica Rose, The Dock Oscar Gospel Quartet & more

Saturday, February 24, 2007
Southpaw
125 5th Ave. (@ St. John’s Place)
Brooklyn, NY
$10
Doors, 730pm

Advance tickets available

Tom Morrell: 1938-2007

From The Dallas Morning News Tom Morrell bent steel with his hands. With his agile fingers and wrists, he could coax a steel guitar to cry out a mournful melody and to laugh out a happy phrase.

Mr. Morrell died Monday of emphysema at home in East Dallas. He was 68.

His contemporaries in Western swing and jazz consider him a musical genius, while many mainstream country music listeners don’t know him. But they probably unwittingly hear his session work on recordings by artists such as Willie Nelson (The Sound in Your Mind), Asleep at the Wheel (Tribute to the Music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys ) and many others.

“There’s nobody can even touch him,” said Leon Rausch, of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, before Mr. Morrell’s death. “He’s a stone genius.”

The Dallas native, who lived 30 years in Little Elm, left behind his 15-volume Tom Morrell and the Time Warp Top Tophands “How the West Was Swung” series on WR Records.

The collection chronicles his passion for jazz and particularly Western swing. Each CD features a roster of Texas’ best musicians such as guitarists Leon Chambers and Rich O’Brien, fiddlers Randy Elmore and Bobby Boatright, vocalists Leon Rausch, Don Edwards, Chris O’Connell, Buck Reams and Craig Chambers. Mr. Morrell was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 2001.

Mr. Morrell’s next CD, Relaxin‘, is expected to be available next week at Westernswing.net, Amazon.com and some local record stores. The disc is the 15th in the “How the West Was Swung” series.

Mr. Morrell’s sisters Delores “Dodo” Boyd, 65, of Dallas and Jeanne McKinney, 59, of Garland remember their brother as a lifelong musician. Mr. Morrell first picked up a guitar when he and Ms. Boyd were students at St. James Catholic School in Oak Cliff. Ms. Boyd knew her brother was serious about music back then.

“If you lived at our house and saw every minute he spent playing with a band … music was his life, that was it,” Ms. Boyd said.

Other survivors include a son, Jerry Wayne Morrell of Monroe, La.; daughters Cheryl Denise Walker of Monroe and Laura Renée Wagner of Houston; and four grandchildren. Memorial plans are pending. Details will be posted on the guest book at Westernswing .net.

Mr. Morrell lived in Hobbs, N.M., for about a year in the 1950s. Mr. Rausch remembers seeing Mr. Morrell play in Hobbs.

“We all were amazed at him. We saw this pimple-faced kid playing more steel guitar than anybody we knew,” Mr. Rausch said.

Mr. Morrell had an onscreen band part in the 1990 movie Daddy’s Dyin’… Who’s Got the Will? directed by Jack Fisk. Also, his music is featured on the soundtracks of the movies Savannah Smiles and True Stories.

Mr. Morrell was most recently living with his lifelong friend and partner, Jody Balfour. Ms. Balfour says that the couple talked a lot about music and Mr. Morrell’s artwork. “His biggest fear was being forgotten,” says Ms. Balfour.

Bert Winston, owner of WR Records, thinks Mr. Morrell’s legacy will be affirmed by seasoned and up-and-coming musicians.

“He was one of the greatest steel-guitar players that has ever been, really,” Mr. Winston said. “I actually think he is probably more admired now than ever.”

Tom Morrell – Innovator of Steel Guitar – Hospitalized

From the Dallas Morning News – Tom Morrell, a Dallas-based prolific steel guitar player is being treated at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas for emphysema,Mr. Morrell was admitted to the hospital Jan. 21, where he was placed on a ventilator on Tuesday. The ventilator has since been removed.

Mr. Morrell was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame, in St. Louis, in 2001. His CD Monkey Bizness is the 13th volume in his “How the West Was Swung” series of Tom Morrell and the Time Warp Tophands albums. For a discography, visit www.westernswing.net.

Leon Rausch, of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, hired Mr. Morrell in 1964 to be part of the reorganized Texas Playboys band, after Mr. Wills had left the band.

Mr. Rausch, who has played with Mr. Morrell in many other groups and gigs over the years, says fellow musicians consider Mr. Morrell a musical genius. “He’s the man to go to for steel guitar,” he says. “He’s the biggest influence that a lot of us have ever had.”

Albert Talley of the Texas Steel Guitar Association says, “Tom has been a premier player and innovator of steel guitar for the last 50 years.”

Mr. Talley, who organizes the annual Texas Steel Guitar Association Jamboree, says that Mr. Morrell had intended to attend this year’s convention but probably not perform as he usually has.