The view from here

Christmas Day, 2010. Sitting in my brother's living room, where he has photos floating across the TV screen of Christmas scenes from yesteryear, I notice the above picture go by a couple of times....and I can sense it pulling on me, somehow.

I recognize that window vista. More to the point, I guess, I remember the feeling.

The camera is pointed out the window of a house in suburban Rochester, New York. It's around the time I was born -- maybe a little before, perhaps a little after. Regardless, it's clearly an ingrained very early memory.

Here's how it struck me tonight, I think. Looking out that window, flashing by for a few seconds in a world full of digital images and big-screen TVs, where I can live a thousand miles away and fly in for the holidays, and log on to the web and convey my thoughts to whoever may be out there reading....what that picture said to me is: At one point, this was the entirety of my world view.

I lived perfectly well in a simple home. All my needs were cared for. Nothing more was wanted, sought, dreamed of, desired.

The world outside? Well, this was it. This was the future. What awaited me was....the yard, the street, the neighbors' house across the way.

And the pursuit of just those immediate surrounds, those things you see outside this window, would keep my explorations occupied for years to come.

The future, now so long passed, was a long, long way away.

The world, in the end, would not wait. But from that view out the living-room window, the world stretched on beyond the snow, up toward the sky....and all the way to forever.

Peter Blackstock

December 25, 2010

Why Should You Care Now? -- Fire Town.

By Peter Blackstock

I really can't give you a good reason why you should still care about Fire Town. They existed for a brief period somewhere inbetween 1985 and 1990, and primarily occupy the historical gap between the obscure Midwestern band Spooner (who played at the wedding of one of my best friends) and the relatively well-known band Garbage (who had honest-to-god Hits You Care About and all that). Butch Vig is the big name here, mostly because he produced Nirvana's Nevermind, although I'll swear till my dying day that the Seattle record of that era he produced which really counted was the Young Fresh Fellows' Electric Bird Digest. (I'll bet Vig even agrees, or at the very least chuckles at the recollection.)

Vig's bandmates were... a couple of guys whose names I'm too lazy to even bother to look up. They were in some band before that, and probably some band after. I don't mean to slight those guys, just trying to make a point. And the point is: Why should you care what their names are? I don't.

But, damn, I care about Fire Town. I don't know why, exactly. They're akin to the BoDeans, or Mellencamp, or the Rave-Ups. (Who'll probably get their own entry in this series soon enough.) They weren't that good. They couldn't have been, could they?

Then why did I listen to Side A of In The Heart Of The Heart Country about a zillion times in the summer that I lived in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1987, a few thousand miles from everything I loved and cared about?

OK, now we're getting somewhere. This one's about time and place for me. And about exile. A continent away from home, I latched on to things that offered a sense of closeness to what was so far away.

That's not entirely it, though. Fire Town was from Wisconsin. I was from Texas. Listening to Fire Town, I wasn't pining for memories of seeing them play at the Continental Club or Hole in the Wall. In fact, I never did see this band play live.

And yet, a couple weeks ago, when I won a $5 Amazon gift-certificate for guessing the winner of the Redskins-Texans game in a Yale Statistics survey (true story!), I spent that $5 on "Places To Run," "Carry The Torch," "Secret Heart," and "Rain On You" -- the entirety of Side A of that old Fire Town record from 1987.

Why would I do that? Why should I care now? I'm having a hard time answering this one myself. And yet there's something here that calls to me.

OK, first off, these are really good melodies. It's anthemic stuff, probably along the lines of what my old friend Rob Thomas loved about The Alarm, but in a more Americanized way. Instead of faux-political "Spirit of '76" anthemics, it's faux-romantic "Secret Heart" anthemics.

"Faux" in that the lyrics only go so deep. Which is to say, not very. But frankly, it doesn't matter. There is something brilliant about what they do on "Secret Heart," and very few other songs I've ever heard have pulled it off. It's kind of like a melodic perpetual-motion machine. You know how sometimes an artist will change the key of a song for dramatic effect? Apparently it's called "modulation." (I only learned this term upon exiting the stage of the Hole in the Wall one night, having just performed Barry Manilow's "Mandy", after which Rich Brotherton remarked, "Wow, you even did the modulation!" ... To which I responded, "I did the what now?")

So, on "Secret Heart," Fire Town does this modulation thing, and I'm pretty sure they do it again, and then maybe back down again before they go back up, but I swear that by the end of the song, they've created some sort of cycle where they keep lifting the key to where they can build on it for dramatic effect, and it just keeps feeding on itself. "Your secret heart..... WILL TURN ON YOU!", they exclaim, and it hits with far more emotion than they should be able to get away with.

Somehow it just keeps building. And building. And building. They're fading out the song at almost 5 minutes, and it's still ascending to another round of more intensely burning secret-heart turning. If you think that doesn't have a lasting impact, then you've never spent a few dollars of NFL-pick prize-money on an Amazon MP3 purchase.

The other songs on that side were decent enough -- "Rain On You" (perhaps slightly reminiscent of the True Believers' "The Rain Won't Help You When It's Over") and the somewhat more forgettable leadoff track "Places To Run" -- but it's actually "Carry The Torch" that stuck with me more than any of the other songs (even more than "Secret Heart"). This is a hopeless romantic tune if there ever was one: "You can leave but I'll believe / I'll carry the torch for you." And that's just the opening line. Heck, at 21, I was a sucker for that crap. So we'll chalk this one up to nostalgia, mostly.

Except.

There's a great guitar lead here. Played by one of the guys not named Butch Vig, presumably. It's a simple, straightforward melody. But it's GREAT. You can hear this thing and still remember it two decades later, even having not heard it in the interim. I can personally vouch for this.

And then there's that kicker of a line in the middle: It's really simple, and yet it's evocative:

"I'll be walkin' tonight, I'll be walkin' tonight."

Walking where? What for? To whom? Why should I care now?

I don't know. But I do.

Still.

Postscript, from the friend at whose wedding Spooner played:

"key to fire town and spooner was doug erikson, one of the best unknown singer-songwriters ever to come from the midwest. he fronted both, and was kinda the tom petty of wisconsin. he morphed into "duke" erikson in garbage, the band's bassist. and has recently played bass in freedy johnston's touring band (they also have a cover band with butch).

thing is, in both spooner and fire town, doug was the heart and soul. butch was the drummer. he didn't even produce the early spooner stuff (gary klebe from shoes did). and when bands started working with butch, it wasn't to get his sound, it was because smart studios in madison was cheap.

more than you wanted to know, but you started it. and i love those guys."

Why Should You Care Now? -- Doctors' Mob.

By Peter Blackstock

OK, so the intent here is a series. Along the lines of "Where Are They Now?", I suppose, except it really doesn't matter where these folks are now. It's about what thy did at some point, something that mattered. Something that has been pretty well forgotten, left for dead and gone. And yet....

The series has to start with Doctors' Mob, because it's their song title that's the inspiration for the series. "Why Should You Care Now?" was the next-to-last ("penultimate," if you're more literate than Doctors' Mob cared you to be) song on the band's 1985 record Headache Machine. Here's an odd admission about that song:

In the chorus, singer Steve Collier repeatedly asks, "Why should you care now?", and then finally answers the question at the end. "We do!" ... or, wait, is it "We don't?"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B00000JN8B/ref=pd_krex_dp_001_011?ie=UTF8&track=011&disc=001

Doctors' Mob was kind of a loud band, see. The words weren't really supposed to matter, except that they did, because Collier was pretty sharp. I mean, fer chrissakes, he named one of his songs after an editor of Details magazine. So as much as they were all about showing up drunk, showing up late, or not showing up at all (their official motto), these guys actually had some pretty good words to their songs. (Witness that when folks called out in the encore for "The Cage," typically the stress was on "The" rather than "Cage." The audience clearly cared about the words.)

And so, back to the question at hand. Why should you care now? It's been about 25 years now that I've wondered whether Doctors' Mob cared, or didn't care. Frankly, at this point, I really don't wanna know what the actual line is there. I prefer to believe that Collier screamed out something different each time, depending upon what he felt at any given moment. It could be "WE DO!", it could be "WE DON'T!" -- either would fit the band's identity, I think. "We do" if they were buying into the "New Sincerity" tag that was put upon them and their peers in the mid-'80s Austin scene; after all, what could be more sincere than caring? And "We don't" if you figured these guys thought that whole New Sincerity deal was just a crock of shit.

This summer I saw Doctors' Mob play for the first time in about 15 years, at a reunion gig. They played "Why Should You Care Now?", and each time the chorus came around, I joined in. I shouted "We Do!" ... or maybe "We Don't!". It doesn't really matter. I sang it at the top of my lungs, and that was all that mattered.

When the mood strikes me, I'll write about some other stuff long since dead and gone, and why you should care about it now. Or shouldn't.

Mike & Ruthy's "End Of Time"

By Peter Blackstock

With some songs -- not many, but when they're really something pretty special -- you distinctly remember the first time you heard them. Not so much the time or the place, but what you thought about it when you first heard it, the way it struck you, the way it made you feel. If music is important to you, I expect you know what I mean.

Bits and pieces of such encounters float among the edges of my memory. Some are "big" songs, some are a blip on the pop-culture radar. Scruffy The Cat's "Land of 1,000 Girls" in a record store in 1986, infectious enough that I bought the record on the spot. Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," having just put the disc in the CD player in the fall of '91 shortly after moving to Seattle. A slow, brooding ballad called "I Knew" by a band named Zeitgeist from the stage of Liberty Lunch in the spring of '85. Springsteen's "Born To Run" on American Top 40 radio in the fall of '75. The 10,000 Maniacs song "Hey Jack Kerouac" in the car deck driving across the streets of Anchorage in the summer of '87, having just bought the last cassette copy from the city's only cool record store. Slipping a tape labeled "Jay Farrar" off the shelves of the SXSW office in the spring of '95, hitting play, and hearing "Windfall."

So here's another one. It comes to mind mainly because I keep playing the song on my iTunes tonight, but my first encounter with it was actually more than a year ago, at a funky little club in Brooklyn called Jalopy. I'd gone to see Mike & Ruthy, the husband-wife duo of Mike Merenda and Ruthy Ungar, who I'd gotten to know from their years in a band called the Mammals. Mike's got a real talent for songwriting -- they work in a rootsy place, but he brings in a lot of stuff from outside that realm which makes it more interesting -- and Ruthy just has a presence, a charm, a vibrant soulfulness that can manufacture magic out of thin air.

They got through their set playing some older stuff, some newer stuff, probably some Mammals songs and some covers, I forget what all exactly. But I remember the song they closed with. I can't say quite what it was about that song -- it had a sort of repetitive feel to it, not in a bad way but in a sense that it seemed like you'd instantly remember this song once you heard it, a trait of many of the best pop singles. (Ah, singles.) I didn't really catch the words, I just heard the way they sang it together -- harmonizing, but not in a typical woman's-voice-floating-above-the-man's kind of way. Ruthy sang the melody, Mike sang slightly underneath; without listening closely, you might have thought they were singing in unison, even.

Regardless, something about it was mesmerizing, and electric. I just remember thinking, now THAT is a song. And I recall talking with them briefly about it afterward, mentioning that they really had something there, something that was beyond the roots/traditional realm that tends to be their domain. I think they already knew, but they seemed to appreciate the feedback.

Fast-forward to sometime this summer. Mike & Ruthy's new disc Million To One arrives in the mail. I put it in, and, sure enough, that song is the very first track on the disc. It's called "End Of Time" and their recording does justice to my memory of that night, probably even improves on it. The appeal is immediate, again. The arrangement is really more rock than folk, though pedal steel plays a big part. That probably sounds confusing, but in a way, that's good; it means this song has its own identity.

Somehow I got sidetracked from it for awhile (happens too much these days, I'm afraid, with attention pulled in various other directions), but this week I was drawn back in. (I forget exactly how, but I'm grateful for whatever the impetus was.) Struck again by how good this song is, I put it in my "Best of 2010" iTunes folder, and played it several more times. And finally started getting a bit more curious about the lyrics. Which might seem backwards or atypical, but really, it's the music that draws me in first the vast majority of the time. (I suspect that's true for most folks, actually; otherwise, it might as well just be spoken-word stuff, or reading poetry on a printed page.)

Come to find that not only are the lyrics admirably well-written (this is no surprise, as both Mike & Ruthy are super-literate and smart as a whip), but it's something that speaks pretty directly to some tough things going on in my family's own existence these days. "One minute I'm fine, one minute I'm free / Then another I'm blind, and crippled in need," they sing in the chorus. I'd gotten bits and pieces of those lines previously, but it hadn't quite sunk in. Now it has. And the song means that much more, as a result.

They do some nice things with the arrangement. It builds modestly as they go along, but then when they get to the final chorus, most of the accompaniment drops away, and they let those lines stand out in relief. At the end, they forsake words and just let Ruthy's voice carry the emotion above the strums and swings of the sticks and strings. And the whole thing is almost exactly 3 minutes long. (Ah, singles.)

"Signal fire out on the plain / Suddenly clouds and a pouring rain." That's how the song begins. A great opening line, for a song, and for an entire record. You kinda know what you're in for after that. They sum it all up in the back end of the chorus, from whence the song's title arises:

"One minute I'm born, one minute I die. In the middle I'm yours till the end of time."

Joe Henry short piece on The Thread (Duke Performances blog)

Here's that, if you're interested....

http://thethread.dukeperformances.duke.edu/2010/09/joe-henrys-vanishing-act/

Megafaun show presented by Duke Performances

Am doing some stuff for a new blog site calling attention to the shows in Duke Performances' 2010-11 series; the first one is posted here:

http://thethread.dukeperformances.duke.edu/2010/09/building-up-and-tearing-down/

Joe McDermott (re-post from 2007)

Was telling someone about Joe McDermott today, and figured it was worth digging up and reviving something from the long-gone No Depression editorial site. This was originally posted in 2007.

By Peter Blackstock

A few weeks ago, amid a series of blog-entries revisiting my live-show logs from nearly two decades ago, I suggested that a long-defunct ensemble called Grains Of Faith was "quite possibly Austin's best band" of the late-1980s. I also noted, with regret, that no recordings from the group had ever made it to CD.

That wasn't quite the end of the story. The band's leader and songwriter, Joe McDermott, has in fact remained musically active, just in a different arena than the pop-folk-rock avenue Grains Of Faith pursued. He'd actually already begun to shift gears way back then; a closer examination of my logs turns up a handful of gigs in '88 and '89 by Smart Little Creatures, a children's-music side-project McDermott had put together during the latter days of Grains Of Faith's run.

Children's music eventually ended up moving from side-project to the primary focus of McDermott's songwriting and performing endeavors. This isn't a genre we've tended to cover much in our magazine's pages -- though, given that my co-editor has a four-year-old now, he's likely more attuned to the realm than either of us were a few years ago.

Still, there's something about McDermott's kids' songs that have always appealed to me, even way back in those Smart Little Creatures days. Partly it was the effortlessly tuneful nature of his songwriting; the sense of melody that made Grains Of Faith's material so memorable served his children's-music forays quite well. Beyond that, the simple sense of wonder in his words conveyed an innocent charm that I could somehow appreciate even as a dreaded grown-up.

As with Grains Of Faith, McDermott had a couple cassette releases of the Smart Little Creatures stuff. Happily, though, some of those songs HAVE seen the light of day on CD -- most recently with his new disc Everybody Plays Air Guitar. Playing it recently, I instantly recognized/remembered several of the tracks. "Our Family Car Is A Helicopter" is a beatific lark ("When mom sends us off to school, she says, 'Take your books and hat, and don't forget your parachute!'") soaring on a chorus that'll stick in your head for, well, in my case, about twenty years. "Sport Comes To The Rescue" is a spunky little tribute to the family dog; "Momma's Gonna Have A Baby" addresses the prospect of siblinghood from the kid's point of view, without glossing over the tough stuff ("There's so much to do with the baby, and we don't get much sleep at night").

There's also newer material here, from the rhythmically infectious title track and its wonderfully sly observations ("Basketball players after a dunk/Your great old uncle who used to be a punk/Hipster rads, balding dads/They play the air guitar!"), to a barbershop-style retooling of the traditional tune "I've Been Working On The Railroad", to a truly demented over-the-top live number called "Ride, Ride, Ride".

Of the older songs, the one that stayed with me the most over the years was "Anything Is Possible", which affects me in a way that's always been difficult for me to pinpoint or explain. I think it has something to do with the reality that growing up is largely a matter of accepting that not everything is in fact possible, that there are limits to what we'll be able to do, that some things may always remain out of reach, and that sometimes you have to be able to move on, beyond those disappointments of dreams that didn't come true.

I guess I was moved by the fact that McDermott could come through all of those things and still write and sing a song about how "Anything Is Possible", without any hint of disillusionment or disbelief. Maybe things don't always work out the way we grown-ups imagined they would -- but as for the kids, well, the message still rings out loud and clear: "Anything is possible, whenever we think of all that we could be..."

And somehow, in the singing, the message comes back around to us again, too.

Blue Shadows reissue

Wrote up something about this week's reissue of the Blue Shadows' terrific 1993 album On The Floor Of Heaven for John Marks on the Purple State Of Mind site, here:

http://john.purplestateofmind.com/?p=2074

....And, just to give an instant look at one of the best songs on the record, here ya go:

Alejandro Escovedo and Buddy Miller in Richmond

You may recall that back in the print days of No Depression, we named Alejandro Escovedo our "artist of the decade" for the 1990s, and gave Buddy Miller the same nod for the 2000s (in our final print issue in 2008). They happened to be playing on the same night last week in Richmond, and I put up a little something on the ND website about it:

http://www.nodepression.com/profiles/blogs/dueling-nd-artists-of-the

Blue Rodeo, south of home

My rumination about Blue Rodeo on John Marks' Purple State Of Mind blog:

http://john.purplestateofmind.com/?p=2021

Swell Season

I posted a few thoughts about the Swell Season's recent show in Raleigh to John Marks' "Purple State Of Mind" site here:

http://john.purplestateofmind.com/?p=1948

Josh Ritter show review

Did a review of Ritter's show in Durham for John Marks' Purple State Of Mind site, if you're interested:

http://john.purplestateofmind.com/?p=1874

Wammo's pop

My latest bit on John Marks' Purple State Of Mind blog page:

These boots were made for Walkers

(A tie-in to the name of this blog: It was Wammo who first introduced me to Vic Chesnutt.)

of implosions past and present

PREFACE: Texas Stadium, longtime home of the Dallas Cowboys, was imploded today. Seeing the footage reminded me of the implosion ten years ago of the Kingdome in Seattle, an event I witnessed firsthand. I'd written something about it at that time for the old AOL No Depression board, and, as it happens, saved it to my hard-drive. Dug it up just now and figured it was maybe worth a rerun a decade later....

------------------------------

By Peter Blackstock

March 26, 2000

the kingdome is on my car.

well, a thin layer of it, anyway. my trusty ol' datsun was parked a few blocks away from the hulking megalith when it went tumbling down at precisely 8:30 this morning.

yesterday i spent half an hour examining ferry schedules and even going down to the ferry dock to try to determine if watching from the water would be a viable option. there were some good land viewing spots scattered about the downtown area, but i suspected they'd all be rather crowded, and besides, something about being out on elliott bay when the dome went down just seemed like the way it should be. (tying in such a historical event with the waters of puget sound sorta reminded me of that day chasing the u.s.s. missouri along the strait of juan de fuca a couple years ago.)

it wasn't an easy feat, though. turned out the only way to do it was to board a 5:10am ferry for bremerton, which is an hourlong trip, and then wait over there for the 7:45am boat, which, if everything went right, would be rounding the bend along west seattle's alki point at just about the right moment to allow a clear view straight ahead into downtown and the dome at demolition time.

so, i dragged myself outta bed at 4:30am and got a parking space right by the ferry terminal; still early enough that even the dome-watching crowds weren't out and about yet. only about 20 people boarded the 5:10am boat to bremerton, but it was a bit more crowded for the return trip, with lotsa bremerton locals coming aboard with the same idea. overall it was less crowded than i'd expected, though; probably about 250 people on a boat that could pretty easily fit over a thousand. which was nice, 'cuz between the upper and lower levels, everyone could find a pretty good spot for an unobstructed view.

sailing back from bremerton, the downtown seattle skyline comes into view first, but you have to get a good bit closer before you can see around alki point to the area just a few blocks south of downtown occupied by the dome and safeco field. it was looking like it was gonna be a close race for awhile, but finally we got into range at about 8:25. ideally we might've been right up close near the ferry dock by 8:30, but the captain had to slow the boat significantly in the final stretch, because, as expected, there were hundreds and hundreds of sailboats and yachts and catamarans and the like crowded into elliott bay awaiting the apocalyptic vision.

the captain obviously had radio or tv access to track the countdown, because right about 8:30 he announced, "ok, 30 seconds to go." (we might've also gotten screwed if the demolition was running just 10-15 minutes behind, 'cuz the ferry would've had to go on up to the dock to stay on schedule; but fortunately everything was running like clockwork.)

first the dome roof seemed to rise a little bit and become blurry; that was all the dust shaking off the top from the initial detonation. within the next five seconds, it all came tumbling down -- sinking, really, the up-curved roof inverting and crashing into what used to be the middle of the ballfield. the giant "boom" took about three or four seconds to reach us out in the water, an interesting sound-effects delay.... it looked like some of the walls fell outward to the north; then i remembered that was planned, 'cuz there was a big parking lot to the north and they decided to use that extra space to their advantage.

the dust clouds hovered high and wide for the remainder of our float into the ferry dock, which took about twice as long as usual as police boats escorted us through the throng of private crafts scattered all over the place within a few hundred yards from the shore. there must've been a slight northerly breeze, 'cuz much of the dust seemed to be drifting up toward downtown, enveloping the once-mighty smith tower, and the surrounding skyscrapers that now dwarf it, amid a smoky gray haze.

once we docked and got off the boat, i decided to walk over as close to the dome as possible (the streets directly around it were closed off). the first thing i noticed as i hit street level and looked up toward the sky was the tiny specks of "snow" falling softly all around. it occurred to me that it was kind of like the kingdome's ashes were being sprinkled over downtown seattle. then i realized, no, it wasn't "like" that -- that's EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS. beautiful.

the closer you got to the dome,the more the dust had collected. most of it had fallen from the air by now, but when cars drove by, you could see streams of it kicking up from behind their spinning wheels. at occidental park, an open square between shops that formed a path directly to the dome, you could see everyone's shoeprints in the layer of dust on the brick walkways.

there wasn't much to see of the dome itself; chain-link fences were positioned far enough back that only a few big boulders of concrete jutting from the old site were visible. it was funny, trying to get a peek at something that *wasn't* there; really the most striking thing about the view from occidental park was that you could now see straight through to safeco field, which previously had been blocked by the dome.... just across the street was the zeitgeist cafe, five floors above which can be found the loft-apartment abode of neko case, who'll be moving soon because that building, too, is scheduled for demolition in the midst of an out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new cultural devolution that is consuming this town.

walking back to my car, i came across a bronze sculpture that must be relatively new, because i'd never seen it there before. it was four firefighters, posted as if charging and crawling their way toward a blaze, two of them holding a hose -- pointed, ironically, directly to where the kingdome had always stood, until 30 minutes ago. i eventually realized that the sculpture was a memorial to the four firefighters who died in a blaze at a factory very near the kingdome in 1995. it's strange, though; with their gas-masks on and in full gear, the first thought that comes to mind when you see these four figures could easily be WTO.

when i made it back to my car, i was happy to find it had received the same dusting of kingdome history across its hood and windshield that had coated everything else in the area. most of it blew away on the drive home, but there's still a few traces of it on the trunk hatch, under the wipers, in the rearview mirrors.

the dome is dead, but its remains still linger, all powder and clouds and hazy memory of a lost landmark left to give up the ghost.

Steve Forbert: Love's a Purple State of Mind....

My journalistic compadre John Marks asked me if I might like to write something for the "Purple State Of Mind" blog that he and Craig Detweiler are now running, sort of an online extension to their documentary film of the same name. (I re-posted a piece about the movie a few days ago.)

What I came up with was an essay that discusses the music of Steve Forbert, but a little bit more than that as well.

You can read it here.

Low Anthem / Annie & the Beekeepers

By Peter Blackstock

If by chance you're deep in the midst of SXSW right now, you've probably had several opportunities to catch a couple of acts I saw last weekend at the Cat's Cradle here in North Carolina: the Low Anthem, and Annie & the Beekeepers. Though they're really quite different bands, they have a couple of notable connections: Low Anthem multi-instrumentalist Mat Davidson formerly was one of the Beekeepers, and the two acts share the same management.

Because I happened to come across both of them around the same time last year, and saw them both last summer on separate bills within a week's time at small clubs, they have become sort of intertwined in my mind, despite the fact that they really don't sound anything like each other. The common ground from a musical standpoint is simply that both bands are really, really good.

They're also at fairly different stages in their careers. The Low Anthem, though I enjoy the opportunity to write about them and perhaps help spread the word, hardly needs my little semblance of assistance at this point, I expect. True that they're not "huge" by any measure just yet; but it seems plenty clear to me that they're over the hump, with an album (Oh My God, Charlie Darwin) on an excellent major-affiliated label (Nonesuch), and a steadily increasing live draw that saw them graduate from around 100 folks at the Local 506 in Chapel Hill last August to around 300 at Cat's Cradle down the street last week.

For fans, right now is the absolute perfect time to catch this band. The crowds are large enough to feel like you're sharing the experience, yet not so crowded that everyone's packed in like sardines. I think the latter is coming, because the other thing about seeing them right now is that it feels like they are at full bloom artistically. I recall the band I saw last August being something special; last week, what I heard was beyond special, to the point that I believe I can call them one of the very best young bands I've heard in the last ten years or so. In that regard, they'd be in the company of the Avett Brothers (with whom they recently toured, and apparently really hit it off) and Hem (who they definitely should tour with, from a musical-compatibility standpoint at least).

So what exactly IS it, then, about the Low Anthem that leaves me so impressed? A few things. First, the instrumentation. These guys (well, actually, three guys and a girl) routinely switch around among a variety of instruments both typical (guitars, drums, bass, keyboards) and atypical (esoteric horns, musical saw, harmonium, some thing with bells on it played with a bow that I don't even know the name of). The result is a sound that is, to properly employ an overused word, unique. I've never heard another band that sounds like the Low Anthem. (Thus my apologies for the lack of the standard "recommended if you like" comparisons here.)

Next, the dynamics. Folks used to talk about how the Pixies were masters of the quiet-to-loud transition, and they were; I've noticed a similar sort of facility with that balance among the projects of Glen Hansard (notably the Frames and the Swell Season). And yet I'm not sure I've ever seen a band so effortlessly follow a number that's as hushed as something from the Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Session with a full-on blues-belting scorcher that blows out the engines. The Low Anthem's genius is finding a way to make these deliveries of a piece with each other; and somehow, they completely fit within the group's overarching aesthetic. I have no idea quite how they manage this, but I've heard it a couple times now onstage, and there is no abruptness to their dynamic shifts. It just works.

Finally, they're very good songwriters, ones who optimize the balance between creating new sounds and borrowing from the past. That their first album (2007's What The Crow Brings) included a cover of the Carter Family's "Keep On The Sunny Side" was a nice touch, but the Low Anthem would not work simply as a revival band (even acknowledging what a fresh-sounding take on that old tune they recorded). Like the very best bands we covered in No Depression over the years, they're employing traditional songs and styles to inform their own very original art.

If there's a specific area where the Low Anthem and Annie & the Beekeepers overlap, it's this last observation, because they're clearly drawing on traditional music as well, yet are also very good songwriters creating new material that is ultimately all their own. The traditionalism is perhaps a little more evident with the Beekeepers, in that the instrumentation is more akin to contemporary string-band lineups, though the inclusion of cello is a somewhat unusual (and welcome) element alongside the more traditional upright bass and acoustic guitar (with occasional curveballs such as banjo and harmonica on a song or two here and there).

Probably the biggest calling-card for Annie & the Beekeepers is the quality of their voices, specifically the exquisite purity of the harmonies that are struck between frontwoman Annie Lynch and multi-instrumentalist Alexandra Spalding. It's not just the raw beauty of their voices, but also the emotional pull they exert through the expressiveness of their singing. In short, they make you feel the songs, not just hear them.

I probably can give you some "recommended if you like" comparisons here -- Crooked Still, Gillian Welch, maybe Alison Krauss -- but I wouldn't wanna take that too far because the Beekeepers stake out their own territory with their songwriting. Still, it's the vocals that will almost certainly draw you in first, and so if you're the kind that appreciates the likes of those artists, you will definitely want to seek out Annie & the Beekeepers too.

With a self-released LP and EP to their name, Annie & the Beekeepers are still finding their way, though the simple fact that they've been in my neck of the woods twice in the past eight months suggests they're working hard to get there (as does the fact that the current SXSW is their second straight appearance at that event). They strike me as the kind of band, unlike the Low Anthem, that could benefit from whatever boost I might still be able to provide, limited though it may be at this point. So, to put it simply, if I've ever steered you right before over the years -- if I've made you aware of a talented young band that you might not previously have heard -- then check these guys out. Their music has moved me, and it's of such unmistakable quality that I have no doubt there are a lot more folks who would be similarly moved, if they get a chance to hear it.

"someone's praying, my lord, kumbayah...."

You may or may not have seen a post I made here a few weeks ago regarding Karla Bonoff; it was, I noted at the time, a reprint of a post that originally appeared on the old nodepression.net website. Back when No Depression magazine was still in print and before nodepression.com became Kyla Fairchild's community website, Grant Alden and I posted regular web entries to the nodepression.net site, as a sort of online editorial supplement to our print publication. None of these entries were carried over into the currently existing nodepression.com domain.

Some of these were quick asides that aren't really worth revisiting, but others were more substantive passages that I'd like to reinstate on the web. So I'm planning to use this forum on occasion to dig a few of them up and re-post them.

Here's one that proved particularly meaningful in the long run. It's about a documentary film called Purple State Of Mind made by John Marks and Craig Detweiler. The outgrowth of this blog-entry was that Mr. Marks ended up becoming a contributor to No Depression in its final days, writing an excellent feature on the Old 97's for our final issue (ND #75) as well as a superb piece on the Guthrie family in the third installment of the ND bookazine series published by University of Texas Press. I thought their film was something special, and I still do; so, in case you missed it back in 2008, I'd like to call it to your attention again.

By Peter Blackstock

A few weeks ago I happened to stumble upon a rather intriguing and intelligent blog-entry that dealt with our recent cover story on Shelby Lynne, written by a fellow named John Marks on a site called purplestateofmind.com. Interested in his writing but not having a clue as to what "Purple State Of Mind" might be, I poked around a little further and found that it's the title of a documentary film which is just now beginning to hit some festivals and select screenings. Though its promotional budgets are modest and its national profile is (so far) relatively low, Purple State Of Mind strikes me as a film that the majority of Americans need to see.

The summary description is hardly sexy: Basically this is 80 minutes of two middle-aged white guys sittin' around talkin' to each other. The catch is that the two guys -- Marks and his longtime friend and former college roommate Craig Detweiler -- are tremendously articulate and intellectually challenging, and their central subject matter delves deep into the heart of the modern American experience. Essentially they're addressing the great Red State/Blue State divide between believers and nonbelievers of Christianity, and the extent to which this divides us as a nation in a way that is ultimately both unnatural and unhealthy.

By openly and honestly confronting each other about how they came to believe (or not believe) what they do today, Marks (raised Christian but no longer a believer) and Detweiler (not raised religious but born again in his college years) take their own steps together toward bridging the supposed chasm between the religious right and what might be termed the agnostic left. More significantly, they go a long way toward breaking down those stereotypes altogether, eventually revealing within themselves elements of each other's beliefs and values.

Their conversations and arguments are heated, humorous, vehement, compassionate, and most of all relentless. In the end, as Detweiler repeatedly stresses, it's not about convincing the other person, or about winning or losing. Rather, it's about understanding and respecting one another's views.

Nowhere is that better illustrated than in the two deeply personal revelations which more or less bookend the film, in which Detweiler and Marks recount specific trigger-points that had a lot to do with their respective affirmation and rejection of faith. Essentially the two men faced very similar darkest-moments-of-the-soul experiences; their responses may seem on the surface to have been entirely opposite, but I'd argue that on some level, they were affected in precisely the same way. Both of them stared directly into the heart of darkness; each of them dealt with it by reaching for the only reckoning that could help them find their way back to the light.

For a taste, here's the film's trailer:




Many of the upcoming screenings are cross-promotional events for Marks's new Harper/Collins book Reasons To Believe, which came out this week. For those willing to dig deeper, the book goes another 360-odd pages into the subject; in fact, the film was actually an outgrowth of the book, having sprung from Marks' decision that his first interview subject for the book should be Detweiler. Because Detweiler's career involves teaching and training students in filmmaking, he suggested they have their conversations on-camera, and a documentary project was born.

If you're looking for an Americana-related musical tie-in (other than Marks being a devoted reader of No Depression), check out the film's music, which includes excerpts from Neko Case's cover of "Wayfaring Stranger" as well as Wilco's "Theologians". In my estimation, however, the crowning musical choice is the revival of Guadalcanal Diary's transcendent 1985 cover of the old campfire sing-along "Kumbayah". The movie's spirit strikes at the very core of that band's apocalyptic reading of the song; it's almost as if Guadalcanal Diary recorded it precisely for the purpose of connecting with Purple State Of Mind twenty-odd years later.

And we had no dreams, we just lived one.

I've heard this song for at least 20 years, having bought the LP sometime in the 1980s, and the CD-reissue circa 1990. The recording linked here was made in 1972:

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/Keeper+Of+The+Mountain/1Xpatm

The band is the Flatlanders. The song is "Keeper Of The Mountain", written by Al Strehli.

Although I've never quite realized it till just now, my question -- especially to all of you artists -- is:

Who the hell keeps covering Hank Williams songs, and Johnny Cash songs, and Woody Guthrie songs,

And keeps leaving this uncovered?

Just what more do you want than:

...and these
(theeeeese)
these ain't teardrops
(these ain't teardrops)
and it ain't the river
(ain't the river)
just a moment
(just a moment)
the river's not complainin'
oh no
oh no no no.



You will not find any better.

You will not write any better.

So just cover the damned song already.

This is how the folk process works.

(More or less.)


Adios,
Peter

170 Nights Spent At The Cactus Cafe

By Peter Blackstock

Writing about the value of the Cactus Cafe in my previous entry got me to thinking back on some of the shows I've seen there, and so I dug out my trusty show-logs to help rekindle those memories. Since the fall of 1988, I've kept a list of every musical event that I've attended, which makes it possible to go back and compile lists such as the one below.

This isn't the complete record of my Cactus experience, since I saw quite a few shows there from 1985 to mid-1988 before I began keeping my logs. At 21 years, though, it's fairly extensive. Take a look; perhaps you were at some of these shows too.

I've listed them alphabetically by artist, with the date of each show attended following the artist's name. (The dates lean heavily toward the late-1980s and early-1990s, since I lived in Austin at that time.)


FROM 1988 TO 2009:
170 NIGHTS SPENT AT THE CACTUS CAFE


Abi Tapia -- sat mar 15, 2008

Abra Moore -- sat feb 17, 1996

Alejandro Escovedo -- thu nov 10, 1988; sun nov 20, 1988; sat dec 9, 1989; fri jan 19, 1990; sat july 14, 1990; fri nov 9, 1990; fri feb 8, 1991; fri mar 12, 1993; sat aug 28, 1993; sun feb 12, 2006

Alison Rogers -- sat dec 8, 1990

Amy Rigby -- sat mar 18, 2000

Andy Van Dyke -- fri oct 13, 1989; thu oct 25, 1990

Ani DiFranco -- sat jun 22, 1991

Ann Powell -- wed nov 30, 1988

Austin Lounge Lizards -- fri jan 11, 1991

Balloonatic -- sat july 7, 1990; wed may 8, 1991

Barbara K -- fri feb 21, 1997

Beaver Nelson -- fri apr 26, 1991; fri jun 28, 1991; fri sep 20, 1991; fri feb 19, 1993; thu feb 13, 1997

Bedlam Rovers -- tue apr 9, 1991

Beth Orton -- fri mar 17, 2006

Betty Elders -- wed sep 5, 1990

Big Blue Hearts -- fri mar 17, 2006

Bill Morrissey -- thu mar 15, 2001

Billy Joe Shaver -- thu mar 16, 2000

Black Francis (a.k.a. Frank Black) -- thu jan 11, 1990

Blackberry Winter Boys -- tue nov 7, 1989

Bob Neuwirth -- sat dec 16, 1989

Butch Hancock -- fri mar 3, 1989; wed jun 14, 1989; wed oct 4, 1989; wed jan 31, 1990; thu feb 1, 1990; fri feb 2, 1990; sat feb 3, 1990; sun feb 4, 1990; mon feb 5, 1990; thu sep 6, 1990; wed dec 5, 1990; sat apr 13, 1991; sat july 20, 1991; fri sep 20, 1991; fri nov 4, 1994; fri feb 24, 1995; sat feb 25, 1995; fri feb 16, 1996; sat mar 9, 2002; sat mar 8, 2003; sun feb 12, 2006

Butch Hancock & Jimmie Dale Gilmore -- wed feb 13, 1991

Cactus Cafe Orchestra -- tue oct 16, 1990; thu feb 27, 1992

Camp -- tue nov 1, 1988; tue feb 21, 1989

Chris Armstrong -- sat mar 18, 1995

Chris Burroughs -- sat mar 23, 1991

Chris Chandler -- tue sep 18, 1990

Christine De La Garza -- thu july 19, 1990

Cliff Eberhardt -- thu oct 11, 1990

Cowboy Junkies -- sat aug 18, 1990

Damon Bramblett -- sat feb 17, 1996

Daniel Johnston -- thu mar 17, 2005

Darden Smith -- fri jun 16, 1989; sat sep 9, 1989; sat nov 18, 1989; thu mar 5, 1992

David Garza -- sat july 6, 1991

David Halley -- thu nov 10, 1988; thu feb 16, 1989; fri apr 21, 1989; thu july 20, 1989; thu jan 11, 1990; fri may 4, 1990; sat aug 18, 1990; fri july 5, 1991; fri july 19, 1991; fri aug 27, 1993

David Rodriguez -- sat aug 17, 1991

Dick Siegel -- sat feb 25, 1995

Dirk Hamilton -- fri mar 12, 1993

Ed Miller & Rich Brotherton -- wed feb 22, 1995

Eliza Gilkyson -- sat dec 16, 1989

Eric Taylor -- sat aug 17, 1991

Graham Weber -- sat mar 15, 2008

Grains Of Faith -- wed feb 21, 1990; sat july 7, 1990; sat may 11, 1991

Grant McLennan -- sat mar 18, 1995

Grapes Of Wrath -- thu jan 18, 1990

Greg Brown -- thu jan 24, 1991

Gurf Morlix -- sat mar 15, 2008

Guy Clark -- fri mar 24, 1989; sat july 21, 1990; tue dec 12, 2006

Hal Ketchum -- sat july 29, 1989; thu aug 17, 1989; wed nov 28, 1990; wed aug 14, 1991

Harry Dean Stanton w/ Michael Been & members of The Call -- tue oct 4, 1988

Hey Zeus -- wed aug 7, 1991

Hudson & Franke -- thu jan 19, 1989

James McMurtry -- wed july 26, 1989

Javelin Boot -- wed apr 3, 1991; wed feb 26, 1992

Jennifer Cook -- thu aug 30, 1990

Jimmy LaFave -- sat oct 13, 1990

Joe Ely -- sun nov 20, 1988

John Gorka -- sat apr 6, 1991; fri aug 30, 1991

Jon Dee Graham -- sat mar 23, 1991; wed jun 26, 1991; sat sep 14, 1991

Josie Kuhn -- thu mar 4, 1993

Julian Dawson -- wed sep 5, 1990

Kathy McCarty -- wed feb 19, 1997

Kevin Carney -- thu aug 30, 1990

Kevin So -- sat nov 16, 1996

Kimmie Rhodes -- thu feb 20, 1997

Kris McKay -- tue may 9, 1989; thu july 5, 1990; sat may 11, 1991

Leatherbag -- sat mar 15, 2008

Lisa Colvin -- tue jun 25, 1991

Lisa Mednick -- tue feb 27, 1996

Loudon Wainwright III -- fri may 11, 1990

Lucinda Williams -- sat oct 15, 1988; fri apr 26, 1991

Lyle Lovett -- fri jun 2, 1989; sat july 22, 1989

Make Believers -- tue oct 4, 1988

Marlee MacLeod -- sat mar 23, 1991

Martin Zellar -- fri feb 21, 1997

Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives -- fri mar 17, 2006

Mary Gauthier -- fri feb 10, 2006

Matt The Electrician -- fri oct 9, 2009

MayDay -- fri feb 26, 1993

Meredith Louise Miller -- sat mar 18, 1995; thu feb 13, 1997

Michael Fracasso -- sat apr 13, 1991; sat sep 21, 1991; fri mar 20, 1998; fri mar 17, 2000

Michelle Solberg -- thu july 19, 1990

Mike Hall -- sat sep 30, 1989

Mike Nicolai -- fri sep 20, 2002

Milo Binder -- sat mar 23, 1991

Nanci Griffith -- thu jan 19, 1989

Open Mike -- mon feb 20, 1989; tue aug 7, 1990; mon nov 26, 1990; mon apr 15, 1991; mon may 13, 1991; mon mar 2, 1992; mon mar 9, 1992; mon mar 8, 1993

Paddy Moloney & Darren Casey -- sat aug 30, 2008

Patterson Hood -- fri mar 17, 2006

Pete Droge -- fri mar 12, 1993

Peter Case -- sat sep 9, 1989; fri jan 19, 1990; sat jan 20, 1990; thu oct 11, 1990; sat oct 13, 1990; fri sep 15, 1995; sat nov 16, 1996

Peter Himmelman -- tue nov 8, 1994; thu nov 14, 1996

Peter Rowan -- sat feb 2, 1991

Poi Dog Pondering -- wed feb 15, 1989

Randy Erwin -- wed oct 11, 1989

Ray Wylie Hubbard -- fri feb 17, 1995

Reeva Hunter -- sat july 20, 1991

Richard Buckner -- tue feb 27, 1996; fri sep 20, 2002

Robert Earl Keen -- fri feb 10, 1989; thu may 4, 1989; sat july 15, 1989

Roger Manning -- tue feb 7, 1989; sat mar 23, 1991

Rory Block -- wed feb 26, 1997

Rory McLeod -- tue jun 11, 1991

Sara Hickman -- wed jan 18, 1989; thu oct 25, 1990

Sarah Harmer -- fri mar 17, 2006

Sharon Shannon -- wed mar 1, 1995

Shawn Colvin -- sat dec 9, 1989

Ship Of Fools -- thu aug 16, 1990; fri oct 19, 1990; sat feb 9, 1991

Shoulders -- wed mar 29, 1989; wed nov 15, 1989; thu jan 18, 1990; fri oct 19, 1990

Steve Forbert -- fri oct 13, 1989; sat dec 8, 1990; sat sep 21, 1991; thu mar 4, 1993

Stick People -- wed nov 15, 1989

Storyville -- thu feb 18, 1993

Syd Straw -- thu nov 10, 1988; thu july 18, 1991

Teddy Thompson -- fri mar 17, 2006

Terry Allen -- sat mar 8, 1997

Timbuk 3 -- sat sep 30, 1989

Tiny Lights -- mon jun 25, 1990

Tommy Womack -- sat mar 15, 2008

Toni Price -- fri feb 25, 1994

Toqui Amaru -- fri dec 1, 1989

Townes Van Zandt -- sat aug 19, 1989; thu jun 27, 1991; fri jun 28, 1991; sat mar 12, 1994

Townes Van Zandt Tribute with Butch Hancock & Friends -- thu mar 7, 2002; fri mar 7, 2003

Tres Chicas -- fri mar 17, 2006

Uncle Bonsai -- sat nov 12, 1988

Vic Chesnutt -- sat mar 23, 1991

Vince Bell -- wed feb 15, 1995

Will T. Massey -- fri mar 3, 1989; sat july 21, 1990; fri aug 10, 1990; thu feb 16, 1995

Woody Guthrie Tribute hosted by Greg Johnson -- wed july 17, 1991

Yolocamba I Ta -- fri nov 10, 1989

The Cactus Manifesto

By Peter Blackstock

I've been trying to live with this idea for a little while now, the notion that some folks at the University of Texas think it's a good idea to shut down or repurpose the Cactus Cafe.

I've endeavored to be open-minded about their perspective. First and foremost, the budgetary concerns. This economic downturn is very real; its effects cannot be denied. Simply saying "But don't cut the Cactus, it's too important!" isn't a good enough response, because any entity that might end up on the chopping-block will be valuable to someone. This is simply the nature of dealing with a bad economy; tough decisions sometimes have to be made, it's not fun, and inevitably some things will be lost. I don't see any avoiding those realities.

As such, the fundraising effort spearheaded by Save The Cactus Cafe has been the logical approach. If whatever dollar-amount that UT claims to be saving by shutting down the Cactus can be matched by community donations, then the economic motivations automatically become a non-factor for the university. Exactly what the precise dollar-amount may be seems to have been a source of confusion, with figures ranging from $122,000 to $33,000 having made the rounds (complicated by the inclusion of the Informal Classes program in the university's cuts, and the citing of costs on a biennial rather than annual basis). Regardless, if the folks behind Save The Cactus can raise the appropriate funds to replace any stated savings from the proposed Cactus actions, then the university can't legitimately claim fiscal concerns as the reason for any changes.

OK, then -- what about the matter of the venue needing more student participation, and/or a need for the Cactus to present more student-oriented programming? This one hasn't really held water from the outset. As for students participating in the operation of the Cactus, I believe that the venue has in fact historically hired and involved students in its operation. Should an increase in student involvement be desired, clearly that could be accomplished without closing or repurposing the venue. (Not to mention that closing or repurposing the venue would in fact be depriving any students of the opportunity to be involved with one of the nation's foremost music venues of its kind, a stature that has been realized thanks to the considerable efforts and knowledge of Cactus booker Griff Luneburg.)

If the desire is to present more student-oriented music programming, the Union needs only to reopen the adjacent Showroom, which operated for years in the '80s and '90s as the Texas Tavern and specifically presented more student-oriented entertainment. The Union has plenty of space and opportunity to utilize for such a purpose; there's no legitimacy whatsoever to any suggestion that the Cactus is the only room in the building which could address such desires.

Finally, there's the matter of community interaction. Some comments from UT personnel have expressed a viewpoint that the university must cater primarily to its student population, with the community necessarily a secondary concern. I can buy that up to a point -- but it's not as if this is a one-or-the-other choice. There is plenty that the Texas Union does to cater specifically to students; having one room that also caters to the Austin community hardly seems an overstepping of bounds, particularly given that the Cactus has become one of the university's foremost examples of positive interaction with its community (as evidenced by the considerable public response to UT's initial announcement). This one just comes down to common sense, it seems to me: There's just no way you do away with the Cactus on "university vs. community" grounds.

So, what ground is left for the university to stand on?

Frankly, I don't think there really IS anything left. None of the arguments made by University Unions executive director Andy Smith, nor by student government president Liam O'Rourke, nor by student affairs vice president Juan Gonzalez, nor by UT president Bill Powers, ultimately stand up to careful scrutiny. Each of these people -- especially Powers, as the university's public persona #1 -- needs to simply admit they made an error in judgment. There's no harm in that.

To do otherwise would be to admit a willingness to toss a living and breathing cultural and artistic institution onto the scrap heap, without justification. Is this really a legacy that any of these people wish to have in their name? For what purpose? For what need? For what possible good? What is left for an argument that closing or repurposing the Cactus somehow makes any sense?

I'm asking those questions quite honestly, because if any of them can give me an answer -- taking into the account the answers already examined above -- I'd really like to hear what those responses would be.

As for my part: I graduated from the University of Texas in 1988 with a B.A. in History and a minor in Journalism. Though I received a top-quality education from the many hours I spent in the classrooms of Bates Hall and Parlin Hall, and Welch and RLM, and working for The Daily Texan in the basement of the communications complex, and interviewing athletes over at Memorial Stadium .... there was one place where I learned more about what would become my future career than in any other room on campus.

That room was the Cactus Cafe.

It was while I was at UT that I decided to shift gears from pursuing a career in sportswriting to trying my hand at writing about music. In the long run, things worked out pretty well; after a decade or so of covering music for various daily newspapers and other publications, I launched my own magazine, No Depression, which for more than a decade was acknowledged as the primary journalistic voice for American roots music.

A great deal of what we surveyed in No Depression overlapped with the kind of education I received at the Cactus during my Austin years. Of the 75 issues we printed during our 13-year run, I suspect that at least 25% (and quite possibly more) of the artists who appeared on the cover were artists who have performed at the Cactus Cafe. As for the number of artists we covered somewhere in the magazine's pages over the years that have played at the Cactus, it would undoubtedly be well into the hundreds.

Simply put, what I learned about songwriting and performance in that exceptionally fine-tuned little music room was immeasurable, and invaluable. I discovered artists who amazed and enlightened me, I watched local up-and-comers gradually develop into major talents, and I witnessed legendary troubadours creating art, and history, right there on the spot, in that very moment.

The first show I ever saw at the Cactus, in the summer of 1985, featured two of those legendary troubadours; it was a double-bill featuring Butch Hancock and Townes Van Zandt (who, rather than performing separately, shared the stage with each other on this night). Townes has been gone for more than a decade now, but Butch still carries on his legacy; every year on March 7, Hancock gathers up a bunch of his friends and hosts a Townes Van Zandt tribute show at the Cactus -- the place that Townes declared, in an autographed poster that hangs upon those hallowed walls, to be "my home club."

Home. That's what the place feels like to me, too.

The past couple of years, I've made it a pilgrimage of sorts to return to Austin in the fall and attend a football game at Memorial Stadium. After the game ends, I find a certain comfort in exiting the south end of the stadium and walking westward down 21st street, past the Alumni Center, past the little building where the student-radio station began broadcasting during my UT days, past Gregory Gym where my dad took me to see basketball games before the Erwin Center was built. Past Perry-Castaneda Library where I spent many hours studying as an undergrad, past the perfectly picturesque Littlefield Fountain and up the South Mall where I used to stretch out in the afternoon sun between classes, past the orange-lighted Tower that has been an inspirational beacon to me since the first time I laid eyes on it back in 1969.

As I walk up those Tower steps and turn left toward the West Mall, my final destination is resolute: I'm headed to the Cactus Cafe. I'm going home.

Please, Mr. Powers et al.: Do not simply give away this home, when there is no logical reason to do so.

"to fly over the mountain, though i'm standing still...."

[initially published October 30, 2007, on the now-defunct nodepression.net website]

When a new live release from Karla Bonoff (titled, reasonably enough, Live) arrived in the mail recently, my first impulse wasn't to put its two discs into the CD player, but rather to pull out my tattered old vinyl copy of her 1977 self-titled solo debut and play IT instead.

Such is the lifelong blessing and curse of artists who make a classic album right outta the gate. Think Marshall Crenshaw's self-titled debut; the Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Session (though it wasn't technically their first); Willis Alan Ramsey's first (and, still, only) record .... all so good that the artists in question have spent the rest of their careers trying to live up to such perfect beginnings.

Bonoff's debut was that good, and she's certainly well aware of it. She wrote eight of the record's ten songs, and all eight of those songs are among the 21 tracks on her new live disc. Clearly she's come to terms with the reality that her fan base still wants to hear all those songs, and when it comes down to it, that's a good thing. There are worse fates than having written an entire album's worth of material that stands the test of time three decades later.

The new live versions (recorded at shows in California and Japan) are quite good; Bonoff remains in fine voice, even as she's inevitably tuned down a step for "If He's Ever Near" (and yet she still hits some majestic high notes in "Falling Star", my personal favorite from that first record). It's also fair to note that the other thirteen tracks are more than chopped liver; especially of note is "Wild Heart Of The Young", the title track to her 1981 album. Conspicuously absent from the live collection is her lone top-40 hit, 1982's "Personally", but that's just fine by me, as that song always seemed a little bit lightweight compared to the emotional depth and resonance of Bonoff's best work.

It's worth acknowledging that I probably would never have become familiar with Bonoff way back then if not for the influence of my older brother Si, who had a fair bit to do with the development of my musical tastes in those formative years. I may have listened to the album then in large part because Si played it and I just liked what I heard; but I'm struck all these years later by just how strong a record it really is, the kind of songwriter's statement that definitively proves an artist's worth, much like Lucinda Williams' self-titled 1988 record (indeed, Lucinda's "Like A Rose" from that album seems to echo "Rose In The Garden" from Bonoff's debut), or perhaps Iris DeMent's "Infamous Angel".

Bonoff never did become a big star -- in some ways, her greatest notoriety came from Linda Ronstadt having covered three of her debut album's songs on her 1976 blockbuster Hasten Down The Wind -- but she did seem to earn a reputation as one of the best singer-songwriters to come out of the 1970s SoCal scene. She certainly deserves that respect.

Losing Vic Chesnutt

by Peter Blackstock

I've been trying to write something about Vic Chesnutt for a couple of weeks now, and just haven't seemed to be able to get it all out. Mostly because it's just been too sad and depressing to face, I think. Partly because I fear that some of the things that Vic felt he lost in recent years have been things that I have lost too. And maybe -- I should admit this part because Vic would've done the same himself -- I've just been slack. (In fact he DID fess up to just that in his hand-scrawled liner notes to the 1993 album West Of Rome: "But know I am slack," he warned those who might write to the P.O. Box address he provided.)

Slack in getting the words down on the page, though, doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about him pretty much every day since Christmas. Most of an afternoon vanished when I tried to hunt down an old Polaroid of Vic taken in Austin circa 1991; not sure exactly how it ended up in my possession, but it was a fun snapshot, with a handful of Austin musicians (including Wammo, Frank Orrall of Poi Dog Pondering, Ingrid Karklins, and Thomas Anderson, and somebody's young son) all surrounding a beaming and charming Chesnutt. Perhaps someday it'll turn up and I can scan and post it here. Till then, it still burns brightly in my mind's eye, a split-second of joyousness frozen in another lifetime.

I also spent hours combing through my hard-drive and pre-laptop computer printouts to find all the old interviews and reviews and articles I wrote about Vic, for the Austin American-Statesman and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Rocket and the MusicHound Country Album Guide and No Depression. Somehow I never did write at length about Vic for ND; as editor, I spent more of my time assigning pieces to our many talented freelancers (we had Russell Hall, William Bowers and Bob Townsend write extended pieces about Chesnutt at various points along our thirteen-year run), but I did go over my own personal history with Vic in a "Hello Stranger" editor's note when we had Chesnutt on our cover in ND #56. I put that up on my previous post here.

During the '90s I seemed to have an encounter with Chesnutt once a year or so. I didn't see him nearly as much over the last decade; there was an occasional SXSW gig, and a show at Cats Cradle in Chapel Hill (opening for Hem) where my wife Lisa got a chance to see and meet him. And this past January, I went to see him at Local 506 in Chapel Hill with Elf Power; I briefly said hello inbetween sets, but didn't make the effort to visit more with him. My last chance, alas.

Counting it up from my show logs, I found that I saw Vic perform 22 times between 1991 and 2009. One of the singular things about Vic's shows was that he almost never paid any heed to whatever record he might have most recently put out. That Elf Power gig was an exception, for the obvious reason that they could only do songs they'd worked up together, which meant that they played most of their excellent Dark Developments album. Most of the time, though, and especially when performing solo (which he did frequently), he just ignored his latest release and played a buncha new stuff. Might have been frustrating for some, but I always found it fascinating, in large part because going to see Vic was always less about the song (though he truly was a great songwriter) and more about the personality. Half the experience was the humor; he was one of the funniest people I've ever encountered.

A few scattered memories from those nearly two dozen shows:

-- At a performance at the Backstage in Seattle, someone kept requesting "Danny Carlisle" (from Vic's debut Little). Chesnutt generally didn't suffer requests gladly, but in this case he had a unique reply: "Why don't YOU come up here and play 'Danny Carlisle'?" And so the guy did -- Vic eyeing him all the while with a sort of mock-schoolmarm judgmentalism, as if he were fixing to grade the kid's oral report. It was a nicely played and heartfelt rendition, which Vic ultimately acknowledged quite warmly: "You did good."

-- A crazy Sunday night in Athens in November 1993 began with an Alejandro Escovedo show at a small club and ended up in someone's living room, with Escovedo and his violinist Susan Voelz and cellist Frank Kammerdiener swapping songs well into the wee hours along with a cast of locals including Kevn Kinney, Syd Straw, and Armistead Welleford. Vic was there too; people kept prodding him to do a song, but he kept insisting, "I'm too drunk," until his benefactor finally berated him into complying.

-- At that final show I saw with Elf Power a year ago, Vic went on a classic rant about how his thunder had been stolen by Hollywood wannabes. Seems that one of the best songs on his new record was a jaunty little ditty called "The Curious Case Of The Bilocating Dog", about a remarkable canine that could appear in two places at once. A couple months later came the Oscar-nominated film The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. Vic was not amused. "I got screwed!" he howled from the stage, to waves of sympathetic laughter.

Such moments were common with Vic, and it was hard not to think of him without smiling. I realize he had a significantly darker side as well; I can't say I knew him enough to have experienced it much, but I'd heard the stories about tour freakouts and breakdowns and previous attempts on his life. Lord knows he had a hard go of it in his 45 years, but I did get the sense that he fought pretty valiantly, and he accomplished a heckuva lot. And in so many ways he was just brilliant; the oft-overused "genius" tag is fully deserved in Chesnutt's case.

That his death may have in part been brought on by the failure of the United States health care system is as maddening as it is unsurprising. More than being angry, though, I'm simply sad, for never having a chance to hear him play onstage again, or to sit and talk with him for awhile. It may sound a bit too Ben Kenobi-like, but a great light has been vanquished from our world.

And yet, I'll never forget him, who he was, that irrepressible spirit that soared above the little guy in the wheelchair. Even in this saddest of circumstances, it's STILL hard to think of him without smiling.

Soul Asylum covering Vic's song "When I Ran Off And Left Her"