Increasingly Occasional

Somehow happened upon this blog tonight and thought it was probably worth noting that content posted here probably will be very infrequent in the foreseeable future, as the new job at the Austin American-Statesman keeps me plenty busy enough with writing opportunities these days. You can find my stuff quite regularly at statesman.com, mystatesman.com and austin360.com if you're interested in whatever I may be going on about. (Which mostly will be related to music news and events in the Austin vicinity.)

One parting note, then. When I first started this blog just after Vic Chesnutt's passing in December 2009, the idea was really just to put up a few thoughts about Chesnutt's music and personality. Looking back just now, I came across this list of potential names for the blog that I considered, before narrowing it down to That Magnificent Ghost. All of these are lyric snippets from Vic's songs. I think I'm happy with the choice I went with, but here were the others that lingered for awhile....

dream treefort

strategy not protocol

rabbit box

future stepped into my field

the tar is oozing from my little noggin

stupid preoccupations

primal griping

holding up a sparkler

jigsaw disposition

steeped in the dark isolation

only one of many

shimmer ephemeral

try to skedaddle

a rusty mass of machinations

that magnificent ghost

salient obsession

rambunctious cloud

The Picketts, from The Rocket, August 1995

Inspired by a photo that Miro Jugum posted of The Picketts doing an in-store at the long-gone Tower Records store on Mercer Street in Seattle -- in which the band mambers were holding copies of The Rocket with them on the cover -- I've dug out that cover story from my personal archives. Here it is, below.

A side note: Grant Alden and I were starting up No Depression at the very same time. Since I was writing about The Picketts for The Rocket, we needed another writer to do a piece on the band we were planning to run in the first issue of No Depression. That writer ended up being our good friend Mary Schuh. You can find it here:

The Picketts in No Depression #1, Fall 1995

----

From The Rocket, August 1995

By Peter Blackstock

            It would be easy to call the Picketts the best country band in Seattle, but first we must ponder the question: Are the Picketts a country band?

            Guitarist John Olufs cranks out riffs with the kind of raw twang that recalls the heyday of legends such as Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. But if you tune into country radio stations these days, Owens and Haggard are nowhere to be found, cast off to pasture in favor of your Garths and your Trishas and your Billy Rays and your John Michaels.

            Singer Christy McWilson has one of the most classically beautiful country voices since Loretta Lynn. But what's she doing over at stage right? Don't these guys know that you're supposed to put the cute girl singer in the middle and rename the band Christy & the Cowboy Nation?

            Instead, center stage belongs to Leroy "Blackie" Sleep -- a drummer, who plays standing up and shares vocal duties with McWilson. Since when have drums been a spotlight instrument in country music?

            OK, let's check these guys' credentials. Rhythm guitarist Jim Sangster boasts bass-playing duties in the Young Fresh Fellows, Seattle's most celebrated garage band. Olufs and bassist Walter Singleman were in Red Dress, who were -- well, it's hard to say what they were, but they sure as heck weren't no C&W hat act.

            Yet the Picketts ARE the best country band in Seattle.

            Meet the new country. It's about the same as the old country, really -- except that the old country has long since been passed over in favor of a starmaking machinery that stresses individuals over bands, smooth sounds over solid songs, and image over talent. It's no wonder country has become a commercial equal with rock and rap on the pop-music playing field in recent years: In its effort to reach the masses, Nashville polished off the edge that defined country music in the first place.

            So it's really not all that surprising to see the seeds of country taking root in the underground. As alternative-rock bands proliferate to the point of implosion and young punkers begin to wonder if there's really anything new under the sun after all, a traditional form such as country becomes more and more appealing. Especially when the genre is crying out to be reshaped and reinvented by fresh, creative blood.

            But doing this stuff well takes more than merely an attitude and a guitar. It helps if you have a certain amount of respect, rather than merely disdain, for the music that has come before you. The best alternative-country bands have taken the time and effort to seek out the great forgotten works of decades gone by, and have simply set about "to go through that music and take the parts and put them together in a different way," Olufs suggests.

            "There's so much back there to be inspired by," Sangster adds.  "And the more your learn about that music, the more interesting things you bring to the kind of music that we've all played before."

            As much as the Picketts have absorbed what has preceded them, however, they're not interested in being a retro band. "You have to make it happen right now," Olufs says. "It's really about having a feel for what you're doing, not with knowing so much the history of things."

            Sangster agrees. "You could know everything about every record put out and what you do could still be really crappy," he said. "And there's definitely a lot of music that's like that -- it's overthought, it's overeducated and it doesn't have any verve."

            For McWilson, who spent much of the '80s singing with the girl-group cover band the Dynette Set, the ability to use a traditional foundation as a springboard for personal creativity has been a gradual learning process. "I started off really emulating other things, but now I'm moving into my own experience," she says. "I feel like I'm pruning it or shaping it to something that's more relevant to me. I've gone from copying it to using it more as a form of self-expression."

            A good example is a song she recently wrote that was inspired by an old semi-novelty country hit called "The Girl on the Billboard." Both songs use an unusual device -- verses with lines that run on about three times as long as you expect them to -- but McWilson's lyrics have nothing to do with the rather sexist slant of the original. "It's kind of an answer, in a way," she says. "It's based on that song, but it's a reinterpretation; it's like my female response to it."

            It's also one of the best songs she's ever written, part of a healthy new crop of Picketts tunes that are ripe to be recorded for the band's next album. At the moment, however, the group finds itself in the somewhat awkward position of celebrating the release of an album that has basically been finished for almost two years but is just now seeing the light of day.

            The Wicked Picketts, the follow-up to the band's 1992 Paper Doll on local label Popllama, comes out this month on Rounder Records and gives the Picketts their first real shot at becoming nationally known. Until now, they've had to settle for regional recognition and a healthy pocket of fans in Austin, Texas, where the band has played several times.

            Long an established haven for country bands that don't quite fit into the Nashville mainstream, Austin not surprisingly has welcomed the Picketts with open arms. "The last couple times we were there, I've felt like that's  where we live," says Sleep.  "We go down there and people recognize us on the street and in the store, and they write stuff in the paper about us. We'd be riding in a cab, and the guy would recognize us. I was just blown out by that."

            In fact, the first time the band went to Austin, to play at the South by Southwest music conference in March 1992, rhythm guitarist Kels Koch liked the town so much he moved there. That marked the last in a long list of lineup changes that had hindered the band's momentum in their early years. No shortage of talented and accomplished local players have had stints with the Picketts, including the late Jim Silva, Gerald Collier (Best Kissers in the World), Larry Barrett, Brian Kenney (Lazy Susan), Steve Marcus and Jeff "The Dog" Leslie. Sangster, who had been playing with the band occasionally, took a full-time role after Koch's departure, and the lineup has remained the same since then.

            In addition to their trips to Texas, the band also has toured the West Coast a couple of times, but their upcoming plans to tour behind the new record will mark their first opportunity to take their music to rest of the nation. As fate would have it, however, those plans are basically on hold for a couple more months, as McWilson has been playing the single-parent role for most of this year while her husband, Young Fresh Fellows leader Scott McCaughey, has been on tour with R.E.M. as a backing musician.

            If timing hasn't exactly been on their side with touring prospects and album releases, it does seem to be playing a positive role in terms of musical climates and trends. With acts such as the Jayhawks, Wilco and the Bottle Rockets gradually broadening the audience for roots-influenced bands, the time seems ripe for the Picketts to bring their music to the rest of the country.

            Which reminds McWilson of an amusing anecdote from the band's earlier days. "Jim said something to me at a show where I was really depressed, and he put his hand on my shoulder, and -- I've never forgot this -- he said, 'Don't worry, Christy -- by the time people like the kind of music we like, we should be really good at it!"

            That time is now.

Deconstructing ELO

By Peter Blackstock

A confession, to begin with.

The first record I ever reviewed – or, at least, attempted to review – was the Electric Light Orchestra’s 1979 album Discovery. As a freshman cub-reporter for The Edition, the Anderson High School newspaper in Austin, Texas, I’d been writing short news and sports articles, and it occurred to me toward the end of the year that perhaps they’d let me do an album review.Discovery was the record (er, 8-track tape, actually) that I’d been listening to nonstop at the time, so I wrote up something and turned it in.

It was only after I’d submitted it that our teacher was informed by the paper’s editor that the album had come out nearly a year earlier, which nixed any chance of it being published. Such was the first misstep in my music-critic career, and my initial lesson about the significance of timeliness with record reviews.

It was probably just as well; mostly what I remember from what was undoubtedly a wretched piece of prose was my observations about the record’s “wacky special effects.” However, I believe I also pointed out just how hummable and memorable the melodies were – which, despite the band’s spaceship-oriented visuals and futuristic sonic palette, is really what had drawn me to the Electric Light Orchestra in the first place.

Though the band was plenty popular – I suspect both Discovery and its 1978 double-album predecessor Out Of The Blue went platinum – they were never much of a critics’ darling (at least beyond 9th-grade critics-in-waiting), which made it somewhat surprising when Lynne turned up in the Traveling Wilburys a decade later, alongside living legends Dylan, Orbison, and Harrison. His entree to that inner-circle seemed to be via Tom Petty, the slightly more mortal Wilbury who was at that time working with Lynne on his soon-to-be-chart-smashing solo disc Full Moon Fever.

While the Wilburys stint – brief though it was, since Orbison died shortly after the album was released – perhaps caused some folks to reconsider Lynne’s oeuvre, I don’t get the sense that ELO really has been taken much more seriously over the years. And perhaps with good reason. Because of the overreliance on those “wacky special effects,” much of ELO’s catalogue ranks with the most dated recordings in rock history; it’s hard to listen to much of their stuff and keep a straight face.

But if you do go back and listen, I swear that there really are terrific songs waiting to be excavated beneath all the studio dressing. It occurred to me that perhaps, somewhere in existence, are Lynne’s simple single-instrument-and-vocal early demo versions of these songs, and perhaps those recordings might be fascinating. Thus I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon what was labeled a “Home Demo” of the Discovery track “On The Run” which was apparently included on a 2001 reissue of the album – but I could only laugh when I checked out the track; “home demo” in this case appeared to something like cutting from 64 tracks down to 32. It would appear Lynne has no relation to the concept of stripped-down and simple.

Just because he doesn’t, though, doesn’t mean other artists shouldn’t. When I hear Discoverytoday, compared to how I marveled at the multilayers three decades ago, what starts popping into my imagination are deconstructed remakes performed by roots-oriented artists well-versed in the art of “less is more.” I hear, say, Del McCoury doing “On The Run”. Or Rosie Thomas doing“Wishing”. Or Willie Nelson doing “Need Her Love”. (OK, maybe there’s no way to address the mini-rock-opera that is “The Diary Of Horace Wimp”.)

It’s true that such cover-selection is a tricky business, one that first and foremost is best-served by artists mining their own memories for songs that still resonate and connect on a personal level. But there is also a fundamental principle, I’d contend, that some of the best sources for interpretation are songs which may in fact be sound and solid at their core but that may have been disguised by the genre or arrrangement in which they’ve been cloaked. Those artists who are willing to remove the artifice and rediscover the song can produce revelations: consider the Gourds’ “Gin And Juice” (compared to the Snoop Dogg original), Gillian Welch & David Rawlings’ “Black Star” (compared to the Radiohead original), Bruce Springsteen’s “Dream Baby Dream” (compared to the Suicide original).

With the Electric Light Orchestra, there’s a whole catalogue out there that’s just waiting for the taking, if someone’s inclined to dig in. Just turn off Lynne’s electric bulb, light up a few candles, and let the melodies burn through.

Don Walser article in The Rocket, March 1995

[This was published in the late, great Seattle biweekly music publication The Rocket as a preview for a tw0-night stand at The Backstage featuring Don Walser, Butch Hancock, Santiago Jimenez and Tish Hinojosa on March 28-29, 1995.]

By Peter Blackstock

For a well-traveled man of 60 who just recently retired from his day job, Don Walser sure seems a lot like a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed teenager.

He may not quite have that youthful jump in his step as we slowly shuffle back to the office of Babe's, a restaurant in Austin where he and his Pure Texas Band play every Monday night, to do an interview before the gig. But once you get Walser talking, there's no mistaking the sprightly youthfulness in his manner -- from the beaming gleam in his eyes, to the wide-as-a-tractor-trailer grin that splits his double-chinned mug ear-to-ear, to the giddy giggle reminiscent of a juvenile junior-high prankster.

Not to mention some of the company he keeps in Austin. "Are you familiar with the Butthole Surfers, and ol' Jeff Pinkus, who used to play with them?" he says, when I bring up the subject of how he has become a favorite at Emo's, Austin's most popular alternative-rock nightclub. "Well, we were one of their favorite bands, and they always hung out with us when they were in town. And they finally got us down to Emo's to play.

"Oh, and there's another guy that comes out to see us all the time. He usually comes to Jovita's (a Mexican restaurant where Walser and his band play every Tuesday night). He has a group called Ministry. Do you know who I'm talking about?" Al Jourgenson? "Al Jourgenson, yeah, that's the guy. Anyway, I went out to his place one day, just me and my guitar, and we played a little bit. And he showed me his new studio he had. And right on the board, he had a bumper sticker, Pure Texas Band! And he told me, 'Your CD's the first thing we played on this thing!' "

Exactly how or why the Buttholes and Jourgenson became such big fans of someone who plays music so totally different than their own is anyone's guess, unless you simply accept that you don't necessarily have to play classic country music to appreciate it. And it's almost impossible not to appreciate Walser, who has a keen ear for the most revered songs country music has produced since the beginning -- and also a voice to belt it out like probably no one you've ever heard.

At one point during our interview, Walser ely not believe your ears. And how many singers do you know who can make their voice sound more like a steel guitar than a steel guitar does, as Walser demonstrates on the 1949 Stan Jones gem "Cowpoke"?

Playing songs that are half a decade old is an integral part of what Walser and his Pure Texas Band are all about. "My heart's just not into doing Top 40 country," he says. "When I first started singing, I noticed there were a few bands around that would get together and they would learn the up-to-date tunes, and that was all they did. But what you're doing, you're constantly working up new stuff, and then in two weeks or a month or six months, it's plumb gone and forgot about, and you've spent all that time on those old tunes that are no good. And I just decided I wasn't gonna do that."

Though Rolling Stone from Texas indeed delves significantly into the catalog of classic country music with tunes by the likes of Marty Robbins, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Jimmie Rodgers and Willie Nelson, Walser also wrote or co-wrote five of the songs on the album. Not that you'd really notice much of a difference between the covers and the originals; his own material is heavily rooted in the old sounds he dearly loves, even if it has meant he's never gotten much attention from the Nashville cats.

"I had a pretty good bunch of songs that I thought were good about 20 years ago, so I went to Nashville," he recalls. "And they all really liked what I had, but they all told me one way or another real nicely, that, 'This is great stuff, but we haven't done it in 20 years.' So I told 'em, 'Well, when 20 years comes from now, I'll still be doing it.' And I am, I'm still doing it. I just didn't want to play the games that you have to play. And of course now, I'm tryin' to help a few people keep this old traditional country music alive. It's like a big ol' oak tree out there. If you destroy the roots, it's gonna die, and that's what's happening right now, I think."

Walser's efforts seem to be paying off. Seeing a full house of tattooed, nose-pierced twentysomethings spinning and singing along to his band at Emo's on a Friday night is all one needs to confirm that there is indeed room for his beloved old country music in the hearts of the Alternative Nation, as incongruous as it may seem. Of course, there's also the possibility that the kids may see him as nothing more than an entertaining curiosity, but he's not so sure about that.

A 60-year-old solo traditional country act on a showcase full of rock bands at CMJ might seem strange enough -- but then there was the time a couple years back when Walser actually opened a show for his pals the Buttholes in Austin. "It was our band and the Bad Livers and the Butthole Surfers," he recalled. "And I'll never forget Jeff Pinkus -- I was tellin' him, 'Well, good, I've been wantin' to hear y'all play.' And he said, 'Oh, Don, you don't want to hear this band.' And I said, 'Sure I do!' And he said, 'Naw, you really don't. You need to just go on home!' And I said, 'Naw, I'm gonna stay and listen, man!'

"So I got up there on the side of the stage, and I found out pretty soon why he didn't want me to stay. They had these two screens going at one time, and one screen they had a naked lady gyratin', and then on the other screen, they had a sex change operation goin', changin' a guy into a girl! I know that's why ol' Jeff didn't want me to stay!"

Butch Hancock article in The Rocket (Seattle), January 1994

By Peter Blackstock

It’s kind of an eyesore from the outside, this humble cottage industry that Butch Hancock calls home, a few yards from the antiquated streetcar tracks on a mostly deserted block in the middle of downtown Austin. Huge planks of plywood hide the graffiti that covered the abandoned storefront before Hancock moved in a couple years ago. Above the boards is a modest but intriguing sign, painted by Hancock, that depicts a city skyline as seen through a rearview mirror, along with the name of the establishment: “Lubbock Or Leave It.”

It’s an amusing but ironic phrase: Although Hancock left Lubbock for the culturally greener pastures of Austin a couple decades ago, there’s no doubt his old hometown still holds a special place in his heart. After all, it was in Lubbock that Hancock hooked up with the Flatlanders, a now-legendary revolving assemblage of musicians which included Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. The Flatlanders released an album in the early 1970s (reissued in the UK in 1980 as One Road More, and more recently on Rounder in 1990 under the title More A Legend Than A Band) that’s now considered a classic document of West Texas folk music.

Hancock moved to Austin in the mid-’70s and released his first solo album in 1977 on his own label, Rainlight Records. He followed it up with a steady stream of self-released records that chronicled the development of a songwriter sometimes referred to as “The West Texas Dylan.” Such comparisons often have become bad omens for promising songwriters, but Hancock can’t be cursed by the “New Dylan” tag because he’s already delivered the goods to be placed in such company. (Never was that more evident than the first week of February in 1990, when Hancock showcased his own material for six straight nights at Austin's Cactus Cafe and never repeated a song.)

Yet his impressive catalog of original material is only the most salient example of the creativity that radiates from this fascinating person. If Hancock isn’t jotting down song ideas or drawing sketches in one of the little notebooks he constantly carries around, he’s probably occupied with a camera. His photographs have been published in magazines and on the album covers of his peers, and have been been the subject of feature exhibits.

Nowadays, his photos frequently can be found on display at Lubbock Or Leave It, which not only is Hancock’s residence but also houses an art gallery, a tape duplication business, a store selling the music and merchandise of his peers, and a spacious studio room occasionally used for live performances. The multi-purpose setup is an ideal physical manifestation of Hancock’s do-it-yourself-and-do-everything ethic. And that includes simple manual labor -- he remodeled the place himself.

Such a task was old hat to Hancock; as he puts it, “I’ve done my share of hammerin’ and nailin’.” A student of architecture at Texas Tech University in Lubbock just before the heyday of the Flatlanders, Hancock spent a couple of years in the ’70s doing construction work in the Texas Panhandle town of Clarendon. Shortly after moving to Austin, he took a job remodeling an old train station into a house. His early days in Lubbock also included many a turn in the seat of a tractor, an occupation chronicled in the title and content of his debut solo album, West Texas Waltzes and Dust-Blown Tractor Tunes.

Such experiences are an integral part of Hancock’s character and have provided the wellspring from which his creative juices flow. “I literally wrote a lot of songs on the tractor,” he recalls. “On this old International Harvester we were pulling the terracing machine with, second gear at two-thirds throttle was about the key of G. So you could change gears, or speed up and slow down, to change the tune.”

The gears turning inside Hancock's mind mesh in perfect harmony when it comes to such seemingly disparate activities. “I just look at it as all one whole thing that’s completely related,” he explains. “My drawings and my photos are completely intertwined, at least in my brain, with my songs. I don't look at myself as a songwriter, or as a musician, or as a photographer; those are just part of what I do. And if I’m a tractor driver one year, then I’m a tractor driver, but that’s just part of what I do.”

“I never have understood the concept of just being a songwriter to crank out songs, because you’ve got to go out and get the experience and write from that. Otherwise, you just start imitating bad imitations of other imitations.”

These days, Hancock’s musical career is busy enough that it leaves little time for hammerin’ and nailin’ and tractor drivin’. But it hasn’t kept him from continually challenging himself with new experiences. In recent years, most of those experiences have involved international touring. In 1987, Hancock was one of a handful of Austin musicians who participated in a two-week tour of the Soviet Union as part of a cultural exchange program. In 1990, he and longtime pal Gilmore spent a month in Australia, where they played several shows and became enlightened to the art and culture of the indigenous Aboriginal tribes. (A live CD culled from shows on that trip was released in 1992 by Caroline Records.)

Among the more interesting endeavors Hancock has pursued in the past couple of years has been a series of “river-rafting concerts” on the Rio Grande, which divides Texas and Mexico. In coordination with with a West Texas travel outfit called Far Flung Adventures, Hancock and a couple of river guides take small groups of rafters on a three-day, two-night trip that includes campfire concerts by Hancock amid the walls of the river’s towering canyons. If you seek truly “Unplugged” music, this is the ultimate experience.

But enough about river trips, art galleries, tractor driving, architecture and the like. Ultimately, Hancock’s most significant contribution to the world has been his songwriting. His melodies and arrangements are generally pretty simple, but as a lyricist, Hancock has few, if any, peers in contemporary music.

Take, for instance, the barroom wisdom of “Firewater (Seeks Its Own Level)”: Perched on your back was a loudmouth vulture/ Y’all were talkin’ back and forth about the counter-counterculture/ Smoke was hangin’ heavy, everybody had to breathe it/ Your hands were on the table but your thoughts were underneath it.

Or the rambling stream-of-unconsciousness that drives “Cause You Never Compromise”: There was a goat on the ladder and a man on the trumpet/ A boy on the bass drum and buddy he could thump it/ A woman in a window and a monkey and a man on a chain/ I shook my head and the wind blew through my ears/ I looked away and heard the music disappear.

Then there’s the timeless beauty of his love songs, such as “If You Were A Bluebird”: If I were a highway, I’d stretch alongside you/ I’d help you pass byways that had dissatisfied you/ If I were I highway, I’d be stretchin’/ I’d be fetchin’ you home.

And that’s just scratching the surface. Several of Hancock’s best songs (including the aforementioned “Bluebird” and “Firewater”) are included on Own & Own, a two-CD set issued by Sugar Hill in 1991 and culled from the seven albums Hancock released on his own Rainlight Records label between 1978 and 1987. (None of those original albums have been issued on CD, but cassette copies are available by mail-order through Lubbock Or Leave It, 406 Brazos St., Austin, TX 78701.)

The real treasure of Hancock’s discography, however, is No 2 Alike, a 14-cassette, 140-song series documenting the aforementioned six Cactus Cafe concerts in February 1990. It’s sold only as a “tape-of-the-month club” -- you send $12 each month for an hourlong tape until all 14 have been delivered. It’s the definitive Hancock recording in terms of both quantity and quality: In addition to dozens of previously unreleased songs, the series also features the best versions of many Hancock classics.That’s due in part to a remarkable cast of guest performers -- Gilmore, Ely, Townes Van Zandt, Alejandro Escovedo, David Halley, Jesse Taylor, plus more than a dozen others -- and partly to the studio-quality sound of the recording.

In addition, several of Hancock’s songs can be found on albums by other artists. Both Ely and Gilmore have included handfuls of Hancock tunes on their solo albums; his credits also have recently turned up on discs by Emmylou Harris, the Texas Tornados and Flaco Jimenez.

In truth, however, Hancock’s catalog seems to have gone criminally unrecorded by a country music industry that too often relies on Nashville tunesmiths writing in office cubicles rather than seeking out folks who compose songs on tractors. To be fair, though, part of the reason Hancock hasn’t had a parade of hits is that he generally shies away from publishing deals, preferring simply to let the artists seek him out if they want to record his material.

“I’ve been real lucky just to retain control of my songs as I have,” he says. “Maybe the trade-off is that I haven’t had those one or two medium-sized hits or haven’t had songs on the charts or anything. But, you know, if it’s going to happen, it’ll happen.

“And if it doesn’t, well, so what?”

JKutchma, the Five Fifths, and a Valentine

You don't cover "My Funny Valentine" light-heartedly or off-handedly. It's not a happy-go-lucky love song, despite its title; its melody is weighted with something heavier, darker, harder to reconcile. To be honest, it's never really been a song I've longed to hear around the Ides of February. And yet, there is *something* about it... a peeling-back of artifice, perhaps, leaving the singer with nowhere to go but straight through the heart of it, their persona betrayed by the way they choose to deliver those offbeat words.



I thought about that when Jason Kutchma chose "My Funny Valentine" to conclude his set at the Whiskey in Durham tonight. The best-known versions are probably those by Ella, or Frank, or perhaps Chet Baker; my frame of reference is probably a little skewed, as I came to know it through renditions recorded several decades later by Elvis Costello and Rickie Lee Jones. For both of those artists, the song did the trick: The character of their voices when they sang it revealed much about the distinctive nature of their respective personalities.



The same was true tonight, even after Kutchma and his band, the Five Fifths, had served up an album's worth of their own first-rate original songs (plus a cover of David Bowie's "Heroes") with tasteful arrangements of guitars, bass, piano, pedal steel and fairly minimal drums. Kutchma began the set solo and ended it that way too, imbuing the dark, warm, hazy room with a take on "Valentine" that was remarkably assured in spite of its vulnerability. His voice acknowledged the darkness inherent in the song, yet seemed determined to press on toward the light on the other side.



Fitting, then, that the first song they've served up to the public from the album they recently recorded is called "There's A Light On"....

Giant Sand's "Classico" with Vic Chesnutt & Henriette Sennevalt

Well, this certainly needs to be posted here, of all places:





Thanks to Howe for sharing it with us, and Bill Carter for creating it.

West Texas rivers & wind-blown campfire tunes

(From November 2000)

By Peter Blackstock

Driving west on I-10 from Austin, the desert creeps up on you, gradually revealing itself mile after mile after mile until the entire landscape has changed. The winding rivers, lazy lakes, scrubby trees and colorful flowers of the Texas Hill Country finally give way to barren creekbeds, rocky outcroppings, desolate plains and various forms of cacti.

The transformation somehow seems as spiritual as it is physical. The world exists on a different plane: broader in scope, wider in space, deeper in soul. Here in the heart of West Texas, everything truly is bigger.

Biggest of all is the Rio Grande, and nowhere is it so grand as in Big Bend National Park, so named for the gargantuan turn the river takes as it winds through a series of deep canyons on the border of Texas and Mexico, a couple hundred miles southeast of El Paso and Juarez. Though Texas isn’t generally known for its mountains, several peaks in the park are quite impressive, rising to nearly 8,000 feet from a much lower base than, say, the Colorado Rockies, which sprout from a mile-high boost.

Hiking trails and campgrounds are plentiful throughout the park, but it’s the river that rules this region, providing a major recreational draw for adventure seekers in the Southwest and beyond. About a half-dozen companies operate raft trips on the Rio Grande, ranging from day or weekend trips through the three main canyons (Santa Elena, Mariscal and Boquillas) to weeklong excursions through the Lower Canyons.

One company in particular has carved out a unique niche in the market by combining the rugged splendor of Texas geography with the ragged glory of Texas music. Far Flung Adventures, based in the tiny ghost town of Terlingua just outside the park, regularly offers three-day/two-night trips in which a renowned Texas singer-songwriter comes along for the ride and performs intimate campfire concerts for the rafters.

Those who have participated in Far Flung’s river music series over the past decade include such marquee names as Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Robert Earl Keen, Tish Hinojosa, Darden Smith and Peter Rowan. The unrivaled stars of the series, however, are Steven Fromholz and Butch Hancock, whose lives have been significantly redirected by the pull of the river.

Fromholz inaugurated the series in the late ’80s and was so taken by the experience that he eventually became a trained boatsman as well, and set up a part-time residence in Terlingua (his primary home is in Austin). Hancock followed suit shortly thereafter, becoming a music-trip regular in the late ’80s and earning his oarsman credentials in the early ’90s before finally heeding Big Bend’s call completely and relocating from Austin to Terlingua in 1996.



The move marks a full-circle evolution of sorts in Hancock’s life cycle. Raised in Lubbock and a member of the pioneering band the Flatlanders in the early ’70s (along with Ely and Gilmore), Hancock moved to Austin in the mid-’70s shortly after recording his first album, West Texas Waltzes And Dust-Blown Tractor Tunes. He released about a dozen records of varying textures and tones during his two decades in Austin, but 1997’s You Coulda Walked Around The World revisits the rustic simplicity of his debut, a solo recording of just guitar, vocal and harmonica.

Lyrically, Hancock has replanted himself firmly in West Texas soil as well, which is what makes his music so ideally suited to Far Flung’s river excursions. His words echo in seemingly every experience of the adventure. Driving the back roads of Lajitas to the put-in point, the chorus of “This Old Dirt Road” comes to mind; the border adventure tale of “Leo y Leona” practically provides a plot map to the area; “Barefoot Prints” ponders the reflections of moonlight, sunlight and starlight on the Rio Grande.

Starlight, coincidentally, is where our journey begins — at the Starlight Theatre, which sits next to Far Flung’s headquarters in the heart of “downtown Terlingua” (consisting only of those two facades and a gift shop). Having set out from Austin around dawn on a Thursday in mid-November, my father and I pull into Terlingua shortly after dusk (”You can drive all day and never leave Texas,” another of Hancock’s lyrics reminds) and drift into the Starlight, which functions as a restaurant and bar in addition to presenting occasional musical and theatrical events.

Across the room I happen to spot Joe Nick Patoski, a senior editor for Austin-based Texas Monthly magazine who’s in the area researching an article. Presently he’s joined by Fromholz, who informs us that our river trip with Hancock will be greatly enhanced by the ever-entertaining guidesmanship of Gary “Catfish” Callaway. We meet Callaway the next morning and instantly appreciate Fromholz’ assessment: “They call me Catfish because my mouth is bigger than my brain. And the fact that I just told you that proves that it’s true!”

Soon enough, however, Catfish’s considerable wisdom of his domain becomes evident. An outdoorsman and river guide for three decades and a minority owner of Far Flung, he knows the Rio Grande intimately, from its habits to its habitat to its history. As he rows our boat of five — Catfish, my father and me, and another father-son pair from Houston — downstream with breezy deliberation, he identifies bird species and rock formations, recalls floods and other incidents that altered the form of the river’s banks and rapids, and continually curses the tamarisk trees whose byzantine root structures drain water from the river at an alarming rate.

Drifting along lazily behind us, barely visible amidst a barricade of supplies surrounding him on his raft, is Hancock, who’s serving as cargo crew as well as campfire balladeer for our journey. Occasionally Catfish will nod back in the direction of Butch, careful to be out of earshot so as not to embarrass him, and marvel about how that guy in the trailing boat happens to be one of the great songwriters of our time.

Soon enough we’re treated to firsthand evidence of that assessment. After pitching our tents at the Friday night campsite and devouring a hearty steak dinner (Far Flung feeds folks mighty well on these trips), we gather around the fire, hoping that a threatening sky will hold off long enough to allow Butch to play a few tunes. (The story’s often told of how, around ten years ago, Hancock played his song “Just One Thunderstorm” one evening at a Rio Grande campsite and, on cue, the heavens opened forth and poured.)

The rain mostly holds off on this night, though a light drizzle eventually prompts us to scoot a few feet under the tarp protecting the makeshift kitchen. Playing for an hour or so, Hancock treats us to classics from his past such as “If You Were A Bluebird”, Terlingua-inspired tunes from his most recent album including “Long Sunsets”, and even a couple new numbers he hasn’t yet recorded. Those who have caught Hancock in the cozy confines of the Cactus Cafe in Austin might assume they’ve heard him in the ideal environment, and they’d almost be right — but nothing could ever transcend the experience of Butch’s songs rambling along the river’s banks, rolling upon its rippling waters, reverberating off its colossal canyon walls.

We don’t actually enter the majestic Santa Elena Canyon until the following afternoon, having spent the first day following the river’s twists and turns through the mesa-pocked frontier of the Chihuahua desert. We stop for lunch at the entrance to the canyon, taking a relatively short but awe-inspiring hike up a fairly steep trail leading to the canyon’s precipice. Peering one direction, down into the chasm created by the sheer cliffs on both sides, ignites the nerves with dizzying wonder; gazing another direction, across the vast cactus-covered playas of Mexico, beckons the soul to the edge of eternity.

We spend Saturday night deep within the canyon, chilled and whipped by a whistling wind that quickly renders our nice hot dinner less than lukewarm. This is, after all, West Texas, a place where “the wind is gonna blow tomorrow, just like it blows today,” as Hancock sings on “Wind’s Gonna Blow You Away”. The natives have long since learned to weather the elements, and Butch has no problem keeping us up for quite awhile, regaling us with the misadventures of “Split & Slide” (”Well Split he slipped and started to slide/And Slide he slipped and split his side”) and the simple wisdom of “Chase” (”You might chase a tune/You might chase the muse/You might chase the moon/You might chase the blues”). Finally, and fittingly, Hancock leaves the music to be carried away on “The Wind’s Dominion”.

Sunday morning, only a short float remains through the rest of the canyon to our early-afternoon takeout point, though it’s probably the most scenically spectacular portion of the trip, the canyon’s walls towering ever higher and revealing formations such as Smuggler’s Cave, a giant hole in the wall on the Mexican side. Then it’s out of the long shadows and back into the bright sunlight, Santa Elena’s tight fortress receding abruptly and giving way once more to the desert’s endless horizon.

Driving back to Austin, watching the parched plains transmute back into rolling hills mile after mile after mile, I recall all those treks across I-10 I’d made in my younger days, and how hard it always was to readjust to urban civilization after spending a few days amid the soul-stirring nature of this country. As usual, another song of Hancock’s — this time it’s “Texas Air” — comes to mind, and captures the feeling exactly:

Leave my spirit on the prairie
Bury my bones in the sand
Toss my troubles to the western wind
Baby it’s a wide, wide land.

Why the very last R.E.M. song means so much to me.

By Peter Blackstock

That it was R.E.M.'s time to say goodbye came as no surprise. Thirty years in, eleven years beyond the timeline they'd once vowed to follow, a tenure without Bill Berry approaching the tenure they'd had with him: It was time, if not past time. There had been reasons to keep going, for better and for worse, but the end was always near. And so it was here. We knew, understood, accepted.

As it happens, there was a farewell note left on the mantle. It's called "We All Go Back To Where We Belong", and I find myself drawn to it much more than I'd imagined was possible, at this late date in a lifetime relationship with a band long taken for granted. As the title suggests, it harkens back to the beginning, a reminder of why such alchemy had first coalesced, of where it all flowed from. Which is not to say it's retro: R.E.M. circa Chronic Town would not have been capable of this particular shade of accumulated beauty. The unapologetic gracefulness, the sympathetic twinges of strings and horns, the clarity of message and purpose....these are the full blooms from wisdom gained along the way.

But the artistic impulse, the underlying current of emotion -- that carries over, and connects 1980 to 2011. Then, as now, the pull of a melody divines the direction. It's the feel of the sound that determines the words. And so "I could live a million years" bridges over three decades into "I will write our story in my mind."

The poetry always mattered, even when the words were elusive. They became clearer over time; that clarity sharpens to its finest point in this final address. "This might be my innocence lost." "I can taste the ocean on your skin." "I woke up thinking we were free."

And the answer to the end of this band, fittingly, comes in the form of a question: "Is this really what you want?"

We all, ultimately, must ask this of ourselves. Where we proceed from that reckoning is up to us. And yet, the nature of the past exerts its power over the future: "We all go back to where we belong." This is not as reactionary as it sounds. "Things don't change, they never have," a contemporary of R.E.M. used to sing. But the meaning, really, was: Things don't change, they're not so bad.

And so it follows that this "going back to where we belong" is not so bad, either. R.E.M.'s final offering is the perfect closer to my 2011 year-end collection of songs, but if you play this collection on a loop, it feeds right back into the opening track, "Burning Up The Sky," delivered in the same key by a twenty-something band called the Parson Red Heads. On the heels of R.E.M.'s end-of the-road concluding statement, the Parsons reopen the dialogue with wide-eyed wonder: "We are living, living in a new age, living in a new age, kicking up the dust."

As I write this, there is a picture on my laptop screen of a breathtaking midsummer sky -- layered shades of grayish blue, brilliant red and glowing orange reflected upon the waters of Liberty Bay, against a silhouette of evergreen trees, a lonely rooftop, and a hillside speckled with the scattered lights of town, stretching out across the horizon. It looks for all the world like a heart-stopping sunset. But, in fact, it was taken just before the dawn.

"There wasn't even time to say, Goodbye to R.E.M...."

September 21, 2011, 5:05 pm

I hadn't seen the news until late this afternoon; been busy today with an extensive project that, coincidentally, included writing a little bit about a side-project of R.E.M. Just three days ago, I'd posted to Facebook about Sept 18th marking 28 years since the first time I saw them play. (At the old Austin Opera House.)

Fair to say they changed my life in a pretty major way. My early experience is much like what others have recounted, in terms of hearing something in their music that started them down a new path. I think that's why they were such a big deal for a long while, and so influential -- because a whole lot of folks our age told that same story. They were largely responsible for my first giving a chance to music that was outside the mainstream.

They were my favorite band throughout the 1980s, with the possible exception of 10,000 Maniacs (who I discovered in part through R.E.M.) and the Austin band Zeitgeist (all of whom held R.E.M. in high esteem). Seemingly everyone I knew at the time placed them on a pedestal, sort of shared with the Replacements, but with an appreciation fully for the art of the music (whereas the Replacements' legend was partly tied to drunken antics, alongside some seriously great songs). A phone interview with Peter Buck for an Austin American-Statesman preview of their March 1989 Erwin Center concert was kind of a rite of passage for me; I'd probably never been so nervous for an interview, but he turned out to be really easy to talk to.

Fate intervened in the '90s. In the fall of 1991 I moved from Austin to Seattle, and, lo and behold, who shows up in town the following summer but R.E.M., doing some work at a local studio on what became Automatic For The People. Buck (recently divorced) fell in love with the city, and most specifically with the owner of the cool local nightclub, the Crocodile Cafe. He moved to Seattle, taking up residence in a house within shouting distance to Kurt & Courtney's place down the hill.

We ended up more or less in the same circle of friends, largely via Crocodile Cafe booker Scott McCaughey, who eventually was enlisted into R.E.M.'s lineup at the tail end of 1994. Sometime around then, a friend of mine named Gary Heffern decided to record a song I wrote on an album he was doing for a small German label; Gary had a way of enlisting anyone and everyone to play on his records, and so it was that Peter Buck ended up playing bouzouki on a song I wrote. (Still kinda freaks me out to this day.)

McCaughey's first tour with the band was in January 1995 in Australia. Realizing I could tag along for a few days and sleep on the floor in Scott's hotel room, I booked a flight to Sydney and caught the band's three shows there plus one in Adelaide. The last night in Sydney is the one I remember the most; we went to some seaside park late at night after the show, and Mike Mills was pointing out to everyone where the Southern Cross was in the sky. At some point, Bill Berry and I were tossing a frisbee back and forth on the grass, basking in the balmy January summer night on the other side of the world. I didn't really get a chance to know Bill but he sure seemed like a good guy; I was horrified when I heard about him collapsing onstage in Switzerland two months later and nearly dying from a brain aneurysm. I think he did the right thing by calling it quits shortly after that, but the band was never quite the same.

Our paths crossed in Vienna in the fall of 1998, where I caught them at a live-radio performance, but after I moved to North Carolina, I didn't see them again until they came through the Triangle in the fall of 2003. They had a day off in town the night before the show, so I met up with Scott and Peter for dinner in Chapel Hill. Knowing they were sometimes open to spontaneous guerrilla musical performances (particularly under the guise of the Minus 5, a side-project band Scott and Peter had formed a few years prior), I stopped by a tiny little Chapel Hill dive called the Cave and suggested to the band playing there that night (who happened to be friends of mine) that they might wanna leave their gear set up after they finished their set, just in case. Yep Roc's Tor Hansen and I dropped a few hints during the course of the evening, and sure enough, sometime past midnight, everyone strolls on down Franklin Street to the Cave, and a makeshift Minus 5 (with McCaughey, Buck, Mills, Pete Yorn, Ken Stringfellow and probably a couple others) proceeds to rock the joint till closing time. That was the talk of the town for all of one day, until it was superseded the next night when Bill Berry showed up at R.E.M.'s outdoor-arena gig and sat in for a song during the encore, his first turn in the drummer's chair with the band in seven years. (I think he played with them one other time since then, at a special event back home in Athens.)

The last R.E.M. show I saw was at a fitting place for my own personal history, I guess -- a taping of Austin City Limits three years ago during SXSW. Of late, I've been more likely to see Scott and Peter when they're touring with The Baseball Project, a terrific band that writes really cool songs about mostly obscure baseball players and historical events. (ESPN has championed them the past year or two, doing special promotions with them on their website.) I presume that both the Baseball Project and the Minus 5 will continue, and perhaps even step up the frequency of their performances, in light of this news. On the other hand, I wouldn't blame Peter or Scott for just deciding to take a break...but as long as I've known either of them, it's just never seemed to be in their nature.

So I'll raise a glass to R.E.M. tonight. Had they not come along, it's entirely possible I would have led a very different life.

Remembering, (or Introducing,) The Balancing Act.

By Peter Blackstock

Fitting, probably, to write about this band here; my hidden little blog is no doubt even more obscure than the profile of The Balancing Act has been over the past couple of decades. Which is probably understandable enough for the blog....but not so much for the band.

We all have bands of our youth, sounds that make us remember a certain age, place, time. You hear a song and it instantly transports you back to a little league summer, a junior-high basement hang, a high school football game. I get all that, and I have all that, too.

But this is not that deal. Granted that I discovered The Balancing Act amid such impressionable times, in the tail end of my college years. I first heard their music sometime in '86, I think, and first saw them play in the fall of '87. They didn't last much past that; they'd called it quits by '89. I'm not sure why, exactly, but I guess they all had different lives to go on and lead. And so there was an indie EP, a couple of LPs for IRS, and goodbye. Similar story for a lot of bands in that heyday.

But, damnit, this was NOT that same story. The Balancing Act was something more than all that. Maybe they all had other things to move on and become....but the music they made in their youth was not forgettable. It was not disposable. It didn't not matter.

I guess I'm not the only one who feels this way. This past spring, the band gathered in Los Angeles to play for a small but appreciative crowd, a bunch of folks who remembered and revered what they'd done. It was hard to peg exactly what The Balancing Act were, which is much to their credit. They were a folk band, a jazz band, an indie band, even a sort of new-wave-ish band in their time. A rock 'n' roll band in the finest sense of that term, such that it denotes a converging of excitable energy and adventuresome spirit. They were, ultimately, great musicians, creative souls, and positive-charged human beings.

"We're not lost, we're meant to be here," they sang in one of their most indelible tunes. That's as good a summation of The Balancing Act's raison d'etre as I could offer. Seeking, yes; lost, no. They were meant to be here, digging for songs and sounds that had yet to be found. I reveled in following them on that journey, if only for a brief time. The legacy remained with me....as, apparently, it did with them, if this footage from those recent reunion shows is any indication.

Jackson Browne, "Something Fine"

Many thanks to Jason Verlinde of Fretboard Journal for this wonderfully shot and beautiful-sounding rendition of a great song from the back pages of one of my all-time favorite artists.

Jackson Browne - "Something Fine" on his vintage Gibson Roy Smeck from fretboardjournal on Vimeo.

There are such wonderful subtle touches here. The setting itself, so simple and "home"-like, Browne sitting in a chair by an old desk, the wooden stairs hovering aside and above him. The way the sunlight flashes thru the cracks of the venetian blinds every now and again, casting fleeting beams on the stairway wall or the sheen of his guitar. And, most surely, the world-weary cracking in his nevertheless still warm and resonant voice, an imperfection that somehow just makes these words all the more meaningful thirty years later.

"Bison" -- a song by Skylar Gudasz & the Ugly Girls

A few weeks back, I posted on Facebook a link to a real nice cover of Gillian Welch's "April The 14th Part 1" on YouTube as performed by Skylar Gudasz & the Ugly Girls, a relatively young band from my neck of the woods that I've only recently come across. That clip led me to their own recently released debut recording, a seven-song disc that shows considerable promise, even if one senses their vision might not be fully formed yet.

My attention today is on one song in particular. It's called "Bison" and it's a fairly good representation of the group's artistic identity: tasteful acoustic-based arrangments which lend themselves to dramatic expression; lyrical explorations that wander adventurously rather than seeking a narrow focus; and an indelible vocal presence that's ultimately the music's primary calling-card (not only frontwoman Gudasz's highlighted lead, but also guitarist William Taylor's understated counterpoint).

This was the song that struck me most vividly when I first downloaded the record a little while back. On Tuesday, after seeing the band for the first time at the West End Wine Bar in Chapel Hill, I bought the CD, in part just to support the musicians but also because I felt the need to get a better handle on the lyrics. It was clear that Gudasz's words were an important part of her songs, but I'd been drawn in by the sound, and the lyrics are more elusive. Lines would stand out here and there, yet the stories remained mysterious.

I'm still not sure I fully understand "Bison" after having read through the lyrics, though I'm further impressed by their poetic nature, and perhaps more significantly, I'm fascinated by one very unusual detail. There is a spot in the song that one would commonly identify as the "chorus" -- Gudasz's voice soars sweetly, memorably, and this same striking passage comes around three times during the course of the song's five minutes. But here's the intriguing part: A chorus is usually a repeated melody accompanied by repeated words, yet Skylar sings a different set of words each time that melodic phrase comes around.

First it's "Lord knows I haven't dreeeamed since then / There ain't nothin' I haven't seen that I haven't seen before / That wasn't prettier the first time, prettier for sure." A couple minutes later, while the first line is repeated ("Lord knows I haven't dreeeamed since then"), it's followed by, "The shaman's wife swears it was your love that did me in / Soon they'll be pulling from the graves, those tree-wronged Indian braves." And then, a completely different address the final time around: "Its ivory slates wiped cleeean / Oak ain't just made for you to carve your heart all over into / I'm deeper than this forest, wider than Tennessee."

I've found myself somewhat torn between whether this is a sign of the artist needing a better hold on songcraft -- that perhaps she'd benefit from following standard structures a little more -- or if she's fully aware of the rules and is breaking them on purpose. It's probably the latter. Certainly she doesn't seem to lack for quality role models; the aforementioned Welch is an obvious one (underscored by her cover of a different Gillian & David number at last Tuesday's show), and I sense a bit of Laura Nyro, though I've really no idea if Gudasz is familiar with Nyro's oeuvre. Possibly Lori Carson, or Tori Amos. Not surprising that she also covered Neko Case on Tuesday.

Mostly, though, I hear Gudasz and her band finding their own space, which is what makes them worth hearing, and seeking out.

-- Peter Blackstock

You can hear "Bison" on the group's Bandcamp page, here:

http://skylargudaszandtheuglygirls.bandcamp.com/track/bison