just another old country album(?)
one of my friends wrote in his blog last week something along the lines that, why would he want to write about an album that was like three years old? yeah, why? i mean i do it all the time. some of the music i’ve written about is at least 30 or 40 years old. some even older in the case of ella fitzgerald. i really don’t see anything wrong with it because you just might turn someone on to the music that had never heard it before. a good thing to be sure.
the cd in question today is one i’ve had in the car pretty much since i bought it a few months back. i play it over and over. cranked up at serious levels. of course, the brown eyed girl doesn’t like to hear it more than once a week but that’s fine. at least she’ll tap her foot now when i do play it and she’s in the car. trust me that’s a good sign.
well, the cd is from 1999 and it’s by hank III, ‘risin’ outlaw’. yeah, it’s ten years old. i’ll tell you what, this cd is what country is all about. hank III has put out some really nice country stuff. country stuff that is head and shoulders above anything going on in pop country these days. ‘risin’ outlaw’, is what country music ought to be. though sadly that’s not the case.
hank III and the boys take a trip down the country western hillbilly highway with this one. some of the finest pickin’ and harmonies since hank senior and the boys. count on it. from the opening track, ‘i don’t know’, to the last, ‘blue devil’, the band kicks it out with all their collective hearts.
a few of my favorites are, ‘on my own’, a great drinkin’ tune if there ever was one. and ‘cocaine blues’, a fine tribute to johnny cash. along with the haunting, ‘thunderstorms and neon signs’, perhaps one of the finest road songs ever written.
do yourself a favor and find hank III’s, ‘risin’ outlaw’. buy it. play it. loud. then you’ll understand. boy howdy, country music at it’s all time best.
jmh
ramblings and catching up, sorta. plus a doc h and the rio laudanum cowboys update
the brown eyed girl and i are back from vegas and our wedding. it was a smashing time and i’m trying to get photos together for a blog about the deal. easier said than done. plus, i’m getting sidetracked with other stuff like cleaning out photos in some files. and other things that creep in and take over my time for a spell. yes, i know. just remember, patience is a virtue.
on an other note, for those that remember i did a review of my friend, john harrelson’s latest cd a few weeks ago, Doc H and the Rio Laudanum Cowboys. good news is the cd is now available at cd baby. click the link to go there and buy it. at least visit and check stuff out. though you should buy the cd. doc h and the boys, is country western at it’s best. just do it because it’s not the crap you hear on country radio these days.
http://cdbaby.com/cd/harrelson4 or you can see it at http://cdbaby.com/style/369
or http://cdbaby.com/style/360
jmh
“Doc H and the Rio Laudanum Cowboys”, a CD Review
that’s the title of the current cd by my friend, john harrelson. it’s been playing on the car cd player since last friday. now, i’ve got it on my media player as i type. the more i listen to it the more i like it.
Doc H and his usual band of suspects: brian chapman, bass and stand-up bass; steph kuhn, drums; jeff ross, guitar and steel(ed) guitar; and jwfh, himself, on vocals, guitar, accordion, mandolin, piano, harmonica, bottleneck guitar and 12 string guitar; kick out some fine country and western music. oh, yeah, turn it up!
jwfh, told me this cd is about as country as he can get. kids, that’s fine by me because it’s good stuff. stellar stuff. 12 tunes and 9 of them are john harrelson country originals that were written over the past few years. john’s usual take on love, life and playin’. plus, a very interesting little snippet at the end of the stones countrified, ‘19th nervous breakdown’, that is if you let the cd just track on. a nice short sorta country version of the old mothers of invention tune, ‘my guitar wants to kill your mama’. a fine example of john’s humor. yeah, frank’s too.
john harrelson stands alone as one of the only truly original singer song writer players of the 60’s that’s left standing. yeah, he’s been at it for more than 40 years. writing and playing jazz, blues, rock ‘n’ roll and country. it would be hard to find anyone anywhere that could pull off all those genres. and he pulls them off all very very well. this cd in particular.
musically john’s playing style is all his own. if you listen closely to his guitar licks you’ll hear some folks out of the past. however, he’s no eric clapton disiple that’s for sure. though jeff beck, keef and brian do come to mind. there’s some fine pickin’ and grinnin’ on this cd from everyone involved. no doubt about it. like i said, this one is growing on me and it just might be john’s best effort so far. but then i’m just an old country honk as well as a friend of john and his music.
at any rate, Doc H and the Rio boys, is now high up on my play list. trouble is, the only place you can find it right now is at rhino records in claremont, ca. or contact john personally. you can find him on myspace. trust me, it would be well worth your trouble to do so. the cd should be available soon on http://cdbaby.com you can search his name there.
find this cd. buy it. play it. LOUD!!!! ‘Doc H and the Rio Laudanum Cowboys’. country thangs don’t get much better. count on it. a nice bit of country fried meat and potatoes. and after several listens you get the fact john is spooning on the country gravy. bring it, my friend.
john harrelson
jmh
hank, country music and jesus
this was written last night, after a day of listening to the cds and an evening sipping vino. there’s a few bumps in here but you’ll get the picture.
if you’ve been paying any attention to this place you’ve noticed i’ve been listening to, ‘the un-released recordings – hank williams’, an awesome 3 cd set. simply amazing stuff to be sure. i thank the brown eyed girl for giving me the collection as a birthday gift. i will always treasure your thoughtfulness. thanks, babe.
kids, if you love your old country music by a man that’s been screwed by the grand ole opry and the humps that wish to make him a minor footnote in country western music then this cd collection is for you. it is also most certainly not anywhere near today’s country music crap.
hank williams, country and jesus. a simple homage to the main simple man of country music. that’s what this cd collection is. i haven’t heard anything anywhere near this stuff for many a year. old. simple. pure. country. played and sung by a bunch of drunken jesus sorta lovin’ folk just tryin’ to make a livin’. my goodness.
if you’d mind your own bidness you wouldn’t have time to be foolin’ with mine. lordy. can you? can you, the us of a government? sorry, that’s a drift.
un-released old 1940’s live radio recordings mastered into only what a cd can conjure up. yeah, i know. vinyl is on a comeback tour. i been there and done that and i’ll stick with a cd, thank you. no mp3 or ipod either. there ain’t no high or lows to be found there. highs and lows be what this and other old country rocker blues jazz boys need and love. hank and the band nails it on this 3 cd set.
yeah, ok. you may not be into jesus. fine, that’s your bidness. however, if you love the real country pickin’, singin’ and peddle steel deal then you best get over it and hunker down with the king of country, hank williams and his, ‘the unreleased recordings – hank williams’, 3 cd set. oh, yeah.
‘pictures from life’s other side’. ’searching for a soldier’s grave’. ‘tennessee border’. ‘on top of old smokey’. and 50 others. some of the best country i’ve heard in a very very long time. trust me.
thank you, jesus. thank you, lord. thank you, glimmer twins, for that country bon mot. and more importantly, thank you hank and the band.
sweet, jesus. TURN IT UP!!!
jmh
saddling up
it’s been awhile since i’ve sat down here at the computer and pounded something out. well, today is the day. i’m feeling the need to yammer about some music that’s been playing a lot in the car since i picked it up last friday. now, it’s on here and jamming out over the jbls.
i stumbled onto an old austin city limits last thursday evening. one from 2006. van morrison to be exact. van morrison doing his country thing. yeah, van does country. that show was amazing. jaw dropping amazing. some of the finest country i’ve heard from a non country artist in a good long while. thankfully, i got into it from the beginning. an hour of van’s wonderful voice and a band that kicked some serious ass. steel guitar to die for played by a lady i’ve never seen before and i have no idea what her name is. if anyone reading this can help me out in that regard, please do so. she was playing licks off a triple neck steel that at one point made me cry. yeah, that’s right.
the next day i was having some java with my friend, jwfh. as usual i went into rhino records and wandered around for 45 minutes or so cherry picking this and that. an otis redding dvd with all the good stuff on it. and a stones live dvd from 1975 recorded here in la la land. sweet to be sure.
as far as i know there isn’t a recording of the van morrison austin city limits show. the closest you can come to it is his 2006 lp ‘pay the devil’. i picked it up as well. as jwfh said, it isn’t one of his best and the band isn’t that good. but i’ll tell you what, the band is adequate and satisfying. the steel player on the lp isn’t the steel player on the show but paul godden does a good enough job for me. as does everyone else on the lp. bob loveday, violin; geriant watkins, piano; mick green and johnny scott on guitar; paul riley, bass; ian jennings, double bass; and bobby irwin, drums.
this lp is sorta an ode to his dad who was a big country fan. i like it. you might too. though at one point yesterday the brown eyed girl told me enough of van and his country we need to listen to something else. no, she’s no fan of country but she puts up with me up to a point. you can’t always have it all.
at any rate, there’s some nice covers of some old standard country stuff from, ‘there stands the glass’ to ‘your cheatin’ heart’ and ‘half as much’. if you like country this is an adequate and satisfying lp. an lp done by probably one of the few singer and players that you can pretty much be assured you need ALL of his stuff in your collection. folks, there ain’t very many artists out there that you can say that about. the stones. maybe john lennon. otis redding. and there just isn’t anybody else. count on it.
jmh
adios, molly
molly got her start in music on the old rex allen radio show singing covers of hank williams tunes. she was only 10 years old. at 13 she had her first hit in 1952 singing the novelty tune, ‘i saw mommy kissing santa claus’.
i mostly remember her from the old so calif tv show called ‘hometown jamboree’ which starred the late great, tennessee ernie ford. i cut my country and western teeth on that old show and the music generated by it. along with the show ‘the hoffman hayride’ starring spade cooley. both shows were local staples on los angeles tv in the 1950’s.
adios, molly bee, RIP.
the cast of ’hometown jamboree’. molly, seated in the front row to the right of ernie ford.
molly later in her career.
jmh
last lonely eagle
i went over to the village last week for some conversation and java with my compadre, jwfh. as usual, before our meet, i hit rhino records. i had a certain cd in mind. i’d even mentioned i would order it if it wasn’t in stock. it wasn’t in stock. well, being old i forgot to ask and order the cd. next time. then again, i did find an old one that kicks ass. another old hippy country cd.
‘new riders of the purple sage’, 1971. the group of the same name. the old sorta grateful dead country band. jerry garcia on peddle steel guitar. oh my, yeah. i used to have this particular cd on vinyl. i’d forgotten about it. stumbling on it again was a fine thing indeed.
i love old country stuff. regulars know and understand this. however, there are a number of old hippy country cds out there that the new country outlaws might want to give a listen to. ‘new riders of the purple sage’ is one of them. fine music with sing along harmonies. shit don’t get much better. country wise. trust me.
john dawson, who wrote most of the tunes and jerry garcia combine to make a fine hippy outlaw cd. plus, david nelson- vocals, guitar, mandolin; dave trobert- bass, guitar, vocals; along with spencer dryden- drums and percussion; mickey hart- drums and percussion; commander cody- piano.
sure they kinda followed after gram parsons and the byrds and a few others. but in the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t matter. there are a number of new riders of the purple sage cds out there. this one. their first. is, in my opinion, their finest. start to finish this is one fine outlaw country cd. the country humps of today’s radio world would kill just to get close to this old country rocker beauty. yes, they would.
as a drift. there’s a cafe i go eat breakfast in a few times a month. new country radio is playin’ while i eat. damn, the stuff sucks. nah, the food is fine it’s the damn music that sucks. vocals that blow with just a snippet of peddle steel or some decent guitar lick before they head back into the stupid crap. lyrics, vocals, and music. it almost makes an old country honk want to cry. or lose his breakfast.
you love country? old outlaw shit? try this one on for size. new riders of the purple sage. their first and their finest. give it a listen. the new improved digital version has a live three track bonus that kicks some ass as well. i think you’ll be happy you did.
new riders of the purple sage.
jerry garcia and his peddle steel guitar.
jmh
new country heroes
i wrote this late yesterday morning/early afternoon. my ears are still ringing from the volume of the tunes. plus, i wasn’t under the influence of any drugs or booze. a shade too early in the day for vino so i was just under the spell of real country music.
a few weeks back my friend, jwfh, turned me on to a semi old country and western cd. the real deal shit. not that pussy crapola you hear on k-fr(o)g around these parts or your parts for that matter. the real deal shit. because like the band says, ‘pop country really sucks.’
yep, plus some of the best country musicians this side of the last late great batch of country pickers from the heart of country music not since the likes of clarence white et al. that doesn’t make much sense but i don’t care. more kids to be sure. kids that kick ass.
johnny hiland– electric guitar; andy gibson– several steel guitars; randy kohrs, dobro; joe buck, bass; donnie herron, fiddle; shawn mcwilliams, drums.
then there’s leader of the pack, hank williams lll, vocals and guitars. the grandson of the late legendary country crooner/composer hank williams.
if you like real country music or if you’ve never listened to hank lll and his band i think you should. no holds barred. raw in your face country. old country. the kind of stuff that brings me back to my youthful days of early country music. back when it was real americana. not the watered down puss bucket country shit of today. real country music played by some of the best musicians i’ve heard in a long damn time. period.
‘angel of sin’ is worth the price of admission alone. or ‘not everybody likes us’. or ‘country heroes’. hank williams lll, the cd, ’straight to hell’. buy it. listen to it. i’ve lost track how many times it’s played today.
‘i think i’d rather eat the barrel of a double barreled shotgun than listen to that shit they call country pop on 98.1.’
‘it’s a certain kinda livin’. it’s a certain kinda style. not everybody likes us but we drive some folks wild.’
they ‘put the dick back in dixie and the cunt back in country.’ sure nuff.
i really like these guys because they can play and they sing the truth.
jmh
do right woman
i’ve been playing some poker and listening to gram parsons. something i do a lot of. not playing poker but listening to gram. today for some reason his version of the tune, ‘do right woman’, really struck a chord. i don’t know but maybe it had to do with last nights joint freezing muscle torturing session on the couch with the brown eyed girl. moving to a more comfortable place was brought up a few times but it never happened. frozen joints and tortured muscles not withstanding. it was however very cosmic in that odd geezer way.
if you’ve heard gram’s version or the flying burrito bros version of the tune before give it another listen. if you haven’t listened to it try and find it. i can’t find a video of it. maybe there is one out there but i don’t know.
yes, i know there’s aretha franklin, sinead o’connor, joan baez, and a few others out there that have covered the tune. listen to gram or maybe even emmy lou harris.
Do Right Woman
Words and Music by Dan Penn and Chips Moman
Take me to heart and I’ll always love you
And nobody else could make me do wrong
Take me for granted, and I’ll tag along
Makes willpower weak, and temptation’s strong
A woman’s only human
This you must understand
She’s not just a plaything
She expects love just like a man
So if you want a do right all day woman
You gotta be a do right all night man
They say that it’s a man’s world
But you can’t prove that by me
So as long as we’re together, baby
You better show some respect for me
So if you want a do right all day woman
You gotta be a do right all night man
You gotta be a do right all night man
You gotta be a do right all night man
jmh
Room Number #8, at the Joshua Tree Inn (re-printed here with the author’s permission)
a friend of mine sent me this article a couple of weeks ago. i had forgotten about it. he did a blog this morning that reminded me of the article. i’m re-printing that article here with the author’s permission.
jmh
Room # 8, at the Joshua Tree Inn
by Rob Roberge
I’m writing this from Twentynine Palms, CA, where a few years back, my wife Gayle and I bought a cabin to getaway (very away) from it all. We spend our days hiking Joshua Tree National Park, walking and driving around to and visiting the hundreds of abandoned homesteader shacks, playing guitar and singing on the porch, writing, reading and doing as much of nothing as possible. It’s a great place—still, at the relative turn of this new century, something of a well-kept secret.
People come out to Joshua Tree for many reasons, but the major ones are: to go to the national park, to be in the presence of so much beauty and peace and quiet, to spot UFO’s at Giant Rock, to scout the best location for their new meth lab (the city’s a better bet, for you Junior Achieving Speed freaks out there), and to do what we do in the staggering heat of our porch: Nothing much.
And people stay at the Joshua Tree Inn, about 14 miles west of our place, for all these reasons, plus one very specific one.
To stay in Rm. #8.
Because, as many know (evidenced by the frequent waiting list for the room), Room #8 is where, on September 19, 1973, Gram Parsons, relaxing after having finished his second solo album, the classic, although laden with too many slow as molasses tunes, “Grievous Angel”, died. He was a amazing singer—listening to Gram Parsons’ cracked beauty of a voice dance over a 7th chord is one of the most painfully gorgeous sounds that has ever been captured on recording equipment. There were singers with better chops, to be sure. Though, as my friend John points out, Doc Severenson had better chops than Miles Davis, who couldn’t play in the upper register. Chops are never the whole story when you’re talking about art.
The thing Gram Parsons had is what all great artists have—he wasn’t cool or ironic. He was willing to stand, metaphorically naked and striped bare to the essential emotions. And, he could sing like no one else before or since. As someone once said about Keith Richards…everybody switches from C to F, but nobody does it quite like Keith Richards. And nobody sounds like quite like Gram Parsons.
Gram Parsons died when he was 26. We are past the 30th anniversary of his death, which means people have been missing Gram Parsons from this Earth longer than he was on it.
The circumstances surrounding his death and burial have been told and retold (most recently mistold in the so-so indie film “Grand Theft Parsons”), but I’ll offer them here in a brief summary to those who don’t know it. Skip ahead, if you do.
Gram Parsons’ stepfather, by most accounts an oily and brutally self-interested man, tried to rush GP’s body to New Orleans for burial. There was some Louisiana loophole that would allow for Bob Parsons to claim Gram was a New Orleans resident and thereby get his hands on the rather lucrative Parsons’ estate.
Phil Kaufman, a friend/hanger-on/road manager to Parsons and, among others, the Rolling Stones stole the body, with help from friend Michael Martin, from LAX, where it was waiting to be shipped to Louisiana. The reasoning was simple: Parsons had told Phil Kaufman, earlier that year at Clarence White’s funeral, that he wanted to be cremated in his beloved Joshua Tree, where he had spent so much time.
Kaufman and Martin then, in an alcohol and drug-induced haze, drove Parsons to somewhere around his beloved Cap Rock in Joshua Tree National Park (then known as the Joshua Tree National Monument in its pre-national park days), poured gas over the coffin and lit it on fire. They high-tailed it out when Kaufman (mistakenly, it turned out) saw park rangers chasing them. The half-charred coffin was discovered the next morning by hikers (and reported as a “big burned log”), and the remains of the remains were then shipped to New Orleans, where a dying Bob Parsons claimed and buried them.
And now, every year, people come to stay in room number 8, where the sad and brilliant life of Gram Parsons came to such an early end. The question is: Why?
There’s maybe the easy reason of people being obsessed with celebrity. But that misses the boat on a couple of scores. One is that Gram Parsons wasn’t that famous, or that much of a celebrity (at least not when he was alive). He was a great singer/musician, but he wasn’t that popular in his lifetime. For instance, Jim Croce was scads more popular, and he died the same week as GP, and yet no one goes to whatever small airstrip it was that Croce died over. There is no pilgrimage to the flat where Jimi Hendrix died (of course, not many people die in a Bed and Breakfast, as GP did, where it’s kind of convenient to pay your respects).
People are macabre, make no mistake. Henry Ford, reportedly, had the last breath of Thomas Edison sealed in a jar (which lead to all sorts of gruesome deathbed breath-collecting images), so there may be the ghoulish desire to capitalize in whatever personal way on someone’s death. It’s a tenuous analogy, the Ford/Edison thing, and the staying in Room # 8, I realize, but maybe it’s a way of claiming the dead as our own when we have these personal rituals after they’ve left.
But, I’m thinking it’s not for such seedy reasons that people come and stay in Room # 8 and walk around Cap Rock, where Gram Parsons’ ashes are said to have been scattered. And sing sad GP songs on their porch in Twentynine Palms like Gayle and I do all the time. I’m thinking, maybe, there’s a sincerity of purpose at work here.
There’s an old African (I think…I’m a musician, not a scholar) folk tail a friend told me one time about a squirrel and a lion. The lion, after a relatively short chase, had caught the squirrel in its mouth. The squirrel said, “I know you’re going to kill me, but would you let me down for just a second beforehand?” The lion did. The squirrel thrashed around in the sand, and then said, “ok.” The lion asked what that was all about. The squirrel said, “I know you’re going to kill me, but at least now, people will come by here and see my marks and know that I struggled.”
Gram Parsons had, by most accounts, a tough life with many demons. Which doesn’t make him unique. But Gram Parsons, whatever else he did or didn’t do, left some of the most beautiful signs of all of our futile struggles in the sand. And maybe that seems to matter somehow, listening quietly to your own breath inside Room # 8, while the high desert winds swirl outside, much like they probably did on the night of September 19, 1973.
Bio: Rob Roberge is the author of Working Backwards From the Worst Moment of My Life (due Oct 10th), the novels More Than They Could Chew (Perennial Dark Alley/Harper Collins, February 2005) and Drive (Hollyridge Press, 2006). He teaches writing at the Antioch University Los Angeles, MFA in Creative Writing and the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where he received the Outstanding Instructor Award in Creative Writing in 2003. He plays guitar and sings with several LA bands, including the legendary Punk pioneers, The Urinals. In his spare time, he restores and rebuilds vintage amplifiers and quack medical devices.
ok. so if you enjoyed this article on gram you may want to check out another blog of mine, ‘joshua tree ‘73 re-visited or and ode to gram parsons’. it’s easy to find. just look under the ‘country and western’ section at the top of the page or on my blog home page. there’s other gram stuff in there as well. jmh
