Willie Nelson, Keith Richards, Ryan Adams and Hank Williams III "Dead Flowers"

What a great quartet, for Kentucky Derby Day!

Well when you're sitting back in your rose pink cadillac
Making bets on Kentucky Derby Day
Ah, I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon
And another girl to take my pain away

Hear the song on Youtube.

Kami Lyle "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight"

Imagine saying to a chef who just came over your house and cooked a meal:

"I mean, I've eaten lots of food, but I've never actually seen it cooked!"

I'm sure he'd look at you strangely. After all, preparing food is completely second nature to him, and he can't imagine a world where the end result is divorce from the creation of the product.

Joey Spampinato was looking at me strangely.

I had just finished what was, and still is, one of my most favorite interviews for mvy ever.

We were in Louisville, Kentucky, for a radio convention, and Joey's wife Kami Lyle was making the interview rounds, talking to radio stations about her record.

Kami was a bit nervous, but her discomfort with the interview process just motivated her to be exceptionally funny. So I was already delighted.

At the end of the proper interview, we asked her if she'd do a cover tune for us. It's mvy Standard Operation Procedure. We collect covers for our Live, Acoustic and Covers segment.

Kami's manager perked up. Kami didn't generally do covers, but her manager had recently asked her to learn a Bob Dylan song.

Kami was a little unsure. She was with her husband Joey, who had played the song before, and with Tim Krekel, a local Louisville star and old friend, who'd come to provide musical support. But they'd never played the song together, and she didn't remember the lyrics.

But we coaxed her, and a few minutes later I was holding my laptop in front of her, with the lyrics I'd pulled from Dylan's website. And they did a run-through.

As I was listening to them, I realized that despite being a lifelong music fan, despite having gone to tons of live shows, I'd never really seen music being made.

By "made" I don't just mean created, but actually built.

Joey figured out his chords, and Kami called out changes, and they talked back and forth as they played about where certain parts should come in, and how Tim should do a harmonica solo and how they'd wrap the whole thing up.

I saw all the ingredients being tossed together.

And then, immediately after, they recorded the song for us.

Afterwords, I was explaining to Joey that it was really a privileged as a music fan, to watch artists work something out of nothing. I'm sure to him, a lifelong musician, my perspective was unimaginable to him.

Anyway, check out the interview, and the song, and see if you can spot the magic.


See the video on Youtube.

Hear Kami, Joey and Tim doing "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight."

Hear the full Kami Lyle interview.

For more Dylan covers, visit mvyradio's Bob Dylan Cover Tunes Channel.

Tim Krekel “Casualties”

Hitting Random on the iTunes list . . .

“What does this song make me think about” is the game I play here, daily. And sometimes a really clear picture of a moment or idea pops into my head.

And other times, it’s like a pumpkin hitting the pavement. So many thoughts and emotions and ideas hit at once, in a bit of a jumble.

Today, it's the latter.

Tim Krekel died this year. Cancer. Quickly.

He’d found out that he was sick in March. By June 24th, he was gone.

On June 24th, my wife and I were in this room (I’m writing, on my laptop, at home), working on details for my sister’s impromptu wedding, scheduled for the 27th.

She had cancer. She was gone a month later. Cancer. Slowly.

Eight years she fought cancer. It kept coming back. She fought. Literally, Fought. Angrily.

Tim Krekel didn’t know he was sick when he wrote “Casualties,” for 2007’s “Soul Season.” It’s a song about lifting off the burdens of your troubles, despite the hardship of life.

Though he was a star in his hometown of Louisville, Krekel had never achieved the mainstream National success of the folks he worked with, including NRBQ, Jimmy Buffett (he plays on “Son Of Son Of A Sailor”) or even Kim Richey (with whom he co-wrote “Come Around”). But when he knew he was dying, he still was able to describe his as “a most wonderful life.”

Just 10 days before he was gone, he decided to get married, and, he got hitched in a private ceremony.

My sister did the same thing. When she knew her time was at the end, she and her long-time boyfriend got hitched in a private ceremony.

At that point, in June, she was weak enough that she had to be in a wheelchair. And within a couple of weeks, cancer in her brain took away her most of her ability to speak.

In the end, she could only conjure up a handful of words. They included “No,” but not “Yes.” And “Fuck.”

I met Tim Krekel once. Just once. So I’m placing a lot on him, as I think about the parallels and perpendiculars and particulars between him and my sister, and how they left.

My wife just looked across the room and asked “Are you still at it?” I’ve been working on this post for a couple of hours now.

I started with a jumble. I’ve touched on the things I wanted to think about. But I don’t know how I want to end here.

How to leave it. I guess that’s the question, isn’t it?


Hear a clip of "Casualties" plus a Buffett track Tim played on, and several clips of songs he co-wrote:


See The Tim Krekel Orchestra perform "Casualties" live and check him out on acoustic guitar, supporting Jimmy Buffett on Saturday Night Live, 1978.

Tim played guitar during one of the best, funniest, most personally memorable interviews I ever did, when I talked to Kami Lyle, in Louisville.

Buy "Soul Season".

The Section Quartet “Paranoid Android”

In an earlier post, I was talking about how I kept a Kevin Bacon song on my hard drive, not because I listened to it or even liked it, but more for the show and tell factor.

So if someone says in conversation, “What would some great modern rock songs sound like if they were rendered by a classical outfit?” I can point them to the Section Quartet.

Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” was perhaps the most unlikely radio/MTV success of the last 20 years. No chorus, no hook, indecipherable lyrics. It just wasn’t made for Pop consumption. But in spite of/because of its breathtaking, adventurous musicianship, it did achieve a level of mass popularity. And more so, it’s become a musician’s musician song.

One of the great, unposted outtakes from the mvyradio Archives is the band Moe taking on this song, acoustically. They did a tremendous job, and I sat slack-jawed in a crowded Louisville On-The-Road hotel room, as I watched them work through the twists and turns of the piece. And when it was over, one of the guys in the band said, “Well that sucked.” So we never got to use it.

On the album “Fuzzbox” The Section Quarter covers Led Zeppelin, Soundgarden, and even The Postal Service. But this Radiohead track is the one that really lends itself to the violin-viola-cello instrumentation and the classical precision necessary to pull it off.

Hear The Section Quartet “Paranoid Android”

See the band, in the studio, creating the song, here