Son Volt "Hearts & Minds"

Sometime shortly after I have become Program Director at MVY, I was down at the Pub where I hung out.  One of my buddies was saying to a third guy:  "Did you hear that PJ got promoted at MVY?"

The third guy shrugged.  "MVY?  I stopped listening to them since they went country."

Went country?

The previous month, we'd done an On The Road trip to Merlefest, the premiere East Coast Americana music festival hosted by Doc Watson.

We gave it massive coverage on the air, playing cuts from bluegrass, country, roots and Americana artists not typically found in large supply on our station.

Was it wall-to-wall country?  No.  But here in the Northeast, a little country goes a long way.

It's always important to keep a good balance, and air only a moderate supply of songs that push away from the center-boundary of what is mvyradio.

If you look back at the old entry about how we choose songs for mvyradio, you'll see that I expressly mention that we're okay when we have a couple of Country-leaning songs.  Anything over that, and we risk sounding "too country."

So what do you do when there's a plethora of great, mvy-friendly country music out there?

We're suddenly deluged with great albums that can't really be ignored, by Son Volt, Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, and Steve Earle.  Not to mention the banjo and dobro inflected likes of The Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons and Jerry Douglas.

I guess the answer is, you go with it. 

We can't not play the Steve Earle.  Or the Emmylou & Rodney.  It would be weird for MVY, long-time Earle and Harris supporters, to suddenly ignore a critically-praised major release of theirs.  And the curiosity factor of the Steve & Edie record alone is reason to play it---it's the kind of oddball release that listeners expect to have a place on our eclectic indie station.

I say this all the time to listeners who complain about hearing too much of one new song or another:  Songs come and songs go.  If you don't like this one, don't worry, it will run its course and fade. 

Three months from now, many of these songs will be gone from our "current" playlist, and the balance of the station will be restored, or will perhaps lean in another direction that we'll have to course-correct for.

In the meantime, we haven't "gone country."  We're just enjoying the twang.


Hear Son Volt on Youtube.


Hear Buddy & Jim on Youtube.


Hear Emmylou & Rodney on Youtube.


Hear Steve & Edie talk about their record on Youtube.


Hear Steve Earle on Youtube.

Slim Dunlap "Ballad Of The Opening Band"

Here's another "I Looked At The Internet Today So You Don't Have To" feature.

Guitarist Slim Dunlap has found himself in a position that too many Americans, and particularly, too many musicians, find themselves in.

He had a debilitating stroke last year and his insurance doesn't cover enough of what he will need going forward just to survive.  So not only is the medical condition delibitating, so is the financial condition.

Fortunately, he has friends.

In February, a limited edition new recording by his old band mates, The Replacements, went at auction for $10,000.  The songs will be available digitally later in March, but Pitchfork as a previous of the Gordon Lightfoot cover.

And there are more songs to come.  If you are, or you know, a fan of Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Jacob Dylan or a long list of others, check out the Songs For Slim site.  There you'll find out more about Slim and his needs, and more about the songs to come.

If nothing else, check out the song below.  It's Slim's funny, somewhat heartbreaking and very accurate "Ballad Of An Opening Band."


Hear the song on Youtube.

Steve Earle "John Walker's Blues"

I've been working this week, on mvyradio's 9/11 Radio Special.

It'll be 2 hours of songs directly about or inspired by September 11th, 2001.

So I've been up late the last few nights, researching, script-writing and organizing.

I've got songs about the attack itself as well as songs that became rallying cries or comfort food, songs about loss, and songs for reflection.

But I've got this one song that sticks out like a sore thumb, and I'm not quite sure how to fit it into the Big Picture.

Do you remember John Walker Lindh?

He was an American kid, who was found among Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Steve Earle wrote a song from the perspective of the young man, and because some people believed it to be a sympathetic portrayal of a traitor, the song became a source of much controversy.

On the surface, this song is probably the least about September 11th, of all the songs I've been listening to.

But though it's not about loss, or remembrance, or anger, or resilience, maybe, more than any song we'll play this weekend, it says something about the post-9/11 world we live in, the political world we live in.

Earle has flat out said that he does not condone Lindh's actions, but because Earle's own son was the same age as Lindh, Earle had to ask the question:

How did this happen?

The kid didn't just wake up one day, and leave his high school soccer team and glee club practice to convert to Islam and join the Taliban. It didn't happen in a vacuum. So what were the factors that went into this transformation? What was in Lindh's control, and what was beyond it.

The song imagines a kid who finds no comfort or reflection of himself in American culture and starts to look elsewhere.

The hugely negative response to the simple creation of the song pretty much lays bare where we are as a culture:

Complicated questions, with complicated answers, are not welcome.

Here in 2011, we, as a country, are hoping to correct our debt problems, employ the unemployed, protect Social Security and tackle a host of other complicated problems.

But no politician, and frankly, no voting public, is willing to listen to a complicated answer.

Or, perhaps worse, they may listen to a complicated answer, but are easily distracted by base (but often baseless) attacks.

Death Panels!

Class Warfare!

No New Taxes!

Those are easy things to shout. They are effective in getting nothing done.

And sadly, they are easy things to listen to and digest, instead of the complicated truth.

The McGarrigle Sisters & Emmylou Harris "Green Green Rocky Road"

Barnes Newberry played this song on a recent episode of My Back Pages," and hearing it took me right back to one of my many awkward fan moments.

I was at the Ryman in Nashville, Tennessee, and I had paid a little extra in my ticket to a Anti-Death Penalty benefit show, so I could go to a post show Meet & Greet with the artists.

Not only had a met Sister Helen Prejean, the nun who wrote "Dead Man Walking" (portrayed in the film by Susan Sarandon), but I had already met Steve Earle.

Indigo Girls and Jackson Browne were also signing autographs, but it was Emmylou Harris that I really wanted to meet.

We were in a backstage area where there were a good 100 or so fans, surrounding each artist, who were each milling about the room, not unlike how Goofy and Donald and Pluto work a crowd at Disneyworld.

I had been in the right place at the right time when Emmylou appeared, and though she was quickly surrounded by the crowd, I was right up front. Unfortunately, I was just to her left, and she started signing autographs, slowing turning to her right, away from me.

And as she turned, this enormous, rock solid Ryman security staffer stayed stuck to her left shoulder. As she turned, he turned, edging me out.

Like a man looking down from a mountain, he cast his eyes down at my somewhat pitiful, squeezed-out fandom and said, softly, "Sorry, Dude."

So I waited, with a lot of time to think.

What should I say to Emmylou Harris?

I was a huge fan. Maybe not her "number one fan" on the planet. But I had seen her in concert the previous summer, and was just knocked out. I had enormous respect for her work, and was sincere in my devotion.

I didn't want to be one of those weird autograph seekers, who just want the paper. They may not even be real fans.

No, I had to say something that let her know I wasn't just a casual fan.

But it also couldn't suggested that I was a psycho fan either. I didn't want to sound rabid or obsessed.

I settled on "Green Green Rocky Road."

The McGarrigle Sisters had put out a CD in the recent past, on which Emmylou guest appeared. And this was one of the songs she sang on.

I figured, if I mentioned this project, it suggested that I was a serious music fan, and was well-aware of things she was working on. But it was recent enough that it wasn't some piece of obscure minutiae.

Confident in my choice, I watched her patiently, politely, generously, give each fan a few moments, and then graciously, gracefully move to the next. Say what you will about Country Music, there is no other genre who's stars are nicer to their fans.

She had almost fully circled around at this point. The crowd had dissipated. It was only Emmylou, the security rock, a few more autograph seeker, and me.

My turn.

I handed her my concert stub to sign and said, "I loved that version of 'Green Green Rocky Road' that you did with the McGarrigle Sisters."

And then she did something unexpected.

She looked up, brightened, and said "Aren't they wonderful!" and as she did this, she reached out to touch my hand.

And I then also did something unexpected.

My knees buckled.

It was just a split-second, but I was, apparently, so overcome in my fandom over the fact that Emmylou Harris was about to touch me, that I lost my balance.

And in that split-second, she pulled her hand back, gave me a flash of a look that said, "What's wrong with this guy," regained her poise, smiled and moved on.

So much for not looking like a crazy fan . . .

Check out the track at Grooveshark.

Hear Emmylou, live this weekend during our coverage of Newport Folk, and check out her album tonight as we play it in its entirety for our Album Of The Week.

Steve Earle "Carrie Brown"

I often wonder what life was like before instant replay.

I mean, in sports, there are infamous cases of officials making calls that were shown to be blatantly wrong on replay.

And beyond sports, tapes and recordings and photographs offer a chance to look back at a moment, and see it in a clearer light without the distractions of your own bias or self-perception.

Sometimes, you can even see a whole new narrative.

I’d gone with a group of friends to Nashville to the historic Ryman Auditorium, for a benefit show put on by a few groups who had come together to oppose the death penalty.

After an afternoon talk by Sister Helen Prejean (the nun who was portrayed by Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking), we were treated to an evening with The Indigo Girls, Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle.

We bought the upgraded tickets that got us to a Meet & Greet backstage after the show, and that was my chance to talk to Steve Earle.

And as I waited my turn for an autograph, I tried to think of something thoughtful to say.

At the time, I was living in Abingdon, Virginia, working at a radio station there. But just prior to my radio gig, I had been a producer at an NBC affiliate in Bristol.

Bristol is actually two towns---Bristol Virginia and Bristol Tennessee. Two towns, two mayors, two police forces, two everything. And the border runs right through State Street. On the left side of the street it’s Virginia and on the right side it’s Tennessee.

By coincidence, Earle had recently put out his first bluegrass album, with The Del McCoury Band, called “The Mountain,” and it contained a song about a young man who kills the boyfriend of the girl he longs for but can't have. And the song contains this great line:

I walked around in Bristol town a bitter broken man
A heart that pined for Carrie Brown and a pistol in my hand
We met again on State Street poor Billy Wise and me
I shot him in Virginia and he died in Tennessee

Perfect! I’ll tell him I live right there! That’ll open up a dialogue and Steve and I will become friends forever!

So my turn comes around and I hand him my ticket and a Sharpie. And as he’s signing the front, I tell him I’m from Bristol and I think it’s cool that he wrote a song set in my town.

He finishes his signature, looks up and hands me back the ticket and the marker, and says kinda gruff-ly, wearily, “Yeah, I thought Bristol was a pretty good place to set a Hillbilly murder ballad.” And he moves on to the next guy in line.

That's how I remember him---gruff, a little weary from working all day (he was one of the event organizers), and just a notch above tolerant.

My friend Rita snapped a picture of a moment in our exchange, and seeing the photo gave me a whole different perspective.

(I didn't see the photo until several weeks after the incident. This story takes place waaaayyy back in 1999, when we actually had to get film developed, so you didn't know how your pictures came out)

Earle's face is much brighter in the photo than how I remembered it. In fact, the moment it captures suggests that his delivery of the "Hillbilly murder ballad" line was gruff and crusty and a bit drawn out, purely for comic effect, and that cracking the joke made him smile.

Here's the photo.

And it even lends itself to a sillier interpretation.

With the ticket and the Sharpie in his hand, and the bright smile on his face, doesn't it look a little bit like Steve Earle is asking me for MY autograph?

Somewhat surprisingly, I couldn't find the Steve Earle/Del McCoury version of this song. But Youtube is always good for some amateurs taking a crack at a good tune.

Justin Townes Earle “Harlem River Blues”

Justin Townes Earle has every reason to sound he lives downstream.

He has every reason to sound like his Dad, Steve Earle, one of America’s great songwriters. How could he not be influenced by that?

He has every reason to sound like the man he was named for, Townes Van Zandt. His Dad was certainly a fan, and Justin most certainly grew up listening to Townes’ tunes.

But how refreshing that, at least on “Harlem River Blues” he seems to evoke the most upstream influence of both Townes and Steve.

Doesn’t this track sound like a Woody Guthrie song? Or at least an outtake from the Billy Bragg/Wilco “Mermaid Avenue” project?

Tallest Man On Earth "King Of Spain"

There was a time, several millennia ago, it feels, when I didn’t know the music of Steve Earle. My roommate at the time was a big fan, so we loaded up some Earle discs on the stereo, and we drank beer and listened.

There was something so familiar about his music, but I couldn’t quite place who he was sounding like to me, until “Hardcore Troubadour.”

“Springsteen. He sounds like Springsteen. What Springsteen song does this sound like?”

It was driving me nuts, because I knew it, I just couldn’t quite place it.

Then I got it:

“Rosalita!” and just as I said this, Earle sang the line:

He’s the last of the all night, do right,
Hey Rosalita won’t you come out tonight.
He’s the last of the hard core troubadours.

And it made me like Earle so much, because he wasn’t just a guy who sounded like Springsteen, doing a song that sounded like a Springsteen song. He was a guy who knew he sounded like Springsteen, doing a song that sounded like Springsteen song. That acknowledgement immediately diffused a possible dimissal of Earle as a blatant copycat.

And that only needed to be a temporary pass, because in the years since, Earle developed a distinctive voice and a style that obliterated any need to compare him to Springsteen.

Now if I may quote Arlo Guthrie . . . “But that’s not what I came to tell you about . . .”

Barbara pointed me in the direction of this European artist called The Tallest Man On Earth.

Though I found the song charming from the get-go, there was this moment when I started to say to myself, “Okay, Mr Tallest Dylan Impersonator . . .”

And he sang the line: “I’ll wear my boots of Spanish Leather, while I’m tightening my crown . . .” and I had the Steve Earle experience all over again.

So, Tallest Man On Earth, you have charmed me for now. Go forth, and develop your own distinctive voice and style, and I will love you always.

(Hear clips of "King Of Spain," "Hard Core Troubadour" & "Rosalita")