Random Notes & Conjectures

Work continues, at it’s usual snail’s pace, on the next CD album, “Ashmore’s Store”. My producer, the great Garrett Soden, showed me an article about the creation of Paul Simon’s “Graceland”, which detailed the arduous slog putting that album together was. Simon’s poor producer, Roy Halee, actually lost count of how many cross-country flights he made, and how many zillion alternate takes he recorded (in some cases just to get a single word sang differently!) and later tossed, all to end up with recordings that sound as organic and free as can be.

We’re not quite that possessed or directionless, but we do have day jobs. So things take time. And I’m absolutely certain it’s well worth the effort and the wait. We’re creating a truly great record.

So when will y’all be able to hear and judge for yerselves?!? I’m thinking right around the beginning of March.

In the meantime, and as an “end-of-the-year-present” to all, we prepared a quick ‘n fun little adaptation of some lyrics by Thomas Pynchon, from his monumental novel “V”.

Here’s the introduction, right there on page one, chapter one of “V”:

“Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia. Given to sentimental impulses, he thought he’d look in on the Sailor’s Grave, his old tin can’s tavern on East Main Street. He got there by way of the Arcade, at the East Main end of which sat an old street singer with a guitar and an empty Sterno can for donations.
Profane rounded the corner. With its usual lack of warning, East Main was on him.
Out in the street a chief yeoman was trying to urinate in the gas tank of a ‘54 Packard Patrician and five or six seamen apprentice were standing around giving encouragement. The old man was singing, in a fine, firm baritone…”
(Now click here!  http://www.youtube.com/v/gmrd900uRC4&hl=en&fs=1) 

Leave a comment here below if ya wish. Love to hear from folks.

Best to everyone for a great 2009! (And goodbye George Fucking Idiot W Bush!)

[January's blog topic:  Lyrics in pop music.]

Went to a party on Election Night – about 30 people – parents, kids, dogs, straight, gay, black, Hispanic, Anglos, blondes, brunettes, and redheads – all anticipating final relief from The Idiot Bush. Akin to New Year’s Eve, it was.

I’d said to a friend a few days previous that if Obama won there would literally – literally – be dancing in streets all across America.

And I was both correct and too myopically American – ‘cause there was dancing in the streets all around the WORLD.

Sure, there were some setbacks. In California the Mormons and Catholics and Evangelicals – basically all the Tax-Free Corporate Entities pushing the old “Imaginary Friend in the Sky” scam – were able to buy a win for a truly ugly ballot measure stripping gay and lesbian folks of the right to get legally married.

(As a gay friend of mine said, “What they’re really against isn’t gay marriage at all – it’s gay sex. So they should ENCOURAGE us to get married – everyone knows sex drops off after marriage!…”)

Anyway, I admit my hopes were set unrealistically high. I was pushing for 1.) an Obama blow-out. Check. And 2.) and 3.) about 7-9 more Repubs knocked outa the Senate and 20-30 more House seats. Check and double-check.

But of course that still wouldn’t solve the problems of 30+ years of right-wing rule in this country. (Anyone  claiming Bill Clinton was any sort of “progressive” in that parade of dufuses needs a reality check. The best luck that clown ever had was being sandwiched between Bush the Elder and Bush the Twit – my GMC pick-up truck would look good as president between those bozos. No, Clinton was out for Clinton. And if that meant rolling over and collaborating – er, “compromising” – with the most pernicious Big Business and right-wing desires, so be it. The end of welfare, “Don’t ask, don’t tell”, mergers and monopolies encouraged across the spectrum – especially in media ownership – the list goes on… Hell, Scientology got tax-exempt “religion” status on his watch!)

Well – so anyway, I got Obama, the Senate and the House. But THEN, there was still had the toughest nut to crack in the wish list: my Number 4.

And Number Four was a Truly Tragic Event to happen AFTER the election. Wednesday. A traffic accident in the heart of Washington DC! During the middle of the workday! Supreme Court Justices Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts – walkin’ together to have lunch – all four of ‘em run down by an out-of-control UPS truck jumping the curb. Brakes failed. No one else injured – just those four poor Supremes. All dead. Headline: “Four Die in Tragic Accident”. So sad, so sad…..

And THAT, folks, woulda had me dancing in the street the next night as well!  

(I mean in celebration that they’d all gone to Heaven and were with God, because of their pure hearts and Christian living. Why, what’d ya think?….)

The “big push” right now has been to get the brand new electric version of “One Great Mornin’ (The South’s Gonna Rise Again)” to as many media outlets as possible, leading up to the election.  It’s got Woody Paul Chrisman (of Riders in the Sky) on fiddle, J.P.Fitting (late of Doctor Hook) on bass, Cliff Carothers (LA heavy-metal band Malice) on drums, and producer Garrett Soden on second guitar.  We finished recording in Nashville and Los Angeles in late July, and mixing in mid-August — just in time to have Mike Malloy play it on his nationally-syndicated political talk show during the Democratic National Convention.  If you haven’t had a chance to hear the song, click over to the “Listen” page and check it out.  I got an email from a guy in Birmingham saying it moved him to tears — which is exactly what I also heard from a woman in Meridien Mississippi.  An old friend in Valdosta told me she loved the song, but that I was too romantic – I’d been away too long, and didn’t realize just how hard it was to be a progressive in the South.   I know what she means – and yet, when I do go back, I see the changes, the great combination of nascent self-assertion and confidence of KNOWING that what’s been perpetrated on the South, and in the South, all these decades wasn’t good and didn’t work to working people’s benefit.  Maybe on November 4 we’ll even see a few states in Dixie flip outa the Republican column.  If so, it’ll be the beginning of that “One Great Mornin’” I see up ahead….  It’s a-comin’….