ABOUT RAR: For those of
you new to this site, "RAR" is Rick Alan Rice, the publisher
of the RARWRITER Publishing Group websites.
Use this link to visit the
RAR music page, which features original music
compositions and other.
ATWOOD - "A Toiler's Weird Odyssey of Deliverance"-AVAILABLE
NOW FOR KINDLE (INCLUDING KINDLE COMPUTER APPS) FROM
AMAZON.COM.Use
this link.
CCJ Publisher Rick Alan Rice dissects
the building of America in a trilogy of novels
collectively calledATWOOD. Book One explores
the development of the American West through the
lens of public policy, land planning, municipal
development, and governance as it played out in one
of the new counties of Kansas in the latter half of
the 19th Century. The novel focuses on the religious
and cultural traditions that imbued the American
Midwest with a special character that continues to
have a profound effect on American politics to this
day. Book One creates an understanding about
America's cultural foundations that is further
explored in books two and three that further trace
the historical-cultural-spiritual development of one
isolated county on the Great Plains that stands as
an icon in the development of a certain brand of
American character. That's the serious stuff viewed
from high altitude. The story itself gets down and
dirty with the supernatural, which inATWOOD
- A Toiler's Weird Odyssey of Deliveranceis the
outfall of misfires in human interactions, from the
monumental to the sublime.The
book features the epic poem"The
Toiler"as
well as artwork by New Mexico artist Richard
Padilla.
Elmore Leonard
Meets Larry McMurtry
Western Crime
Novel
I am offering another
novel through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service.
Cooksin is the story of a criminal syndicate that sets its
sights on a ranching/farming community in Weld County, Colorado,
1950. The perpetrators of the criminal enterprise steal farm
equipment, slaughter cattle, and rob the personal property of
individuals whose assets have been inventoried in advance and
distributed through a vast system of illegal commerce.
It is a ripping good yarn, filled
with suspense and intrigue. This was designed intentionally to
pay homage to the type of creative works being produced in 1950,
when the story is set. Richard Padilla
has done his usually brilliant work in capturing the look and feel of
a certain type of crime fiction being produced in that era. The
whole thing has the feel of those black & white films you see on
Turner Movie Classics, and the writing will remind you a little
of Elmore Leonard, whose earliest works were westerns.
Use this link.
EXPLORE THE KINDLE
BOOK LIBRARY
If you have not explored the books
available from Amazon.com's Kindle Publishing
division you would do yourself a favor to do so. You
will find classic literature there, as well as tons
of privately published books of every kind. A lot of
it is awful, like a lot of traditionally published
books are awful, but some are truly classics. You
can get the entire collection of Shakespeare's works
for two bucks.
Amazon is the largest,
but far from the only digital publisher. You can
find similar treasure troves atNOOK
Press(the
Barnes & Noble site),Lulu,
and others.
Legendary
John McEuen
Then and Now
By RAR
John
McEuen ˗̶ most closely associated with
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and most highly
honored for his key role in the making of the classic American music LP Will the Circle Be Unbroken ˗̶
took up the challenge of responding to one of my overly indulgent
interrogations. I asked him about a hundred questions about how he
became music legend John McEuen. Something of a professional narrator, he used
the opportunity to tell me his life story, which begins with his upbringing in Southern California
where, as an employee at the Main Street Magic Shop at Disneyland, he became a
close friend of fellow future legend Steve Martin.
He also shared company with a young Puerto Rican kid named
Jose Feliciano, who
encouraged McEuen to play a range of instruments beyond just his beloved banjo.
There were tons of people happy to help young McEuen along his development path,
including Doug Dillard (The Dillards), who
taught McEuen how to use an H.O. railroad spike to revision his acoustic guitar
as a banjo.( For those of you born after, say, 1975, it might be useful to note
that “H.O” refers to the scale universally accepted in model train building in
which 3.5 millimeters represents 1 foot of real world size. This makes the H.O.
railroad spike a tiny little thing suitable for placement under a guitar string.
That’s for any of you hillbillies who might actually wish to do such a thing to
trick your guitar into thinking it is a five-string banjo.)
Steve Martin, who initially came to fame as a banjo
playing, arrow-through-the-head, comedian, credits McEuen for teaching him how
to play the instrument, a claim the humble
John McEuen eschews, though he does cop to having shown Martin “some things”.
McEuen’s account of he and Martin’s early years should inspire anyone who
imagines building a career in the entertainment business. The crux of the whole thing is
that both young dudes were inspired teenagers who developed their show biz chops
through 10-hour days doing magic tricks at Disneyland (the real one, in Orange
County), working in melodrama productions at Knottsberry Farms, and playing
every little gig they could find to hone their crafts. (McEuen contrasts this
up-from-the-streets means of developing as a musician to the modern era of
American Idol and The Voice, where talented young people start their
careers from mid-level positions in the entertainment industry, a development
about which he clearly has doubts.) The early hard work paid off big for both of
the SoCal boys. Steve Martin went on to become a movie star, a Grammy award
winning musician, a much-honored screenwriter/playwright, and one of the most
beloved celebrities of any of our lifetimes. McEuen became
a platinum hit record maker, the producer of an Americana LP honored with
inclusion in the Library of Congress, the composer of a dozen film soundtracks
(including the classic Lee Marvin film Paint Your Wagon (see photo left
with Lee Marvin, center frame and John McEuen behind and above), and a key
member of the first American band to ever tour the Soviet Union (upon invitation
from the Kremlin).
John McEuen seems to have played with every notable
musician in the modern history of country and popular music, helping to call the
world’s attention to the likes of violinist Vassar
Clements and flat-picking wizard Doc Watson,
and introducing a whole new generation to country music legends
Maybelle Carter, Earl Scruggs, Roy Acuff, Merle Travis, and
Jimmy Martin. He still does
80 shows each year with the Dirt Band, and another 40 as a solo act, plus he
does Civil War historical presentations, and all sorts of other projects. The
father of six, he and two of his sons have an album out (The McEuen Sessions)
and John is telling his life story in book form, as well.
John McEuen Interview Part One: The Early
Years
Did you catch that reference to The Dillards? Check them out in
the clip below
from a 1967 Judy Garland television show. McEuen thought of them
as the perfect blend of two other acts that had a great influence on his
career: Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs, and The Smothers Brothers
(Tom and Dick).
Remember how we first met Steve Martin on national
television? In the early years, Martin was managed by John McEuen's
brother William. Years after this performance below, John McEuen
produced Steve Martin's 2010 Grammy-winning album
The Crow: New Songs
for the 5-String Bango, which was honored as the Best Bluegrass
Album in 2010. William McEuen is credited with producing the
Will the
Circle Be Unbroken album, which over time became a platinum record.
"Wes Thompson called me and said, 'Hey, I'm in
this new group called the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band". They had been
together about a month. I enlisted them to back me up at the Topanga Canyon Banjo Contest. I
taught them my first tune, "Dismal Swamp", and I entered and I won. I
figured, well, with these guys backing me up and helping me win that
contest, maybe that's how I'll get on the radio. I knew I wanted to be
on the radio... I knew I wanted to be on the radio and maybe these guys
could help me do that."
"On the way to college one day, I heard The Byrds
doing "Tambourine Man" and I knew then that the bass player was
Chris Hillman, and that he used to be
in a bluegrass band in San Diego called the
Scottsville Squirrel Barkers, and I figured if somebody from
San Diego, who was in a bluegrass band, could be on the radio, then
maybe I could too..."
"Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy... we
found out that (this) music was listened to by the kids, and a lot famous
pickers that we adored. Doc Watson's son Merle played it for his dad,
that album. Earl Scrugg's sons - Gary, Randy and Steve - played it for
their dad, Earl. Jimmy Martin's son played it for his dad. We were the
teenaged kids' new hot group that was using their parents' instruments
and getting on the radio with it. So when it came around to the time for
me to ask Earl Scruggs if he'd record, well he'd already come to see us
play at Vanderbilt University, in 1970.... I asked him, 'Earl, why would
you come to see this bunch of hippies play, and he said "I wanted to
meet the boy who plays 'The Randy Lynn Rag' the way I intended to. I can
remember that like it was six months ago..."
"We recorded for six days, two track, and we were done. The album was
done. It was two track. We'd play a song, and it was right, first take -
perfect. Next. Some days we only recorded really actively for four or
five hours... Like the old saying, how long does it take to make a hit
record. Well, it's only supposed to take about three minutes if you know
the song..."
"I just love having the job of walking out on stage,
and seeing if I can make people forget - for about an hour and a half,
two hours, or whatever I'm given - their problems, maybe what was going
on outside, or in the world, and to take that away and have a little
piece of that in their lives."
"I guess one thing that has been missing is people
who work from the ground up. Often there are people that you see coming
into the picture who kind of start in the middle. They get on a TV show
like American Idol or The Voice, and they don't have the
background that some of the people had before them... It just doesn't
seem the same. I prefer to have the experiences I've had. Some of them
were very difficult. It was hard to be away from six kids so much of the
time..."
"One of my favorite film contributions was the music
for Manassas - End of Innocence, a documentary about the Manassas
battles. It is playing at Manassas Park, right outside of D.C.. I
think... that period of music interests me, the 1800s, because that's
the beginning of American music..."
"All this led to my sons
Jonathan and Nathan, who out of six
kids got into music on a professional level... I told them you have to
work at it all the time, and they do..."
"When the Dirt Band was doing Paint Your Wagon,
in 1968, we spent four months on the set. And that was the year and the
time that Music from Big Pink came out. Also The Beatles' album
with "Hey Jude" on it. Those two records got us through the four months.
I think it might have been one of the things that broke the group up
when we came back from Baker, Oregon, because... that music was using a
lot of the same instruments that we were using, only so much better..."
"Climate change... I see that in my 120, 130 cities a
year, and I have for 25 years, noticed the changes..."
"Tell people about sleep apnia. If I hadn't found out
about it... 20 years ago, I probably wouldn't be talking to you now, or
even picking a banjo. Sleep apnia, it means that you are not sleeping
enough, and you are going to be living about 15 years less, most
likely..."
Lenin looks down on American music while a hostess loiters on
stage.
John Hartford, Billy Ray, John McEuen, and Steve
Martin in the early years.
John McEuen, Tom Gray, and Earl Scruggs
John McEuen and Levon Helm
Edgar Winter, John McEuen, and Leon Russell
John McEuen Band
McEuen Three (father and sons)
Golden Years
In case you are under the misperception that John
McEuen has no fans.
Manassas - End of Innocence"
John McEuen composed the music for
this documentary of the two bloody battles at Manassas that introduced
large scale bloodshed to the War Between the States. He was also one of
the film's producers. It is narrated by Richard Dreyfuss.
Author:
Todd Berkoff (Todd_Berkoff@reid.senate.gov)
from Washington, DC
As someone who took part in the filming of End of Innocence, both
the cast and crew were selflessly devoted to telling the stories of the
two famous battles of the Civil War with as much historical accuracy as
possible - but the script falls short of the real story. Ben Burtt, the
Academy Award-winning sound designer from the Star Wars movies, E.T.,
Indiana Jones movies and the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, teamed up
with writer Ray Herbeck to produce a "realistic" movie for the National
Park Service that would inform the public what happened in the two
famous battles of Manassas or Bull Run, fought in July 1861 and August
1862 respectively.
The movie is narrated by Richard Dreyfuss
and his voice certainly adds to the quality of the movie. The script
focuses on a few individuals - some civilian and some military figures
and takes you through the battles from their perspective. However, the
selection of some lesser-known individuals hurts the movie because it
ignores more important figures who played more prominent roles in the
two battles, men like Generals McDowell, Beauregard, Pope and
Longstreet. These men should have been the focus of the movie. In
addition, the movie ignores key points of the battles, like the capture
of Charles Griffin's guns by the 33rd Virginia in the first battle or
the fighting on Chinn Ridge in the Second Battle. Overall, too much
emphasis is placed on the First Battle of Manassas (about 90% of the
movie), while the Second Battle, which was much bloodier and larger than
the first battle, is almost an aside. There is almost no talk of why the
two armies are back again for the second battle. The movie neglects to
use any maps of the fighting - very important tools if one is to
understand the two battles. Finally, most battle scenes show groups of
10-20 guys fighting eachother, when they should show hundreds, if not
thousands of men, slugging it out. I understand there were financial
restraints on the making of the movie, but the lack of computer
generated "soldiers" make the legendary battle scenes look like bar-room
brawls.
In conclusion, the movie will indeed
entertain the public, but it will be up to visitors to Manassas National
Battlefield Park to do their own reading on the battles to truly
understand the horrific events of those days long ago.
Legendary
