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.
The Beaumonts come out of the rebel Saustex
Records stable, and so in many ways are sort of a anti-Austin group, more
inclined lampoon Texas music culture than kowtow to it. Their brand of
musical humor can be way over the top, as in the video below, or it can be sly
and clever, as per the following press release announcing the band's third
album.
Amarillo, Texas -
Coody Gold Enterprises has announced the release of The
Beaumonts' third album "Hey Y'all It's" (The
Beaumonts) via Saustex Records. Coody
Gold, Texas Panhandle music impresario and the band's longtime manager, had this
to say about the band's new release: "Hey Y'all It's" (The Beaumonts) represents
a lot of musical growth for these five young men from Lubbock. Lyrically it
explores deep themes and issues of average looking, common, rural folks who find
themselves morally adrift in the great metropolises of our fine
country...ill-equipped to deal with the abundance and variety of temptations
they face in their daily lives that include sex, drugs and alcohol. The
Beaumonts are no strangers to these same temptations, and their many fans and
listeners will no doubt identify with the heartfelt and personal portrayals of
these struggles in their songs."
The production of the new album was slightly
delayed due to the departure of longtime bassist Don Ed
Rosewood who was forced to leave the band owing to multiple claims of
child-support. Don Ed is currently attending truck driving school in the DFW
area and by all reports is learning to handle the big rigs pretty well. His
boots have been filled by hired gun Duck Buford
- third runner-up in Hub City Weekly's 2008 best bass player poll. The rest of
the band's trademark lineup remains intact: Troy Wayne
Delco - lead vocals and guitar, "Hollywood"
Steve Vegas - lead guitar and vocals, Jimmy
Ned Messer - drums, and, Chip Northcutt
- pedal steel guitar.
Coattails
Those familiar with the Austin,
Texas music scene, and what has been going on there over the past five
years, will be familiar with Coattails.
That didn't happen by accident. Besides being fine musicians, drummer
Eitel Colberg, guitarist-singer
Damien Howard, keyboardist-singer
Michael Martinez, and bassist
Kevin K. Rowe have worked hard to
establish and expand their market. They have formed a collective called
Native Waves, consisting of fellow musicians, artists, photographers,
bloggers, videographers, and producers, who work in collaborative ways
to make an impact at events like Austin's own SXSW festival. Backing
Coattails is worth everybody's time.
The Lovely Sparrows
The
Lovely Sparrows has a long history in the Austin music scene,
most notably in the persona of Austin-based songwriter
Shawn Jones. The Sparrows have released
numerous EPs over the years and gathered praise from Pitchfork,
Rolling Stone, Spin, Paste, and Billboard. Now they are back
with an LP titled "Shake the Shadow". This thing has been in the works
for seven years, during which Jones has gone through big changes,
including (according to his press release) "exodus from Austin to the
woods just outside of Lockhart, TX- to rebuild an old house, and regain
his bearings. During this time, Jones quit teaching, returned to grad
school to pursue Music Composition- and immersed himself in the works of
Bartok, Eno, Ives, and Reich while simultaneously co-developing a
magical realist video game. The songs, in turn, became looser, more of a
sound collage than before, as a reflection of these blurring influences
and tastes."
Bob Livingston
Photo at Right, borrowed from a Facebook posting by
Bob
Livingston Music: The Gonzo Survivors at the Treehouse
in Austin about 1985. L to R: Dan Cook, Paul Pearcy, Bob
Livingston, Stevie Ray Vaughan & John Inmon. (Photo in the
kitchen by Peach Reynolds.)
The Lost Gonzo Band
was a musical unit built in 1971 to back the emerging
outlaws of Texas Country: Ray Wylie
Hubbard, Jerry Jeff Walker, and
Michael Martin Murphey. They created the sound
that characterized the unique country outlaw orientation of
the "Cosmic Cowboy" (referencing a Murphey tune inspired by
a Bob Livingston wish to be just such a dude). The Gonzos
were one of the key starships of Texas Alternative Country,
which put a range of spacey cowboys in the Texas Music Hall
of Fame, including Jerry Jeff Walker and Willis Alan Ramsey,
not to mention Willie Nelson. One wonders how Willie
achieved the honor using only his first and last name,
though Waylon Jennings was also able to achieve the feat.
The original members of the Lost Gonzo Band were
Bob Livingston, Gary P. Nunn, John
Inmon, Kelly Dunn, Tomas Ramirez and
Donny Dolan. The Lost Gonzo Band released three
albums of their own: Lost Gonzo Band (1976) and
Thrills (1977) on MCA Records, and Signs of Life
(1977) on Capitol Records. That band disbanded in 1980, but
surviving members have occasionally reconvened over the
years for special events.
Bob Livingston, the singer-songwriter and
bassist, began working with the U.S. State Department in the
1980s, performing throughout the world as part of their
cultural and diplomatic outreach. He has been performing
with his son Tucker, and in 2005 they toured
Africa for concerts in Morocco, Tunisia and Angola and they
have also done State Department tours of Vietnam and
Thailand.
Livingston released a CD titled Gypsy
Alibi (New Wilderness Records) in 2011, which was
honored as the "Album of the Year" at the Texas Music Awards
that same year.
Livingston is the president of
Texas Music International (TMI), a non-profit 501 (c) 3
organization founded in 1995 to explore multi-cultural
themes in music and art and to help promote the music and
folklore of Texas internationally. TMI seeks to educate,
entertain and empower audiences around the globe with a
sense of brotherhood and cross-cultural understanding.
Austin Sage Ray Wylie Hubbard
"Count My Blessings"
We at RARWRITER.com are great admirers of
Ray Wylie Hubbard, and here's
why: Ray Wylie and Rick Richards
performing an unreleased song, "Count My Blessings." This
version was filmed at the 2011 Spring Music Fog Marathon at
Threadgill's WHQ during SXSW® music week in Austin, Texas.
Austin-Based Dustin Welch
Exploring Themes Sacred and Profane
Dustin Welch, the son of
highly-respected songwriter Kevin
Welch, continues to chart his own adventurous path
following the twisted sonic roadmap of his dreams.
By Brian O'Neal
AUSTIN, Texas — Building on the thrilling strengths of
his fearsomely original 2009 debut, Whisky Priest (which
LoneStarMusic magazine deemed “one of the most
compelling albums to come out of Texas in the past year”),
Austin-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist
Dustin Welch is set to release his second album, Tijuana
Bible, on February 12, 2013 via his own Super Rooster
Records.
Like Whisky Priest before it, Tijuana Bible finds
the Nashville-born Welch playing the part of a wickedly
mysterious carnival barker, bouncing strains of Americana,
rock, and folk music off of each other like a hall of
funhouse mirrors. His lyrics are similarly multifaceted,
reflecting literary influences ranging from American gothic
to gritty pulp fiction and themes both sacred and profane.
Welch calls Whisky Priest and Tijuana Bible (named
after the hand-drawn pornographic pamphlets that were passed
around in Depression-era work camps) the first two parts of
a projected trilogy. Although the songs are neither overtly
religious nor linked to each other as part of a conceptual
story, many of them do share a sense of desperation-hardened
fortitude — along with hints of mono-mythic mysticism.
Welch, a voracious reader who home-schooled his way out of
high school and now cites authors like Graham Greene, John
Steinbeck, William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, has read
his share of Joseph Campbell, too.
“I’ve thought a lot about [Campbell’s writings on] myth
and storytelling, because it’s so much a part of our fabric,
and there’s a lot of that kind of mysticism in it,” Welch
says. “I think a lot of these songs have a kind of glimmer
of hope to them. They’re about these folks who are going
through really hard times, but there’s that little bit of
hope that keeps them going. Which, again, is a lot like the
heroes that Joseph Campbell talked about. That’s the kind of
state they’re in; I just drag these characters through all
hell, but they’re holding on against all odds for this once
chance of redemption.”
As for the music, well, Welch will swear on a bible —
Tijuana, King James, whatever you’ve got on hand — that he
dreamt it all up. And not just a song, ŕ la Keith Richards
and “Satisfaction,” but a whole damn sound. It came to him
as a vision — so loud and clear he could see it like a
moving picture in his mind, the notes and colors and shapes
coming into sharp relief just as he was drifting off to
sleep. The melody was strange and complex, a beautiful
cacophony of disparate styles clashing together all at once:
Celtic and Appalachian folk music set to driving rock and
dexterous jazz rhythms, with big harmonies sung in a “gritty
and raw,” “archaic” sounding language. “It was profound,” he
recalls. “It felt like horses running wild. And I’d never
heard anything like it.”
That was half his life ago, but that sound still
resonates within him. And through him, because that music
Welch first heard in a dream some 15 years ago is now very
much his own sound, still wild and untamed but corralled
into the digital grooves of Tijuana Bible, which he
recorded in Austin at the home studio of producer/drummer
Eldridge Goins. In addition to writing or co-writing all 11
songs, Welch plays banjo and acoustic and gut-string guitar
on the album; other players include electric guitarist
Jeremy Nail, violinist Trisha Keefer, pianist Scotty
Bucklin, and bassist Steve Bernal, among others.
“We ended up doing some overdubs, but mostly we recorded
everything live in the same room in three different sessions
in three days,” says Welch, who made himself right at home
on Austin’s celebrated live music scene upon moving to town
just a few years ago. “This group of guys, they’re all
really sophisticated musicians, and it’s funny because a lot
of real sophisticated musicians like that, really all they
want to do deep down is rock.”
Listen to Welch snarl, stomp, and tear his way through
the songs on Tijuana Bible, or watch him ratchet up
the intensity even higher onstage (even when playing solo
acoustic!), and you’d naturally assume the guy was born
wanting to rock himself. Fact is, he was a bit of a late
bloomer, at least to that side of his musical personality.
As happens when your father is a renowned songwriter (Kevin
Welch) with a Nashville publishing deal and you grow up
around some of the most gifted writers and hottest pickers
in Music City, U.S.A., Welch was born and raised surrounded
by music and displayed a natural affinity for any instrument
he could get his hands on practically from the time he was
in diapers. But as a teenager, most of the music other kids
his age were into just didn’t speak to him. He avoided MTV
and VH1. “I remember the first time I heard Nirvana’s
Nevermind, I thought was the worst shit I’d ever heard,” he
admits with a laugh. (Jimi Hendrix didn’t impress him much
at the time, either — though he’s quick to note that he’s
since learned to appreciate both.)
In lieu of rock, Welch’s earliest musical influences just
naturally skewed more towards jazz, classical, blues and
country. In high school, he flirted with jammy hippie fare
in a band called the Groundlings (featuring singer Cary Ann
Hearst, now of the Americana duo Shovels and Rope), and he
later spent his early 20s playing rootsy, old-timey country
and blues in Nashville’s the Swindlers with fellow “Music
Row brats” Justin Townes Earle, Travis Nicholson and Cory
Younts (Old Crow Medicine Show, Jack White). But then fate
came knocking via an offer to join a West Coast Celtic punk
band called the Scotch Greens in need of a touring utility
player. It wasn’t long before Welch was reveling in the rush
of playing full-throttle punk rock (on banjo and Resonator
slide guitar, no less) in front of moshing Warped Tour fans.
“I think it made a big impression on me the way that
people reacted to that stuff, and just the energy of it,” he
says. “I’d see 500 people in a crowd of 1,500 all singing
along, pumping their fists in the air. I think music can
really be something that the listener can participate in.
It’s the same way with some speakers and preachers; their
message might not be anything real profound, but the way
they deliver it, that intensity just builds and builds until
everybody is empowered and feels like making a difference in
the world.
All that energy and intensity certainly made a difference
in Welch’s own music, once he finished his time with the
Scotch Greens and moved to Austin to begin his solo career
in earnest. “It came through in both my writing and my
delivery,” he says. “It gave me the confidence to just make
things slightly more . . . exaggerated. Exaggerated rather
than glorified, though, which is what you hear in a lot of
more commercial music. When it’s over-glorified, I think it
robs it of its soul. But I’ve really been getting pretty
idealistic about how much music can change the world, and I
think the more heartfelt communication we have, the better
place the world can be.”
That’s not a belief he holds on blind faith, either; he’s
witnessed it action. Welch has spent the better part of the
past year and a half volunteering for the Texas chapter of
the Soldier Songs & Voices program, a national organization
he helped found that provides free music and songwriting
lessons — and even guitars — to Armed Forces veterans. Twice
a week, he meets with men and women who are finding through
song a means to not only share their stories, but also cope
with and make sense of their own journeys to hell and back
again. “These guys we’re working with, they’re really
getting their lives back, and I see it more and more every
week,” Welch marvels. “And music can work that way across
the board, with anybody, because it really is our common
denominator. It’s the universal language, and it resonates
with people on this subconscious, emotional way.”
And on Tijuana Bible, Welch uses that language to
tell the trials and tribulations of a varied cast of
battered and broken but not quite entirely beaten souls,
ranging from the Vietnam vet of “Sparrows” to the fragile
Hollywood China doll of “Party Girl” to the fire-starting
whore’s son of the album’s chaotic closing title track.
There are more sinners than saints here, and some of them
are admittedly a lot farther off from redemption than
others. As the protagonist in “St. Lucy’s Eyes” warns, “This
life I lead, it’s not for the faint of heart.” But even at
its darkest, Welch’s music still thunders with the exuberant
spirit of horses running wild, indifferent to the line
between fever dream and prophesy.
____________________________
Funny Stuff
Darin Murphy Does
Sir George Martin
Darin Murphy, of the Austin,
Texas band Future Clouds and Radar,
the follow-up project of '90s breakthrough act
Cotton Mather, also fronted by
singer-songwriter Robert Harrison,
is one talented impersonator, along with being a fine musician.
Check out his spot-on and amazingly straight-faced interview
below in which he portrays, and takes the piss out of, legendary
Beatles Producer Sir George Martin.
And now that you
are tuned in to Murphy, Harrison, and
Future Clouds and Radar, check out this live
performance, which for RARWRITER.com's money is about as coolly
refreshing and reminiscent of an earlier musical glory as exists
anywhere on the planet today. Great recording voices.
Future Clouds and
Radar is the brainchild of frontman-guitarist-vocalist-and-songwriter
Robert Harrison, who first broke through in the 1990s with his
band Cotton Mather. Noel
Gallagher of Oasis heard the band's Kon Tiki LP, and no
doubt recognized the same Beatlesque overtones that were the
inspiration for Oasis as well, and the two bands toured
together, with Cotton Mather opening. This inspired the
re-release of Kon Tiki in Britain, where it blew up,
yielding the hit song "Lost My Motto", which was later featured
on Little Stevie Van Zandt's Coolest Songs In The World Vol.
1. The tune is regularly played on Van Zandt's Underground
Garage series on Sirius Radio.
__________________
Seth
Walker
Seth
Walker and pianist
Stefano Intelisano perform a nice rendition of
"You Don't Know Me" live on Austin's own ME Television.
Walker is an Austin mainstay, a blues regular who first
burst onto the scene in 1997, with his first album release,
and since then has shared stages with the top bluesmen in
the world, including B.B. King, Robert Cray, and
Austin's own W.C. Clark ("Godfather of Austin Blues")
among many others. He has recently been a featured artist on
the No Depression music site. Walker is another of those
artist utilizing the suddenly popular KickStarter financing
method to cover expenses on his next album. Learn more about
the talented Mr. Walker at
www.sethwalker.com
.
AUSTIN CITY
LIMITS FESTIVAL
The Austin City Limits Music
Festival took place in Austin, Texas last week. Pretty
cool that you could watch it live on YouTube.
AUSTIN, Texas — When Slaid
Cleaves moved from Portland, Maine, to Austin, Texas, at the tail
end of 1991, he landed on South Lamar Boulevard, a few blocks from the
legendarily seedy Horseshoe Lounge. But as he points out on his new live
album, “It was many years of drivin’ by before I worked up the courage
to come in through the door.”
Maybe his New Englander’s reserve got the
better of him; one thing most Texans do not fear is walking into a bar.
But curiosity and, no doubt, the lure of stories contained within
eventually won out, and in 2000, Slaid wound up releasing “Horseshoe
Lounge,” an ode to the 46-year-old beer joint, on his breakout CD Broke
Down. A turning point in his career, "Broke Down" transformed Cleaves
from feckless Austin singer/songwriter, playing open mics and running
sound at the legendary Cactus Cafe to Americana chart-topping, New York
Times-lauded (“One of the finest songwriters from Texas”) national
touring artist. Oh, yeah, and the 2001 Austin Music Awards named the
title track, written with childhood pal Rod Picott, Best Song of the
Year.
It had been a rough eight years in Austin
for Cleaves, having left the small pond of Portland, Maine, where he'd
busked and played bars and started the alt-country (before the term
existed) Moxie Men, for the allure of milder winters, a fledgling South
by Southwest, and a desire to hone his skills amongst the likes of Joe
Ely and Lucinda Williams. But with the Americana radio success of "Broke
Down" and subsequent tireless touring of the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and
the Netherlands, Cleaves made good use of the 2000s, connecting to
audiences and developing a reputation for sincere and entertaining shows
featuring his intimate songs presented with a variety of top-notch
instrumental accompanists.
And now, 20 years after his Southwest
migration, he’s releasing his first live album — a double disc, no less,
titled Sorrow & Smoke: Live at the Horseshoe Lounge, on Music
Road Records on September 6, 2011.
When he first contemplated a live album,
Slaid turned to the massive collection of performance recordings he’s
acquired during his decades as a wandering troubadour, traveling from
stage to stage and entrancing audiences with tales of lost souls. But he
couldn’t bring himself to sort through it all, and decided to do fresh
versions.
“I thought, ‘How can I make a live record
special?’” Slaid explains. ‘Well, it has to be in a special place.’” It
makes perfect sense; so many of his songs reference watering holes
anyway. Sorrow & Smoke fully conveys the spirit of an intimate yet
jovial crowd: Clinking beer bottles. Laughter. Sing-alongs. Good-natured
heckling. “The give and take, this sort of conversation I have with the
audience,” he says. And of course, the self-deprecating humor that
leavens the singer’s stories of people struggling to make sense of their
lives.
“That’s a big part of the show and I wanted
to capture that as much as
possible,” he says, adding, “I also wanted to give an honest depiction
of what my show is like these days.”
Unlike his beautifully realized, Gurf Morlix-produced
studio albums, Sorrow & Smoke is a more stripped-down, mostly acoustic
affair. South Texas Walk of Fame guitarist Michael O’Connor twangs
acoustic lead guitar with Slaid at “the Shoe” while
accordionist/trumpeter/harmonica player and all-around character Oliver
Steck keeps the crowd on their toes. (Both O'Connor and Steck have
ridden many a mile in the van with Slaid over the years.) The plan was
for a single disc, but there was so much good material, they decided to
pack it with Slaid’s most-requested tunes and “greatest hits” — the ones
he likes to joke carried him from “total obscurity” to “relative
obscurity.”
Up to now, you had to catch Slaid live or
read interviews to hear quips like that. And until you know that side of
him, you can’t really appreciate him. He’s the kind of guy who will
casually place one of his most requested compositions, “Breakfast in
Hell,” about an ill-fated lumberjack, into a category he calls the
“narrative workplace disaster song.” (That tune, on 2000’s Broke Down,
helped elevate him beyond “relative obscurity.”)
The live album also gives Slaid a chance to
fully exercise his yodeling skills, honed through tutoring by none other
than his “mentor and hero,” the late master Don Walser. In tribute, he
delivers two Walser tunes: “Texas Top Hand” and “Rolling Stone from
Texas.” (They follow his “warmup” song, “Horses,” about his parents’
neighbor, Willie Jr., whose hard-luck line is, “If it weren’t for horses
and divorces, I’d be much better off today.”)
Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that Slaid’s
not a morose guy. But he’s a channeler of hurt and heartache, with an
uncanny ability to chronicle despair — and beauty — in verses of
startlingly simple eloquence. Despite their economy, his lyrics are
strikingly detailed. “Just a little cut up on your brow / The principal
said don't come back now.” “Your date of grace is due / And you’ve
pawned everything you own.”
He’s such a skilled wordsmith he could very
easily tell you all about himself instead of hiring someone else to do
it. His website has always been a repository of sparklingly told stories
that never bear an ounce of untruth, like the one about when he had a
whole Austin-to-Nashville plane flight to himself. He and the crew had a
fine old time. It’s too bad he recently took down some older chapters,
like the heartrending story about how his dog got shot. “Dogs. You gotta
love ’em. They are designed to break your heart,” he wrote. Perhaps not
coincidentally, the title of his sterling last album was Everything You
Love Will Be Taken Away. (The title comes from “Cry,” its opening track.
The closer, “Temporary,” is written from tombstone epitaphs;
coincidentally, the album’s liner notes were written by one of Slaid’s
biggest fans, horror novelist and fellow Mainer Stephen King, who knows
from cemeteries.)
Slaid actually did write his own bio once.
It reads, “Slaid Cleaves. Grew up in Maine. Lives in Texas. Writes
songs. Makes records. Travels around. Tries to be good.” Just like his
songs, it speaks volumes with just a few well-chosen words. And sounds
so much like verse, you almost want to hear it set to music. Maybe he
could drop it into a set at the Horseshoe Lounge. He might have to
hurry, though. Like much of funky old Austin, the Horseshoe’s days may
be numbered; Slaid says he heard the land it’s on has been bought up by
yet another developer.
All the more reason to hold dear this
intertwined history of a classic dive bar and a singer who spins classic
tales from those who populate such places. Because if everything you
love will be taken away, at least musical memories can remain. And if
you’ve never been to the Horsehoe or seen Slaid Cleaves perform, with
Sorrow & Smoke you’ll still get the picture. Loud and clear.
# # #
For more information on Slaid Cleaves please
contact Conqueroo:
Cary Baker • (323) 656-1600 • cary@conqueroo.com
_______________________________
NOTE TO READERS:
The Austin Links from 2006-2009 are archived,
so if you are not finding the profiles you have seen on this page previously,
you might either explore the following links or, probably better,
use this link to go to the Links at RARWRITER Artist
Index.