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.
OUT APRIL 7 ON HIS OWN BORDELLO RECORDS
Renowned Texas songwriter/Americana hero
returns with lean ’n’ mean follow-up to 2012’s triumphant The
Grifter’s Hymnal; album soon to be followed by his uproarious,
hair-raising autobiography, A Life … Well, Lived. Co-produced by
Hubbard and bassist George Reiff, The Ruffian’s Misfortune
showcases Hubbard’s bluesy slide alongside the twin guitar leads
of Gabe Rhodes and Hubbard’s son, Lucas.
WIMBERLEY, Texas —
When it comes to
down ’n’ dirty roots ’n’ roll, nobody in the wide world of
Americana music today does it better than
Ray Wylie Hubbard.
Except, it seems, for Hubbard himself. After riding a
decade-long career resurgence into the national spotlight with
2012’s acclaimed The Grifter’s Hymnal and his first ever
appearance on the Late Show With David Letterman (“I didn’t want
to peak too soon,” quips Hubbard, 68), the iconoclastic Texas
songwriter is back to continue his hot streak with The Ruffian’s
Misfortune — his 16th album (and third on his own Bordello
Records, via Thirty Tigers) — due out April 7, 2015.
From his humble beginnings as an
Oklahoma folkie in the ’60s to his wild ride through the ’70s
progressive country movement, and onward through the honky-tonk
fog of the ’80s to his sobriety-empowered comeback as a
songwriter’s songwriter in the ’90s, Hubbard was already a bona
fide legend by the time he really found his groove right at the
turn of the century. That’s when he finally felt confident
enough in his guitar playing to dive headlong into his own
inimitable take on the blues, a form he’d admired but steered
clear of for decades, thinking its mysteries were beyond his
grasp as a basic chord strummer.
“I used to go see
Lightnin’ Hopkins
and Mance Lipscomb and
Freddie King, all those cats, but I never
could play like them — I guess because I never took the time or
effort to try — until I was in my 40s and learned how to finger
pick,” says Hubbard. “Once I learned how to finger pick, I
started going, ‘Oh, OK, this is how they did all that!’ Then I
started learning open tuning, and then slide, and it was just
this incredible freedom that gave all these songs a door to come
through that wasn’t there before. It was like all of a sudden
having this whole other language or a whole other set of tools
to add to my arsenal.”
In lieu of drugs and alcohol, that language became Hubbard’s new
addiction — and the title of his 2001 album Eternal and Lowdown
somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy: 14 years further down
the road, he’s still chasing hellhounds deep into the underbelly
of the blues, with a Lightnin’ Hopkins gleam in his eyes and a
Rolling Stone swagger in his boot steps. The Ruffian’s
Misfortune is his latest missive home from this leg of his long
journey. Its message? Don’t wait up.
Packing 10 brand new songs into just
under 34 minutes, The Ruffian’s Misfortune is the tightest and
most focused record of Hubbard’s career; it will also be his
first record to be pressed on vinyl in more than 30 years. But
its grooves cut just as deep in digital form, every track
rumbling like muddy water over a bed of lethal rocks and gnarled
roots. The terrain ain’t exactly pretty, but every record
Hubbard’s fished, fought, and dragged from those waters —
including such fan and critic favorites as 2002’s aptly-titled
Growl, 2006’s Snake Farm, and 2010’s A. Enlightenment, B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is no C) — has only strengthened his
resolve to follow his gypsy muse closer and closer to that dark
river’s source. Hubbard hints that he may someday find his way
back to less rocky ground, admitting that he keeps a 12-string
on hand “thinking I might go back to more Gordon Lightfoot type
stuff … every once in a while the old folkie guy will rear his
ugly head” … but The Ruffian’s Misfortune finds him still a long
way from that.
“I really liked The Grifter’s
Hymnal, and I think The Ruffian’s Misfortune is still kind of a
part of that,” he offers, noting that he likes the way both
titles would look just as fitting on a dusty old book jacket —
or perhaps at the start of a silent movie — as they do on an
album cover. But the similarities don’t end there. “This record
is pretty much where I am as far as trying to make records that
work on a couple of different levels, by laying down a groove
with cool guitar tones and vicious nasty licks with lyrics that
have a little depth and weight and even a little humor thrown
in, too, as life is pretty much like that.”
Hubbard describes the process of
getting those lyrics down just right — with every line and word
weighted and measured with a poet’s discipline — as both “a joy
and anguish.” But the actual recording this time around went
down remarkably quickly, with most of the tracks nailed down
live in two or three takes over the course of five days at the
Zone studio in Dripping Springs, Texas, right up the road from
the rustic Hill Country cabin Hubbard shares with his wife,
manager, and record label president, Judy. Hubbard’s ferociously
gifted 21-year-old son, Lucas — who’s been holding his own
onstage with the old man since his late teens — shared lead
guitar duties on the album with the equally talented
Gabe
Rhodes, swapping leads the whole way through. “I really wanted
to have that Ron Wood/Keith Richards two-guitar vibe, you know?”
explains Ray Wylie, who of course played a fair amount of guitar
himself: namely, all of the slide and acoustic stuff. The
bedrock is provided by bassist/co-producer
George Reiff and
drummer Rick Richards, whose “deep in the pocket,”
just-behind-the-beat timing has been Hubbard’s not-so-secret
weapon for years on both record and stage. Hubbard raves that Reiff and Richards make for such a potent groove machine that
he’s had to share them on more than one occasion with friend
(and poacher) Joe Walsh: “He called me up and went, ‘I don’t
want to steal your band … but I’m going to steal your Snake Farm
band,’” Hubbard recounts with a laugh. “Which of course is a
high compliment to George and Rick.”
Sonically, The Ruffian’s Misfortune
picks up right where The Grifter’s Hymnal left off, with Hubbard
and his wrecking crew confidently jumping from jagged,
wicked-cool roots rock (“All Loose Things,” “Down by the River”)
to trashy, ’60s-style garage stomp (the ferocious “Chick Singer,
Badass Rockin’” and riotous “Bad on Fords”), Mississippi and
Texas blues (“Mr. Musselwhite’s Blues,” “Jessie Mae”) and even
earnest country-gospel name-checking Sister Rosetta Tharpe
(“Barefoot in Heaven”). The songs themselves are rife with
wayward souls worthy of both words in the album’s title —
sinners, luckless gamblers, drunks, thieves, and at least one
beautiful, fierce woman (“Too Young Ripe, Too Young Rotten”).
Some of these characters own their misfit/outsider status with a
proud and exhilarating air of invincibility (like the
aforementioned badass-rockin’ “Chick Singer,” equal parts sloppy
cool Chrissie Hynde and sneering Joan Jett), while others are
all-too-conscious of their mortality (“Hey Mama, My Time Ain’t
Long”) and not overly confident in their prayers for salvation
(“Stone Blind Horses”). As narrator and guide, Hubbard doles out
more empathy than judgment for the whole motley lot, but his
words sting like grit in open wounds just the same. As he puts
it rather ominously in the theme-setting opener, “All Loose
Things,” “The gods can’t save us from ourselves.”
Actually, Hubbard gives that line to
a blackbird — the same animal that also observes,
tongue-in-beak, “Look at them fools down there, they ain’t got
no wings!” It’s an old trick he says he picked up from studying
Aesop’s Fables. Of course, Aesop doesn’t get a co-writing credit
on that number, nor do Charlie Musselwhite or Jessie Mae
Hemphill for directly inspiring “Mr. Musselwhite’s Blues” and
“Jessie Mae,” respectively. But Dallas rocker
Jonathan Tyler
does get one for lending a hand (and a cool guitar lick,
although he doesn’t play it himself on the record) in the
writing of “Hey Mama, My Time Ain’t Long,” while
Marco Gutierrez and
Sean “Nino” Cooper of El Paso’s Dirty River Boys
collaborated with Hubbard on the cautionary border anthem “Down
by the River” and Ronnie Dunn of
Brooks & Dunn fame pitched in
on “Bad on Fords.” After taking a shine to The Grifter’s Hymnal,
Dunn invited Hubbard up to Nashville to write some songs
together for a solo project he working on. Hubbard in turn was
impressed by the country superstar’s legit Red Dirt roots and
rock ’n’ roll attitude, so he figured Dunn might get a kick out
of an idea he had about an unrepentant Okie car thief with a
fast and furious pick-up line: “I’m bad on Fords and Chevrolets,
but I’ll be good to you!” He figured right — though neither of
them could have foreseen Red Rocker Sammy Hagar
getting his
hands on a demo of the song and cutting it first, on 2013’s Sammy Hagar & Friends. (“He does it a lot different than I do,”
Hubbard deadpans. “We didn’t do any high kicks when we recorded
it.”)
There’s a bit more to that
particular story, which is but one of hundreds, if not
thousands, of colorful anecdotes Hubbard could tell about his
long and eventful career — some going even further back than the
one about how he came to write “Up Against the Wall, Redneck
Mother,” which became one of the defining anthems of the entire
progressive country era after Jerry Jeff Walker recorded it on
his classic 1973 album ¡Viva Terlingua! He’s certainly got more
than enough of them — and years of insight to match — to fill a
book, which is something he finally got around to tackling after
persistent prodding (and a bit of editing help) from friend and
music writer Thom Jurek. After spending the better part of the
last two years sifting through his memories and hashing them out
on the page, Hubbard’s autobiography is off to the printer and
due out this spring or summer right alongside The Ruffian’s
Misfortune. It’s exceedingly Hubbard-ly title? A Life … Well,
Lived.
His book may be finished, but Hubbard’s not done, well, living
that life. And as long as he keeps his gratitude higher than his
expectations (to borrow a line from The Grifter’s Hymnal’s
“Mother Blues,” pointedly delivered by Hubbard himself and not
some wiseacre Aesop’s crow), his fortune going forward should be
pretty good.
“As I look back, I’ve had some
amazing cool things happen, but I still feel like I’m moving
forward,” he says. “I still enjoy it, and I think there’s still
plateaus to reach. I don’t know what they’re going to be,
because I haven’t really sat around thinking about it; when I
wrote ‘Mother Blues’ for the last record, I wasn’t thinking,
‘I’ll put this album out and try to get on Letterman’ — he just
heard the song on Sirius XM Radio and called up and asked for us.
So who knows what will happen with this record? All I know is I
feel very fortunate right now in that I’m playing gigs that are
really fun to do. And as long as I can keep writing and
performing new songs, I think I could keep doing this for
awhile. I saw some show once where Pinetop Perkins was playing
at 90 years old, and Judy said, ‘You’ve got another 20 years in
you!’”
We have featured the studio version of
"Snake Farm" before, a tune we at the CCJ love. Here is a live
version, nearly acoustic. There may be more video versions of
Ray Wylie Hubbard performing "Snake Farm" than there are of any
other performer performing any one other song.
There are a lot of things to like about
Ray Wylie Hubbard, and among them is his appreciation for
certain outlaw musical types, like the 13th Floor Elevators. In
"Good Night for Rock'n" he does the type of testimonial tribute
that he provided in "Screw You, We're From Texas".
While we are watching Ray Wylie Hubbard
videos, why not a whole concert? We at the CCJ just love the old
reprobate!