Merle's latest communique, translated from Semaphore

Late summer, into autumn, is my Respite Season.  For months my days have been plagued with the sounds of children shrieking with abandon at the pool across the way, and with ambulance sirens wailing and offending on their lumbering sprints into the Emergency bay at the hospital on the corner.  I’ve been playing Guess The Breed as lapdogs have been barking into the surrounding hard surfaces lining this little lagoon I live on, undoubtedly feeling beefier and tougher when their barks instantly echo back.  Summer’s reign is fading, and some of the jocularity, the team spirit, the seasonal, intoxicated laughter is mercifully waning.  I am ready for hibernation and solitude, a take-out Everett & Jones barbecue combo plate and a big ol’ ice-cold Trader Joe’s Limeade.

Frankly, I’ve been stuck, blocked, hamstrung.  My summer has brought some excellent players into my sphere, and rehearsals hummed along until other obligations pulled them away from arranging these old tunes that I love.  My blog, a casualty of summer and unwillingness, has been designated an abandoned asylum.  I’m bored with my own history.  I wonder, “Where’s the funny stuff?  Sing through me, O Daughters of Zeus!  Gimme a bone here!”

Turns out the Muses have been camping out at my mailbox, and I never noticed until a week ago.  Poster tube after shipping box after slick, opaque envelope - sometimes a single serving, sometimes three and four per day:  the solicitation begins.  It’s Payola Time!

"On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers." ~ Adlai E. Stevenson
Such a bitter truth ...

I am a lifetime member of the Country Music Association by some comical quirk of fate.  A friend in the country and western field thought it would be mutually beneficial if he were to provide me with a membership.  Far be it from me to refuse; it might just come in handy one day.  November is fast approaching, and with it the CMA Awards. Yay.

http://www.bridgestonearena.com/events/detail/the-47th-annual-cma-awards    

The fine art of pandering without sacrificing any plaid-shirtsleeves-rolled-up, backwards-ball-cap cool is presenting six shows a week in and around my mailbox.  Sometimes the "incentives" are too bulky to fit in the box.  My mail lady then dutifully dumps them at my door.  These are the hilarious and sometimes disturbing efforts to bag my votes for Entertainer of the Year, Vocalist of the Year, Album of the Year, Musical Event of the Year, New Artist of the Year.  I have opened valentines from “The Next Big Voice In Country Music” (sadly, not Haggard) and “The New Hat In Town” (not Tom Mix).  If the Next Big Voice were also the New Hat, think of all the trees that could be saved.  One promo piece came disguised as a U.S. Passport.  Cute.  I saw this very same format used for a wedding invitation and reception two years ago.  I’ve been bombarded with love by ten artists I’ve never heard of.  Two vinyl LPs made their way from Nashville in what can only be described as pizza delivery boxes.  I’ve received a 12”x16” poster from one artist’s management in a shipping tube that is over 21” long with a 10” circumference and would have held 100 posters, not just one.  Evidently the only “green” valued in Nashville is the kind that buys more ball caps, more worn-out t-shirts, and more working girl stilettoes ‘n’ bustiers ‘n’ kozmetix ‘n’ kounterfeit kleavage.

Legs sell records.

Follow The Leader:  

Legs sell records.

    Which CD
   would YOU
        buy?                                     

(I didn't have

to buy

 either!

Just lucky,

I guess!)

                                                          

BREASTS SELL RECORDS.

WHERE'S JULIE LONDON
WHEN YOU NEED HER?

  "BREAKTHROUGH?"

  THIS GUY HAS NOTHING ON 

JOE DALLESANDRO.

Someone please tell me what this means!
Should I be amazed?  Depressed?

My favorite feature in all this gratis junk is the no-uncertain-terms sticker affixed to the bait:  “For Promotion Only - Ownership Reserved By [record company] - Sale Is Unlawful”.  First they buy you a lobster dinner; when dessert is done they threaten you with cement overshoes.  I feel robbed, with all this giveth-ing and taketh-ing away.  I’m tempted to sell this stuff cheap, but I’ve been to Rahway (now East Jersey State Prison):  the Big House is just no place for a girl like me.  Besides, they’re having MRSA outbreaks among the prisoners.  That alone is enough to make me steer clear.  I promise I won’t sell any of the CDs, DVDs, vinyl - none of it.  I’ll save all of it until Hanukkah and Christmas are tapping me on the shoulder, at which time I shall "repurpose" them.  

I’m thinking about write-in votes.  Stringbean.  Grandpa Jones.  My personal favorite and spiritual kin, Cousin Jody.  Maybe someone who tallies up the votes might see my suggestions, and get a good laugh and a brief glimpse of how it used to be done in the days when a simple heartsong had more impact than an anthem.

_________________________________________________________________________

On another note, attention should be given to the dreadful news that Linda Ronstadt has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.  I don’t know Linda, I’ve never been on a show with her.  I imagine that if she suspected Parkinson’s seven or eight years ago when she first started experiencing symptoms, then she would have been noticing gradual changes in her voice and in the effort she had to expend to make the notes come out the way she wanted them to.  Now the news is telling us she “can’t sing a note” and will never sing again, because people with Parkinson’s cannot sing.

Somewhere in this process she must have been considering a Plan B, another way to invest her energies and her talents, a different kind of gig that would fulfill her and bring joy, or at least comfort, to others.   I understand she has a new book coming out called “Simple Dreams.”  She is smart, she’s talented, she has both experience and wisdom.  You can’t lie around in your flannels and expect to purchase qualities like those online with your debit card.  She earned it, all of it, by slugging it out in the trenches and giving, giving.  I’m confident that she will find unique ways to be creative and useful.  I don’t find it easy to digest the fact that most of my own life is gone, or that much of it was squandered.  We are all being called to the finish line, but while we’re still here we would do well to remember that it’s not the amount of time left that matters.  It’s how we summon the courage to continue living meaningful lives in the face of struggles that threaten to shut us down.     

Linda Ronstadt has a tough road ahead.  I wish her a miraculous absence of suffering and fear, with no regret, only gratitude and contentment.  I hope she will be surrounded by family and friends who honestly have her well-being at heart.  I hope she understands the tremendous impact she has had on contemporary music, and among fans and singers who have looked to her as a mentor. May twilight bring to her window a rainbow of birds, with melodies of love and comfort and reminders of a life well-lived. That will assign full-circle meaning to every note she gave us.
  
People with Parkinson’s CAN sing.  
They do it in their hearts and minds.  
    

      

  

Songwriters Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus

"Let's talk about 'Marie's the Name' and Del Shannon."     

~ Merle Torpitude

Thanks for asking, Merle!  Mmmmm ... Elvis!  So many great hits, so many of them written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, including “Viva Las Vegas”, “Little Sister”, and a fine little number found on “Be Right Back!” called “(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame”.  Originally recorded by my friend Del Shannon, reportedly in June, 1961, and cut by Elvis shortly thereafter, the song holds lots of memories for me, some of a relatively happy time growing up in Virginia, with an older brother whose slick, black pompadour rivaled Elvis’, courtesy Brylcreem (“A little dab’ll do ya!”)  When he would come to pick me up at school in his black ’61 Chevy Impala 2-dr Bubbletop (with moons) to drive me across town to a standing monthly medical appointment, it was just like Elvis had walked into the classroom.  Chatter stopped.  Admiration commenced.  It was the pomp.  It was the swagger.  Every time I hear Del or Elvis or Orbison I think of those days, and of the undeniable impact of AM radio.  It was what this white, suburban Catholic girl had to groove on:  Jack Alix wh-wh-wh-whippin' it on his listeners on Arlington, Virginia's WEAM (5,000 watts), Marvelous Marv Brooks and Bob Raleigh on WPGC out of Morningside, Maryland (10,000 watts, broadcasting in daytime only!).  These shows, along with the likes of Milt Grant's TV Dance Party on WTTG-TV Channel 5, were powerful enough to shape my developmental musical awareness, which was born within the dovetails between the Everlys and the Beatles, The Miracles and the Marvelettes.

Irlene Mandrell, "Texercise", 1983

One significant AM radio force in those fertile days was Del Shannon.  When I listen to “Marie”, or even “In My Arms Again”, one of Del's later self-penned releases, I think of the warm friendship that developed between Del and me in the mid 80s, when he shared with me the plain truth that I need not drink myself into oblivion in order to do my road gig.  Of all the people who carried that message to me, by mail, on the phone, over walking-on-eggshells Christmas dinners, or in any given green room, Del was the only person who ever drove it home.  It was a blessing when we appeared together one fateful night on “Nashville Now” on The Nashville Network, where I was plagued with a profound wretchedness, anaesthetised by a quart of Absolut and, perhaps most annoyingly, amused yet disgusted by the disingenuous chumminess of the show’s host, Ralph Emery.  Twenty-eight years later the memory is clear as day, and what a collage of mixed messages it was. Irlene Mandrell was draped all over Ralph’s neck and acting like, well, a chirping, rather manic Mandrell.  In a moment of brutal exasperation with my petulance, Ralph flew up out of his seat like a jack-in-the-box during a commercial break and hurled a chair at no one in particular, although it landed precariously close to one of his cameramen.  Emery admonished me, and rightly so, for being a “smart aleck”, a characterization with which I boldly and vociferously agreed.  Meanwhile, once we'd returned from our commercial detour, Ray Benson did his level best to field questions from the good folks who were calling in to the show, all the while lamenting his decision to allow me onto the dais and trying to convince me it would be in my own best interests to shut the hell up.

This circus was juxtaposed with Del Shannon’s humane, frank, sheltering observations, his truth, a whispered covenant he shared with me both before and after the show: “You know, you don’t have to live like this anymore.”  I don’t know, it sort of sounded like a guarantee, like a map out of the psychic wilderness.  The voice of his experience sliced neatly through the noose that I had willingly put around my own neck.  So death by hanging onto fear was not compulsory?  This disclosure turned out to be an epiphany, caveat emptor.

Chris and Del Shannon on the old "Slut Dog"band bus,
with Asleep at the Wheel
The Palomino Club
North Hollywood, California
1985
Photo courtesy Jasper Dailey, Los Angeles, California

We used to visit, Del and I, when I’d swing through Hollywood with The Wheel to play the Palomino.  He’d send me letters, and encourage me to keep striving, saying there was little standing in my way but me.  When Del died in 1990 I was bereft and bewildered.  It was then that I understood the fragility of what he and I, and so many of us at the goddamn edge of reason, were - and are - trying to do: stay sober in the business of music, ride the tides, maintain an even emotional keel, take care of business.   In a way I understand what happened when Del walked off the edge of the earth, but part of me still wants to search for another explanation.  He was like me in some sadly familiar ways. We were both at the mercy of our dispositions and addictions; we were bundles of roiling complexity, and his having found a way out, his generosity in sharing what he had learned, was my saving grace.  Del still inspires me today, but in a different, deeper way than he ever could have during my own green days, when Jack Kennedy was six miles down the road in the White House, when I was a tomboy in grade school, and when Del was on AM radio every hour with one hit or another.  

I used to wash the family car every weekend when I was 11 and 12.  It gave me a pre-learner's-permit way to move the cars around between the street and the driveway. Part of the job was cleaning out the ashtrays. I'd listen to the radio while working away, dumping out detritus left from four active smokers in my family (and a couple of active imbibers).  Who could ever have imagined that the guy on the radio singing "Keep Searchin'" while I was undoing the mess would be the guy who, twenty years later, would tell me "I think I found something ..." (caveat emptor)?  Whatever the outcome, he certainly helped me undo a lot of my own mess.

Fine performances on this recording!

Del had several huge hits in the early 60s, including “Runaway”, “Hats Off To Larry”, “Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow The Sun)” and one of my personal faves, “Little Town Flirt”.  These songs and more were on the air between 1961 and 1966, 16 singles charting in five years.  Elvis had the huge, recognizable hit on “Marie”, but Del was there first, with his own intensity and his own expectations which, as it turns out, actually do turn into planned resentments.  I’m sure it was one of many times when Del was overshadowed, but he kept going until I guess it didn’t make sense to him to go any further.  I miss the opportunity to be in his calming presence.  I miss our unique friendship.  I miss what could and would have been for Del, because he understood rock ‘n’ roll and country music and melodic, engaging pop music from the inside, not as a derivative talent but as an innovator of his time.  His time would have been now, today, if only he had wanted every single moment not to cast himself out of his own garden.  And who has that remarkable continuous vigilance?  Anyone?  Rest in peace, my friend, and thanks for having a voice and a message that was louder and more resonating than Ralph Emery’s noise.  I’m still a punk, but because you cared I’m a sober one.

Somebody once said, "Grief is light that is capable of counsel."

Since July, 1984 you have shone a light down the road, 

always ahead of me, never behind.  

Stay near, friend,

and thank you.

                

February 8, 1990.

Ever missed.

              

"From a long way away I picked up a lot of buzz about you at the Hardly Strictly Festival. Sounds like I missed a great party. But what could be better than Chris O'Connell being back on stage? Well how about Blackie Farrell being back on stage and healthy? I hear he did great."  ~ Merle

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE:  BLACKIE FARRELL
AT HARDLY STRICTLY BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL, OCTOBER 6, 2012

Vans.  Golf carts.  People.  Did I say people?  The news said there were over a million people at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco over the first weekend in October.  Some of them loped along in front of the golf carts that took Bill Kirchen and Texicalli to their stage and to the respite of the backstage area.

Bobby Black:  Gearin' Up

There was the usual band banter taking place inside the dressing room and out.  Bobby Black predictably ferreted out the coffee; it seems not to matter to him what time of the day or night, or what question he’s pondering, but coffee is always the answer.  Every time I caught a glimpse of singer/songwriter/guitar player/raconteur/child care provider/old pal Blackie Farrell he seemed truly jazzed about this gig.  His wife, Vicky, was with him and his kids and grandkids were on their way to see him play on the big stage.  And the stage was truly big, with a whole mess o’ people down front, smoking dope, telling jokes, dancing and partying like it was 1967.  Most of them were like Blackie and me, and the rest of the band:  Senior Festivity Specialists.

Backstage, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival
San Francisco, CA.  2012
(one of a half-dozen stages)

Our set was 35 minutes.  Maybe we went a little long, I don’t know, I don’t wear a watch anymore.  Blackie and I were the extra credit window dressing on this gig.  Bill has been recording Blackie’s songs for decades and has given him valued visibility in the swamped field of songwriters.  A supportive and esteemed friend for more than 40 years, a vivid storyteller whose most recognizable tunes, “Mama Hated Diesels” and “Sonora’s Death Row” are cult classics, Blackie has songs in his catalogue few people have ever heard.  I have old Blackie Farrell demos on cassettes that were sent to Asleep At The Wheel from Bug Music, the Nashville/L.A. publishing house that was absorbed by BMG/Chrysalis not long ago.  Over the years these cassettes accumulated in my apple crate of songwriter demos, and I still listen to them on my little Sony jambox.  It’s almost like a history lesson:  “Angie’s Arms”.  “Cold Country Blues”.  “Red Cajun Girl”.  “Another Go-Round To Go”.  "The Hobo Who's Holdin' Your Hand".  

Some of it is my history; I think back to when Blackie and LeRoy Preston would start knocking back shots of George Dickel in the middle of the day and go long into the night at LeRoy's house on Annie Street in South Austin, huddled up, playing, changing up lyrics, telling stories, then breaking into some Link Davis, Sr. thing like "Albuquerque" or "The Face In The Glass".  Oh, sure, some of us other folks were drinking, too, but we’d be out back of the house in the hideous white-hot, incinerating Texas sunshine, chain-smoking menthols to try to keep cool, playing with the rubber pop-gun and horsing around with the hunting dogs. (Jubilee was a Blue Tick sometimes chained to a toilet so she wouldn't run off; Face was a 16-year old pit who put his teeth through my foot just trying to play).  While the menfolk were creatin', LeRoy's wife Kathy and I were hosing out a shed in their backyard to make it habitable for another songwriter friend, Jon Emery.  This was the beginning of Jon's long-running saga known as "Back When I Was Livin With Sue".   We were productive, Kathy and I, but we weren't looking to create anything that would last any longer than a hangover.  The shed turned into a home for Jon, however, and Jubilee was found later that week roaming the neighborhood, grinding up the sidewalks, dragging the toilet behind her.  But I digress . . . 

Blackie Farrell and LeRoy Preston were a great team and still write together, but of course they each also write separately.  One after another, Blackie’s tunes conjure up more than just pictures of incidents.  He throws you into the middle of the action whether you want to go there or not, whether it’s safe or not, whether there’s a happy outcome or not.  One song he did at Hardly Strictly, Red Sovine's “Freightliner Fever”, really spells out a reality of the trucker life.  Ask any over-the-road driver, slipping through the woods to get around the scales, spinning his log books for the DOT, creating ways to get the load delivered on time without killing himself or somebody else.  “Freightliner Fever” should be in the DSM-IV-TR.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-IV_Codes  And Blackie, who has recently had health problems that would kick anybody else’s ass, was in fine form at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, smiling, joking, chatting with the peeps, having a blast, which was really great to witness for those of us who had been concerned about our pal and had been hoping he’d soon get to the other side of these problems.  So what did I do?  I caused him even more pain.  I strong-armed  him to play Bill's song, “One More Day”, in Eb.  

Nobody likes Eb. Because Bill wrote the song, and because I cut it in Eb for "Be Right Back!", Blackie was in a corner.  But he soldiered on, because there is no crying in Eb.          

"Please make Eb more like D or E.  Amen."

There's a difference between a big festival and a night club, between a dance all and a house concert:  the differences are in the ways the artist approaches the audience, and it has to do with intimacy and expectations on the part of the band and also on the part of the audience.  Outdoor audiences are definitely there to have a great time.  I like outdoor venues because the people are groovin no matter what the clock says.  It’s easy to gauge how the tunes are going over - audiences unabashedly provide that information with body language and laughter and whistles and fist-pumping.  The people at Hardly Strictly were definitely out there!  I hadn’t been around that much smoke since the 80s. Bill Kirchen and Texicalli sounded great, maybe even greater to those who were high, who knows?, and nobody lost their cool.  Maybe the concertgoers were experiencing some of their own brand of Freightliner Fever.  But I know there was one guy who gained a fair measure of cool in his family’s eyes, and who reminded all present that he remains a steady and enduring musical force:  Blackie Farrell was tremendous!

Blackie Farrell and Bill Kirchen Backstage, Hardly Strictly 2012

Thanks to all who organized this 
wonderful annual event, 

and thanks to Bill Kirchen for inviting me to 
come outside and play.  

From all of us, many thanks to Warren Hellman, 

Founder of San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival 

(July 25, 1934 - December 18, 2011).

Banjo Player and Billionaire
F. Warren Hellman

"What does move me is the philanthropic stuff," he told Forbes magazine in 2006. "Giving really does move me. Part of it is selfish. It's fun to be appreciated. But the other part is that good things really are growing."  He called the bluegrass festival "a selfish gift," one that he, the musicians and the community could all enjoy.  "How could you have more fun than that?  What the hell is money for if it isn't for something like that?"  

~ F. Warren Hellman

           

                                                                                          

“Seems like for decades now, everybody's been doing theme albums. Pizzarelli did a pop album. McCartney did a jazz standards album. Willie did a western swing album. Charlie Haden did a country album.  Willie did a standards album. Boz Skaggs, Linda Ronstadt, you name ‘em, everybody's done some. I think it first got legs way back when this rock’n’roll band had an album full of songs so diverse they didn't know what to do. They got the idea to stitch it all together as a circus variety show band and they called it Sgt. Pepper's. Ironic that themes got style and variety was out. Now it looks like you're telling diversity to stand on its own legs.” ~ MT

It’s been my good fortune to work and create in environments that were both structured and unconstrained.  Looking back, I don’t see too many instances where experimentation was discouraged, and most of those took place in the advertising industry and not in the creation of music.  Advertising is a whole different animal, where the singer has to deal with power struggles and art manipulators and ticking clocks.  It calls on the singer to dress up product with chirpy overtones and even the occasional deceit.  My experiences creating spots for Southwest Airlines were anything but stodgy, though.  They were more like paid vacations with really smart, creative, funny people.  I'll just say that making good music has put lots of teachers in my path, as well as great opportunity and freedom.  The smart singer learns when the lesson looks like a threat.

I think sometimes of Rosemary Clooney, with her hilarious story about being forced to cut Wayne Raney's "Why Don't You Haul Off And Love Me" - I think it was Mitch Miller who brought the song to her, and she said in her book, "Girl Singer", that is was the most god-awful song she ever had to record.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EOSyrhTrtI

Rosemary Clooney
1950s

On this cut she even sounds like my pal Maryann Price, getting kinda kitschy with the lyric, because what else could she do?  It’s hardly “Autumn Leaves”.  That fantastic voice stooping to slog through this yokel cheese is amusing until you realize the waste involved.  Even though it was recorded by lots of different artists in the late 40s and early 50s it was just a bad match for Rosie.  Mitch Miller was aggressively pop pop pop in his commercial productions.  This guy had the chutzpah to persuade Sinatra to record an abysmal number called “Mama Will Bark”.  Mitch Miller was no dope, but even guys with experience and instinct sometimes stand and watch the ship growing smaller in the distance, knowing they missed it, at least artistically.

Wayne Raney

 “Why Don’t You Haul Off And Love Me” was perfect for the man who wrote it, a harmonica player from Wolf Bayou, Arkansas. http://ia600306.us.archive.org/28/items/WayneRainey-WhyDontYouHaulOffAndLoveMe1949/WayneRainey-WhyDontYouHaulOffAndLoveMe1949.mp3  We hear harmonica, flat top guitars, maybe a bass. This song was on the set list the first time I ever heard Asleep At The Wheel at American University in D.C. in October, 1970, with Ray Benson taking the hillbilly bull by the horns and blowing away the audience with The Wheel’s hip/pie  version of this simple tune.  The Wheel's performance of Raney's tune made perfect artistic and visual sense.  It sounded a damn sight better coming out of Ray's face than it ever could have coming out of Rosemary’s.

This all raises the question of appropriate choice of material for the artist, and who gets to choose.  Rosemary had a deal with Mitch, who threatened to fire her if she didn’t sing “Come On-A My House” in a fake Armenian accent.  In my early days, when recording in Nashville, I had the experience of being locked in Billy Sherrill’s office with an Epic rep telling me I shouldn’t sing the songs that my own songwriters were coming up with - writers like LeRoy Preston and Blackie Farrell - but that I should, instead, sing the songs that my producer du jour had written or co-written.  So I was pitched one song after another while the band waited for me to return to the studio.  Maybe this guy didn’t know I played guitar and was needed for the basic tracks, I don’t know.  But I declined and told him I was prepared to sing the songs I brought with me, and despite his best efforts to sell me the company tunes, I cut what I wanted.  I have three songs on that Epic album:  “Last Letter”, Rex Griffin's 1937 suicide weeper; “The Kind Of Love I Can’t Forget”, which was a western swing standard written by my friend and early Texas Playboy fiddler Jesse Ashlock; and “Our Names Aren’t Mentioned (Together Anymore)”, a jukebox country duet, a waltz written by LeRoy Preston.

With Jesse Ashlock, circa 1975

I trusted my songwriters and my own instincts.  Why shouldn't I sing what I wanted?  I was coming to understand that I could try any kind of song that felt right.  The Wheel was doing demos for different labels and I would find myself singing a LeRoy Preston love song, then an Etta James song, and then a Stevie Wonder tune followed by a song recorded in 1961 by Bobbie Smith and The Dream Girls.  And the band's publishing house was getting on board with this, sending all kind of songs to try, things written by John Hiatt and Mike Duke and Del Shannon.

When I first started singing I was learning derivative versions of songs; before I was a teenager I heard Arthur Alexander through John Lennon’s version of “Anna” and Don Covay through Mick Jagger’s stone cop of “Mercy Mercy”.  It wasn’t till I left my home in Virginia and became surrounded by players a few years ahead of me that I started to see the complete family tree.  Irma Thomas and Helen Humes and Little Jimmy Scott and Dinah Washington and Big Joe Turner - “nice to meet you!”  In fact, it was you, Merle, who turned me on to Irma Thomas shortly after I got to California.  It was a great time to be in music, in the early 70s, and once The Wheel got to Berkeley inspiration was coming in under the door.  A turntable.  Floor speakers.  A burgeoning collection of cool and interesting vinyl.  Freedom.

My new release, "Be Right Back!", contains 13 wildly diverse styles of music. This is not a palette of similar hues and shades.  I don’t have time to waste on filler material or re-hashings of what I’ve done before.  The project was ambitious and demanded that we hire the most versatile musicians we know.  We were very fortunate that new players, some of whom I’d never met, turned in terrific performances.  Old pals went out their way to participate out of love and devotion.  It was the strength of these individual and collective contributions that drove me to step up my own game.

I chose songs that I thought were poignant or droll or evocative.  That’s what I’ve always done.  I have trouble singing lyrics that don’t paint a picture.  I left my toughest song until the very end of the vocal sessions, and then I had to get on the mad side to sing it.  I have often used anger for situational management.  (Ask anyone who knows me!)  Fortunately for all involved, this time it turned out in our favor!  In coming back to singing after having been away so long I had to reintroduce myself to my own vocal chops and try to remember my shortcuts, how to get from point A to point B without dropping the character or the intensity, how to maintain pitch and tone while increasing thrust, how to inhabit the song.  That last one is the hardest, because some of the material is stark and desolate.  It’s painful to tell some of the stories on this record.  Yeah, I still call it a record.  "I hate it - I’m never doing this again.  I mean it.  We're done."  "I love this, it’s so huge and swingin'!"  "Wait a minute, that can be better."  "This song hates me."  "It wasn’t as hard as I imagined it would be."  "How did he make it sound so effortless?  It's not."  "I just got lucky there!"  That's how it all went down.  That’s how enduring things are made.

If you look inside any random Crayola box you will see this album.  It’s got the pink cloud, the greenhorn, the sunny yellow of “what the hell”, the dark blue of loss.  Colors are celebrated instrumentally or brought to the table vocally.  It navigates human emotion like a heart-and-soul GPS, complete with suggested turns into cheerless neighborhoods, but you get to choose the destination.  Or just sit in it and ride around . . . like we used to do, with the windows down.

"My Grace, Myself", Preparing to Cruise, 2004

                                            

So I look at this collection of songs you are about to release and it looks to me like trick or treat at the rainbow coalition. Boggling variety. Or the flip side might be, why are you so exclusive? I don't see any reggae or klezmer. How did you pick this wild batch of songs? ~ MT

There are two sides to the method for me, Merle.  One is, you hang around this business long enough, you meet people, clever people who can do things you can’t do.  I’ve met lots of songwriters over the years, and I’ve noticed how hard it is for some of these people to even get noticed or garner applause for their humor or their heartache. They have a talent for yanking my feelings out of me and putting them on paper with such accuracy that I can’t not sing them.  Ever since the Wheel got hooked up with the Cody band, the mantra has been “take your friends with you”.  I think that’s an honorable way to walk through this world.  And so on this album I have material written by old friends:  LeRoy Preston, Blackie Farrell, Bill Kirchen, Brenda Burns.  I can write, and I used to write a lot, but two things happened that influenced that:  First, everything that I wrote between 1965 and 1970 was lost when a roving band of West Virginia hillbillies set my ’63 Mercury Monterey on fire.  My lyrics, my artwork, my clothes, 90% of everything I owned was in the trunk and went up in flames.  The steering wheel melted.  The seats were nothing but springs.  I took it as a sign that there might be better songs outside the trunk.  Second, a friend in the business listened to one of my tunes and said, “Too many words”.  Maybe he was being a sanctimonious jerk, maybe he was just expressing an opinion that I inflated to the size of an insult. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to show enthusiasm that day, or maybe he was trying to save me from myself. I’ll never know.  It didn’t stop me from writing, but it did stop me from sharing my songs with anyone.  So I have relied on other writers over the years to explore the depths of living and then allow me to interpret their lyrics and their melodies.  That’s what I've always been, an interpreter of song.

Anastasio's Flotsam and Jetsam

Another side of taking friends along is taking people whom I wish were friends, or who seem to be kindred spirits.  I didn’t really look at genres until later in the game on this album.  The thing I wanted to accomplish was a return to singing what I consider great songs, after not having sung for a very long time.  People kept asking me if I was having fun.  There were times when the recording was fun, with Tony Garnier laughing his head off at everything or Paul Anastasio moving into the fiddle booth like an eccentric pack rat, with fruits and tuners and his laptop and a ukelele and his toothbrush lying on the floor.  I was energized and focused on what was going down and what people needed.  I wouldn’t say that the entire recording experience was fun.  The first day was good because it was my birthday and I had cake and daffodils in the vocal booth (along with the mainstay bottled water, throat spray and Hot Tamales candy).  I felt loved!  And the enormous amount of talent and love and encouragement in the studio were humbling.  I was honored to be there, and almost embarrassed that the whole thing was essentially about me.  But later in the process I flew to Austin to do some vocal overdubs, and that experience was difficult.  

"Happy Boothday" to Me

Part of my problem is that I am ten years old.  If I hear a song I want to sing I take a run at it.  Like a wide-eyed kid I rush into things and I don’t know that there are tunes that are unsuited for my voice, or that someone my age shouldn’t sing because it might embarrass the young folks.  I’m impulsive and I try them.  I want to be ten, without the responsibility of making difficult decisions.  I want to just get my hands on the thing and start molding.  And on this project I tried 14 songs:  that's a lot of clay for someone who was coming off of a ten-, eleven-year sabbatical.  When I first heard the songs I thought lots of things:  “I can sing that,” or “That’s a killer melody,” or “That’s an emotional volcano,” or “That’s funny as hell!” or “That could make a dead man cry,” or “That’s as dry as a dustbowl martini.”  And my cool-o-meter was pegging based on what I used to be able to sing before I left music for a decade.  Guitar tracks were really not much of a problem for me, even though I hadn’t played in ages.  When I got right down to laying down vocal tracks, though, there was a lot of catching up to be done, a lot of remembering how to get from “a” to “b”, a bit of wrestling the old licks out of the footlocker and dusting them off to help me tell the stories.  It was good to break through the vocal paralysis in Austin, but it was a demeaning exercise.  It was work.  It was frustrating, infuriating, unrewarding work on a lot of levels.  And when I returned to California I honestly didn’t care if the project never saw the light of day.  I was ready to bag it. 

Talent and Career Management

The only thing we could do was to keep on moving forward.  We already had quite a lot invested in the project and it would have been unreasonable to quit.  So that’s what we did:  we kept moving forward.  As a ten-year-old, I will drop a hot rock.  As a sixty-year-old, I know I need to juggle it until it can be handled.  This is what my Golden Years look like:  juggling, handling, managing.  I've come full circle, all the way back to The Ed Sullivan Show and the spinning plates on rods:  cocktail dress optional, but don't hold your breath.   

Chris,
There was a note in the mail bin last week from Ed Ward, "Noted Rock Historian" of NPR.  It gave me the jitters, remembering his good piece on Little Willie John.

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/20/140596530/before-rock-n-roll-the-chitlin-circuit-performed

When that came through my car radio, I got the jaspers thinking that a whole bunch of singers would jump the Little Willie catalog before you could get yours out, making you a Little Willie Johnny come lately. 

Maybe divert them to his new bit on James Burton, while you hurry up and get that stuff of yours out. ~ MT

By the time I get this out Ed will be onto five other things.  He's always worth reading, though, or listening to on NPR.  Ed's an old friend from The Wheel's earliest days in Berkeley.  He and writers John Morthland and Mike Goodwin would almost always be in the back room at the Longbranch Saloon in Berkeley for our regular Tuesday night gig.  We offered one free beer per patron, even though I think it was illegal to give booze away, and we played a couple of sets of music with special guest artists like songwriter Blackie Farrell or stride piano player Mike Lipskin.  We even had a juggler on the act a few times.  Once we gave away a t.v. to attract patrons.  The best offer we made to pack the house was a free date with the piano player.  Sometimes we'd share the bill with the Oso Band or Sober and Sorry.  It was a long time ago, but some images seem to have stuck in my mind.  

I was talking with Ed recently about that Little Willie John book, and about how James Brown did some of his tunes.  I've always loved James Brown as a singer, as a performer.  I especially dug those "Live At The Apollo" recordings.  As a kid I'd seen "The TAMI Show" in the theater and I thought it was cool how the knees of his pants were worn from all that "collapsing" he was doing.  I bought a record maybe thirty-five years ago called "James Brown ‎– Thinking About Little Willie John And A Few Nice Things" - I bought it for "Talk To Me", which I thought had a pretty, simple melody, kind of like a Sam Cooke song.  And I started putting it together, how James Brown had been influenced by what Little Willie John had done with his own tunes and that powerful, controlled, soulful voice.  That's when my attention was redirected.

Ed's review of Susan Whitall's book is a timely reintroduction of Little Willie John for those who missed him the first time around.  His art should be in everyone's musical library.  She credits him with the birth of soul.  That's huge!  Some people sing, some sing well.  Some were born to sing.  Little Willie John was born to sing, he was driven by that greatest of all blessings:  he knew what he wanted and he had the goods.  So if Susan Whitall and Ed Ward are hipping people to him, that's a good thing.

I have one cut on my new album that I learned from Little Willie John; it's called "Suffering With The Blues".  At first it seemed like a straight shot, an emotional read for sure; but in finding my own voice for this song I really focused in on the power of Little Willie John's delivery and also on what seems like the depth of his commitment to his own experiences.  There was no artifice in his singing, no trickery, no clever licks.  He was a face value singer.  It's so refreshing to listen to him, especially within the context of what's being currently released in any genre.  When I listen to contemporary jazz singers it sounds like many of them are so wrapped up in the blazing articulation or the unwavering octave jumps or the 

l-o-n-g tones that it all sounds like vocal acrobatics at the expense of telling the story.  I lose interest right away.  If the song doesn't speak to me except in terms of "here's something I bet you never thought of doing" or "here's a lick you'll never pull off" I just flip it over to Hank Williams.  I like the face value singers.  No, I love the face value singers.  That jazzes me more than hot vocal licks or pursuit of perfection.  To share an intimate message with somebody through singing is a responsibility.  To muck it up with ego or cheap tricks means failure to communicate.      

Yeah, well, with Memorial Day flying by it seems like a good time to remember some late heroes like Little Willie John. But I notice you were also back at the Freight and Salvage, mixing with some live heroes. It was good to see Cindy Cashdollar out here on the coast. The real heroes are still workin. Johnny Nicholas, Suzy Thompson, Del Rey! Damn good show. ~ MT

I've known Johnny Nicholas a long, long time.  His band, "The Boogie Brothers" arrived on the West Coast shortly after the Wheel did, but they came out from Ann Arbor, I think.  We got to Oakland in '71, and then they came out, gigging the same circuit we were, plus a few other joints we didn't play, I'm sure.  Fran Christina was playing drums with them, and after several years Johnny and Franny came on board with The Wheel.  They were some wild times, man; it was about 1979, 1980-ish, and you know what the scene was then, Merle.  Did you know that the Bombay Gin bottle used to say on the label, "Gin is a state of mind"?  Or maybe it was, "Bombay is a state of mind."  Whatever it was, there was a lot of truth in that.  There was all sorts of partying going on, as you can see in the attached picture.  There we are with Tatum O'Neil on the left, and then me and Johnny standing - oh, and that's Eric Clapton being a good sport and crouching down on the floor.  I think this was taken at a club in Atlanta - "Moonshadows"? - but if someone told me it was somewhere in Nevada I couldn't argue.  I'm quietly astonished to see myself balancing a beer, a pack of smokes and a shot all in one hand.  Sign of the times.  Desperate measures and all that.

        

Tatum O'Neil, Chris O'Connell, Johnny Nicholas, Eric Clapton (kneeling)

"Moonshadows", Atlanta, Georgia ~ circa 1979

We did a lot of really great work together - like Johnny just told me when I saw him at the Freight and Salvage last month, "You know what?  We were good!"  And we were.  He and I cut a Brook Benton-Dinah Washington tune called "Baby, You've Got What It Takes" and it was killer!  But the best jams happened on the bus or in the motel bathrooms where there were plenty of hard surfaces to create natural reverb.  He and I recorded a cassette of a half-dozen tunes, just a cappella, in the bathroom - maybe it was when we were playing at the Shy Clown in Sparks, Nevada - and we called ourselves The Toilet Tones.  He sang Lonnie Johnson's "Tomorrow Night", a gorgeous ballad which I had heard by Laverne Baker, and I wailed the steel guitar/Anita Kerr soprano part in the background, and then we cut duo versions of Hank Williams' "Weary Blues" and the Holland-Dozier-Holland hit "Can I Get A Witness".  I sang a LeRoy Preston song called "Jimmy Lee", which was a take-off on his "Rosalie" (always gender switching on these tunes!) - it's a real hillbilly thing involving lies, infidelity and gunfire.  I just love it, always have.  There are probably a couple more songs on that cassette that I don't remember now (it was 33 years ago! - if I'da wanted to alphabetize every memory I'da told Ray Benson - he has a phenomenal memory).  Johnny and Franny were always drinking and smoking cigarettes and singing.  To be surrounded by such natural and authentic talent was a real education and a real honor.  The bus was where I heard lots of material that was new to me.  University on Wheels.  Wouldn't trade it.

I did see Cindy Cashdollar with Johnny at the Freight and she sure does have a fan club!  She's such a great student of accompaniment, of coloration, and she's a hell of a show(wo)man.  She fits right in with Johnny's material and the attitude that he brings to his shows; it's a smart pairing, these two onstage together.  She's easy to work with, has a huge vocabulary of steel and dobro licks and attitudes, she's a real pro.  She's on my new album,

"Be Right Back!" where she plays some swingin stuff and some really haunting stuff.  She dressed me up pretty good in the studio.  I know people are gonna love it, especially her Fan Club.  They're a rabid bunch.

Suzy Thompson and Del Rey opened the show for Johnny that night.  Just the two of them.  Guitar and uke.  Or guitar and guitar.  Or uke and fiddle.  Between the two of them there are at least a half-dozen acts.  They do older music, Sippie Wallace blues, Memphis Minnie, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, ragtime, stuff like that.  Neither flinches when thrown a solo, and what they play is commanding  and cool.    These two white women sing the blues with authority, and they play the hell out of their instruments.  They're funny to watch - they are natural foils for each other, like Suzy plays straight guy and Del plays goofball.  But it's never kitschy or gratuitous, which shows how professional they are.  They really love playing together - you can feel it.  And the songs are fascinating because of the instrumentation and because of their ease in playing them, almost like they go out on the bandstand in their robes and slippers and pick a few.  These two women are entertaining and savvy, but I found the thing that intrigued me most was their playing - they've put in the time.  A jam with all players at the end of the night illustrated their mastery of the music they love and their ability to catch the blues ball and fearlessly run with it.  

Check 'em out:

Here's Del on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxk3N7GOgX4&feature=related

You can find Del Ray's recordings here:  http://hobemianrecords.com/delreydiscs.html

Some are with Suzy Thompson.

Here's Suzy on YouTube - solo!!:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQLGbZHBOzU

You can find Suzy Thompson here:  http://www.ericandsuzy.com/suzymore.htm

(A girl who worked for 30 years as a professional musician and finally released her first CD ~ I can dig it!)

Here's Johnny Nicholas' website with info on his latest CD:  http://johnnynicholasblues.com/

Let's not forget Cindy Cashdollar!  Her website:  http://www.cindycashdollar.com/home/

These are real people playing real music.  Break away from that Velcro chair cushion and go see them when you get a chance!  

I'm tard, Merle.  Time fer a nap.