You Are My Face

MMJ 2038

Alan Jackson & Flip-Flops

I guess I never figured I'd have an article in a magazine with Alan Jackson on the cover, but I do. The latest issue of American Songwriter includes my review of Jackie Greene's new album Giving Up The Ghost. You can buy the issue on most newsstands or order a subscription for only $12. It's a good read whether you write songs or not. Or you can just read the review here.

I also have a new installment of my Rockin' Chair column over at Jambase.

The Song That The Morning Sings

Grace Potter Recording In Memphis

A Wayback Interview with Jerry Joseph (2000)

The Wayback Machine at archive.org is a sometimes brilliant, sometimes scary thing. It archives most webpages so that you can go back and see what a page looked like and retrieve it's content from just about any time in its history. That means that a lot of the old pages of Honest Tune's website are there, which is sometimes embarrassing. But there are also great advantages. I found myself perusing those archives and ran across an old interview I did with Jerry Joseph, soon after his album Everything Was Beautiful was released, in 2001.

I remember sitting at the bar with him after his show at George Street Grocery in Jackson. This is it:

Jerry Joseph Interview

New Articles Hither And Yon

I've got a few new articles published in a few places that were published in the last few days.

I did a profile of the hip-hop group Nappy Roots for the Jackson-Free Press. While I'm admittedly not very well-versed (heh-heh) in hip-hop, I had fun learning more about these guys, and I like 'em. You may or may not remember their hit "Aw, Naw," where their record company made them dress up in overalls and straw hats because they're from Kentucky and they wanted to play up the "country" angle. Nappy Roots went along with it, but they've got their own label now and a new album coming out. You can read that story here:

Who Are The Nappy Roots?

Also, the new Local Voice is out today. My "Speed of Sound" column this issue addresses the recent spate of geezer shows (Smothers Brothers, Joan Baez) at the Ford Center, and then suggests that readers go out to see 60-year old George Porter Jr funkify their life. He's in town with his trio Porter, Batiste & Stoltz, aka PBS. There's also mention of the Hill Country Review, the new group from the Luther-less NMAS & Company. The paper is not available online, but you can download a pdf of the it here:

The Local Voice #51


Over at Honest Tune, our new April issue is up. I did an interview with Donna Jean Godcheaux-McKay, formerly of The Grateful Dead and currently with Donna Jean & The Tricksters. Her new band, made up mostly of folks from The Zen Tricksters, made a swing through our area last week, but had to cancel their Memphis show. Still, we had fun talking about synchronicity, pyramids and singing in the Grateful Dead while 8 months pregnant. That article is here:

The Music Never Stopped: The Musical Journey of Donna Jean Godcheaux-McKay


In the same issue, I reviewed new records by The Black Keys and Hymns. I like 'em both.

Read them here:

Black Keys: Attack & Release

Hymns: Travel In Herds



Of course I suggest you check out all of the other fine content in this month's Honest Tune, including a great story on the Rev. Jeff Mosier, an interview with Jerry Joseph about his new band Denmark Veseys, and a report from the Langerado Festival.

It's all available at HonestTune.com

Here's Neil Young:

Welcome Back, REM

The hype has been suffocating. Everybody from Rolling Stone to friggin' Sunday Morning on CBS has been yelling at me about the new REM album, Accelerate. They're saying it's a return to form, that they've made a bold move in cementing their legacy, that they've finally got their feet back under them after the departure of drummer Bill Berrry.

Well, they're right. In this case, you can believe the hype. I picked up Accelerate at my local vintage clothing Store/CD Shop/Coffee Shop/Boarding House/Yoga Studio Purple Haze, and damned if it didn't take me back in time, or rather along a different timeline.

Accelerate is all the things people are saying it is, sure. But it mostly sounds like REM in some kind of alternate timeline version of 1988, one in which they didn't sign to Warner Brothers Records and make Green and didn't become "Shiny Happy People." It's the record that they should've and could've made after Document. It's loud and fast and angry. Peter Buck's guitars blaze, Stipe mumbles, Mills nails the high harmony. This is the band I loved back then, and if you did too, get this record, turn it up to eleven, tight-roll your jeans and go back to a different 1988.

Here's some YouTubage from it:

Black Crowes' Warpaint Bonus Tracks

A couple of bonus tracks were made available via vinyl and iTunes versions of the excellent new Black Crowes album, Warpaint. "Hole In Your Soul" and "Here Comes Daylight" make fine additions to an already great album.

Hear here:

http://www.w8man.com/audio/sotd/Hole_In_Your_Soul.mp3


http://www.w8man.com/audio/sotd/Here_Comes_Daylight.mp3

Maybe It's Not Crowded Enough

Crowded House--you know, Austrailian band helmed by Tim Finn who writes those beautiful and haunting pop ditties--have released a new CD, and announced an "American Tour" to support it. Time on Earth came out last July on ATO. Their subsequent tour of America, which kicks off next month, consists of multiple shows on the coasts two in the middle and none in the South, which was presumably not quite crowded enough for them.

The press release follows:

CROWDED HOUSE CONFIRM AMERICAN TOUR
Crowded House has confirmed its first North American tour of 2008. Instead of single dates in many cities, the band is going back to a few of its favorites to do short residencies in smaller, more intimate venues in those markets. Slated to start on April 28 in New York City, the tour will end on May 17 in Los Angeles, with four cities in between. The tour is still in support of Crowded House's first record since 1993. Entitled "Time on Earth," the band is Neil Finn - vocals/guitars; Nick Seymour - Bass; Mark Hart - keyboards/guitars; Matt Sherrod - drums. "Time on Earth" was released on ATO Records on July 10, 2007.

"Time On Earth" was recorded at Roundhead Studios, Auckland, NZ, RAK Studios, London, and Real World Studios, Bath, and was produced by Ethan Johns (Kings Of Leon, Ryan Adams) and Steve Lillywhite (U2, Morrissey). Guitar legend Johnny Marr features on two tracks, lead-off single "Don't Stop Now" and "Even A Child," a song he co-wrote with Neil Finn. Another album track, "Silent House," was co-written by Finn and the Dixie Chicks, whose own version of the song appears on their Grammy Award-winning album "Taking the Long Way."

The press response to the new record was rapturous. "Paste" said, "'Time on Earth' is another batch of Finn's impeccably crafted pop gems," and the "Los Angeles Times" noted that, "Finn is a master at expressing ambiguity, lyrically and musically." "USA Today" hailed that, "the melodic gifts that allowed Finn to craft some of the sweetest pop of the late '80s and early '90s are still intact," and then continued to say, "the album's unpretentious warmth and modest wit offer a refreshing alternative to the winking and whining of some successors."

Crowded House formed in Melbourne, Australia, in 1985 and first tasted global success with their massive 1987 hit "Don't Dream It's Over." They continued to have hits for a decade, including "Something So Strong," "Weather With You" and "It's Only Natural." "Don't Dream It's Over" hit #2 on the American Top 40 and won the band Best New Artist at that year's MTV Music Awards, while "Something" reached the #7 spot. They produced four studio albums and a best-of compilation.

The dates for the tour are as follows:
April 28 - 30 New York, NY NY Fillmore at Irving Plaza
May 2 Washington, DC 9:30 Club
May 5 - 6 Boston, MA Somerville Thatre
May 7 - 8 Toronto, ONT Danforth Music Hall
May 10 - 11 Chicago, IL Vic Theater
May 14 - 15 San Francisco, CA Fillmore
May 16 - 17 Los Angeles, CA Orpheum Theatre

Done Up And Did It

Another One Bites The Dust: Therondy For Harp Magazine

Aw, hell. Shortly after getting the news about No Depression, Harp Magazine announced that they would quit publishing after 7 years.

They cited mostly the same reasons as No Depression and Honest Tune.

This was one of my favorite magazines. It was almost strictly about music--no fashion or politics and very little bullshit. I liked it especially because they focused on music that didn't neccesarily come across my desk on a regular basis. It was ostensibly a "Rock" magazine though more and more it could be characterized as an Indie Rock mag, but that's mostly because a lot of the best music being made these days is getting tagged with the "Indie" label. It'll be something else in a few years. I guess most bands don't know what genre they're in until some asshole behind a keyboard (ahem) says so in a magazine, or I guess now a blog. They relentlessly hammered me with information about Cat Power (among others) until I finally acquiesced, and I'm glad I did.


Former Honest Tune scribe Andy Tennille had just penned a great cover story on the Mars Volta for the second-to-last issue. Andy's written for lots of folks but did some great articles for us, and really helped us find our footing. He did a great piece on Slang, the collaboration between Lang Martine and Dave Schools. He interviewed Jim Dickinson and John Hiatt and turned in countless other pieces. Other Honest Tune alums like Dennis Cook and Aaron Kayce were regular contributors. Aaron did a kick-ass story on Danger Mouse in the last issue. And I'd been talking to them about contributing some articles myself and, I think, getting close to finding something that fit.

Such it is that there aren't too many "small" (Harp was about five times the size of Honest Tune, but that's still small compared to Rolling Stone, Spin and Paste, and half the size of Relix) music magazines anymore. It's sad because it means that fewer musicians will get the ink they deserve as the larger magazines are more about broad appeal that artistic merit (in most cases).

So long, Harp. We hardly knew ye.

One Moe High Ate Us

The Grateful Dead did it, of course. So did Phish and Widespread Panic. I think String Cheese did too. So I guess it was just their turn to follow suit.

In a message on their website, moe. announced their plans to take a break from touring after a massive summer tour. They plan to return to the stage sometime in 2009. Naturally, their fans are freaking out, prompting a post on their myspace page telling them to calm the fuck down.

The Dead took a year off from their rigorous road schedule in 1975, playing only a few shows during that year. They did it to get a handle on their ever-expanding universe of hangers-on, an extended family that was costing them no telling how many dollars. Of course they went on to play another 20 years after that. The break probably did them some good. They explored side projects that likely fed their imaginations and helped to expand the palette of styles they utilized so well.

Twenty years later, Phish took a break too. They'd slipped into the role vacated in 1995 by the Dead as the biggest concert attraction for what were now being called "jam bands." Thousands of traveling fans who had followed the Dead from city to city simply jumped on the Phish bandwagon, and the popularity of the band soared a bit more quickly than it probably would have otherwise. Suddenly, they were selling out huge arenas and amphitheaters. This too, brought with it some problems as their organization, which like the Dead's was comprised largely of friends who were expecting a paycheck, swelled. It got too big for them, out of their control, and by their own admission, began to include more and more nefarious characters. They played what should have been their swan song, their Shea Stadium, on New Years Eve 1999 for about 70,000 fans on the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation in Florida, preforming more than six hours until sunrise. They could have called it quits then and their legacy would have been intact. But they didn't. They took a break, and for them it didn't seem to do much good. They came back from their break sloppy and uninspired. They held it together for a few more years, with the good shows being far less frequent than the trainwrecks.

Widespread Panic had the best reason for taking an extended break, but took it at the wrong time. They soldiered on playing shows in 2002 even as founding guitarist Michael Houser left mid-tour and soon succumbed to pancreatic cancer. Guitarist George McConnell filled in for more than a year of on the job training before they decided to take a long overdue break. When they came back, they struggled some more before McConnell left the band in 2006 amid a barrage of back-up guitarists being trotted out on stage and rumors of Jimmy Herring replacing him, which he did the following tour. If they had taken their break when Houser passed, they might have re-grouped better, though perhaps not at all.

Now, moe. is taking a break. It may seem like it's just part of the jam band formula, like playing two sets and an encore and allowing taping. But really, it's no big deal. Most bands tour every few years to support an album release. Only in the insular world of the jam band community does a few months or even a year off constitute a "hiatus" (or as Widespread Panic's bassist Dave Schools termed it, a "sabbatical.")

Jam fans seem to literally get addicted to the euphoria and obsessiveness of following their bands from show to show, so a break seems like cold turkey.

But there are plenty of other great bands out there to see. Maybe it'd do moe.rons some good to check it out, and maybe it'll do moe. some good to have some rest. As one of the hardest working bands on the scene, they certainly deserve it.

Backyard Tire Fire's New FREE EP

Backyard Tire Fire has to be one of my favorite unheralded artists. The fact that more people aren't tuned into these guys is a damn shame.

They are a rocking little trio from Indiana helmed by Ed Anderson, who is such a prolific songwriter that their road manager once complained to me that by the time they recorded an album he already had a whole new batch of tunes that he played on stage, thus giving them nothing to sell to the throngs of fans who came up after the show wanting to buy the album with "that song" on it. I'd hope those fans picked up one of their other albums. There isn't a stinker in the bunch.

They've wisely measured this output by adding EP releases in between full-length albums, and they're recently announced the lastest EP, Sick of Debt, which is available as a free download on their website.

These are Ed's comments about it:

"We loaded into Oxide Lounge in Bloomington, IL on a cold December afternoon (12.17.07) to record a healthy dose of some acoustic Tire Fire twang. There had always been talk of sitting down in the same room and doing a stripped down recording and we finally found the time to do it! Some of these songs are favorites that have been around for years and never found a place on an album, while others were written only weeks before. All of the tunes feature our good friend Jerry "Muttonhead" Erickson on either dobro or pedal steel guitar and were recorded live with minimal overdubs. The result is a raw collection of some of our finest acoustic material that we decided to make available for FREE DOWNLOAD. Please enjoy and pass it around." - Ed Anderson

Download the EP here.


The tracklisting is as follows:
1. "Sick of Debt"
2. "I Only Cry When My Momma's Sick"
3. "Honey to a Be
4. "Cigarettes and Coffee"
5. "Ice Cream Truck"
6. "Lost in Durango"

Here's a video:

Otis Taylor's Banjo Record...

I talked with Otis Taylor a few weeks ago about his new CD, Recapturing The Banjo.

Lots of people think of the banjo as a bluegrass instrument only, but its roots are actually in Africa. When it became a staple of the minstrel show circuit, lots of black musicians didn't want to be associated with it anymore.

Otis' record features an all-star cast of African -American banjo players....Alvin Youngblood Hart, Keb Mo, Guy Davis, Don Vappie, Corey Harris. They all contribute songs and it comes with really great exhaustive liner notes for those of you (like me) who are into that kind of thing. ...With or without the history lesson, it's a great record.

Read my story about it over at
Honest Tune


Happy Monday,
Tom

Maxim vs. Crowes

I feel sorry for anyone who turns to Maxim Magazine for anything other than cheap thrills of near-nudity, but they set a new low this week, and that's saying something.

The magazine that damn-near killed the magazine article--replacing it with lists about lists and blurbs about nothing--pulled off a bullshit move of gargantuan proportions last week by reviewing a record they'd not even heard, and not only rating the record but giving it a poor rating at that--2 1/2 out of 5 stars.

The victim in all this was none other than The Black Crowes, whose new album Warpaint, their first in 7 years, is said by those who actually have heard the album to be a true return to early '90s form. In fact, the one track that has been released, "Goodbye Daughters of The Revolution", kicks major ass.

The Crowes' manager Pete Angelus publicly exposed the gaffe, stating:“In my opinion, Maxim’s fabrication of an album review is highly unethical and indefensible. This issue potentially pertains to all artists and their craft, and a publication which apparently has no respect for either.”

Maxim tried to back track saying it was an "educated guess." I can't even believe I used the words "educated" and "Maxim" in the same sentence.

Angelus hasn't backed down either. Keep track of the quarrel here.

The album also marks the band's first recording with local guitar hero Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars. He's an official member of the band now and will be on tour with them this Spring and Summer and presumably as long as the Robinson brothers can get along.

The album comes out officially next Tuesday, March 4th.

Read Dennis Cook's excellent Crowes feature at Jambase.

No Depresssion No More

The news came down this week that the pioneering alt-country (whatever that is) magazine, No Depression will cease publication of their fine magazine, citing dwindling advertising revenues due to a paradigm shift in the music industry.

This came as a bit of a surprise to me given the wide acclaim in which ND is held, their strong and loyal readerships and what I thought was pretty strong advertising support. But their reasons were not new to me at all. They are the very same reasons we ceased print publication of Honest Tune late last year.

For us, and for No Depression and other smaller, niche music magazines, the bread-and-butter of ad revenue was from record companies. For us, that mostly meant independent record companies as we always made a point to cover smaller, up-and-coming acts. So as it became harder and harder for record companies to actually sell records the marketing budgets started to shrink. First on the list of budget cuts was print advertising, and on the top of that list were the Honest Tunes of the world. I guess No Depression was next on the list. The independent artists (wisely) turned to cheaper and in some cases free promotional tools like myspace and email lists and street teams, leaving less advertising revenue to support printing and mailing a magazine.

But it's not just advertising budgets. Printing costs were going up. Postage costs were going up. Retail shelf space was harder to come by with the conglomeration of distributors, and the very best retail space--the shelves of independent record stores--were disappearing too as the download generation grew to represent a larger percentage of the music consuming public.

Is this bad for music? I think so. The nature of the internet is such that people get bogged down in the most specialized of interests. You search things out and find like minded viewpoints in the storm of opinions and misinformation. Picking up a magazine on a whim and finding yourself comfortable in a community that expands your horizons was a little different. Mass media conforms to the lowest common denominator, and while magazines like Harp, and Paste, offer some hope, it seems that the end result of this will be back where we were--the have artists with the big budgets and the big press being easily available to the marketable public at large, and the have-not artists relegated to their corner of the Internet.


Here's the announcement from ND:


NO DEPRESSION MAGAZINE TO CEASE PUBLISHING AFTER MAY-JUNE ISSUE

No Depression, the bimonthly magazine covering a broad range of American roots music since 1995, will bring to an end its print publication with its 75th issue in May-June 2008.

Plans to expand the publication's website (www.nodepression.net) with additional content will move forward, though it will in no way replace the print edition.

The magazine's March-April issue, currently en route to subscribers and stores, includes the following note from publishers Grant Alden, Peter Blackstock and Kyla Fairchild as its Page 2 "Hello Stranger" column:

Dear Friends:

Barring the intercession of unknown angels, you hold in your hands the next-to-the-last edition of No Depression we will publish. It is difficult even to type those words, so please know that we have not come lightly to this decision.

In the thirteen years since we began plotting and publishing No Depression , we have taken pride not only in the quality of the work we were able to offer our readers, but in the way we insisted upon doing business. We have never inflated our numbers; we have always paid our bills (and, especially, our freelancers) on time. And we have always tried our best to tell the truth.

First things, then: If you have a subscription to ND, please know that we will do our very best to take care of you. We will be negotiating with a handful of magazines who may be interested in fulfulling your subscription. That is the best we can do under the circumstances.

Those circumstances are both complicated and painfully simple. The simple answer is that advertising revenue in this issue is 64% of what it was for our March- April issue just two years ago. We expect that number to continue to decline.

The longer answer involves not simply the well-documented and industrywide reduction in print advertising, but the precipitous fall of the music industry. As a niche publication, ND is well insulated from reductions in, say, GM's print advertising budget; our size meant they weren't going to buy space in our pages, regardless.

On the other hand, because we're a niche title we are dependent upon advertisers who have a specific reason to reach our audience. That is: record labels. We, like many of our friends and competitors, are dependent upon advertising from the community we serve.

That community is, as they say, in transition. In this evolving downloadable world, what a record label is and does is all up to question. What is irrefutable is that their advertising budgets are drastically reduced, for reasons we well understand. It seems clear at this point that whatever businesses evolve to replace (or transform) record labels will have much less need to advertise in print.

The decline of brick and mortar music retail means we have fewer newsstands on which to sell our magazine, and small labels have fewer venues that might embrace and hand-sell their music. Ditto for independent bookstores. Paper manufacturers have consolidated and begun closing mills to cut production; we've been told to expect three price increases in 2008. Last year there was a shift in postal regulations, written by and for big publishers, which shifted costs down to smaller publishers whose economies of scale are unable to take advantage of advanced sorting techniques.

Then there's the economy...

The cumulative toll of those forces makes it increasingly difficult for all small magazines to survive. Whatever the potentials of the web, it cannot be good for our democracy to see independent voices further marginalized. But that's what's happening. The big money on the web is being made, not surprisingly, primarily by big businesses.

ND has never been a big business. It was started with a $2,000 loan from Peter's savings account (the only monetary investment ever provided, or sought by, the magazine). We have five more or less full-time employees, including we three who own the magazine. We have always worked from spare bedrooms and drawn what seemed modest salaries.

What makes this especially painful and particularly frustrating is that our readership has not significantly declined, our newsstand sell-through remains among the best in our portion of the industry, and our passion for and pleasure in the music has in no way diminished. We still have shelves full of first-rate music we'd love to tell you about.

And we have taken great pride in being one of the last bastions of the long-form article, despite the received wisdom throughout publishing that shorter is better. We were particularly gratified to be nominated for our third Utne award last year.

Our cards are now on the table.

Though we will do this at greater length next issue, we should like particularly to thank the advertisers who have stuck with us these many years; the writers, illustrators, and photographers who have worked for far less than they're worth; and our readers: You.
Thank you all. It has been our great joy to serve you.
GRANT ALDEN
PETER BLACKSTOCK
KYLA FAIRCHILD

No Depression published its first issue in September 1995 (with Son Volt on the cover) and continued quarterly for its first year, switching to bimonthly in September 1996. ND received an Utne Magazine Award for Arts & Literature Coverage in 2001 and has been nominated the award on two other occasions (including in 2007). The Chicago Tribune ranked No Depression #20 in its 2004 list of the nation's Top 50 magazines of any kind.

Artists who have appeared on the cover of No Depression over the years include Johnny Cash (2002), Wilco (1996), Willie Nelson (2004), Ryan Adams' seminal band Whiskeytown (1997), the Drive-By Truckers (2003), Ralph Stanley (1998), Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint (2006), Gillian Welch (2001), Lyle Lovett (2003), Porter Wagoner (2007), and Alejandro Escovedo (1998, as Artist of the Decade).

*****

Here's a pretty good piece from NPR

Between The Ditches: The Music Blog of Tom Speed

Although it is well established that I'm a very bad blogger, here we go again. With the demise of the print version of Honest Tune Magazine, I've been working on putting my brain more to music than to numbers and other worries. That is to say, I've been trying to actually listen to more music and write about it.

To that end, I'm still writing my column over at Jambase, The Rockin Chair. I'm also writing a music column for the local subversive alternative paper, The Local Voice. That one is called The Speed of Sound.

The remaining subscriptions of Honest Tune were taken over by Hittin The Note Magazine
It's a fine publication, and I've been writing some for them too. I did a feature on Outformation in the latest issue, and will have one on Widespread Panic in the next one.



I'm also trying to get my words in some other publications.

Here I'll write about all the stuff that falls between the cracks, the music that moves me and turns my ear or my heart. That's usually the stuff that is not easily definable. The music that is made without regard for genre. It's not jazz or rock or blues, it's the stuff in the middle, the stuff between the ditches.

I'll also try to drag myself into the 21st Century by utilizing videos and mp3s and other forms of black magic.

You are welcome to come along on the journey with me. No ticket required.