Satan on the Run

This is an album that I have wanted to do for many years. I produced, recorded, as well as played all of the instruments myself on my home studio in Nashville, Tennessee. The only other person on this recording is my wife and Porter Hall Tennessee cohort, Molly Conley, lending her vocals to all of the songs.

 I started playing music when I was 7 years old with my grandfather, Truman Roadarmel. We played together in churches and performed at various nursing homes for the elderly around Hagerstown, Maryland up until I was about 15 and my grandfather died. In that time period, there was a traveling evangelist from Columbus, Georgia that came through our church (The Peoples Gospel Tabernacle) named Harold Flanary. I was really drawn to Harold for his energy through his preaching and his music which he performed on a custom made, Joe Maphis model, Moserite guitar and mandolin double neck. Harold was also a really good piano player. He had given me some hand written charts of piano chords which i had used to teach myself to play in this same honky-tonk style. Friends at the church then loaned me albums that he had recorded in the early 50s on the Gospel Jewel label. They were all duo recordings with John Rhodes or JB Powell. I was later turned on to the Louvin Brothers which sound very similar in style to these records. I'm still not sure who came first or if either one was familiar with the other. I had made cassette copies of these albums and listened to them constantly in my early years and performed several of these songs in church. I had since lost all of those cassettes.

Years and many rock bands later, Molly and I put together our country-punk band Porter Hall Tennessee. I have always drawn from my early country-gospel music upbringing as an inspiration for this band along with my later rock roots. we even recorded a song that I had gotten from Harold Flanary called I've Got a Hedge on our first PHT release "Welcome To Porter Hall Tennessee." You will normally hear at least one gospel number performed during our live shows.

I recently did an internet search for Harold Flanary and found a youtube video of him performing Leaning on the Everlasting Arms in a church around 1991. I then emailed the person who posted this video inquiring on the status of Harold to see if he was still alive. It turns out that the person who posted it was a 17 year old boy named Chris Hodge from Alabama. It seems that Harold Flanary is a long time family friend and still gets together at Chris' house and plays with the family. Chris is a very good "Chet" style guitar picker also. Chris told me that he had several of Harold Flanary's albums and would email me mp3s of his stuff. So after hearing these old recordings again after so many years I felt I should share some of this music. With my recent purchase of a home computer based studio and some really awesome lost gems, I began tracking my own versions of these songs. I hope to get down to Georgia when this is released to get Harold a copy of this and find exactly what songs he had written and maybe where some of the others had come from.

I hope that these songs will be an inspiration to you as they have been for me as they rekindle such fond memories of my childhood playing music with my grandfather and Harold Flanary. I have tried to keep the recordings authentic of the times while still taking advantage of modern technology.

I would also like to take this time to send out a few more special thanks without whom this record would not have been…

My wife Molly for putting up with the months of "mad scientist" time and lending her time and vocals to this; Mark Pavlak (PHT's live drummer) for the use of his drums and support in making it all happen; Travis Collinsworth for the use of the mandolin and providing a practice spot for the band; Derek Zelenka (PHT's live bassist) for the use of the banjo; Scott McEwen, for mastering this thing up for me at his Fry Pharmacy studios; Chris Hodge for getting me the music that inspired this whole project; Harold Flanary for the songs that made this all happen and helping me to learn the piano; Truman Roadarmel (my grandfather) who always had faith in my music even when everyone else didn't; and Mimi Conley (Molly's grandmother) for her support of Molly's music endeavors, as well as giving Molly the Baldwin piano when she was a little girl learning to play. That piano is on almost every single song on the album. Im sure I probably forgot someone in this, but thank you all for listening and God bless…

Well howdy everyone!! It's that time of the week again for the weekly downloads. The past few weeks we have offering cover songs (well I guess we did put Molly's Miracle Woman up last week) so this week we will showcase 2 original songs. One of Molly's and one of mine. One from the first CD and one from the new one. So sit back, have a cup of yer favorite beverage and fire one up and enjoy the tunes…

Track 4 Don't Bury Me

This is a Molly song that we recorded on Welcome To Porter Hall Tennessee around 2001. A friend told me last week that this CD is still the ultimate "break-up" record. It was really supposed to be our  "country opera" and the songs really do go back and forth from the 2 main characters and their answer/calls to each other and how they cope with broken relationships, hard times and dependencies in their small town life. Wanting to break away from the mundane, but still stuck with the comforts of their hometown environment. But I think this kinda freaked our first label out to release such an ambitious debut. So we down-played the "concept" and just let people figure out on their own what they wanted out of the songs. Anyway, I asked Molly what this song is about, and she said that she really wasn't sure. I think it is kind of about wanting to explore things in life, with the idea that before it is all said and done, wanting to return to the comforts of home and a more simple life in the country. We went for many years not performing this song live but it has recently resurfaced and I am really glad that it has. This is one of my personal favorites from the first CD along side Crosses to Hang.

Track 2 Broken Strings

This song is the opening track of our newest CD All Sinners Welcome Here. I actually wrote this song around 1996 and it was on our very first CD that was simply titled Porter Hall which came out in 1997 on Edible records in Maryland. It seems much easier to me to explain our cover songs and what they are about to me than explaining my own songs. Broken Strings is really a mess of run on sentences where the end of a line actually begins the next. By reading these blogs, you may have noticed this pattern in my writing haha. I think the idea is reaching for new ways out, sometimes you grasp for the unsteady and fall right on your face. But how will you ever know if it works or not if you don't try?  I think that is kind of the idea here. I also think that if Uncle Tupelo and They Might Be Giants had ever written a song together, it might come out something like this. Maybe this is my "Don't Let's Start?" I dunno.

Well there ya have it. Free download installment number 8. Hope you enjoy and tell your friends! Hope to see yall sometime soon down the road…

Gary
PHT

Hey Yall,
It's time again for the free weekly downloads. Thanks for all the great response that we got last week from the songs People Who Died and Nashville Summer Fever. This makes this worth while for us to keep offering these things. It's good to know that you are out there and getting these songs. So this week, we are heading north for just a bit over this holiday week and thought we would go with a bit of a theme. The songs this week are both from writers out of The DC/Maryland/Virginia area. Since we are heading to Maryland and playing DC, Virginia, and North Carolina, why the hell not…

Track 19 Fuck It
This song is from one of the (hell maybe the only) great unknown punk bands out of  the western Maryland area circa 1982. They were called The Left and were a big inspiration to me with their youthful angst and unabashed attitudes. Hell it was the first punk band that I had ever heard where the guitarist could actually play more than simple power chords. Mixing Lynard Skynard  with hardcore was really unheard of at the time. I am talking about the one and only mah' fuckin' "lucky man" Jimmy Swope. Of course later for me came Bob Mould from Husker Du's guitar , but  at the time, this was the shit. Plus I seriously doubt that Husker Du would have ever written a song as straight forward as "The Vietcong live next door, we don't want em here no more!" And after meeting Grant Hart of Husker Du, I realized how much I did not stand for the same things as Husker Du haha. I will save that for another story. We are talking about the Left here. As far as the song Fuck It goes, what can I really say about it? This is real punk rock people. Not pansy, poser, die your hair blue cookie cutter crap that later came to hail the title "punk." PHT has been adding this song to their finale for the past several months and it still holds the same impact as it did when I first heard it. "He thinks his lifestyle is new and bold, Fuck It man he's a punk!….Yea the world's had drunks for a thousand years. Fuck it man drink a few more beers…"

Track 5 Screwed Blue
Now this song is a nice contrast to the last one. This is why when people ask what kind of music we play, I say both kinds. honky-tonk and punk rock. Screwed Blue was written by a good friend of mine who also hails from the western Maryland frontier. The "Colonel" Randy Jones. Randy was probably the first person that I had known from the late 80s that was in underground bands like The Coondicks (actually originally from New York) to start playing straight forward REAL country music with his band The Lonely Hog Callers. Molly and I played guitar and sang with Randy in this band for awhile in the early 90s and he really helped to get us back into our roots of George Jones, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Tammy Wynette, and Loretta Lynn. A great person and an awesome writer. We recorded Screwed Blue as the opening track to our first CD Welcome To Porter Hall Tennessee and still play it at just about every show we ever do. So here is a song about getting drunk and getting naked. It's called Screwed Blue and it goes like this….

Well there ya have it. Download installment number 6. Have a good one and we'll see ya at the honky tonks…

Gary
PHT

Porter Hall Tennessee has been giving away free downloads from a live recording of their Nashville All Sinners Welcome Here CD release show live at the 5spot. There has been 2 new songs each and every week. I hope you have been keeping up. Well have ya? Please feel free to write us back and let us know whatcha think of the songs and if you have any special requests in the upcoming weeks. There are 22 Tracks total which pretty much covers the majority of what the band has been playing lately live.

Yes I have been putting these up in random order.

So far we have offered:

Track 16 I Cant Believe You (first week was only one song)
Track 1 Looking At The World Through a Windshield
Track 20 Fatty
Track 9 Abba
Tack18 TV Eye
Track 12 Any Way We Want
Track 14 Give Back The Key To My Heart


So onto the new stuff….

Track 17 People Who Died

This is our version of the Jim Carrol classic about all of your friends dieing. In 2004 PHT did a tour opening for Hank3. At the show in Chicago, Bloodshot records saw our set and asked if we would record this song to be included on the Bloodshot records comp "A Decade of Sin-11 years of Bloodshot." We of course were honored and sent it right off to them although we thought it was quite odd that we were never on Bloodshot Records and they have passed on everything we have sent to them. Life is weird. Especially in the music business. But sometimes you gotta just take it and say "thanks for nothing." We did get a small write up in Esquire magazine by movie producer John Waters (Hairspray, Pink Flamingos, Cry Baby, and most recently, the TV show 'Til Death Do Us Part) stating that our version of this song was in his top 5 favorites at the moment. So with that also getting us pretty much nada, we went on our way and released our studio version on All Sinners Welcome Here. It's still a damn fun song to play live…

Track 15 Nashville Summer Fever
Well where do I start with this one. This is probably one of my favorite PHT originals for it's versatility. It starts off like a big 70's rock song and then goes straight into a honky-tonk feel (by way of the Rolling Stones maybe.) By the bridge and solo, it turns into a full blown Xish cowpunk freak out. So for me, it pretty much has everything you could ask for. And besides that it's a damn good story. It actually goes way deeper than the 4minute song presented here. It could be a book. Or at least a damn good short story. Molly and I had just moved to Nashville on the east side from Murfreesboro, TN. We found a little 2 bedroom house that smelled funny and was cockroach infested. But we were traveling on the road a bunch and it was only 450 a month, so it seemed perfect. Plus the first day on our front porch we were offered some country ham for 10 dollars from a crack head. We passed on that deal. On the corner of the street lived a prostitute with her husband, momma, and 2 little kids. We'd see her walking our street frequently leering in paranoia looking for her next mate. There was an abandoned shack ,which we referred to as "the sugar shack," across the street in the alley where she would take guys and her kids would poke sticks through the window at them. But the kids had a little dog named Skittles and they would bring him by sometimes to play with my dog Dixie, which we rescued from some crazy rednecks up the street. So one day rummaging in the attic of our charming east Nashville abode, we found piles and piles of clothes. We kept finding all of this big sequin dresses and size 12 rainbow pumps. Then we found the pictures. This place was inhabited by a bunch of drag queens. Big scary ones at that. Although I must say, the Wynonna drag queen was pretty damn convincing. So with this environment, what else could we do but write a song, "Nashville summer fever, I don't know what we were thinking either."

So there ya have it. This weeks free download installment. Sorry for the long winded stories. Yes the coffee is working this morning.

Happy Downloading!!

Gary
PHT

Well it's time again for the weekly free downloads.  This week let's go with an original and a cover.

Track 12 Any Way We Want

This was the last song recorded for All Sinners Welcome Here. At the time, it was never heard by the band so we put Molly outside with the chirping birds and "nature" with one mike to record it. East Nashville proved a little too gangta with thumping bass from cars and the occasional siren along with Scott McEwen's dog chewing on a stick right by the mike. So we brought it back inside and still got a nice old timey feel. As of late, we have been performing the song full band and it has been going in a really cool direction I think. Never the same every time, "we can make it any way we want."

Track 14 Give Back The Key To My Heart

This is a Doug Sahm song by way of Uncle Tupelo. The version I heard was on Uncle Tupelo's Anodine with Doug Sahm lending vocal duties. Just a damn good song with a good country/rock feel. It has been a regular in the PHT set for several months now.

Enjoy, and happy downloading….

Gary
PHT