Hard to believe, but true:  Tim Warren of Crypt has finally pressed up "Let A Poor Boy Ride," the "lost" 2nd Revelators LP.  The cover doesn't even look ugly (by Crypt standards).  Hell, compared to the butt-ugly first LP cover, it's a wonder of graphic design artistry, but it still manages to look like a Crypt release (the "Crypt font" is in full use on the back).  I always found the fact that Crypt album covers were ugly, and the liner notes were chock full of typos, mis-numbered tracks, etc., rather endearing, actually.  Hell, it's supposed to be about the music, right?  Well, the sleeve lists two track #5's on side two, so it must be a real Crypt Records production...

Well, first of all, if you want a copy, in Europe you can get it directly from Crypt Records. In the states, get it from the following stores in Austin, Texas: Antone's Records, Breakaway, End of An Ear, Sound on Sound, Trailerspace Records, Waterloo

For those of you who don't know...

This record was recorded in 1998.  After the first Revelators tour in Europe with the Oblivians (a success!) and the first North American tour by ourselves (not so much of a success...) we had enough songs for a second album.  Having toured most of the midwest, south, and east coast, we had found Austin, Texas to be particularly hospitable.  Mike Mariconda, producer of albums by other Crypt acts such as the New Bomb Turks, Beguiled, and Devil Dogs, was at our show at Emo's and liked what we were trying to do.  Since the first album had just been straight live, with no overdubs or even mixing, really, we thought the second album should involve a little more studio trickery.  So, we enlisted Mariconda as producer, and he booked us some time in Sweatbox, a studio where a lot of the garage acts of the day had recorded.  (BTW - Sweatbox celebrates it's 16th anniversary at Emo's this weekend).

Well, shortly before the session, original drummer Mark up and quit.  What to do?  Cancel the session?  Mariconda said no.  He didn't like Mark anyway.  He suggested we get New Bomb Turks drummer Bill Randt as a replacement.  He had worked with Bill for a couple of albums already, got along with him, and thought he would be interested.  So we asked, he agreed, he came to Columbia, Missouri, to learn the songs over a long weekend.  Then we drove down to Austin and cranked the record out over a couple of days.  After recording 18 songs in a few hours for the first album, this seemed like a leisurely pace.  Walter Daniels played harmonica, and I even overdubbed two whole guitar solos.  It was like an ELO album compared to the first record.

We had only been back in Missouri for a couple weeks when Jeremiah up and quit the band as well.  Now, I never envisioned that the Revelators would have a 20 album career, but I had at least hoped to tour Europe once more.  Besides, the new record was GOOD, and I couldn't understand not caring to see it released. 

But, I couldn't really see continuing with the band and calling it The Revelators when I was the only original member out of three.  So, the band broke up, the record was never released, and I moved down to Austin and started my next group The Hard Feelings.  I started singing, not that I thought I had a great voice, but hey, one less person to quit.  (After going through one bass player per record for three albums, the Hard Feelings finally called it quits, and returning to the one man band setup with which I began my music career in 1996 seemed like a good plan...).

So, yeah, that's the story.  Now, for my younger readers, perhaps a bit of explanation is in order.  Crypt Records, home of the Back From the Grave re-issues as well as the Gories, Oblivians, Devil Dogs, Mighty Ceasers, and a handful of other bands, was THE record label that was worth a shit in the mid-to-late 1990's.  This was back in olden times, when record labels still mattered and people actually bought music. 

Of the underground rock n' roll labels, Estrus had too many matching-shirt bands, Sympathy would put out any band with a chick in it (because Long Gone John was an old lech), and In the Red was an also-ran at the time.  But Crypt had a dirty, noisy aesthetic all it's own.  It was the only label to which the Revelators even sent a demo, the only label we wanted to be on.  We played our first show opening up for the Oblivians, fer chrissakes, and that was thrill enough.  Us actually being Crypt "recording artistes" was unreal.  Even though it was the other band members who quit and not me, I've always felt a little guilty that I had a part in Crypt imploding.  Around the same time that the Revelators broke up, the Oblivians, Bantam Rooster, and mosta the other active bands quit, as well.  Tim pretty much gave up on contemporary bands after that, sticking to re-issues of 60's obscurities of dubious legality.

Sure, there were some bands of questionable quality on the label (The Pleasure Fuckers? Los Ass Draggers? The Dirtys?  Really, Tim?), but overall Crypt had an attitude and (dare I say it?) a vision that other labels lacked.  Hey, just because a vision is stupid, doesn't make it any less visionary.  The music scene then (as now), was full of sappy indie-rocker twerps who sounded like fun was a foreign concept to them.  Crypt was fun. 

Meanwhile, mainstream music (then as now) was a vast wasteland of pure garbage. 
"Let A Poor Boy Ride" was recorded in 1998.  Just look at the top songs for that sad fucking year:

1. Too Close, Next
2. The Boy Is Mine, Brandy and Monica
3. You're Still The One, Shania Twain
4. Truly Madly Deeply, Savage Garden
5. How Do I Live, LeAnn Rimes
6. Together Again, Janet
7. All My Life, K-Ci and JoJo
8. Candle In The Wind 1997, Elton John
9. Nice and Slow, Usher
10. I Don't Want To Wait, Paula Cole

Of course, that was the mainstream crap.  The indie-rock "classics" of the era were banalities such as In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel (1998), Lonesome Crowded West by Modest Mouse (1997), and - who could forget - Belle and Sebastian with If You're Feeling Sinister from 1996.  Jesus, just typing these band names is embarrassing.  People actually thought Pavement, Built to Spill, Archers of Loaf, and Dinosaur Jr. were good bands.  It was a dark time in American musical history.  The fact that there are some rock critics who actually regard these bands as "classics" of the 90's should tell you a lot about why nobody reads music magazines or listens to rock critics anymore.  And looking at the popular mainstream and indie music of the time, it also helps one understand why the music business has completely imploded a decade later.  It deserved to.

But, even in the crappiest musical eras, there has always been an underground.  The 80's gave us Wham, the Bangles, Asia, and Damn Yankees.  But if you knew where to look, it also gave us the first albums by the Cramps and the Gun Club. 

So, contrast the steaming pile of mainstream and indie garbage available at the time with the likes of a Teengenerate or Pagans record.  Crypt was a welcome relief.  It was a breath of fresh air.  It was hilarious.  Read Tim's liner notes:  Tim wanted to SHOUT directly into your EARS about the music he liked and how GREAT it was, and how if you didn't like it you were an IDIOT.   Like the example below, from one of Tim's attempts at "promotion", the Cheapo Crypt Sampler:

"Thank you, Mono, fer DMZ and turnin' me and a lotta more folks on to the SONICS, LINK WRAY, and all kindsa great shit!  Thanks also to Billy Miller, Lux, Greg Shaw, Chris Capece, and prob'ly a helluva lot more folks fer lighting the flames that fucked my life up forever and caused me to want to flip the world a gigantic bird!"

Sadly, Greg Shaw and Lux Interior are both gone now, and if anything the "contemporary music scene" is even MORE LAME now than it was when Tim was ranting against "bicycle-pant-wearing dweebs" (in King Crimson-inspired bands) and grunge rockers.  When I was discussing a new band with a friend of mine recently, I stated how I thought they were a little too precious for a supposedly rock n' roll combo.  His response:  "The days of the Oblivians and Revelators are OVER, Schooley!  This is as good as it's going to get."

But, when I finally pulled my "new" Crypt release outta the sleeve and slapped in on the turntable, eleven years after it was recorded, who knew how it would sound to contemporary ears?  My tastes have expanded, and I listen to some stuff now that surely Tim Warren would have written lengthy rants against back in the day.  I hadn't heard "Let A Poor Boy Ride" since 2001, when Tim had last talked about putting it out and asked me to write some liner notes. (I had made a point to name-drop the Hard Feelings when I wrote those, thinking it might help my then-current band.  Who knew that by the time it actually came out, THAT band would be broken up for several years, too?) 

It has aged well.

In fact, it sounds better than any new release I've heard recently.  Yeah, hipster, check back with me in a decade and let me know how well that Vivian Girls or Eat Skull record has held up.  Ha!

I still meet people who ask me if I'm still working at the record store.  Not for a couple years, but that's okay, we haven't seen each other in awhile. 

I work at the Austin History Center.  Have been for awhile now.  The video below was produced for the local PBS station and originally aired last year, but only recently was it put online, so I thought I'd post it here.  It is a nice introduction to the AHC if you are unfamiliar with the institution.  This was filmed shortly before I started working there, so I can tell people to watch it without the embarrassment of having to see myself on camera.  Enjoy!



Of note to rock n' rollers:  Tim, the video archivist, did the original video for Poison 13's "One Step Closer," among other things.  So it's possible to have conversations like this at work:

Me:  "Have you seen that Ronnie Lane documentary?  I watched it last night and it's pretty great."
Tim:  "Oh, yeah.  They filmed part of that in my back yard."

Yeah, could be worse, friends, could be worse.

I have not posted anything here in quite some time. I've noticed that many people have ditched Myspace for Facebook recently, so who knows if anybody even reads these anymore. Do not confuse my staying with Myspace for brand loyalty; it is simply disinterest. I checked out Facebook, and I hate to tell ya – it's the same thing as Myspace. I already went through all this bullshit with adding a bunch of fake internet friends with Myspace, and it wasn't so much fun that I wish to repeat the entire process with Facebook. Besides, would I have to do it again when something replaces Facebook? It's inevitable. Facebook, too, shall pass.  Cyworld.com, here I come!  Gotta up my profile in Korea!

In fact, I have become rather disenchanted with the time-wasting aspects of the interwebs of late. Twitter? Really? If I write more than 140 characters, do the terrorists win? I was already tired of hearing about Twitter from SXSW (see here, here, here, here, and probably a million other terrible articles about terrible bands using Twitter in an attempt to promote their terrible music), and I am sad to see that it hasn't died since then.

Interested parties may have noticed that I haven't played that many shows of late. I'm not busy building up my Facebook numbers. Or Twittering. Or putting sad little attempts at creative writing projects up as “reviews” on Yelp. What the hell have I been doing? Malcolm Gladwell's “Outliers” suggests that people require 10,000 hours of practice to master a particular skill (I mention the book because I just read it, not because I give it a glowing endorsement.  Outliers is really more of a pamphlet than a book, you can read it in about 15 minutes. Here's my online consumer review: it's okay). I don't think Myspace posts, Tweets, Facebook friends, or Yelp reviews count towards this total. So I haven't been doing any of that shit.

When I got back from my European tour at the end of last year, I had come to the realization that I was kind of bored with the one man band in it's current incarnation and I wanted to do something different. Frankly, the current music scene (Austin and everywhere else) is dead right now and is pretty boring all around. In my previous bands I had always felt like there were lots of better bands, and was kept on my toes a bit by that fact. Today, not that I feel like I'm better than every other band in existence, but there hasn't been anything new and exciting that's raised my pulse recently. I haven't heard any new albums that have excited me, and I haven't been knocked out by any live shows. I also haven't had any recommendations from my network of operatives that have led me to believe that I was missing out on anything.  I've been listening primarily to stuff recorded before World War II.  So, after the tour I was feeling a bit bored. I felt hemmed in by only playing the guitar, harmonica, and drums. I had covered Dock Boggs on my last record (“Down South Blues”), but some of the covers I wanted to do just didn't sound right on guitar, particularly the Uncle Dave Macon songs. So why not actually learn how to play them on banjo?

So, I bought a bottom-of-the-line open-back starter banjo at the beginning of this year and began to practice. I am learning clawhammer style, not bluegrass or Scruggs-style, and playing primarily old timey country, not bluegrass. As I like both, I think it's funny that the banjo players are pretty strident as to whether they are in the clawhammer or bluegrass camp (they will no-doubt be horrified to see me playing it through a guitar amp and cranking the shit out of it). The differences between the styles are explained somewhat here, here, and here. But it's easier to explain it in a Hee Haw context: Bluegrass is Roy Clark, clawhammer is Grandpa Jones:

One thing that is amazing to me is how much easier it is to learn an instrument now then it was back when I was a kid and started to learn guitar. Now you can go on Youtube and find a million people giving lessons, teaching you how to play a particular song, demonstrating different techniques, etc. I was talking to one of the guys at South Austin Music, and he said it used to be surprising 10 years ago when some little kid would come in who could totally shred on guitar, but now it's an almost daily occurrence. The guitar technique of our nation's youth have expanded exponentially in the internet era! Too bad this hasn't been accompanied by an increase in musical quality, but hey, at least they ain't all just playing Guitar Hero.

Anyway, compared to the number of guitar-related books out there, the pickin's is slim for clawhammer banjo instruction. I have found Ken Perlman's “Clawhammer Style Banjo” book and dvd combo pretty helpful, although it is not perfect. If you already play guitar, most of your knowledge transfers, and you are losing one and a half strings so it's pretty easy on the left hand. The right hand, however, has to learn the frailing or clawhammer motion. Basically, you have to sit around and just do the same hand motion over and over again until it becomes second nature.

This guy is kind of annoying, but he does give a nice explanation of how to do the basic bum-ditty strum (and is a perfect example of the kind of free knowledge you can now find on the internet):

Another book of interest to banjo nerds is “That Half-Barbaric Twang” by Karen Linn. This social history of the banjo isn't about the music as much as it is about the perception of the banjo in American culture. The story of how the banjo went from being an instrument associated primarily with plantation slaves, to being a parlor instrument playing light-classical numbers, to finally being seen as the instrument of poor white southerners, is fascinating.

So, in case you wondered, this is what I've been doing. I traded in my bottom of the line model for a Gold Tone CC-100 (pictured below), which is more of a solid instrument.  I am still far short of 10,000 hours, but I've been playing for several months now and I've reached the point of not-badness to enough of a degree that I may break it out at my next show. I remember the Dead Brothers saying something in the Voodoo Rhythm documentary about how playing a banjo was more punk rock now than playing a guitar.  We shall see.

Too bad I just wasted the time I spent typing this, when I could have been practicing.  Did I mention that playing clawhammer banjo is pretty fun?  Yeah, its pretty fucking fun. 

I've been wearing glasses since I was about 13.  Sometimes contacts, because it's nice to pretend that I'm not blind, but glasses most of the time.  I'm nearsighted, so I can read alright without them, but I can't see far away very well.  Out on the African savanna I wouldn't be able to see a cheetah coming and would get picked off in no time.  Luckily, I don't have to spend much time on the African savanna, so I haven't been naturally selected outta the gene pool just yet.  There's still too many horror stories about Lasik floating around for me to consider that, so glasses it is.



(Me, at the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, TX)

A number of years ago I got some Ray-ban Wayfarer frames and put my prescription lenses in 'em.  They were cheaper than regular frames, looked slightly less stupid, and they last forever. 


All in all, a good choice, except for getting called "Buddy Holly" constantly, which has led to frequent homicidal urges.  Amazingly, every dumbass who comes up with this witty rejoinder thinks they are the first person that ever thought of it.  Less freguent but still annoying are comparisons to Roy Orbison and Elvis Costello.  Sometimes I get told that I look just like either, both, or all three of these, even though they themselves look nothing alike. 

How come nobody says Bo Diddley?


My old lenses were pretty scratched up and I was going to have to get them replaced, so the question was:  keep the same shit or do something different?

For men, there just ain't that many choices for spectecles out there.  As much as I could give a shit about fashion, glasses are a choice you haveta live with for awhile.  As I discovered, the choice can also open you up to unwanted comparisons to anyone else who has ever worn the same glasses.  Even if you look nothing like them.  So, one must consider what annoying pop culture references your choice will bring out. 

One can choose from thick plastic frames, where you get called Buddy Holly.  Or maybe those thin ones where you look like the guy with his laptop at the coffee shop, and end up looking like Jermaine from Flight of the Conchords...

Or you go with the wire frames so you look like John Denver:


I thought I might try something round, maybe going for a Harold Lloyd thing, ya know?


But, I figured one would be more likely to get called "Harry Potter" than Harold Lloyd, and that would be even more annoying.  At least I actually like Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison.  Not many silent film afficianados out there.  And what if, instead of Harold Lloyd or Harry Potter, they make me think of Ronald Lacey in Raiders of the Lost Ark instead?


No thanks.

Anyway, the choices are limited.

Haverchuck?  Colonel Sanders?  Bill Lumberg?





What to do? 

Ultimately, I decided to go with aviator sunglasses.  Put some prescription lenses in 'em, and they don't look exactly like anything else.  I would like to take credit for this brilliant idea myself, but I have to give props to Hard Feelings drummer Trey Robles for thinking of it first.  Trey wears glasses, as well, and when we were in the band together we both had both arrived independently at the "Bo Diddley" frames as the least-bad choice available.  He is the first person I saw go with the aviator-style prescription glasses.  He got a pair of gold ones, with a yellow tint to the lenses, that look great.  They give him a sort of sleazy, seventies, slightly-gay porno actor look.  I was tired of the same ol' shit anyway, so why not?  I'd had the same glasses for years.

As far as the pop-culture comparisons, I was going for maybe...Peter Fonda in Easy Rider?


Or how about classic French director Jean-Pierre Melville?  I could totally pull off the cowboy hat with aviators.  Maybe add a cane...


Hell, he's one of my favorite directors.  Classic films such as Le Samouri, Bob Le Flambeur, Army of Shadows.





Hell yes.  So, I went with gold frames and lightly tinted brown lenses.  Light enough that I can still wear them at night.  They look cool, and no more Buddy Holly comparisons.  But of course, I realize the average dumbass on the street doesn't know who Jean-Pierre Melville is.  So the question is, who am I gonna get compared to now?

Upon reflection, I think it's gonna be Walter, John Goodman's character in the Big Lebowski.  Eh, could be worse, I guess.  At least I have something to tell people now when I get told "You look just like (insert name of anybody who has ever worn glasses here)"

"You are entering a world of pain!"

Bo Diddley died.  I can't begin to do justice to that man in a stupid myspace blog, so don't look for a tribute here.  Read this instead.

Joe Bageant's book "Deer Hunting With Jesus" comes out in paperback this month. It is the best book about the current state of America I've read in recent memory, and I can't recommend it highly enough. This book reminds me of Thomas Frank's excellent "What's the Matter With Kansas," (tho' addressing folks a bit further down the economic ladder) crossed with Jim Goad's "The Redneck Manifesto," and while that's a fair-enough sound bite description as far as it goes, it doesn't really do justice to what Joe has pulled off here.

While it makes a welcome addition to the pile of books documenting the folly of the Bush years, "Deer Hunting With Jesus" goes far beyond being one of the many "disgruntled lefty" tomes cranked out during the Bush administration to something far more important.  It's an entirely different animal altogether, indicting Republicans, Democrats, and the American people themselves, red and blue alike. The final chapter, "The American Hologram," builds to a climax of writing so amazing, brave, and unexpectedly touching, that it turns what started as a darkly humorous political editorial into an emotionally wrenching and genuinely moving picture of America in twilight. If you want to understand modern America, especially rural, "fly-over country" America, you must read this book. But keep in mind that the truth ain't pretty.

Perhaps my point is best illustrated with an anecdote...

A few months ago my fellow Voodoo Rhythm recording artist C.W. Stoneking came to town, playing a show on his U.S. tour. My other fellow Voodoo Rhythm recording artist, Konrad, opened up for him. I had just started moving my arm around at the time, so unfortunately I was there merely as spectator rather than participant.

C.W. is from Australia, and we got to talking about the state of the U.S. of A. Now, even though I come from a rural, working-class background, thanks to rock n' roll I have been fortunate enough to travel a lot more than the average Joe from the same circumstances would have. So it happens that I was lucky enough to have made it down to Australia for a tour. So I had enough of a frame of reference to have an intelligent conversation regarding the differences between our two countries.

C.W. had been to the U.S. before, so it wasn't a complete surprise, but he commented on how shacks seemed to be a popular means of housing (even in the face of the biggest housing bubble in recorded history). He also couldn't help but notice Austin's teeming homeless population. C.W., also being a musician, has done his share of travel.  More than the average American citizen. A few minutes of conversation along these lines and we come to the inevitable conclusion: The United States is a corporate-owned banana republic. America is a third world country.

The point is driven home even more as Konrad and I proceed to pick C.W.'s brain about being a musician in Australia. He supports himself solely from music, having sold 15,000 copies of his self-released debut album down under. There is actually a well-funded public broadcasting system in Australia (when I was there, I played on Melbourne's excellent PBS Radio) and independent artists can be heard, unlike our current Clear-Channel controlled airwaves. Conrad and I of course both work day jobs, and probably haven't sold that many records combined. C.W. also spent a portion of time on the dole, which is pretty standard operating procedure for artists and musicians in Australia. The dole in Australia even pays enough to live comfortably, rather than in a section-8 housing hellhole like in the states. He also doesn't have to worry about health insurance, thanks to Australia's universal health care program. It isn't a perfect system, but sickness is not a constant source of anxiety or an immediate ticket to bankruptcy.

Konrad hasn't been to Australia but he's toured extensively overseas, so none of this was exactly a surprise to him, either. But as the conversation continued, we both couldn't help but get a bit pissed. Obama's recent "bitterness" comment doesn't even begin to cover it. And as a final insult, when we were thoroughly dissatisfied with our lot in the U.S., we find out that C.W. had brought his wife, two kids, and nanny with him on the tour(!). Now, Konrad's wife at this time was several months pregnant. The thought of a relatively unknown musician even having a nanny, much less being able to bring one on a month-long tour along with the wife and kids, was simply beyond our comprehension.

We would've stayed to hang out and shoot the shit longer with C.W., but this gig being on a Tuesday night, we both had our day jobs to get to. Konrad, with pregnant wife in tow, had to drive two hours home to be up for his teaching gig at 6 a.m. (and the show ended at 2!) Me, I at least I didn't have to drive far to make it to my gig at another floundering public educational institution the next morning.  (For some reason, it seems few of us roots music musician types end up being investment bankers.)

Now, I just offer up this little slice-of-life to illustrate the difference between the standard of living of the average schmo in another country compared to his counterparts in this, the "greatest country in the world," as we are constantly reminded by our media. Having the chance to tour Europe when in my first band was an eye-opening experience for a kid from a small town who had never left the country before. Yeah, rock n' roll may have ruined my life, but as reward I've been more places than many Americans far wealthier than I. Also, I've been lucky in that the punk rock sleeping-on-people's-floors provided me a much better view of how people in another country actually live than I would have gotten staying at hotels and expensive resorts. And I have to say, the disparity between the standard of living of the average American citizen and the average European or Australian is vast and gaping.

Most Europeans don't understand this, as they are just as brainwashed by our media as Americans are, though they are loathe to admit it. While most lists of GDP or other wealth measurements rank the U.S. as first in the world, only an idiot would think that the average American citizen had a better standard of living than the average citizen of, say, Switzerland. An idiot, or a small-town Republican who had never even been to Switzerland (or even had a vacation).  And most typical "big city liberals" in the U.S. (of which I am now one, thank god) have no understanding of this fact, either. After all, either of these types are more concerned with poverty in the third world than they are with those boorish, Republican-supporting white folks in the middle of the country.

Me, having grown up in a poor rural area in the U.S., and also having traveled a fair bit, I think I can say that the foreign country that reminded me the most of where I grew up was...Serbia! And hell, they had a war there. We had NAFTA.

Of course, even most so-called progressives in the states wouldn't believe that if they were told, which they wouldn't be because they avoid all contact with those troublesome red state dwellers. And of course, a European visiting the states probably never makes it anywhere near Niangua, Missouri, either, to compare it with a war-touched east European village. And a Republican-voting, gun-toting, racist, bible-thumping redneck has never been overseas to know how bad he has it in comparison. Hell, 'Yurp is too damn faggy anyhow, they'd say. So it's easy for all to ignore the fact that our nation's poor and white rural citizens are suffering.

Well, at least one person has noticed, and he wrote a book about it, and I can't recommend it highly enough. As someone who grew up in a rural area, with poor working class people, who went on to get the hell out as soon as possible and move to the big city and turn into a damn socialist, well, dammit – I sometimes wondered if I was the only one. Well, Joe Bageant has had the same experience and has written about it much more eloquently than I could have. While it is easy to demonize these people for their bible thumping, racism, and stupidity, I can also recognize that they are frequently caring and decent human beings as well. Joe does an excellent job of making the redneck mindset understandable, while at the same time calling the redneck on his bullshit, bigotry, and cowardice. (Yes, cowardice.  For all the tough Toby Keith-style posturing, Bagaent correctly captures the subservient, walk-all-over-me attitude that is really how poor whites now react to the world.) I frequently found myself veering between extremes of affection and disgust for his subjects, which isn't that different from the feelings I had growing up amongst them.

Well, anyway...hell...If you managed to make it all the way to the end of this entry, then dammit, you better read "Deer Hunting With Jesus." If you read no other book this year (like most of the subjects of this book, alas), make it this one.  I particularly recommend this to all my European friends to whom I couldn't adequately explain the current fucked-up-ness of my country.

Oh, and Joe has an excellent blog, too.  Check it out.

Ok, so let me recap my year for you so far:

January - break an arm (right before my show with Posessed by Paul James, dammit)
February - don't move arm for a month
March - painful physical therapy

By the middle of April I could actually lift my arm above my head, and I could finally play guitar again as well. I've spent the last month trying to get my playing back in shape. I guess I should claim that I've been busting hump with the one man band setup, but actually I've been working on stuff that I don't even know that I'll be able to do as a one man band.

Before I broke the arm I had been working on my own variation of Merle Travis style fingerpicking, along with some Rev. Gary Davis and some other players. Travis and Davis used a thumbpick and fingerpick on the index finger, but I hate thumbpicks and fingerpicks, so I started trying to learn the stuff using a regular flatpick and my fingers. I prefer the flatpick to fingerpicks, I find them awkward and cumbersome, and I hate not being able to feel the strings. Plus, there are things you can do rhythm-wise with a flatpick that are harder with a thumbpick. I've stolen from Danny Gatton and other chicken-pickers before, so I already played in that style and I didn't want to reinvent the wheel in order to learn this more intricate alternating bass stuff.

I hold the pick with my thumb and first finger, and pick the strings with the remaining fingers. I end up using primarily the third finger, only using the middle and pinky occassionally. This feels the most natural to me, although it makes certain moves that you can do easily with thumb and index finger a la Merle Travis a bit more awkward with my method. Well, thems the breaks.

To learn how to do this stuff first I actually tried to take lessons from a real live person. I did have a couple lessons to get the basics down but I didn't think they were helping that much. I've always been an autodidact, especially where music is concerned.

So I've been picking up a lot of books and dvds and whatnot. The dvds especially can run into a lot of dough - 40 bucks a piece sometimes, for what may turn out to be a total dud - so I've been interlibrary-loaning them to try out some different titles. Unfortunately, they vary pretty widely in quality. For most of 'em, I'm glad I didn't pay because they only have a couple of parts that I felt I learned anything from.

Anyway (I warned in the title of this entry that this was for guitar nerds) here's my list of the best and/or worst guitar fingerpicking learning devices I've come across so far:


First off would be Happy Traum's Easy Steps to Guitar Fingerpicking. The dude with the gayest name ever is actually quite an able guitar teacher. The subtitle is "Demystifying Alternate Thumb Style" and that pretty much says it all. A lot of these videos are pretty worthless but this one was actually quite helpful. I'd already been learning all the patterns for awhile, but if you only sit and practice patterns you get really good at playing the same pattern over and over again. Traum, however, focuses on keeping the alternating bass pattern going while picking out different melodies, and breaking out beyond just playing the same pattern. He's also good at slowing it down enough for you to be able to figure out what he's doing easily. A pet peeve with these books and videos is that they tend to use some really crappy songs as examples, but Traum to his credit picks some interesting numbers like tunes by Jimmie Rodgers and Mississippi John Hurt. The first song is "Skip to My Lou" and I was gritting my teeth with that, but that's just a simple example and after that he leaves the nursery-rhyme stuff behind. I think you should probably have some experience with the different fingerpicking patterns before you tackle this one, but it's probably the best that I've seen so far.



For a less sucessful attempt at video guitar instruction, try Woody Mann's The Art Of Acoustic Blues Guitar: Ragtime & Gospel. This book/video combo is all Rev. Gary Davis stuff, and it's not terrible, but Davis' style is a little too indiosyncratic to be able to boil down to simple elements and pick apart in an hour of screen time. This does have a nice version of "O Glory" which is one of my favorite Davis compositions, but overall not as successful an attempt at video guitar instruction as Happy Traum. Here is Davis' version, which is enough to shame you into not mucking it up with your own sub-par attempt:




Now for the bad: Mark Hanson's The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking. This book has exactly TWO items worth anything: a nice arrangement of Elizabeth Cotton's "Freight Train" and an original Hanson compostion "Over and Out Rag". Other than that, you get a lot of dry examples of fingerpicking patterns (outside in, inside out, pinch, etc. etc.). And worst of all, you get lots of "songs" illustrating these patterns with what sounds like the author's hippy girlfriend single breathy Joan Baez-style vocals over them. It's as painful as it sounds. Avoid this one like the plague. Unfortunately I bought this with perfectly good money before I discovered the magic of interlibrary loan.

Then there's this monster:

Merle Travis Guitar Style. I won't even pretend that I'm far enough along to figure this stuff out yet, much less to play it while playing drums and singing at the same time. Also, Travis' style isn't raw or dirty by any stretch of the imagination, so I don't know that it will ever be applicable to a one man band show. But, it's an interesting challenge. Too much of a challenge, actually. I want a challenge I can actually DO. Someday, baby. Someday.

Aside from the fingerpicking, how about the harmonica playing? Well, I gotta say, I've been letting my harp skills atrophy while I worked on my Travis picking. I did try to watch a couple of harmonica instructional videos, too, but I realized that:
1.) when it comes to harmonica I prefer less technical players, and
2.) harmonica is not an instrument that lends itself to visual instruction. With guitar, at least you can tell where your fingers are supposed to go. With harmonica, you can't see anything anyway...

Except the incredibly tacky fashion choices of the person showing you the "licks". I don't know what it is about harmonica nerds, but they need to have their momma's pick out some better shirts for them. Would you take harmonica advice, or fashion advice, from these men?

Yeesh.

So, anyway, I gotta say that I've enjoyed the last month of sitting around with the acoustic and learning some new tricks. I haven't really devoted much time strictly to technique in quite awhile. I don't know if I'll ever be able to actually incorporate any of this stuff into a one man band performance, but for sitting around on the couch and picking away it's quite enjoyable.

Your muscles get sore after awhile, so to avoid tendenitis I've found the best thing to do is play for an hour, then take a break and read a book or something for an hour, then back to the guitar. If you've got a good book, some beer, and an afternoon to kill I can't really think of anything more enjoyable. I find I can kill a whole day working at the same part over and over again, alternating with some good reading material. It's rewarding, challenging, and frankly is making dragging out all the one man band equipment look like a collosal pain in the ass...

"You're alone...but you don't mind that."

The lost classic "Blast of Silence" is now available from the always excellent Criterion Collection.  It even has an hour-long bonus feature with director/star Allen Baron touring NYC and re-visiting the locations used for filming.  You may recognize certain quotes from the opening of the movie, where the hit man is stepping off the train, as being sampled on a certain song by a certain one man band. 

The version I had was a grainy millionth generation VHS copy, from Mariconda by way of Tim Warren, so it's nice to see this in a beautiful transfer with pristine picture and sound.  This is one of those movies that's so rare I never even saw it mentioned or listed anywhere, so kudos to Criterion for digging it up and doing an excellent job on the re-ish.  In addition to being rare it also an excellent piece of cinema.  Dark, gritty, and violent, with a genius voice-over narration.  In the 2nd person, Baby Boy Frankie Bono, so it sounds like the narrator is talking to you.  Genius.

Broke my arm. Fell off a cliff. I've never broken a bone before, but then I've never fallen about six feet and landed with all my weight on solid granite before, either. I've got health insurance, and a job that let's me keep showing up and fumbling around with one hand even though I'm largely worthless. It's an annoyance, but could be a lot worse.

I thought I was getting off easy as I didn't have to get a cast, but it's due to the location of the break and not because it's "not that bad" or something like that. Broke is broke. It wasn't sticking through my skin but I got a nice bruise from armpit to wrist that's turned all the colors of the rainbow. Three weeks later and there's still a huge bruise. Not having a cast actually means that there are more chances for pain, as I have more chances to move it around unintentionally. If you like wincing and sudden intakes of breath, we should hang out.

I'm left handed, so of course it was my left arm. I was told it would require at least a month of wearing a sling and not moving my arm. This has forced me to slow down my usual action-packed lifestyle. Needless to say, no clambering around on any rocks. Also, no guitar playing, which is a major annoyance as I was coming along pretty well on my finger picking (Rev. Gary Davis and Travis-style) before this. Now I fear I will have lost all my finger-knowledge by the time I can play again. Obviously, no one man band shows any time soon. My choices of activity are limited to a.) moving slowly and carefully b.) maneuvering gingerly c.) treading cautiously, or d.) sitting on my ass.

I haven't really been listening to much music lately, since I can't play anything myself. I've been reading a lot, however. "What have you been reading?" you may ask...well...

Shout Sister Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock n' Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle F. Ward

As a document of the life of an undeservedly obscure figure in the annals of American music, this music bio is a welcome addition to the bookshelf. Rosetta was a major bad-ass on the guitar, an excellent vocalist, and today is largely forgotten. Ward is a competent writer, and gets the facts across in a pleasant enough manner. Tharpe's life wasn't particularly dramatic, and while certainly no "Hellfire" this music bio is well researched and written and I've got no major complaints. Ward really steps up to the plate when addressing the notion of "guitar-as-phallus" as an overused bad-music-writer trope when discussing guitar soloists. As a guitar-wielding female gospel singer Rosetta hardly fits into the widespread view of the guitar solo as display of male sexual prowess. I personally can't stand the Jimmy Page/Stevie Ray Vaughan/Eddie Van Halen school of masturbatory guitar-wankery. Would you say that players like Gary Davis or Don Rich aren't "masculine" because their playing involves far more subtle musicianship? Hardly. So reading the following was a welcome reprieve from the usual bad music-writing cliches:

"When [Rosetta] made the guitar talk, she gave her audience an opportunity to feel excitement, pleasure, power, and emotional release in the sounds she generated...Well before the guitar gods of more recent decades made a fetish of the guitar solo as an orgiastic expression of male sexual libido, Rosetta perfected something both more subtle and more radical: the art of the guitar as an instrument of ineffable speech, of rapture beyond words."

But, hey, don't take my word for it. Watch and learn:

Also enjoyable are the frequent period details and local color, such as the following description of the impact of the b-side of Rosetta's single with the Lucky Millinder orchestra, "Big Fat Mama":

"So popular was "Big Fat Mama" that, a month after the song's release, the Apollo played host to a "Big Fat Mama" week, during which women weighing over 250 pounds were admitted for free. At the end of the week, a fifty-dollar prize was awarded to the "most versatile 'mama.'"

And in the end, of course, Rosetta died less well-known than she deserved and was buried in an unmarked grave. Ward believes that this is due largely to Rosetta's status a black woman in a country where both her race and gender made her a second-class citizen. This is undoubtedly true, but I think it's not just a racist/sexist thing. Americans don't know or appreciate their own history or indigenous music. The music of poor white folks has been considered just as unworthy of interest as that of African-Americans in this country, while the academic world continues to focus exclusively on the work of Europeans who died centuries ago. The list of great American musicians who are largely forgotten is nearly limitless, and much like the basis of many of the problems in this country has less to do with identity politics than with class and economics.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

In case you still haven't noticed, we are currently living through the popping of the single largest asset-market bubble in world history. I'm speaking, of course, about housing and real estate. It's finally hitting the mainstream media, but I've been following this story for years now. The MSM is still talking about "sub-prime loans" but this thing is much bigger than what the usual media outlets would lead you to believe. It still remains to be seen if this is going to result only in a recession, or a cataclysm that will bring down our entire financial and monetary system. Seriously. Interesting times.

I first became aware of this just from casual observation a couple of years ago. Housing prices in my neighborhood seemed to be climbing high rather quickly, while rents hadn't changed that much. I wondered what the hell was going on. Not like I'm in the market for a house, it was simply intellectual curiosity. How could all these tiny houses in Austin that were worth maybe 150k a few short years ago suddenly be selling for half a million dollars? Or more? It only got worse as the months went by. Inexpensive apartments were closed, to be reborn as "luxury condos." Hell, suddenly newly-built luxury condos were going up right down the street from Beerland. The same Beerland right down the street from the giant homeless shelter. When Randall and Donya moved in it was a no-man's land of crackheads and bums. Which it still was, but now with luxury condos. Clearly, something was going on.

So, I started following the real estate market. I got turned onto some housing-bear blogs like itulip, Another Fucked Borrower and The Housing Bubble Blog, and I've been watching this thing unfold. It's been fascinating. California peaked in 2006, but Austin was a little slower and seemed to hit the top about the summer of '07. That would be when they tore down the house next door to my cozy little apartment complex to build a gi-normous stucco duplex monstrosity that currently sits unsold for around 650k. Whether anybody actually buys this crapshack remains to be seen, but it certainly drove home the insanity of the real estate biz in a most dramatic fashion, as I awoke every morning during the summer to loud Tejano jams and hammering. At 650k, how much would the potential buyer have to charge in rent just to cover the mortgage and property tax on this butt-ugly example of suburban blight, much less realize a profit from his/her "investment"? Meanwhile, my rent had gone up all of twenty bucks in 5 years. You could still rent a normal-sized house in the neighborhood for maybe a grand or so. Hell, down the street, two more 500k condos had gone up earlier in the year, right next door to some ghetto-assed apartments where tenants lift free weights in the parking lot. Insanity!

At least I knew that real estate values did not, in fact, always go up. My parents bought the farm I grew up on at the height of early 80's farm prices, which then sunk dramatically. I remember them complaining that "this place will never be worth what we paid for it." Of course, they did finally sell it for about that much when they retired, a mere 20 years later. I've actually known quite a few people who've bought houses in the last few years. I generally held my tongue as they spouted the "real estate only goes up" and "buy now or be priced out forever" mantras. If housing prices had doubled in a couple years, did they really think they would go on increasing year after year, forever? Who would be left to afford single-family homes when they cost a million dollars? Wages hadn't increased. People making ten bucks an hour were taking out 250 thousand dollar loans to buy houses on the east side that woulda cost maybe 75K a few years ago. As I've watched Austin turn from a cool little town to some sort of gross mini-L.A. over the last decade, I've gotta lay a lot of the blame on this real estate bubble.

I continued to read up on declining lending standards, ARMs, HELOCs, and the collapse of major lenders and home manufacturers. But, one thing I never did until recently was slog through Mackay's 1841 tome "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," widely regarded as one of the first and best looks at market psychology. It kept getting referenced whenever I read anything about speculative bubbles, so I had to read it. Well, I still haven't read ALL of it. It's over seven-hundred pages long, and the later chapters focus untold hundreds of those pages on alchemy, the crusades, burning of witches, animal magnetism, prophecies, fortune-telling, catch phrases & slang, holy relics, duels, haunted houses, popular admiration of great thieves, and a chapter entitled "Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard," to name but a few of the subjects of this exhaustive (and exhausting) book. I don't think it's one you need read straight through, but can dip into here and there. Keep it on the nightstand. Oh, and this is only volume one.

Of primary interest to me were the chapters on financial and speculative manias: the Mississippi Scheme, the South Sea Bubble, and most famous of all the Dutch Tulip mania. These chapters should be required reading for anybody and everybody, just to ensure that you don't get left holding the bag. You may think that stories of outrageous prices for flowers in the Netherlands in the 17^th century would have little to do with the current state of Austin real estate, buy you'd be wrong. Hey, you can read it for free at Project Gutenberg.

Cousin Bette by Honore De Balzac

Balzac was one of those classic authors who I'd never actually read until a couple of years ago when I read Dylan's "Chronicles, Vol. I" and decided to check him out. Dylan name-drops a lot of authors in that book. Literary recommendations from Bob Dylan mean a lot more to me than user reviews on Amazon. The one that made the most lasting impression was Balzac. The first of his books I read was "Lost Illusions," which I think anybody engaged in any artistic or creative endeavor should make sure to read. I was hooked immediately, and since then I've gone on to check out quite a few titles in "The Human Comedy," Balzac's all-encompassing, unfinished literary masterwork. At ninety-four volumes, The Human Comedy was only half-finished when Balzac basically wrote himself to death at the age of 51. It's heavy shit, dude.

The world of Balzac is one of frilly French lords, art, societal intrigue, concern for social standing, frequent crying and fainting, and money, money, money. It may not sound like something that would interest your average one man band, even one who loves the Upper Crust, but trust me on this one. Once you get submerged in Balzac's world it is a highly addictive experience. Check out Lost Illusions, Old Goriot, A Murky Business, or whatever Balzac titles you come across and you will quickly find yourself in the hands of a master. The plot of Cousin Bette revolves around a wealthy Baron with a penchant for philandering and his family, who is destroyed by it. This may sound totally gay, especially if you've just been reading Jim Thompson or James Ellroy, but Balzac is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. I think I'm going to hit "The Black Sheep" next.

I also just finished Jackie Chan's bio "My Life In Action," which is a quick read and should be required for anybody who is a fan of Hong Kong cinema. Currently, I'm reading "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein (pretty damn harrowing), and "America's Musical Life, A History" by Richard Crawford (a little dry, frankly). I've still got some time before I'm going to be able to do anything with my arm, so I can probably make some more headway on the stack of books I've got piled up here.

I've also been wasting a lot of time online, but frankly, I'm thinking about going cold-turkey on the internet for awhile. I mean hardcore – having no internet at home whatsoever. I can check my email at work, and take the laptop down to the coffee shop if I need to update the web page. Sure, it's a convenience to have an internet connection, as far as looking up information, movie times, or whatever, but it's also an incredible time-waster of massive proportions. Since I've been temporarily incapacitated I've been online quite a bit, and I've gotten a bit disgusted with the whole thing. A friend of mine canceled his myspace account recently, saying that he thought it was an instrument of societal control. Rupert Murdoch owns it, after all. I don't want to cancel mine, since there's a lot of people I keep in touch with mainly through myspace, and myspace isn't even where I waste the majority of my time online. But I'm certainly not going to be on the computer nearly as much once my arm is functional. I've gotta get back in shape, and I've got to start practicing again.

One of the books I read last year was "The Mayor of McDougal Street," the Dave Van Ronk autobiography. It's a good read if you are a fan of Van Ronk, Dylan, Fred Neil, any of the lights of the 60's Village folkie scene. But what really impressed me was how much these people GOT DONE. They were not only working on their music, they were politically active, they were well-read in literature and well-versed in the arts. But one thing they were NOT doing was watching videos on youtube or updating their damn myspace profile. A lot of them were couch-surfing, most owned very little. No ipods or cell phones. And they packed a lot more living into their day-to-day lives. I look at what they got done, and I look at what me and my friends get done. I can't help but conclude I'd get a lot more done if I didn't have the internet around. Do you think Balzac would've written 94 goddamn books if he'd been able to waste time looking up movies on IMDB?

In one anecdote, Van Ronk talks about how there was one Rev. Gary Davis instrumental that all the guitar pickers were working on. Nobody could play it, it was too hard. One of his friends locked himself in his apartment and emerged, six weeks later, "blinking like a mole"...but he'd could play the damn song! How many of the people in the hundreds of bands in Austin devote that kind of time to learning their craft? Hell, most spend more time picking out clothes and working on their website than they do actually listening to music or learning to play their instrument. Bands make t-shirts now before they learn how to write a song. Not much of lasting value seems to be being created. Like the internet, it's virtual, temporary, ephemeral. Good for a few yucks and then quickly forgotten. I don't know, but I think I'm getting fed up with the whole thing.

So, just warning ya – don't expect immediate replies to any myspace messages you send in the near future. I think I'll try to check it maybe once a week or so. If you need to talk to me, give me a call.

Yeah, yeah, so I've been back from tour for a couple weeks now, and still no "tour diary" for ya's...well, here ya go...

First of all, looking through the pictures, it becomes apparent that the one man band makes for BORING photos...after all, it's just a guy sitting in front of a drum kit and holding a guitar.  Even if it's a particulary handsome dude like yours truly, it's still boring.  You get the idea after a few pics...at least this one from Berlin had a weird light fixture behind me:

Here's another one:

Sometimes, a real photographer like Sven would be there, and then you at least get a higher quality pic of the same thing...


Unlike the last tour with the Guilty Hearts, it was just me this time.  Well, I had a driver, Ramses from the best little bar in Belgium, the Pits.  But by just me, I mean - no other bands!  I thought that there would be opening acts everywhere I went, but actually, NO!  A lot of the gigs were just me, which meant I had to play extra-long sets just to get the crowd going.  I was grateful to have gigs with Urban Jr., and The Juke Joint Pimps to liven things up a bit.  At one gig with Urban Jr. we even "jammed" together on the Oblivians "Never Change", which was a complete trainwreck as you can probably imagine, and a lot of fun.

There, I've talked about the shows.  Now that that's outta the way...

I've been over to Europe a few times now, so what may be new and exciting for you is *yawn* boring to me.  Clubs, bars, liquor, rock n' roll, cheese sandwiches.  Yeah, yeah.  For this tour, one of my requirements for Robert (booking agent supreme!) was that I actually wanted a day or two off somewhere cool, so I could actually see something interesting.  I brought the little lady, Ryoko, with me so sell stuff and provide additional body heat since Europe hasn't figured out how to properly heat a bedroom yet...


So, this tour, I actually get to see some of 'Yurp.  I had days off in Cologne and Berlin, in Germany, and Bern, Switzerland.  So in addition to the usual bars and drunks I got to see...

Castles!

Cathedrals!


Unicorns!

Gargoyles!  (sorry it's so blurry, but I had to zoom in from afar...)

And, inside the castles...

Guilloteens!  (actually used...)

Giant swords!

Creepy bridges with skeletons painted on them (and also, lots of spiders)!

More castles!

And even more tourist trap stuff, like Checkpoint Charlie!

It's not really that cool, but we did eat at Snackpoint Charlie, which is just as stupid as the name might suggest...

Speaking of food, in addition to there being tons of chocolate everywhere...

...when we stayed in Bern, Beat Man showed us around the town, and also took us to the Onion Festival.  An annual winter event, the whole damn town closes down and everybody hits the streets to eat and drink...

There was onion soup, onion rings, sauteed onions, you could even buy an onion bouquet...

...or an onion penguin...(?)

Traditional swiss music could be heard...

I also went by the Voodoo Rhythm warehouse, to grap the few VR titles I don't have yet.  There was a big pile of Schooley LP's sitting there.  Better get to work, Beat-Man!


Living in Texas has totally made me a wuss as far as cold weather is concerned.  Being from Houston, Ryoko had never even seen snow before, so when it started coming down in Munich, she had to run outside and check it out (I stayed in the car...snow sucks!).  Ain't she cute?

And...more cathedrals!

This church had some nice cages on the side, where the leaders of a protestant uprising got hung up to rot (I'm sure that's what Jeebus would've done...)

In Zurich, in addition to eating at Europe's oldest vegetarian restuarant, we went to a metal bar owned by the rhythm section of Celtic Frost.  This is the bass player, who brought me my Jack Daniels...


Overall, I found my thinking on this tour followed a pattern similar to my previous trips to Europe.  Upon first arrival, one is struck by the fact that everyone is thin and well dressed, and the streets are clean, whereas in the states everybody is fat and wearing crocs and pajamas.  I swear, the U.S. is becoming more like the movie "Idiocracy" every damn day.  So, my first reaction is usually, "Screw the states, I wanna move here!"  Of course the old architecture, castles, cathedrals, etc. only add to this feeling.  Europe can be pretty incredible.

This feeling lasts for awhile, until the little things like the bathrooms and bedrooms always being freezing-ass cold, the lack of a decent shower, cheese sandwiches for breakfast every damn day, the fact that paprika is considered "spicy", etc. etc. ...ugh.  So, after a few weeks of that, I'm ready to come back to home sweet home, the good ol' US of A!






Thanks to Robert for setting it up, Ramses for driving my ass around, Ryoko for coming along, all the promoters who booked me, Beat Man and Frau Zorn for keeping the Voodoo Rhythm corporation alive, and of course all the fans that came out to see me and bought t-shirts.