Modern Music Nashville

I like Eddy Arnold’s music well enough though, as I often say: I’m just not fan material. Living in the Nashville area pretty much all my life it seemed that he was just part of the landscape.

As we all must, he has gone. In a fairly recent interview he talked about his childhood. His father died when he was a child and the family lost the farm. He learned early that “you have to be stingy and sober”.

His friends commented that he never raised one person above another and treated ordinary and famous the same: with respect.

There certainly aren’t many like him anymore, and that is a shame.

Tennessean Special Section

Man, Tuesday night television drives you pretty nutty. I’ve gotten to the point that I cannot wait for the scale to settle down on “Biggest Loser”. Maybe if there was a little less talking there would be a little more losing.

Anyway, I flipped around to PBS and watched a show about Ameriaca’s first all-female mariachi band. At first I thought “Not my kind of music, not my story, but it beats waiting on the scale”. Mariachi is still not my style and it doesn’t speak to my experience, but the opening and closing songs really gripped me with pure emotion and powerful delivery. These two pieces weren’t sub-titled, so I don’t even know what they were about. But I felt them. Pretty awesome.

The closing song was the best. One woman and guitar alone in what looked like a tunnel into an ampitheatre. It grabs you deep.

Another thing is that there isn’t much money in it for them. For the time and effort there are better ways to make a buck. But it pays in ways a job can’t. A proof of how real it is.

COMPAÑERAS

I watched a shuttle launch last week. The sound…music. I later slept with the waves in Daytona Beach. The sound….music. I rode my motrocycle to work this morning. The sound….music.

The universe seems to sing…

Fascinating.

I grew up watching Porter and Dolly. Overall I was never a big fan, but he wrote one of my favorite lyrics

A Satisfied Mind

by Porter Wagoner

How many times have
You heard someone say
If I had his money
I could do things my way

But little they know
That it’s so hard to find
One rich man in ten
With a satisfied mind

Once I was waitin’
In fortune and fame
Everything that I dreamed for
To get a start in life’s game

Then suddenly it happened
I lost every dime
But I’m richer by far
With a satisfied mind

Money can’t buy back
Your youth when you’re old
Or a friend when you’re lonely
Or a love that’s grown cold

The wealthiest person
Is a pauper at times
Compared to the man
With a satisfied mind

When my life has ended
And my time has run out
My friends and my loved ones
I’ll leave there’s no doubt

But one thing’s for certain
When it comes my time
I’ll leave this old world
With a satisfied mind

How many times have
You heard someone say
If I had his money
I could do things my way

But little they know
That it’s so hard to find
One rich man in ten
With a satisfied mind

Actually, I’m not fan material. I just don’t have the “atic”. That’s not to say there is no empty space in my head due to an enormous brain. No, I just don’t have it in me to idolize two dimensional images on projection screens, CRTs, LCD’s and the like. I can remember getting the first TV when I was a kid, but, even then, I couldn’t bring myself to be agog over people who appeared there. Oh, I went to a lot of concerts ,too, when I was younger. I saw many of the all-time greats. But I never felt it…the awe for a person that I could barely see and would probably not recognize if they drove down my very own little gravel road of life. It seemed that I was a loner in this regard.

I suppose this is a failing, a defect. Maybe there is more if it going around these days since CD sales are plummeting and TV viewers “surf” at physically perilous speeds these days. All I know is that it is bad for the “industry”.

I have decided, though, that I am something of a Nostradamus. I perceived the coming of the internet when I saw the first rasters from that ancient ray gun displayed on phosphor (TV that is). I saw a time when each and every one of us would be a star and exult in the Luv from their fans. I didn’t realize it at the time. This was before I was edgicated. Or maybe that sore throat really did turn into rheumatic fever before the penicillin kicked in.

I don’t know. There was a lot Nostradamus didn’t know. And what he did know: how did anybody figure that out?

OK, to the point. Today we have the internet and we can all be stars. As for me, I like stuff or I don’t like stuff.

Here is something I like, but don’t get me wrong, I’m not agog.

Songs From a Hat

See the intro first, save some confusion time:

Intro

If you love music. If you think music is a magical reflection of a person’s essence, then you need to know about John Work, III and his life and career. He lived and worked right here in Nashville at Fisk University. And, he did what I think only he could correctly do even though the times restrained him considerably.

So, please read:

Recording Black Culture

An exhibit of his life and work will open at Fisk University here in Nashville February 19. It is very much worth visiting if you can:

Redeeming the Legacy of Music Historian John Work III

I despise movie musicals and have made no secret of it for decades. There’s something about ordinary conversation morphing to an orchestra backed song that that makes my brain want to jump out of an ear and run down the street screaming.

But I just watched a movie that is more music than dialog and it was not only OK but is now one of my all-time favorite movies. The music is real, the actors are not professionals, it was made on a micro budget…and it is wonderful.

Please, everyone who loves music should see this:

Once

Check it out on Netflix.

Before running the Music City Marathon a few years ago:

I really hate going downtown. I get lost. I try to go the wrong way on oneway streets. I fume and use portions of my vocabulary that I hardly ever use. Of course to get my bib I’ve got to go downtown to the convention center. It is raining like crazy. The parking garage for the convention center if full on the first hour of the first day. I luckily find a spot in a lot a block over. Course the machine only takes bills as small as $10 and I only have $20s. The guy working the lot, who seems to have only recently arrived from east Africa, says he’ll give me time to go find some change.

So it’s down to the convention center to a coffee shop to break a $20. The gal running the register has no problem. She makes change for people all the time.

By now I have burned some of the energy I’m trying to save for the actual race. Once parked and inside, though, things get to be OK and I become less surly. I’m hoping to find some running shorts that aren’t quite so baggy.

Name brands cost, but I did find some pretty decent running shorts. I got a better tank top, not so thick and heavy, later at China-Mart.

I did this at lunch. Took around two hours. Nobody seemed to notice at work. I did have a moment of weakness. There was a Gibson guitar dealer selling some beautiful guitars. He had a nice SG just under $500. I looked a little bit and then told him I had to get the heck out of there! It would have been a pretty big lie to say at the house “Oh, yeah, they give everybody who enters the race one of these!” Would have been a hard sell.

So I got all the stuff. Got out of downtown pretty easy. This is Thursday. That night I didn’t sleep well. I had all kinds of dreams about oversleeping, missing the race, or some whacky dream type of screwing up.

On Friday I was calmed down a bit. I had everything laid out and ready that night. I got up at 4:15 because the shuttles started running at 5:00. I didn’t want to be late so I allowed plenty of timing slack. At 9:00 Friday night I drove over to Waffle House and ate a big breakfast type meal. Bacon, pancakes, orange juice. I was ready as I could be. Carb loaded and equipment prepared. I slept pretty well.

post script…I finished the race but never bought an SG

About a year ago I stood on a cable access tv stage as a musician for the first time even. CableAccess. A month or so after that I stood as a guitar player on a stage in front of hundreds of people for the first time ever. I never wrote that up.

It has been a year and I’ve done it again. There seems to be a point in your life where you go truly insane and public embarrassment is no concern anymore. The event is and Octoberfest celebration promoted by the Lions Club of Lewisburg, Tennessee. The event is held on the public square in Lewisburg. There are booths all around the square, a big food tent (the main moneymaker) and the stage which is in front of the old Dixie Theatre.

Last year when I arrived, dragging my little red Telecaster, my first act was to purchase a pecan pie. Pecan Pie. This year, even though I was looking forward to it, there were no pies to be found. I was too late, I guess. Maybe there’s something instructive there, but my memory fails me.

This year there were more bands so I spent some time listening. The first group I listened to (while dragging our equipment to the back of the stage) was loud and raucus. I felt my internal organs slapping aginst my rib cage, so as soon as I had moved as much as I could I got some separation from those Marshall amplifiers.

I was more nervous this year. Last year we had practices a good bit, but my part was support. If I goofed up it wasn’t all that noticeable and if and when I got totally lost on a piece I could just fake it for a while. This year we practiced, I made notes, I had parts to do. I would be noticed if I screwed up. Pressure.

It is and odd experience setting up and playing live. Everything moves quickly and there’s no time to be nervous. There’s something of a break when the bands change, so either an emcee is talking while you’re setting up or there is something a little different going on. All the while, it is important for the flow of things to get your stuff on the stage, hooked up, and functional.

I observed this at a Paul Thorn performance Paul Thorn but experiencing it is something on the order of an out of body thing. You observe yourself and wonder why you can’t seem to move fast enough. You want to tap yourself on the shoulder and say “Could you speed up just a little?”.

We had practiced. I had notes with keys, chord progressions, and keyboard position. I was also in a good position to see Danny the lead guitarist, so if all else failed I could find my place by seeing where he was. I was nervous, but felt good. I was as prepared as I could get.

We powered up, checked tune, said very little and started. My biggest worry was the first song and we got through that well. I hung tough with my part and didn’t screw up. My notes were on the floor of the stage in front of me and I was going to be set for each song. This being prepared is kinda nice. I felt good. We were doing 30 minutes, so we had 10 songs and two backups. We were set.

I felt good. Unfortunately, my amplifier didn’t. It was warm on the stage although not hot. During practices the amp doesn’t deal with warm temperatures. About halfway through the set my amp konks. I try not to sweat or slow anything down. I casually move over to my amp and turn if off and back on.

It fires right back up. This works for the next song, but then it konks again. I flip the switch again. It fires back up but doesn’t last through a song. One more flip. I’m really limping along now because I’m spending quite a lot of time diddling with the amplifier.

Something a little different happens after the last flip of the switch. I smell smoke. I casually look back to see a modest amount of smoke coming from my amplifier. There are about 2 songs left. I decide to pull the plug. Of course I’m still up there, so I have to revert pretending that I’m making a sound. Unfortunately, an unamplified Telecaster is very near silent in a library much less so on a stage with amplifier instruments.

So I rode the rest of the show in silent mode. It didn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference. I’m not sure what to think about that. The time had flown. The 30 minutes felt like 10. We were up there and then we were gone.

I was just glad I hadn’t set the stage on fire.

There is a time
When it is right
The words are so
And the notes
Just the right way
And number
To say

I’m Sittin on Top of the World

Hubert Sumlin