Adam Hill music etc.

Missing Pictures part 1

2011-02-16T05:28:00.000-08:00

Press

2010-12-01T16:58:00.000-08:00

Adam Hill has the passion of Westerberg, the emotions of Townes, and cantake you as high as the hills of East Tennessee where he was raised. I am proud to know him as a friend, and even prouder to be able to play his music on the radio for all to hear..."
Benny Smith WUTK

Adam Hill is like young Steve Earl but more edgy. Crunchy electric guitars and a ragged yet committed vocal delivery all work well together. Quircky and fresh sounding lyrics like .."write your name on the sleeve of my shirt .." work really well together. I hope to hear much more from Adam in the future.
Taxi A & R services.

Hill has pulled from his punk roots for the rawness and urban twist to his folk material. But whats really my favorite aspect of Willingness is its casual feel. Theres an open-air quality to the recording that makes me want to turn it up and listen for the sound of glasses clinking or tapping feet. Even with the accompaniment of his band, The Dead Birds, it retains the quality of something that has been completely unfussed with. While comparisons to Paul Westerberg are certainly warranted, several of Hills songs feel like they could be rough edits of early Ryan Adams penned tracks. Particularly the country blues feel of The Devils Fiddle and the male/female duet, Wattsbar. With Hills vocals in the foreground and the female background vocals drifting in and out it could be, with a little more polish, reminiscent of one of Adams duets. Willingness does have a strong swagger but it also has a real inviting sentiment. His voice has a little coarseness to it and a bit of a drawl but its also got a brand of confidence rarely found outside of a punk show. While singer/songwriters, particularly in the game of folk, are a plentiful lot, Adam Hill has the perfect blend to make him stand out. You knowwe can sit in the comfort of our circle of friends and all complain that our favorite geniuses have turned out to be hacks. We can run to the record store the day a new album comes out from an old standby only to walk away disappointed by the compromises of a half realized product. Or we can recognize fresh air like Adam Hill and the Dead Birds and start all over again. Willingness just might be a great place to start that new beginning and when you put it in and hear songs like in the mood for love I think youll agree.

indieworkshop.com steph haselman 2004

Adam Hill is the sh*t.

Elizabeth Cook(Grand Ole Opry star)

"Willingness.." is lo-fi and a little folksy but with a groove remniscent of .."Let it Bleed.." era Rolling Stones.

Wayne Bledsoe (Knox News Sent) 2004

"Adam Hill sings of a South heard less of in the words of any wistful pastoral; but more a place in common with the Jesus-haunted world of Flannery O..'Connor(or even Tom Waits.) His disturbing stories are gnarled and choked withkudzu and blackjack vines; but his offer to peek into the undergrowth is both enticing and rewarding.Adam Hill is Nashville..'s best kept musicalsecret...But not for long. I..'ll wager that his music will be soon regarded as some of the great.."Idylls.." of our twisted, modern time..."
Col.JD Wilkes (Legendary Shack Shakers)

Adam's lyrics are somewhere between Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Bob Dylan.
Larry Shell (vice pres. A&R Broken Bow Records)

Willingness is intentionally flawed broke down Americana which has caught the ears of many of his peers.

Nashville Rage

The songs of Willingness range from gothic folk to a loose twangy gospel. Hill channels a melancholic, 4 am kind of blues through Hank Williams style sentiment. There......'s an effortless, casual honesty to the music.

Paige Travis Metro Pulse, 2004

The Old Flames are a hell raising combo of hillbilly rock and pop punk glam featuring Paul Westerbergish front man Adam Hill.

Nashville Rage - Nashville, TN

Westerberg style swagger, honky tonk lonesomeness and pop smarts that sound like they could be culled from the archives of Harry Smith.

Metro Pulse - Knoxville,TN

Former Satellite Pump Adam Hill retains all his sly lyrical toss offs, achey breaky crooning and back porch rural twang. Does this guy ever get lucky?

Metro Pulse - Knoxville,TN

Hill..'s somebody done somebody wrong songs are Westerberg and Williams, achingly real, never whiney. Lonely sighs never sounded so rock ready and hearts on your sleeve never looked so charismatic.

Metro Pulse - Knoxville, TN

Hill..'s lyrics are at once honest and vividly picturesque. Yet you get the feeling he is fantisizing a bit too. His words make up some of the most literate heartbreak/love songs around. It..'s rare to hear someone who knows the difference in pining and whining. He could make Paul Westerberg proud...or jealous.

Metro Pulse - Knoxville, TN

Any band that can make me swoon and sigh heavily and want to dance like a fool in a single set is not to be missed. The Satellite Pumps with their combustible combination of down to earth charm, retro sophistication, raw rock..'n..'roll energy, tear in your beer resignment and a vibe that feels right on right now might make them the best live band Knoxville has this summer.

Metro Pulse - Knoxville, TN

hotcw.wordpress.com
Anthemic layers of folk and authentic Americana converge to give us a relaxingly raucous ride over Smoke Trees, the latest distillation from veteran country crooner Adam Hill. Whether sweet-water rhyming, casting catchy love lyrics, or giving a mucho-gusto performance of rockin’ country jams, Hill twines a hearty yarn to pull us in. Susceptible to a syrupy sentiment at times, Smoke Trees triumphs in that it refuses to reflect on its own relish, but invites a vitality that is perhaps unrefined, if not wholly untapped, within the genre. Mesquite flavored and flame seared, Hill serves up Smoke Trees delicious and delectable.---2010 http://hotcw.wordpress.com

Aug 25, 2010 Blood on the Bluegrass.com Sarah Norris
Good music remembers where it came from, and Adam Hill is a living testament to that fact. He was raised in Kingston, Tennessee in Appalachia. He heard all the great old country songs sang by his relatives from an early age, and when he saw the movie “Crossroads” (not the Brittney Spears movie) that was it, he needed to be a part of something great: southern music.
The rest was more than history for Adam Hill, all through high school and college he played and recorded for girls, friends, and himself. He played with this band and that band (The Satellite Pumps, Raggeddettes, Second Manassas, The Old Flames) kicking out great song after great song all through his adult life. What do you get after all of that? An experienced, talented songwriter who is confident and sure. Not to mention, a ton of Appalachian Americana tunes that are equally charming and thoughtful. Now performing with or with out the band The Sunday Best, he brings each crowd he performs for to his attention, and shows them the road he’s been down and where he’s headed.
His album “Smoke Trees” (July 2010) is a perfect blend of beautiful melodies on guitar and voice, all underlined by his bittersweet lyrics. From start to finish the album is a reflective journey through adulthood in the holy vessel of southern rock and roots. It’s a freeing collection of songs of a grown up loner kid’s personal pilgrimage for true love, and life now that he’s found it; most well illustrated in the title track. It’s a soulful proclamation of the security and romantics of his life, and most importantly a sweet but not sappy one. Adam Hill lives in Nashville these days.

Wayne Bledsoe, Knoxville News Sentinel Nov 11, 2010
Maybe it's a good thing Adam Hill didn't hit rock 'n' roll stardom with his former Knoxville band the Satellite Pumps.
"I'm like the worst at the rock 'n' roll lifestyle," says Hill. "I go to bed early. I like to write at 6:30 in the morning. I like to keep on a schedule. If a show starts at 9, I like it to really start at 9."
In a call from Nashville, where Hill lives with his wife and daughter, he says he is finally back on track more than a decade after he and the rest of the members of the Satellite Pumps passed up a recording contract with Bloodshot Records and six years after the release of Hill's solo album "Willingness." Hill's follow-up solo disc, "Smoke Trees," has just been released.
Hill grew up in Kingston, Tenn., just west of Knoxville. He says it was seeing the Ralph Macchio movie "Crossroads," which depicts a Robert Johnson-style deal with the devil that set him on a musical path. "A week after seeing that movie I had my parents buy me a Robert Johnson album," says Hill. "I was kind of a weird kid." The Georgia Satellites' song "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" helped give Hill a love of gut-bucket rock 'n' roll. "Then I heard the Violent Femmes' first CD and thought, 'I could do that.'"Then Hill heard The ill-fated rock 'n' roll greats Replacements and it all came together.
The Pumps followed The Replacements' boozy, argumentative, go-for-broke attitude a little too literally and self-destructed.
"There I was in 1999, I went with another band, then I went to New York and played in folk coffeeshops."He and his then-wife moved to Nashville. Just after the release of "Willingness" in 2004, Hill says, "a lot of things fell apart," including his marriage.
He divorced and ended up living in a friend's basement in Brentwood. "Not to sound cliched or dramatic, but I kind of hit rock bottom for a while and it took a while to dig out of it," he says. "It totally derailed what I'd hope to do with 'Willingness.' I kind of came to the point of 'I'm done writing songs. I'm done with music.' I just took a beating on so many levels." He says that the period actually turned into a positive one, however. He ended up meeting his current wife, and in 2007 the two had a a daughter. Hill also got more involved in church and took a job with Christian book publisher Thomas Nelson.

Hill actually drew inspiration from the movie "Julie and Julia," which told the true story of how writer Julie Powell began a successful blog about cooking every recipe in Julia Child's "The Art of French Cooking." "She came to the conclusion that nobody was going to publish her book, but she could still blog. I kept trying to 'make it' and I didn't know how to do it. All I knew how to do was write songs and that's all I could do, so I decided I was just going to enjoy writing songs." The result is "Smoke Trees," which contains 11 of the 30 songs he felt were good enough to be recorded, and contains musical contributions from Legendary Shackshakers members Mark Robertson and J.D. Wilkes.
The songs might not be as hard-rocking as the music he once made, but it's earthy, heartfelt and accomplished.
"I changed a lot of the ways I thought about making music," says Hill. "I got back to following the art, not the dream."

Paige Travis (@rocknrollsoapbox.com
Adam Hill’s new CD, Smoke Trees, conjures the atmosphere of your favorite bar and its superb jukebox, a place more comfortable than your home because it’s not full of your junk (literal and metaphorical), and you don’t have to wash dishes or vacuum.

Maybe I have that image in my mind because the disc’s first song is “Let’s Go Out Tonight,” a sweet invitation to his darlin’ to shake off the day. Hill’s songs create a musical scrapbook of human efforts to make existence more than just subsistence. Uplifting days are evoked in rollicking, shuffling tempos. Romance peeks around the corner comes in the form of Julie Higginbotham’s honeyed harmonies. The lonesome times are in there too—gentle, bluesy lullabies rimmed with harmonica. Hill’s crusty, twangy voice tells every tale with a knowing weariness that hasn’t quite worn through. He knows there are days of both varieties still ahead.

If you like Whiskeytown, Justin Townes Earle, Hayes Carll and their sardonic, folky ilk, you are likely to find Southern comfort in the sounds of Adam Hill, who lives in Nashville but originally hails from Kingston. He spent some time in Knoxville as well, making music in one of our city’s most hailed indie bands of its or any other era, The Satellite Pumps.

Matt Everett -Metro Pulse Nov, 2010
It’s been a long road for Adam Hill. Back in the late ’90s, Hill played guitar and sang for the rowdy local honky-tonk romantics the Satellite Pumps, one of the finest Knoxville bands of the time. When the Pumps broke up, Hill went to New York, recorded some demos, moved to Nashville, recorded some more demos, got dropped from a publishing deal, got divorced, moved into a friend’s basement, and recorded some more demos. None of it went anywhere, and Hill dropped out of the business, though not too many people noticed.
For the last few years, though, he’s been at it again, and he has his first real solo album, Smoke Trees, produced by Nashville pro Steve Mabee, with contributions from members of Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and paid for by Hill himself. It’s a subdued affair—more subdued than the Satellite Pumps, anyway—but a solid effort. Hill’s twangy almost-tenor is surrounded by gentle reverb and acoustic strums, and his songs navigate familiar country-rock territory with energy and imagination. (And there are some great guitar solos.) Hill will be playing songs from the new album as well as old favorites at this homecoming show, which he expects to be the first of many in the next few months. (Matthew Everett)

T-Bone's Prim Cuts Adam Hill Dec 2010
Article here

Satellite Pumps
Rock 'n' Roll Kissin'

At a time when alt.country was the buzz word of the moment, the Satellite Pumps two-stepped in and left ironic pretenders in their own Bakersfield-wannabe dust. While this foursome mined classic country roots, they also understood the way in which country influenced rock 'n' roll; their sound is a charmingly rusty mix of Hank Sr., Paul Westerberg, the Darlin Family, Buddy Holly, and even Motown guitar. Rock 'n' Roll Kissin' from 1997 reeks of the last honky tonk nights at Gryphon's, when the Knoxville hip kids dressed up in their Sunday best to actually cut a rug and shed a tear in their PBR while crooner Adam Hill hiccuped heartache—"Drinking alone, I guess you're gone with your drunk punk boyfriend again/ I don't hear his band on Nashville radio," he sings in "WSM 650"—and pined for crushes he could reveal only in songs like "Goodbye": "The jukebox in my heart might just play you a song/ If you come around and kick it on." And when Hill and bassist/chanteuse Joy O'Shell trade heavy-breathing sighs on the slinky stray cat strut that is "Hands Are For"... well, you'll need a cigarette by the time it's over.
(Shelley Ridenour Metro Pulse)

Hampton Sides

2010-07-19T05:26:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading "Hellhound on His Trail" by Hampton Sides. The title is taken from Robert Johnson's song of the same name. The book deals with James Earl Ray and the worldwide man hunt led by Hoover's FBI to bring him back to Memphis for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. James Earl is playing the Hellhound role. The book's chapters alternate between King a few years after his Civil Rights successes trying to continue his message in an increasingly violent late 60's, James Earl Ray breaking out of Jefferson City's Prison in a bread box and heading to Mexico with dreams of directing porn films, Lyndon Johnson mired in Viet Nam and his Great Society falling apart and J. Edgar Hoover, still at the head of the bureau and seen as a bit of a kook. The narrative starts a few weeks before King is gunned down in Memphis at the Lorrainne Motel and culminates with Ray's capture at Heathrow Airport in London England. Scotland Yard Gumshoe makes good.

The whole book resonated with memories for me and the Epilogue was a good reminder for me that I grew up in a world marked by both men. In 1977 when I was 4, James Earl Ray broke out of Brushy Mountain. Reading names like Governor Ray Blanton and remembering hiking trips to Frozen Head State Park and always when we passed Brushy Mountain, there was the mention that James Earl Ray was serving life there. The world that JER traverses is strong in my memory. I can smell White Rain hairspray and cigarettes. I can see snuff cans and hair creem. I can hear the dusty shuffle of my shoes on linoleum floors. Old late 60’s cars with their plastic leather seats. My great uncle firing off broken down shot guns at tin cans. Dirt roads gravel overflowing onto asphalt. Ghosts made of dust billowing in a car's wake. I was born 5 years later. I spent summers in North GA and Eastern KY where people's mention of King was usually trouble maker or communist. Then of course there was the cult of personality reverence thrown on him too. When I was 10, about 15 years after the crime, I wasn't aware of how fresh it must have been in the minds of the people around me and the poor white south and the veil placed on it as a means of control. Some would tell you poor whites were turned on poor blacks by the rich to keep control and that it was by design. A big part of me just thinks it was the evil in human nature, to want to feel like your better than someone.

I picked this book up because earlier this year I had finished "Bloods a Rover", James Ellroy's final installment of his 1960's tour de violence starting with JFK's assasination and ended with a ficticious offing of Hooever. Of course Ellroy's book is fiction but it's constructed upon the myriad of conspiracy theories born from the tri assassinations of the 60's; JFK, MLK and Bobby K. I was never aware until then, but shouldn't have been surprised that there was a great deal of controversy surrounding King's murder. Hampton Sides book makes a passing mention of Lloyd Jowers, the greasy spoon owner whose restaurant's alley faced the Lorrainne and witnesses claim a plan was hatched on the tables of the dive. He doesn't touch the stories of U.S. Army Intelligence on the roof of the Memphis fire dept, the film they shot or the memphis public works cutting all the grass in the lot across from the Lorainne the morning after the shooting. Elrroys' tale was nail biting and left you feeling like the car was on two wheels. The odd thing is that Hampton Sides work has very much the same effect. One seems fantastic and layered, the other seems mundane but brutal. For some reason I always figure the less exciting is probably the case because the truth always lacks something. The truth is stranger than fiction? Maybe. The danger is in thinking there is no truth, someone pulled the trigger, but the why and how may be lost to a myriad of memories.

Apparently dance lessons are what did James Earl in. That and bartending school. You read that right. Ray was one enterprising screw up. You have to read this book just for the part where he swears up and down that he's not James Earl Ray and then asks to call his brother Jerry Ray. Yes you read that right too. Jesse Jackson appears in the book a-lot. His self aggrandizing and habits of hyperbole found their birth in King's assassination. Fitting I guess, I'm sure it was a profoundly earth shattering day for him. It's these little stories that Sides gleamed from newspapers and interviews, biographies and tomes that make this book great. Once he had culled them, he distilled them into a terse yet colorful prose. It reads part crime novel part southern gothic tale of murder, which for my money is a ride worth taking.

Smoke Trees is the name of the album

2010-07-18T08:12:00.001-07:00

So for the last 4-5 years I regaled you with stories of every mix tape I had in highschool, my thoughts on movies, playing basketball and running but mostly playing rock n roll and writing songs in these days of American Idol.

Statistically I noticed I wrote a-lot in 07-08. I had a-lot on my mind. As I got more into my record and writing it that dropped off. I had less to say and the blog in the last few months has felt more like a chore and a distraction. I am well aware as an artist you have a limited window to catch people. Me talking about tacos and basketball isn't going to sell more records. I'd rather concentrate my time on writing songs and twitter serves the purpose of "Adam really likes drinking tea today."Besides, I have to book shows, manage myself, etc. There just isn't time in the day.

The whole blog has been archived so it's not all deleted it's just not floating around in cyber space. Reading back some of it felt like a diary or a vent, hence part of adamhillrocks was a joke or metaphor, I was no longer making music at the time but wanted to voice my frustrations with things so I was "ranting" and "rocking". I've felt uneasy for a year or so about a-lot of the "ranting" I've had on this blog. None if it I would take back but it's way too much navel gazing for public consumption.

I also have a record called Smoke Trees and am going to work hard at making a name for myself as a songwriter.
Here is the record. Also adamhill.bandcamp.com the link is at the top of the page. Or the link below will lead you to cdbaby.

I woke up One Morning In May

2010-07-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

Found on Anthology of American Folk Music- Set Three: Songs; Disc One; Track Four: "I Woke Up One Morning In May" performed by Didier Hébert. "Vocal solo with guitar." Recorded in New Orleans on December 10, 1929. Original issue Columbia 40517F (111390).
Didier Herbert left nothing but one piece of wax to his name. No deathdate, No birthdate. No wife we know. No child we know. We do know, he was in Louisianna, New Orleans to be exact, in December of 1929 for a recording session with Columbia Records. It wasn't even his session, to be exact he was a sideman for Dewey Segura. Dewey was famous as 1929 goes. He had recorded a regional hit called "A Mosquito Ate Up My Sweatheart." According to the liner notes of American Anthology of Folk Music Didier met Dewey at a party and asked if he could come along to his session in New Orleans. Maybe this melody for this piece of wax were getting to was burning a hole in his pocket.
The guitar moves, and it sounds like his hand weighs a hundred pounds but it kisses the strings subtly as the chord turns from light to dark but never completely changing. I can smell dirt in a light rain from an open window. The drapes are caught in a dance. Then his voice comes and it’s in French but I swear I can understand him. It was 15 days before Christmas and a month or so since Black Tuesday. This melody with so much ache and meanign that is too much for it's signer, who either has a voice of the last century that offends our ears, or is doing something local and clutural and enigmatic and specific to cajun and creole culture or he's drunk. but this melody this melody that could cut the fabric takes me somewhere.
It’s early, it’s cold and warm. It’s wet with dew in the grass. I can hear birds. I can smell wet dirt.One last fact, despite no story, no photos and no history the books tell you Didier was blind and perhaps this is why this song to me is like a recorded dream. I've never been to New Orleans. If I close my eyes I imagine a place that is probably nothing like the reality. Much of that imagination is from this song. I see an old boarding house with long halls that are like tunnels to tall windows. Wainscoating down the hall and in the room. High ceilings and broken chandaliers. Water basin with a pitcher made of porcelin. Spanish Moss hanging in the weeping willows like eyelet.

"One Morning in May" was played during Dewey Segura's session where he was accompianed by Didier for "Today Rosalia" and "Far Away from Home Blues" where he is accompanied by one Didier Hebert. Dewey was a bootlegger. They met at a party. Was Didier a customer? Did he get paid in hooch or did he never touch the stuff? For this breathaking dream like piece of light did he get paid in bathtub gin? Did Dewey lead him in or did he use a cane. He could not see slivers of moonlight through his cupped hands as he washed his face in a basin looking out the window this December eve in New Orleans.

When I was in my early 20’s I had a crush on Cleoma Beraux Falcon. I used to wonder. Did she meet Jimmie Rodgerds. Did She meet Dewey. Was Didier around. Did he smell her perfume? Did it grab him around the heart when she sang? Some tempting mixture of sandlewood and lavander?
Dewey Segura.
Didier.

Stringbean

2010-06-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

They drove. The road made itself from gravel smoke. Ghosts billowed in the headlights. Tree limbs framed the night.

Then, the road turned as if swollen and knotty like an old tree, twisting into the side of the mountain like a cork screw. This went on as they held onto the wheel and the dashboard until finally it let out into a valley and there was the shack. The shack filled with money. The damn walls were wallpapered with cash. The mattress was damn full of money. The well out back was full to the brim with coins. The animals couldn't get under the house because poke sacks full of money were there. The chimney was burning money. The roof shingles were made of money. At least that's what he'd heard.

So the show was on. The Grand Ole Opry was on right now and we could hear that ruckus. We knew right where he was and we knew we was in his house a tearing up the floor boards looking for buckets of cash.

He went off ten minutes ago he said. No it was twenty. No it was just a moment ago and we still haven't cut up all the box springs. And the door opened and I saw all seven foot tall of him brandishing a pistol right at us and we unloaded on Stringbean. The door swung open and light from inside cut the darkness of the yard and showed the white bone underbelly of the grass in the yard that cradled the gravel driveway, where at the end Estelle was standing by the car frozen. She started to run as my feet hit the front porch shaking the planks of wood making the sound like a drum roll. I lept into the yard and drew down on her and shot her and she bust like an apple.

Lester Polfus

2009-08-13T10:11:00.001-07:00

Les Paul was born Lester William Polfus, in Waukseha, Wis., on June 9, 1915. He began his career as a musician, billing himself as Red Hot Red or Rhubarb Red. -wikipedia,

Red Hot Red. I wonder if Mary called him that. Mary his sweet. His angel of sound. His choir of pop in one voice. Smoking cigarettes never roughed the edges of her croon. She dumped him though. Or he dumped her. She died. He lived on till today and kicked the amp at 94.
When I was a kid my father in heaven in His wisdom allowed my father here on earth to buy me a Les Paul when I was 16 without the benefit of a part time job washing cars, washing dishes, windows or anything of the like. This is not a Les Paul with bells or whistles. This is the lower middle class LP if there ever was one. No pearl frets, no scalloped body, no pick guard. But yet it is a Les Paul. A Les Paul XR-2 Model to be exact. This allowed me to live out my Jimmy Page fantasies. The Hammer of the Gods was no doubt a Les Paul. Plugged into my Crate Amp this made an awful shriek unto the world. I had started on a Kay with an action so high playing it was a Herculean feat. I had bought a Fender Music Master from a friend. This held me for a while. But then the Les Paul became this symbol. This vision of rock. We bought at it Lynn's Guitars in Knoxville. What's that old saying "Don't go looking for it, it's not there now?" Well that's the truth. I scrawled Orange Crush on the case with a oil marker. I in foolish youth painted in white on the head stock "Westerberg" after the words "Les Paul" customizing somehow a Gibson made just for my 16 year old punk rock hero of The Replacements. I've since scrapped this off. Not because I don't love Paul but because I don't need any damn help. There are twin lightning bolts on the case that glow in the dark. They are reflective. I am sure they were put on there with glee. I wore this axe out all through highschool. My friend Jason and I made a record every weekend. This guitar was the axe. There were so many tones in the variations of the tone and switches. I felt cool with it too. When I was 18 my father again in wisdom bought me a 4 track recorder. I used this and subsequent 4 track recorders over the next decade and 1/2 like a drug. Between the Les Paul and the 4 track I have probably spent more of my life with these 2 things than anything else. Except maybe pants. So it's astounding that Les Paul invented both. I was always amazed at the tough guy bravado twixt artistry that moved him to have his arm set in the guitar position after having it broken in a car wreck.

When I got to college I dove into the music of the 50's. Really though I already had some Hank Williams and a smattering of 50's rock n roll and other weirdness thanks to Nick Tosches and the wrong crowd. In my teens I had I fell into the world of my Mother's 45s. Connie Francis, Johnny Ray, Nat King Cole, Brenda Lee. The list goes on. In my earky 20's I lived in Knoxville and delivered Wicker furniture for a living. I listened to The Q in the van. The Q was a radio station with smooth as silk DJs that sounded like they were stuck in a bunker playing nothing but 30-60's oldies with a pop lean. Vaughan Monroe to Neil Diamond. Somewhere I picked up a few Les Paul and Mary Ford records. These were magic. The discoveries all run together.

When I lived in New York I kept meaning to go see him play. He played every Tuesday night or something like that at some club near Lincoln Center. Anyways Les. Salute.
One of my favorite guitar solos of all time by any player is found here.

Why Do You Write Songs? Stuck in the Tower of Song with me. Lucky you.

2009-06-20T18:43:00.001-07:00

To quote Jay-Z, these are just my thoughts.
This was the question posed at last week's songwriter's meeting at church. I took a-lot of notes. I never offered up any of my reasons. I don't want to seem like I'm being contrary or whatever. But I am contrary. Maybe I am being passively contrary. I lack tact sometimes. I'm not good at conveying what I mean when it comes to song writing without being mean spirited. I am opinionated when it comes to writing. I like to let my songs do the talking. Maybe it's not something I could talk about to a crowd. But I could write you this note. I hate telephones. I don't like the immediacy, the on the spot shot down. I liked letters. I like e-mail. So here I'll tell you about song writing. This is a hard question to answer in Nashville where everyone is a songwriter. The whole place sort of smacks you in the face about it, all the time. It haunts me. I know every time I drive past Studio B Elvis spit somewhere on that street. Waiting, outside looking up at the moon.

So why do I write songs?
Free beer. In other cities you get free beer when you play a show. We used to get paid in pitchers.
It's a high. When the drum machine is going and I have my palm punching down on the strings and I'm reading over some lyrics I wrote, twisting them and letting them fall, it's a high. When you find that hook that was laying there the way the words got plastered to the page. When the groove clicks. When you imagine it with a record pop at the start and then boom the song rolls. When you imagine playing it live for the first time. That's a high. This is still true.

Songs are my Morse Code. I always hate to tell anyone, anything. So I put it into songs. I used to ask for things in Morse Code as a kid. I kept doing it with songs. I had a crush on a girl. I'd tell her in a song. I was mad at someone for something they did. I'd tell them in a song. Every thing that was stuck in my throat and my chest dying to get off I put into a song. I never put it across clear either. I took bits and pieces and scrambled it all up. I hid it in boxes and cloaks. Songs were the only window. I was always too nervous to be straight forward. Then I started going to church and a whole new way of looking at it all came to me. Life changed. Around 33.

I couldn't help it. When I was in school I wrote songs acting like I was taking notes. When I had jobs I carried around a scrap piece of paper. When I worked retail I wrote on register tape. When I drove I wrote on my steering wheel on receipts. At UTK I'd walk half way to school and get an idea and sit down and write by the train tracks. I wrote on any thing I could get my hands on. I'd call my answering machine with a line. I wrote on the subway in NYC. All this stopped around 33.
I wrote songs to get girls. I wrote songs to get approval. To scream all the things I sat on.
I wrote songs because I grew up lower middle class and I wanted to be as rich as Donald Trump.
I wanted to be on TV in a suit and sunglasses.
Good songs are below the belt. A song has to have body and move.
Songs from just the head or the heart are crap. I don't care if the song came from a hard place and meant a-lot to you, if it's not good it's not good.

Songs are in the air, the guitar is like a radio antennae.
A line is good if it tastes good in your mouth, if it makes your jaw tingle. It tastes like copper from tears.
I remind myself that A.P. Carter had to be a salesman most of his life.
When I have a good song down I feel for one moment that I cheat death. That I nailed down the wind. That I put a name on some nameless emotion. That somehow I wrapped up a bunch of feathers into a pillow and lay my head to sleep. Then the pillow cuts open again and the feathers are everywhere and elusive like all those emotions between fear and love and hate. All those grey ones. Each feather a feeling.
I don't feel like me if I am not writing songs.
Writing is an obsessive compulsive habit. I used to keep a diary. I used to write poems. I still write songs. I used to write short stories. I blog. I Facebook Update. I am obsessed with writing about my experience in the world.

Writing I am tight as a glove, delivery wise I am throw it at the wall and see what sticks. I don't think you can have an exact idea of what you want. There is no point in that. I love to play guitar. I feel absolute joy playing rhythym electric guitar.
I come from mountains and moonshine. Fair or not I think this gives me some sort of edge. I think the mountains are a world of the blues. My eyes are even blue. I can't tell you anymore.
I started writing as a kid to kick everyone in the teeth that thought they were cooler than me. To kick the guy in the teeth that had the girl I wanted. I wrote to snub my nose at people. Revenge was a stone cold motivator for songwriting for years. I wanted to get rich writing songs and then go Howard Hughes. Tell the world to fly up. I wanted to be on the cover of a magazine smirking. Until about 33.

I have around 50 or so good songs. I don't consider myself an artist or a songwriter. I don't make money at it and I am not known as one. I'm a cubicle dwelling business man and I do a good job. This is who I am. This is not entirely true. Since 33 I have come to see I am a songwriter in spite of the world.
Songwriting feels like beating something. I write to be competitive. I want to write songs where everyone goes man the guy that went before him blew and that no one wants to go after me. That was a big motivator for me. I try not to feel this way anymore because it's not right or nice or realistic. But I still get itchy and feisty sometimes. I want to be the best. I realize now that there is no way to be the best. I think there can be standards of what excellence is but it is still ultimately opinion for songs. I'll take prayer. Might help. Remember this is song writing AA.

Since I turned down a record deal at 23 I will never have closure on what I could have done with my talent. I think I feel like Jeremy D on this.
Songwriting is rarely rewarding. It's like tylenol for a headache. It makes this longing go away for a moment. It's like hate. It's like feeding a wild animal. It's something you do to beat something else away. It's like a fight to the death. It's like disappearing and letting something else take your place. This has not changed.
I didn't grow up in church. I can't sing harmony. I don't read the Bible and think of songs. But I have believed since I can remember. Bring it like Rosetta Tharp or Washington Phillips or stay home. I like old Gospel. I like The Dixie Hummingbirds. But I have learned that it's about the experience and not the sound. So I find some joy now even in the pop. I always believed but never knew Jesus until I was about 33. Oddly the age he died. In my twenties I liked God because it was a good way to hate hippies. I didn't get Jesus until later. I guess I was sort of Old Testament Fire and Brimstone. I still have a tough time believing God really wants a relationship with us and cares about us but I feel it's true. Since realizing this I have climbed higher.

I went to a Baptist School. I got in trouble for singing "Centerfold" some J.Geils Band take on The Stones. I got in trouble for singing "I Love Rock n Roll" with a girl on the swings. I got in trouble for going "LALA LA LA" in music class. Looking back I can see where this was heading. I can't sing harmony. I don't know how to read music. I don't know anything about it. I was in trouble. Then I got sent to Public School and I was Public Nerd #1.
Country writing was put up on a pedastool by my family. Dolly. Hank. Cash. Patsy. The Grand Ole Opry was like a pantheon of saints. My Great Uncle sang Ernest Tubb.
Life is like a huge overwhelming noise twisting my heart until I can place it into boxes called songs.
I like choral music when I dream of Civil War Soldiers marching to their death. Otherwise it bores me. I like "Beautiful Dreamer" by The Robert Shaw Chorale.
Let's stop before I give too much away.

All that doesn't really matter now. A-lot of that isn't how I feel now.
Now I write to capture some moment, to distill my life. To work on this passion even though I have no time. I work a job, I'm a family man. I make ends meet. I want to try and make something that goes above what I've done. To connect. To dig deeper. To push away all the mean motivations and try to write not to be a rock star, or get paid but for the love of it. For once. For nothing but the love of it.

I have about 5 songs together for something new. I need to focus on writing more.

Elmore James

2009-06-02T05:46:00.000-07:00

This originally appeared with Plugin Music. I used to write a bit for them. I continually toy with the idea of writing short stories about 1860-1930 era musicians that there is little info on. Basically because you can take a few notions and let your imagination run the show. Below is one I wrote on Elmore James. I thought I'd posted it here but guess not-

Elmore James had three heart attacks. Either he ate a-lot of cheeseburgers or the guitar riff he laid down on “Dust My Broom” took his ass out. But let’s “Begin the Beguine”. Elmore first hit the bottle in Richland, Mississippi though he probably just sucked on a rag being born into the dirt floor of dirt poor. As a young man Elmore played the juke joints hanging around none other than Robert Johnson, the King of Delta Blues. What fascination Mississippi held was not so strong that before WWII was over he took a trip with the US Navy to Guam but since he’s not know as Sergeant Elmore James I’ll have to guess this didn’t work out. A-fore long Elmore was back in Mississippi and eventually Chicago playing side course to main dishes like Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson. Elmore cut his teeth, honed his chops, he marinated. Elmore had the day job blues too, he worked as a radio repairman, in his spare time he hotwired and pimped his amps to fuel them with the white hot heat of distortion. Not heavy metal distortion but the paid price distortion, the holes in the cones distortion, the handful of BBQ sauce distortion that makes the pulse in your wrist beat. It was with “Dust My Broom” that he took the raw materials Robert Johnson left, pulled them through his amp and welded them to the atomic age with a full throttle throw down of fury that made Elmore th’ man. Elmore’s slide playing is like a hand going up a skirt. The bottleneck shaking up along the strings toward the lipstick tube, pulling spark and flame out of the guitar, is like opening the oven door, even on my little boom box. That’s just how the man played. Elmore sings like the cops are at the door. Elmore sings like he’s going down. Elmore sings like he needs therapy, like he needs relaxers. Lucky for the man spinning wax he got neither. From “Look on Yonder Wall” to “12 Year Old Boy” the urgency he lays down is enough to make you book a transatlantic flight just to kiss someone goodbye. For all this cold hard blues Elmore was backed by The Broomdusters, a band that could deliver on piano, bass and drums with maximum volume. They had volume knobs for rings.
Enough about the passion let’s talk fatalism and paranoia, let’s talk unrequited love. In “Done Somebody Wrong” Elmore’s band pounds out the beat and then Elmore cuts in like a saw made of lightning. The sense of terror and paranoia in his voice is heart attack serious, the breaks on the slide guitar are a blood transfusion. “My momma told me the end would come, but I wanted to have some fun.” He doesn’t extol, he pleads. In “The Twelve Year Old Boy” He starts it off ”I feel bad I feel terrible.” Why say more? By the time the guitar solo beats the door down it’s so full of chaotic energy it’s like a barn full of bees. They say Dante wrote his romantic works based on seeing Beatrice on the street once. Elmore knows of what Dante speaks. Maybe they were kin over the swath of centuries. Elmore’s woman shakes hands with every man she meets, when he sees her out walking in the street. He saw her out late last Saturday night, he told his baby everything was alright. His baby ain’t buying it. Elmore and Dante sit watching the girl go by. Not watching “the girls go by” like Dino but “the girl” go by. The one. The heartbreaker, the one that stirred up his heart to three heart attacks. It’s that and life and Elmore died in 1963.

7 Signs.

2008-01-02T16:42:00.000-08:00

The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, TN debuted Colonel J.D. Wilke's first foray into film "Seven Signs" on December, 30th 2007. The film is JD's rebuttal or companion piece to "The Wrong Eyed Jesus". JD's blog from when the film began production is quoted below.

7 Signs Brief

Possessed by a vision similar to that of the tent-show evangelists down in Dixie, Colonel J.D. Wilkes (the charismatic frontman and songwriter for the Legendary Shack*Shakers) sets off with a camera crew to prove that the older, weirder South still exists in all of its eerie, time-worn, & gothic glory.

Along the way, he walks the backroads of Appalachia, nailing up seven signs, each one representing a different apocalyptic theme...themes which only help to reenforce the awesome thrill and dread that lie at the heart of our own "Christ-Haunted" southern heritage.

Inspired by movies such as "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus" and "Dancin' Outlaw, the story of Jesco White", Colonel J.D.'s "Seven Signs of the Apocalyptic South" has officially begun shooting.

Watching the film I realized again that the south is many things to many people. The south has it's own literature. The south has jazz, blues, country and rock n roll. The south has more nameless notions than any other patch of America. So many questions led to a mystifying and deep culture. By going from the wealthiest to the poorest part of the country during the Civil War, being the defeated nation within a super power, the stain and memory of slavery, taking a swig from chivalry, revival and populism in the 1800's, breaking in two with civil rights there is plenty of history. The span from the moonshine gypsies of Appalachia to the Creole culture of NOLA gives this part of the country some dizzying step past the melting pot of the north east. In "Seven Signs" the music, religion, people and mythology of each are entertwined. I realized while watching SS that this probably looks different to me than most of the country, not only am I southern, though not Plantation Southern but Appalachian, I am also a Christian and I am a musician as well. Remembering that the south is many things to everyone it doesn't take long to realize that "Seven Signs" is definitely JD Wilke's vision of the south, a gothic trip from Carnival Canries to High Lonesome Churches and snake handling Preachers. And I dig that. If you ever wonder why all the songs on CMTV are crap it's because they have 5 writers. You have to have a vision.

JD's south is not one many southerners would recognize in 2008. The encroaching shopping mall, southern living magazine, gentile become blandtile, watched over by as one friend put it "6 flags over Jesus" churches-is what your average southern citizen takes as the south. Chain restaurants serving up heaping piles of fried food, SUVs, friday night football and conservatism at it's worst (I can say this, I am conservative), manicured Mc Mansions in perfect suburbs is what much of the south is right at home being. I'm talking Cool Springs for those in the Nashville area or the new Providence development in Mount Juliet if you need examples. JD's argument is that this is not the real south. The south now looks more and more like the north. It seems to really get his goat. To combat the status quo south that is growing around us and to combat the condescending museum piece view of "Wrong Eyed Jesus" JD gives us outlandish, marginalized, freakish and unusual people along with a few good ole boys and musicians. Some of which are all three. Circus performers and pshcyos right along side old timey preachers and blacksmiths. I'm not sure if he means these are true southers b/c there are so many kinds of southerners and I'm not sure what a "true southerner" would be but the film is a great example of the south's exoticness. He proves in spades that the south of Faulkner and Finster is still under the kudzu.
But I turn again to look at the film and I am reminded that this may be the south to aficiondos of bluegrass, street preachers and PBR but I am well aware my wife comes from middle class, indoor plumbing, fried chicken, iced tea and choir practice at church south. No music and very stiff upper lip church. Keeping up appearances south but down home and friendly. None of the world of the film slightly registers to her. She grew up outside Memphis and doesn't really know who Carl Perkins is. Odd to me, criminal almost, but not unlike the majority of people I work with, go to church with and know outside of musicians. The south has shaken off her past, we live in a Britney, U2 or rap world (all three either southern or influenced by). Me? I come from moonshine. Shot guns under the bed, The Last Supper on the wall. But I like art and cooking. I like Thai and subway rides. I don't fit in this film's world, though many relatives certainly would. I understand how the past has been left, it sounds old if you are uninitiated. The music sounds creaky. But deep down I see something I know. I think he might be right. I think it might be a brick through a Home Depot window. But even I am not sure this is to romanticize.

The film is a sort of meet and greet to different friends or acquantinces of JD's. First that I remember was a blacksmith. I wish I'd taken notes so I had his name. He took offense that so many of our generation in the south think they have to throw off what their parents did. Iconoclastic he calls them. From me he gets a big "A-Men". I think this is most true of religion in our generation in the south. There are about 4 types of people in the south as far as religion. The ones who do just like their folks. The ones who a part of the new Jesus Movement, charismatic, Relevant magazine reading church, go to Franklin if you don't know what I mean. There are the ones who are what I call Jesus Whiskey Christians (I'll get to this later) and the "educated". The ones who are smart and have been to college and have read "A Hero With 100 Faces." These children of the south who much like they will not listen to country they are "too smart" and "too sophisticated" for God. They are the children of the post 60’s generation disaffected with Christianity and embracing modernism and post modernism. But in the south this disaffection is made deeper by tradition, and culture. Not that Catholicism is not entrenched in the north east---but the south’s still the Bible belt and so the defaction is greater. It’s more, it's a rebellion of the spirit and the land aches because of it? Not only does the rest of the country look down on the south for it's customs it's own "intellectual" children do as well. This lack of love from the current children of the south is the real lament for the blacksmith. I think this is pretty sad too.

The blacksmith relates the trade's superstition to ring the hammer 3 times when entering the shop to scare the devil off and three times when you return to make sure he's gone. Maybe all of 30 something he comes off like a wise old mountain man bemused by the shopping mall culture that so many of our time embrace. When asked "Why do you think the south is the greatest place on the earth?" He says, "Have you seen the rest of the world?" The south's children want to sweep the past under the rug. It strikes me as odd that girls in Franklin talk more and more like Valley Girls. Maybe they are-they're California parents moved here for Nissan. It's as if they cannot smell the gun powder from the battle of Franklin, as if they cannot hear men scream as they drive the country roads and clutch what's left of their shoulder as a musket ball blows through it. It's as if they cannot hear the crackle of the WSM tower standing by the road and the ghost voice of Hank Williams. Part of me wants to fire a shotgun over the head of these carpetbaggers. My wife wants to make them friend chicken and roll out the welcome mat. That might be the difference in East Tennessee and West.

JD visits with Scott Biram. Scott's voice sounds like a dog barking through an amp. He pummels the kick drum and flails at the guitar. Did I mention he's a one man band? Scott is a livewire of intensity and drama. Scott espouses the I'm a sinner but God loves me brand of Christianity alive and well in the south today. Alternative country is full of writers using the imagery of the Bible for "authenticity". If it says "Jesus" then it must be a real country song. From the outside bands like The Handsome Family look at gospel as a quaint folklore-this southern turn is as equally perplexing. Most of them go along the lines of Christians are hypocrites and assholes but I believe in God so I made my own church. Scott tells the story of getting kicked out of church at age 7 or so and calls them assholes and says he made his own church. The people at his church were probably assholes. I don't doubt it. So many in the south have been turned off by the judgemental church it's hard to find someone who doesn't have a memory like this. And to break away and make your own way is a very American trait but not really Christian. Christianity, Biblically speaking is about community and accountability and commitment, all things you really can't do in your "own church". They also have the I'm a sinner but God forgives me anyway ramble. This is very true also but misses the point of Christ. He doesn't want you to stay that way. He may love your drunk ass but at some point He wants you to grow. If you want I'm OK Your OK then your probably more Bhuddist than Christian. Besides theologic shortfalls, truth be told these people can write some dynamite songs. They have faith that your average church goer can't even begin to touch because they actually know the depths of drunkeness. The mistake comes from writers who drop Biblical imagery looking for authenticity. The Christians in the movie that aren't musician's are almost hillbilly stereotypes of toothless, screaming, ranting street preaching mad men. Lot's of showmanship and brimstone but not a-lot about God's love. God's desires for us. God's will for us to grow and be delivered, they seem to revel in the purgatory. I know deliverence isn't as exciting. It's not compelling like madness. This comes in focus more with The Pine Hill Haints.

I found the Pine Hill Haint's Jamie Brenner to be the most enjoyable visit in the movie. Like most of the films players to viewers outside the south he is dressed in period costume as if he stepped out of 1956. But for many in the film it is about heritage and identity. They wear the glasses their grandfather's wore to see the same things? Jamie's piece is further proof that the movie is almost about religion as much as anything. Jamie is a preacher and a musician. Jamie gives us a tour of a dog cematery for starters, hitting the gothic hard, then he lays it out, "People hate Christians because they drive big SUVs, take huge tax breaks for their mega churches and will bomb anyone who disagrees with them." The Pine Hill Haint's music is great and passionate. And this reminded me of another thing about the south and music and God. Lot's of the music in this movie is made by Christians but focuses on the devil more, it focuses on the dark and not the light--however the bull crap Christian music that the Christian industry gives us (Matt Redman etc) focuses only on the light. It doesn't give you the whole story. We live in a broken world. We live in sin and weakness. In the south music is so mixed up in this, music is almost religious identity. Coming up roses or hellfire?
I relate to this pull. I understand how compelling the dark is but I also understand that the light is the story. But the light often elminates the drama. For a-lot of artists that are southern and born in the late 60's early 70's I think a confluence is at work, just far enough away from Faulkner and Flannery and having been exposed to these works as part of the cannon in their teens, being the generation after the 60's break with church, being the generation of punk rock and then being attracted to the simplicity and beauty of Hank and The Carters (in turn turned off by the insincere country crap of the day) and thus reconnecting to the church and music it's sincerity. There was a time in the mid 90's that alternative country was going to explode and then nothing happened. After that came the film "Oh Brother Where Art Thou", at the time considered a sign of the genres growth now just evidence that it was hillbilly novelty because since then the genre has floundered and shrivled right along with the rest of the industry. But there exists this generation of songwriters and artists that are southern and struggling with religion and identity. JD proves this as well.

Toward the end of the ride is a Carnival Freakshow. Not really sure this is overtly southern, it always makes me think of burlesque and vaudeville or the circus all of which are New York or Philadelphia born entertainments. But toward the end of the gothic the characters are wild, weird and unusual. Maybe this is New Orleans. We meet other characters along the way Finstereque abandoned homes. Folk artists, fiddlers, traditional musicians and foot washing churches. (Churches in Nashville actually still do this but the more traditional churches probably don't which is to say that's not as exotic as you might think). Again focusing on the Christ haunted landscape and not so much the love and joy aspect of the gospel. Maybe this is another pull of old and new south. Old and New Testament. When I was leaving I dallied behind a couple listening for their take on the film. They thought it was typical that Christian neighbors in one town referred to one of the film's mountain recluse characters as a devil worshipper but that most people would call him just a weirdo. Which is really interesting. I think the old south would call the man a devil worshipper and this new south that we are trying to turn from for an hour would just call him a weirdo. A weirdo is just that, devoid of right and wrong and life and death and spirituality and true evil. These are the things that the old south have no problem looking in the eye. Maybe this new south is just the rest of the modern world, the relativist modern world with no good and evil with a faux Valley Girl hick accent. This is something that the south has that matters more than anything to me, the realization of good and evil. I think this loss is more disturbing than banjos or chicken.

I bought it. I bought it. I really like the movie but maybe I'm cynical but I kept thinking the south is many things to many people and it's all about keeping up appearances. Sure the wealthy side is all about image and country clubs and the big church and how things look. But the "authentic" side is guilty of artifice too. If it doesn't come in vintage clothes and guitars, old time melodies and sentiments to keep up their appearances it's not real. The church is real coming from a toothless hillbilly shouting through a mega phone but a regular guy in jeans and a shirt is just square? So this is about character and identity? The movie spends a-lot of time with fanciful street preachers, charismatic and passionate but dark and foreboding. I know very well there are Christians in the world who dress at the Gap and will speak to you on visions and angels and the Holy Spirit yet without this blessed gritty dirty authenticity, and with teeth too. Authenticity seemed to be the aim. The new south doesn't look cool. It's not got hand painted chitlin con carne signs. There is no character. There is no identity, it's plastic. I get this. When I see a blues band I don't want to see tie-dye. I want pin stripe suits. But a-lot of this romance is poverty, a lack of education and mental illness and I have a tough time buying that as something the south has lost. I'm a child of Appalachia but I don't mind Green Hills. I don't care about these things. It's hard not to watch this film and not think about identity and realize that my identity is more a husband and a father and a Christian and not so much a southerner. I think everyone in the film is as real as the day is long but I don't feel that everyone that is not reading Foxfire is a turn coat. Maybe these things just don't matter to me. Another big piece missing is I have not seen "Wrong Eyed Jesus". Something tells me my blood would boil. Something tells me I would be ranting and screaming sawing my kitchen table in two. I would be reading Foxfire every night.
Maybe I have lost something. Maybe I have become bland. Maybe I don't dwell on the dark as much as I should? Maybe I am turning the mountains away in my mind. Pouring the moonshine down the drain. I can hear Doc Boggs. I think when I went to Gettysburg a few months ago I walked on the field and sang "Dixie" but then I sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." I know this is always with me.

I get in the car and I leave the movie and I drive home through the new south by Vanderbilt University and I know that there are things that are lost. I know there are notions, romantic and haunted. Maybe I miss that. What would I be to shout about Jesus from a car covered in Bible verses but I am staid and waiting in my normalcy, reading my Bible in safe privacy. I can see where these banjos once played. I can let the words of the Bible roll off my lips and I can feel that pound. I know where they are coming from. It's the real that we are all looking for to give identity, the say this is what I am, this is where I am from. JD gave us a photo album of our south, still there, under the kudzu beyond image and in reality.

It's a few nights later and I watch the BCS championship game and I scream bloody murder. I gesticulate at the television in violent sweeping strokes for LSU of the southern conference to beat and pummel Ohio. Because LSU is from the south.

Bobby Gentry

2007-04-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

"And poof she's gone" almost like Kaiser Soze in the end of "The Usual Suspects" Bobby Gentry is an apparition. Did she really walk the earth during the summer of love? Did she walk among men and women and sing like a cat on a hot tin roof in heat? There are a handfull of records and television shows that say she did. But she is gone. I've heard so many stories and notions and I fear to type any of them. She, she whose name rolls off the tongue. She who sounds like a small town sheriff. She who looks like a bombshell.

Bobby and I go way back. I'll get to that later. First off, three years ago I lived in a friends basement for a while. I was living a country song. My house was for sale , my wife had left but I decided against crawling into Jack Danielsville. OK so I was living half a country song. I moved to Brentwood. Swiming pools, movie stars. I chilled out. I watched a-lot of television. I lifted weights. I strummed my guitar. I did up the tunes in my notebook on a 4 track. I ate frozen pizzas. The basement came with a bed and a bathroom. On the wall my friend placed a picture of Bobby Gentry. To inspire toward a future of greener pictures with the ladies or to inspire songs or just to inspire, I don't know. It worked on all levels. There she was, her exotic features, Puerto Rican maybe? Spanish? and exotic is a cliche but if you saw her that's just what you'd say. Oh and we do go way back, my Dad played her records when I was a kid and to this day any buxom woman with brown eyes and olive skin can knock me down. So there I was starting all over and here she was, in this photo, her raven hair and raven is a cliche but if you saw her hair that's just what you'd say it was, leaning on a piano poking out that pre J-Lo butt like it was sunshine.

The music is so dirty and southern you'd think they were thinking of her when Goodie Mob wrote"Dirty South." It's classy like Sinatra, it's big like Elvis, it's so damn cool and weird and bitchy. She sounds overtly aware of her sexuality and in a very post 60's way. She sounds modern. I can hear her singing "It's hard out here on a pimp." I can't explain it to you. Like they say, "If you've been then you know." The music is dirty soul with raw horns, strings and funk and on top of it all her voice. I'd pay Greg Dulli twenty bucks to cover "Slow Cookin'" and I think he'd give me money back and buy me a drink.

Bobby learned herself the banjo and bass while going to elementary school in Greenwood, Mississippi. She walked home on dirt roads? She rode the bus? Did she like English class? I bet she did. I bet she rocked the math teachers world. This was in the 1950's, civil rights and the blazing south was upside down on fire. She was part Portuguese so you know and moved to her Mom's crib in California to graduate High School in Palm Springs. Between jokes Bob Hope saw her some how somewhere and told her to play the country clubs. The troops thank you Bob. Was it vodka, was it gin? Were there Palm Trees and Hollywood and sand in her shoes? Every girl has to make ends meet and Bobby made herself a Las Vegas showgirl for a spell until she moved to LA and worked on a philosophy degree. Images of a show girl carrying Plato abound. Mascara and mirrors twixt treatise and tome. She got bored with this. She moved on. She was a file clerk by day and played the clubs at night. I can see her filing with long french nails, white tips like stars sparkling against her raven hair. She then went to the LA Conservatory of Music to work on composition. I take all this in and I begin to think Wikipedia made this stuff up? She worked on a fishing boat, she ran guns, she taught Sunday school. I'm making these up now. I sort of think Wikipedia is pulling my leg. So let's believe she was a show girl getting a philosophy degree in LA in the summer of love and then she opened her mouth and out came that sound. Like Palm Trees brushing the stucco roof slow in the wind, like water pouring out of the sky, like thunder over a charcoal black parking lot. She sang. Men's hearts stopped and started.

Whatever happened to Bobby it all happened in 1967. The summer of love was on. Hippies were on the cover of Time, the streets were full, Vietnam was on TV and her song "Mississippi Delta" was the Capitol Records A-Side. Holy Shit is the only thing you can say. It's like Slim Harpo came up on Linda Lindelll with the nasiest funk of Memphis soul stew you ever heard and made out with the alphabet. SIde-B was a demo with strings. "Ode to Billy Joe" was taken from Bobby's demo by Capitol and strings were added for flavor and fullness as if to make this tale of death and secrets ready for radio. Even show girls with Philosphy degrees need perfume. Disc Jockeys flipped the record and their lids over this joint and that year the Grammys piled up. Best Vocal, Best New Artist. Best Whatever. The Grammys mattered no more then than they do now. She put out a few records, she was number 6 on the chart in 1969 with Glenn Campbell. All this from a bedroom demo with strings, with a story shrouded in vague despcriptions. It was like Faulkner in a pop song. The Mississippi Delta daring the country to look upon her child, to look in the face of the old south.

She wrote "Fancy" and it hit 30 something on the chart and stopped. Years later as mediocrity reigned over all music Reba McIntire turned the gold spun from beauty back into plain rags in a feat of reverse alchemy. Bobby was becoming an underground star back before it was cool. Bobby was big in England, Big in Japan. Big everywhere but the US of A didn't get it. Capitol dropped her. She did Vegas, she wrote, performed, choreographed and arranged. She got bored. She had a television show The Bobbie Gentry Happiness Hour. Time is closing and this all happens fast a movie of "Ode to Billy Joe" came out coming off like a Tennessee Williams take on the enigmatic tale making suicide in the movie from homosexual repression. She rerecorded the song, it stayed in the low 40's-lightning doesn't strike twice, especially for demos with strings. Whatever magic was there the first time stayed there in the blessed first time. The movie moved it and made 1.1 million, it took the bank. Max Baer Jr. produced it. He was the son of boxing ledgend Max Baer. Max the senoir was the boxer who killed a man and had nightmares for life, the man who lost to James Braddock to make the Cinderella Man. Did Bobby feel like a down and out boxer, did she feel against the ropes or was she just sick and tired of the public, the slow slow public. Maybe they talked about boxing, maybe she thought about retiring with her cut of the 1.1 million. She tried prodcuing and got bored. She tried behind the scene and she got bored. She had one last single "He Did me Wrong But He Did it Right" and she flew. I can't find the song. It's long gone. Not everything she sang was magic. Some was bad Beatles, some was bad hippie posturing, some was sappy folk. This song sounds like none of the above. This song sounds like Lil' Kim screaming over some horns and a big bass drum. Perhaps I imagine too much. She was on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1978 for Christmas, then she was gone. Maybe Ed McMahon slipped her the winning check? Merry Christmas. What did she do for New Years? Was there a resolution? Was it a limosine she rode away in? Did she get married to a man who wanted her to only sing for him? Did she throw her purse in the Pacific and move to Singapore? There is so little mystery left in this world. If for nothing else Bobby thank you for that. Mystery is the essence of beauty, it's the essence of desire, it's what makes men stay up all night. It's what makes us lean into the unknown searching for completeness. Yes, all these things. Thank you Bobby, thank you for that.