Steve Earle and the latest incarnation of The Dukes: Kelley Looney on bass, Chris Masterson on guitar, Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle & mandolin, Ricky Ray Jackson on pedal steel guitar, and Brad Pemberton on drums and percussion. | photo by Tom Bejgrowicz/
Pat O’B contends that there’s still some good music out there today, the Grammys notwithstanding and despite a preposterously publicized preponderance of primadonnas, poseurs and pissants.
He’s right, of course. As a free-range rumormonger and Avatar of Fake News I lean toward the flamboyant and unsupported statement: “That sucks.” Or as the black marketeer Duffy put it in “The Commitments.”
“I don’t know why you bother. Everything’s shite since Roy Orbison died.”
Duffy got himself head-butted later for acting like a douche during a gig, despite being a patron of the arts, albeit a slightly heavy-handed one. And he certainly had it coming, Roy Orbison fan or no.
So who isn’t shite, and why? Chime in with your hit parade, and don’t sweat it about providing links if you’re not in the mood.
As for me, I’ll note that Steve Earle has a new album coming out next month, a tribute to the legendary Guy Clark, with guest appearances by Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Terry Allen, Jerry Jeff Walker, Mickey Raphael, Shawn Camp, Verlon Thompson and Gary Nicholson.
NPR’s Bob Boilen chatted with Steve earlier in the year. Their chat kicks off with a discussion of the Texas Chili Parlor’s Mad Dog Margaritas and segues into interesting bits like this:
“I’m very thankful that I came along at a time … this period when Bob Dylan had sort of singlehandedly elevated pop music to an art form by the force of lyrics. I really truly believe that this moment when Bob Dylan wants to be John Lennon and John Lennon wants to be Bob Dylan makes rock and roll hard overnight. Otherwise it’s just songs about cars and girls.”
So I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say Steve Earle doesn’t suck. Steve Earle is not shite. Please don’t head-butt me.
I love this maple in the back yard. It always seems to be reaching out for something. Probably the warmer weather toward the southwest.
Here we are again, gathered around the old bloc na Nalloig beneath the freeway, trying to keep both warm and unnoticed by The Authorities, which is not an easy thing in these days of modern times.
We’ve downsized the old solstice tree. The cats are less likely to try climbing this one.
Now “Performance Today” is rocking the house, ’cause that’s how we roll on Christmas.
There are no gifts under the tree. There’s not much room beneath it, for starters. And we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to buy things as we deem them necessary, rather than delaying gratification until Dec. 25. It helps that we really don’t want much.
So instead of littering the floor with wrapping paper we jotted down some notes about organizations in need of financial support. This year we went heavy on animal rescue, free speech, independent journalism, justice, and outfits that help those whose tribulations often go unnoticed because they don’t have free internet, scads of executive time, and a nice big White House from which to make their case.
Happy happy joy joy to thee and thine. May your days be merry and bright. And if you feel like kicking up your heels a bit, give a listen to “The Rebel Jesus,” from The Chieftains and Jackson Browne. I bid you pleasure and I bid you cheer, from a heathen and a pagan on the side of the rebel Jesus.
It’s a maple, not an oak, but it will have to do for now.
“You were just starting to get into your groove,” the dog-walker said apologetically as I yielded the trail, interrupting the run I had just begun.
More of a rut than a groove, I thought. I run this trail pretty much every Monday and Wednesday, and then lift weights afterward. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, I ride. On Fridays, I brood. Especially when the Friday in question happens to be the shortest day of the year, followed by the longest night.
If I ever actually found a groove and was getting into it, I mused, it would probably be something like the groove on an old vinyl LP, spiraling in at 33 1/3 rpm toward the black hole in the center. Stairway to heaven? More like highway to Hell.
Now ruts I know. I had been in an actual rut the day before I encountered the dog-walker, climbing Trail 341 counterclockwise on my second-best Steelman.
Anyone who saw me lurching upward in the 36×28 might have thought me a lost, loopy roadie, Trail 341 being a narrow, serpentine climb, sometimes featuring actual serpents; rocky where it isn’t loose, fenced with cane cholla, with a couple-three blind corners, no passing lanes, and the occasional rut just to keep things interesting.
But I was in the best mental health I could summon in December, especially this December, and as I said, it was my second-best Steelman. Plus I was climbing, not descending, which lets me ease into trouble rather than diving in headlong.
I had been descending Trail 341 when one of these ruts caught me unawares back in July 2017. I was aboard the Voodoo Nakisi, which with its plump Bruce Gordon Rock n’ Roads is ordinarily more than a match for this short, not particularly technical descent.
But my mind had wandered, as it will, and it didn’t wander back until after I had bitten the dust, grabbing a handful of cholla as I went down.
“What the hell are you doing?” my mind asked.
“Oh, shut up,” I replied, yanking spines from my left hand. “This is your fault.”
“What, I told you to yardsale in a rut?” my mind chortled. “I was just trying to get a little work done while you were dicking around. Jeez, I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”
Ever since taking that little digger I’ve ridden Trail 341 as a climb instead of a descent, though the neighborhood Singletrack Sanitation Service has ironed out a few of its nastier wrinkles. It leaves me in something of a metaphorical rut, true, but it’s a problem I don’t need to solve; a nettle I don’t care to grasp.
Especially in December, when there’s never enough sun to really warm your bones, and what there is of it hangs low in the sky, either blinding you to the path or cloaking it in shadows.
My rides and temper shorten with the days. I get up in the dark and by the time I‘ve gotten a handle on current events — what has the Arsehole-in-Chief managed to shit on today? — it’s dark again and time to go back to bed. This makes for unsettling dreams.
Dreams. The ancient Celts saw the solstices as battles between twin kings, Oak vs. Holly, warmth and light pitted against cold and dark.
Neither king is ever truly vanquished. The Holly King is ascendant as the old year wanes, but as the new year approaches the Oak King reclaims the throne.
It was a murky morning as this year’s winter solstice came to Newgrange, and the Oak King did not make an appearance. But this doesn’t mean that the Holly King has finally triumphed. The struggle continues.
And I recall another Irish legend, who once said: “We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.”
Don’t curse the darkness. Light a candle. Grasp the nettle.
• Editor’s note: I had planned to make this an episode of Radio Free Dogpatch, but various ruts kept tripping me up. At least you can give a listen to the music I had in mind for the background — “King Holly, King Oak,” from Johnny Cunningham via “Celtic Christmas,” a Windham Hill sampler I’d forgotten I owned. And happy solstice to you.
Hm, we seem to be on something of an Irish-music kick here.
They’re sailing in the other direction these days, at least some of them. Zio Lorenzo and The Professor are settled in Italy and not missing Sioux City one iota, unless I miss my guess.
And now our friends Mike and Liz are bidding adieu and relocating to Lyon, France.
We had them over for green-chile stew last night and caught up. They’ve bought an apartment there, the house here is for sale, and come springtime they will be well positioned to observe Le Tour in its native habitat. Stage 8 will be right in their backyard, or arrière-cour, as we say in le français.
Novelist and poet Jim Harrison thought highly enough of Lyon to write, “If I were given the dreary six months to live, I’d head at once to Lyon and make my way from bistro to bistro in a big stroller pushed by a vegetarian.”
The place suffers from a dearth of New Mexican-style green-chile stew, however, and thus we were compelled to revive them after the house-hunting excursion. We couldn’t find a vegetarian with a two-seater stroller to push them home, though.
Mad Blog Media 