Welcome friends, this Sunday finds us, as she has before time to time inwith the cold walls of prison. I’m not a-talkin’ about the ones we all build in our minds and hearts this week brethren neither. I’ma talkin’ ’bout thick the stone walls and locked iron gates of San Quentin. Here with us this week a former inmate Mr. Merle Haggard sings along with The San Quentin Garden Chapel Choir and another country legend forever connected with San Quentin, although he only ever stopped by here to perform, Johnny Cash sings and reads from the good book for us. We generally on the country gospel end of things this week, a little blues and bluegrass seeping in here and there. We gots us an old standard from the Handsome Family too on account of their new record and Brother Randy’s chat with them below, mighty nice to see them. Latecomers or those unable to attend due to incarceration elsewhere might download this week’s service by clicking on the title below. Let everything be done decently and in order, that it will be acceptable to the Lord in that last day. I hope y’all can take something good from it and we hope to see you back again next week. Go with God.
Chaplain Eshelman & Rev. Frank Butler – Introduction and Opening Prayer Merle Haggard – I’ll Be List’ning Leon Payne – Golden Harvest Blue Ridge Rangers – Have Thine Own Way, Lord Rev. John Wilkins – I Want You To Help Me Johnny Cash – 1 Corinthians 15:55 The Handsome Family – Ain’t No Grave Freakwater – Washed In The Blood Moses Mason – Go Wash In That Beautiful Stream Merle Haggard & The San Quentin Garden Chapel Choir – The Old Rugged Cross
Brother Randy only went and interviewed Rennie Sparks from The Handsome Family. Oh yes he did.
Press release descriptions tend to be simultaneously florid and content-free, but I’ll make an exception for the press sheet accompanying the new Handsome Family album, which describes “a world where David Attenborough meets David Lynch in a Honky-Tonk bar at midnight”. That does a fair job of summoning up the weird and fecund mood of Wilderness, the husband and wife duo’s ninth album, on which the magical realism of previous albums (full of lonely magnets and poodles who want to be cowboys and ghosts trapped in airports) goes a stage further by adding a visual element – a book, also called Wilderness, which features Rennie Sparks’ gorgeous artwork alongside essays, writings and ephemera.
Rennie has long had a parallel ‘career’ as an artist and writer (check their website to see more) and this seems a logical step. To call Rennie’s work ‘outsider art’ might not do it justice, but there is something luminous and strange, perhaps a little mid-period Louis Wain, about how she captures the essence of animals. I asked how the book related to the album.
“Wilderness, the book, contains some of the same themes as Wilderness the CD, but discusses them in much greater detail and also expands into other chapters about other wild creatures. Whenever I am writing the lyrics for a record there is always so much information swirling around in my head that never gets used for songs, so I decided to put them all down separately. There are inklings in the book about how a song lyric could have gone in a different direction, but also whole chapters on subjects that never made it into song like Jellyfish, Wolves, Prairie Dogs.”
When I suggest that many of the songs seemed to be about how the natural world existed before us and will exist after us and is indifferent to our problems, Rennie was quick to turn this on its head, insisting instead it’s “perhaps the indifference of humans to the problems of nature! We continually insist that willows are weeping for us when they are more likely suffering from a fungus.”
If you hadn’t picked up on it yet, Rennie Sparks is a very funny lady, with a dark, gothic imagination and a writing style that’s been described as “(William) Burroughs meets (Carson) McCullers”. I wondered if Edward Gorey’s faux-Victorian sense of the macabre was an influence. “Edward Gorey is not an influence, but I sure would have liked to have had tea with him. My major influences are just the little facts that I read about the natural world. Everything around us is far more mysterious than we can fathom. Thankfully.”
One of the most intriguing songs on the album, Wildebeest, is about Stephen Foster, the ‘father of American music’. A quick wiki reveals he wrote a host of American standards like Camptown Races and My Old Kentucky Home before dying in penury in New York in 1864. I asked Rennie what drew her to him, and why ‘wildebeest’.
“He was the most wildebeest-like of musicians that I know of. Totally unable to enjoy how far and wide his songs spread yet unable to stop writing them, until he was felled by that crocodile in the Bowery flop-house. Everything in the song is true.” (Since the Wikipedia entry makes no mention of the crocodile we’ll have to take Rennie’s word for that bit).
Handsome Family albums aren’t known for their sonic innovation, thankfully, more for slow incremental shifts in emphasis, with simple, country-folk arrangements and Brett’s astonishing, sonorous voice at the centre. And while this remains true for Wilderness, there are some small changes, with a fuller sound in places, like the almost Crazy Horse feel to Frogs, the work of guitarist David Gutierrez. Some of the drum tracks were recorded at Jeff Tweedy’s loft studio in Chicago, and Rennie is full of praise for the Wilco frontman, explaining that the loft is “… another way in which Jeff Tweedy is constantly trying to help his fellow musicians. He’s a big-hearted, generous person with time and energy and has encouraged us at many steps in our career.” As for her husband’s voice, which can travel from a deep, deep rumble to a soaring falsetto, often in the same song, it seems nobody has measured its range. “I know he can sing much higher and much lower than me. He likes to make the world rumble.”
I finished by asking Rennie how The Handsome Family are perceived in the UK compared with the US. “I often find that people in the UK seem to see us as very American while your average American thinks we’re pretty strange. Alas, alack such is life.”
Sorry, friends, it’s been a little while since Stagger Cast #58. Ain’t no excuse that makes particular sense, just been kinda busy. Anyhow, pretty pleased with how this one turned out although it comes tinged with sadness – as Brother Earl has pointed out, we lost George Jones recently and that’s a shame. I mean, you wouldn’t have liked him to move in next door and marry your daughter (or borrow your lawnmower) but he sure could get you weeping into your beer. So there’s three tunes (and an extra couple of minutes) devoted to him Besides that it’s the usual blend of country, soul, gospel, garage and the rest (including tunes from the new Kid Congo, Low and Handsome Family albums). So here y’are…
Well, brothers and sisters, that was our fifth visit to Randy & Earl’s Gospel Revue (& Medicine Show) over there on Basic FM.
Did you feel uplifted? Brother Earl and I, we felt uplifted. Don’t forgot to drop a little something in the plate when you exit and we’ll see you next week
Another week done gone brethren and we still here to sing God’s praise, ain’t that the truth? We got a tune today from our recently, dearly departed friend George Jones and a couple meditations on the dread affliction of drink which oftentimes laid him low. As it has ourselves, not to put too fine a point upon it. Here then is a list of what we heard this morning. Those of a mind, or the hungover, can download it from here introduction/leaning on the everlasting arms – Rev. JD Smith & Congregation turn your radio on – Bonnie Owens, Merle Haggard & The Carter Family there’s a power greater than atomic – The Buchanan Brothers I saw the light – Blind Boys Of Alabama Walk in the light – Evangelist Singers Of Alabama Keys To The Kingdom (live at the Opry) – Gillian Welch & David Rawlings when Jesus beckons me home – Stanley Brothers God Don’t like it – Sister Rosetta Tharpe the kneeling drunkards plea – Louvin Brothers God’s wonderful way – Porter Wagoner & the Blackwood Brothers leaning on the everlasting arm – George Jones closing prayer – Rev. Frank Butler
Well friends, it’s old ‘No-Show’ Jones’ last big gig today at The Grand Ole Opry. Open to the public and goin’ out on cable too dont’cha know. Sad to see him go, hell of a voice that guy had, but how he managed to live this long is kinda a mystery. George made literally hundreds of records and some of them are among the greatest country records ever made, some not so much. Couple of great old sleeves here from the crew cut early years. He really sort of grew into his face didn’t he? This song here indulges just a little bit in a bunch of the syrupy sentiments and nostalgia to which country music is prone but, it’s still good and it seems appropriate today don’t it?
Randy & Earl's Old Record Club is about spreadin' the word and creating interest in great, mostly old, music that we love. The tunes and mixes posted here from time to time are to that end and we'd encourage you to seek out and buy stuff that you like. If you represent someone whose music appears here and want it taken down just let us know and it will be done quick as we can...
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