which strikes me as a tad provocative, no? wiki

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club killed it in London last night.  To a capacity crowd who knew all the words.  I think they trust us now.  Back in October I think

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.

Gospel Revue & Medicine Show 6 – ‘Oh Sting, Where Is Thy Death?’

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

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.”

(Narc Magazine / KYEO 2013)

Download Stagger Cast #58 here

Stream it from Mixcloud here

01. George Jones – Who Shot Sam

02. Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds – Killer Diller

03. Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – Zoot Suit Riot

04. Dionne Warwick – You Can Have Him

05. Spencer Wiggins – I’m At The Breaking Point

06. Macka B – Never Played A 45

07. Jackie Edwards – Let It Be Me

08. Marion Williams – I Shall Be Released

09. Duffy Power – Hey Girl

10. James Carr – You’ve Got My Mind Messed Up

11. Darondo – Didn’t I?

12. The Handsome Family – Octopus

13. George Jones – If Drinkin’ Don’t Kill Me (Her Memory Will)

14. Gram Parsons – Brass Buttons

15. Singing Adams – Chicken On A Raft

16. Judee Sill – Jesus Was A Crossmaker

17. Low – Holy Ghost

18. Dion & The Belmonts – A Lover’s Prayer

19. George Jones – He Stopped Loving Her Today

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

Episode 5 can be downloaded here

And you can stream it from Mixcloud here

01. The Evening Light Singers – Walking Around Me

02. The Caravans – Walk Around Heaven All Day

03. Fannie Lou Hamer – Go Tell It On The Mountain

04. The RSB Gospel Singers – Inside The Beautiful Gate

05. Rev D C Rice – We Got The Same Kinda Power Over Here

06. The Pilgrim Travellers – The Old Rugged Cross

07. Oakland’s Famous One Man Band – Amazing Grace

08. Elizabeth Cotton – Hallelujah, It Is Done!

09. Rev Billy H Grady – Holy Rock

10. Hank Williams – I’ll Have A New Body

11. The Soul Stirrers – Touch The Hem Of His Garment

12. Clara Ward & The Ward Singers – How I Got Over

13. Elder Charles Beck – Let The Church Say Amen

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?

R.I.P. George

see y’all in church sunday.

Well, brothers and sister, that was our third Randy & Earl’s Gospel Revue (& Medicine Show). Did you get healed?

You can download it here

Or stream it from Mixcloud here

Here’s what was played:

o1. Sister Rosetta Tharpe – 99 1/2 Won’t Do

02. Two Gospel Keys – You’ve Got To Move (When The Lord Gets Ready)

03. Washington Phillips - I Am Born To Preach The Gospel

04. Deep South Boys – Holy Ghost Getting Us Ready

05. Eddie Head & His Family – I Am The True Vine

06. Doc Reed – Low Down Death Right Easy

07. Rev A W Nix – Slow This Year For The Danger Signal

08. Doc Watson- Down In The Valley

09. Charlie Parr – Jesus Met The Woman At The Well

10. Jerry Lee Lewis - Jesus Is On The Mainline

11. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – I’ll Fly Away