You’ve heard of a countdown, but a meltdown is a little like a countdown to the weekend but more like you’re giving yourself aural permission to melt down the walls.
In the style of Murray Saul of WMMS FM Cleveland, where I cut my rock’n'roll teeth, I offer the first (very long) playlist. Subsequent Meltdowns will only be three hours long.
wordpress won’t let me embed the playlist here, so here is the link: http://lala.com/zK8y
After being a semi-professional musican for most of my adult life, it seems odd that it’s taken me so long to release an album, but rather than look back and question, I’m just celebrating the fact that it finally has come.
If you’d like to listen to the CD online, just visit www.callingsistermidnight.com and the playlist displaying on the home page is exactly the same one on the CD.
If you’d like to have a physical copy of this release, email CSM (aka Melody Romancito, moi) and I’ll make sure you get one.
The reason why I’m giving this release away instead of selling copies will be explained later.
Meanwhile, I’d like to thank everyone who was involved in the making. That’s a lot of people because the project spans more than seven years. From Chipper Thompson, Jon Gold, Raymond Blanchet and David Hale from a local perspective (some of the earlier vocal tracks were recorded at Dead Horse Studio) to music producers from major U.S. cities, South America, Britain and Europe, including La Puerta, Jurgen Herrmann, Jeff Grant and others from the Creative Commons remix site, ccMixter.org.
I can upload 14 tracks per month, and this is going to take some fine tuning, but here is a “Best of …” collection meant to showcase my music — stepped up efforts, etc. Wish me luck.
When something extraordinary happens once, I’m happy for the experience and I tuck it a way in my full-to-bursting “Happy Experiences” database which is easily accessed at any time when I need a little popper of gratitude.
But when something extraordinary happens two days in a row — and happens at the moment you’re thinking about the first incident — I tend to sit up and take notice.
Yesterday was extraordinary because I went places I don’t usually go and met people I don’t usually see. That’s always nice in Taos, but for a homebody who decides to make an appearance at the Farmer’s Market — nothing new.
I ended up going to Seco to visit, Firenza, a newish gallery up there and cover them for my “In the Studio” column. While Jill Shank fired up the torch and showed me how she makes her beautiful hand-made beads, a giant dragonfly came and hovered — as if watching the demonstration over my right shoulder.
The rest of the day was kind of bad news — ending in my camera and data recorder getting stolen after I left it unattended at Ogelvies (Doh! So stupido!). I came home really upset because the interview with the Shanks was on the data recorder and the great photos (well I thought they were great from what I could see in the LCD display) were on the camera and now I have to write the interview up based on what they’ve got on the web and my memory (oh yeah. sure) of details of the interview.
OK. Here comes the extra-ordinary thing. Today — just moments ago — I am thinking about the giant dragonfly as it came into the studio and watched Jill make a nice little red bead — I am sitting on the edge of my side of the bed and our backdoor opens up onto a gorgeous view of Malcolm Brown’s old place and the Picuris mountains in the distance. I hear a roar of wings and there is another giant dragonfly!
It whirs and hovers in the air in front of my face, then clatters out of the door and back outside.
Something like that happens once — ok. When one is paying attention, they are wonderful little incidents that stack up, and to be honest, the longer you live in Taos the more of them you have — but twice in two days and with that kind of synchronicity?
I’ve been working on a lot of music recently, so much so I’m making a post here so I can catch you up in one fell swoop.
Nothing like fell swoops.
I’ve been playing music with Axel Dirksen, a fantastic blues guitar player from Berlin who’s been living in Taos for the last 15 or so years. We started by doing a couple of open mics together and now we are getting ready to start working with a bass player and drummer.
Here’s a little sampler:
Runs and extraordinary soundscapes, which I call Axel’s Awesome Run
The classing Summertime (just one verse. You know, you don’t want to wear these things out).
Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Out
Little Red Rooster
I’ve also been putting together a musical persona, whom I refer to as Calling Sister Midnight. This is where I’m piling up all these dance mixes and remixes being done of my voice and also the dance music I’m making and posting over at ccMixter and SoundCloud. I’ve got a new MySpace page, and I even bought the URL Calling Sister Midnight.
Here’s a link to a playlist of tunes I’m featuring with me either singing or mixing: Calling SisterMidnight on ccM
Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks are playing the KTAO Solar Center Sunday, June 28. You do not want to miss this show.
Hicks is a master of a thoroughly American musical form – folk-jazz. Or is it maybe cowboy Latin swing with a little chipotle seasoning? Sounds like a curious hybrid, que no?
Curious and musically adventurous, Hicks also has a sense of humor – evident by his chord changes, quirky, yet natural phrasing and harmony choices. This guy is more than cool. In fact, he is so cool he is hot – and vice versa.
Like country swing fiddle master Johnny Gimble said, it’s hard not to listen to swing music and not smile a little.
Likewise, you are challenged to hear Hicks signature classics like “Walkin’ One and Only,” or the driving emotional recklessness of “I Scare Myself,” and not smile a little – if not from ear to ear.
The man is undeniably hip. Cool as a moose, etc. Performers like Rickie Lee Jones and Elvis Costello credit him with being a huge influence. Through his decades-long career he remains one of acoustic folk’s true treasures and true eccentrics.
Part of the psychedelic rock scene of San Francisco during the late 1960s, he played drums and a little guitar with the Charlatans, a band that has either been blamed or credited (depending on who you’re talking to) with the whole freakin’ Haight-Ashbury scene. They are also credited with being one of the first acts to play famous Family Dog.
“It’s not like I found myself in the middle of this heavy rock scene and decided to do something different,” Hicks said in a phone interview – I was in the Charlatans from ‘65 to ‘68, playing drums and some guitar,. Some folk stuff too – acoustic folk. I just started adding to that – added the upright bass, the fiddle and the girl singers – we started playing out and after a while I quit the Charlatans,” he recounted.
“I was more of a jazz guy anyway. So I got gigs. It was independent – a natural evolution. It’s what I like. I like acoustic ‘cause you can hear the singing,” he said.
So, besides being a counter-culture icon, he’s got a quirky, bad-boy reputation, that follows him to this day. On his website’s home page there’s a photo pf him from back-in-the day, flipping the bird.
I asked him about a story I had heard back in the early 1970s – about how he flipped off a Cleveland audience and walked off stage because the audience threw things at him and the band.
“I remember the incident you’re talking about. There were four bands on the bill at the Cleveland Auditorium. Steppenwolf, an all-girl band called Fanny, and the Native American band Redbone. It was kinda the wrong place for us. It was before [electronic] pick-ups were used. Since we just had acoustic instruments – playing through the PA – we were quiet. We were unknown too. We were in the middle of this big electric scene, and the audience started throwing ice cubes. Heckling is one thing but ice cubes are little hard things. We were ducking and dodging – we got through five songs and I told the audience off and we left the stage. The next day we went on the local FM rock station [WMMS,] and talked about the incident,” he said, laughing about the memory.
Hicks’ latest release, Tangled Tales,” is like chomping into one of Mante’s Chow Cart chile relleno specialties, and biting into a particularly hot and juicy pocket of goodness. And perhaps it’s a bit spicier than expected.
One big surprise is his buttery rendition of the classic Horace Silver / May Ellen Shashoyan Bossa Nova, “Song for My Father,” where his voice sounds like the most tender horn solo ever played.
His new album lineup of side men is certainly an unexpected treasure. David Grisman, and Charlie Musselwhite are just two of an incredible list of players joining him for this release.
On YouTube.com there is a video for the title track that is a total crack-up. It features his infamous finger photo with moving-mouth Lo-Fi animation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TnjPYyzwvM
On Hick’s website, under the bird, it says,
“In an era dominated b snot-encrusted bellybutton-gazing, semi-literate, mirror-fixated, testosterone-deprived, over-medicated, self-appointed prophets of a particularly lifeless strain of homogenized, lyrically depraved, self-indulgent faux-poetic songcraft, Dan Hicks stood out from the crowd. If the 1970s singer-songwriter scene had a single saving grace, musically, it was Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks”
– The Irate Pirate, Wrath of the Grapevine
Arrr! And a flip of the bird to ya, cultural icon, bad boy, hep cat and snappy dresser – Dan Hicks. I’ll be there or be square.
He’s traveling with a six-piece combo. That’s a lot of ways to split the money, I remarked.
“Split the money? What do you mean?” He laughed.
Advance tickets for Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks are $10 in advance. Children under 12 are free. Doors open at 6 p.m. the opening act, yet to be decided, will start at 7 with Hicks starting at 8 p.m.
I’ve “finished” the chicken coop. I put the word in quotes because, like a Lower Ranchitos take on the Chinese Proverb about finishing your house, you’re never really “finished” as long as you are drawing breath.
Jazz is usually considered an urban art form (unless you want to talk about New Age stuff with pan pipes and pastoral faeries afloating but I’m not talking about that stuff). Urban jazz and what we think of when we think “jazz standards,” seems out of place and time in Arroyo Seco, a groovey little community that coagulated at the crook in the highway north of Taos.
Even still, jazz flowed and flourished like the garden that was just planted that day nearby surely will.
When I pulled up for the gig at Seco Pearl, a woman greeted me, saying the garden was just planted, the setting sun basking her in the leftover glow from the afternoon, the sprinklers spraying in silver arcs over the weedless earth behind her, the scent of wet loam seeping in as the shadows lengthened.
“This is my 47th garden,” she told me and I could see the pride and exhaustion in her sunburned face.
Inside the Pearl, my good friend, Raymond Blanchet, was getting set up for the opening night of his new jam sessions. He’s hosting the proceedings and has populated the players with his new students, acolytes to the high priest of real jazz in these parts.
I don’t know that anyone disputes Blanchet’s musicianship. It’s his grumpy façade that usually puts people off. I’ve heard him described as a troll or a black hole, and Blanchet will own up to either persona in a heartbeat. But the thing that really pisses people off is that he is usually right – at least when it comes to music, and often almost everything else. Believe me there’s nothing that will piss a person off more than calling them on their shit.
So he’s managed to put together this combo of “new to jazz” neophytes (and I have to say I was a little concerned that I was going to have to sing with this group when they got started).
I watched Blanchet bark out orders to the drummer and heard him drive the guitar player. I’ve heard this tune before with the numerous kids (and adults) he’s shaped. Many of them have gone on to be major players, like Lorca Hart, son of Billy Hart, who listed me on his resume as his first gig (La Cocina back in 1989) and called me a “torch singer.” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be flattered or offended by the title. Still not quite sure.
So when I got up to sing, I was relieved when the combo finally hit their stride and were able to keep everything going even if it took both feet.
After the Jon Hendricks tune “Moaning,” finding the groove was a little like chasing a hamster around the room.
I was delighted, however, when Sambhu and Al Sutherland joined the combo. Blanchet slipped over to play the piano since the groove was in Sutherland’s able hands.
I’d love to be able to better hear Sambhu tasteful gypsy stylings but the combo is playing on funky equipment and the sound balance is not what it could be with time and resources. Still, I look forward to hearing more from this group.
The klatch of dreadlocked and sweet-faced children and granola dancers who came in from the night to hear this urban-kinda music – thank you for being open to the potential this little jazz scene could turn into.
I would encourage any singers out there to give Blanchet a call at 575-737-0854 and talk about songs and charts. Come on up. It’s happening.
Last Tuesday I did something I’ve done dozens of times – I picked up a garter snake dozing in the sun. But this time something happened to me that had never happened before – I got burned.
Not right away. Let me explain.
The snake – an adolescent – must have been sleeping. I clearly startled it and for the first time I smelled “snake smell,” and I immediately thought of the John Prine song, “Paradise.”
Well sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.
It was a foul, musky odor. I’d never really smelled anything like it before but the closest thing I could compare it to was the horrid, rotten-potato smell of a stink bug.
There was quite a lot of the secretion – it nearly puffed out of the snake and foamed as it hit the air. The oily substance instantly followed the form of the snake as it wrapped its body around my wrist. Soon both of my hands were covered with it.
Of course, this was when my Blackberry decided to slip out of my pocket and onto the ground.
I took the snake out of my path, letting him loose in the tall grass near the ditch and tried to pick up my phone without getting snake juice on it. The juice had actually turned into a greasy powder-like substance that reeked horribly.
I washed my hands when I got to the house. I first blasted them with the hose outside then used the antibacterial liquid soap we keep in the kitchen.
I didn’t really notice the burning feeling until I woke the next morning. My hand felt swollen and hot – but not so much on the surface as on the inside and the joints especially.
I researched garter snake secretions online and found nothing more than mentions of a “foul smelling secretion” from a gland near the snake’s anus.
After waking the second day – this time with the hand clearly swollen (not a lot) and the skin becoming dry and flaky – like an acetone burn – I decided to rephrase my garter snake searches to include the word “volatile” and “secretion.”
I found a scientific journal article about the “Volatile components in scent gland secretions of garter snakes (Thamnophis spp.)” I didn’t have the $34 to spend on the journal but a look at the names of some of the compounds tells me, I’ve been chemically burned, with my limited knowledge of chemistry. It’s a somewhat unusual encounter, according to local lore, but something scientists are aware of.
My hand *still* burns. The knuckles are becoming cracked. The right hand more than the left, feels like a very bad arthritis attack, but heat and hot water only makes it burn more.
I may never touch a snake ever again.
I keep thinking about what it means.
In myth and in symbolism, snakes stand for knowledge, for healing, for our human “chi” energy, and sexual prowess. Getting what amounts to a chemical burn from what is an essentially harmless snake species is certainly puzzling.
Taos on the Net:
Former Governor Gary Johnson Treks for Trash
Posted in Taos Commentary, The Taos Experience on September 13, 2009 by Melody RomancitoOn my way to Peñasco Saturday Sept. 5, I came across a crew of cyclists picking up trash along U.S. Hill on Highway 518.
Following a hunch, I pulled over and spoke briefly with Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson’s daughter Seah, who waited with a hatchback full of protein-packed food, water and encouragement. They’d need it.
Johnson said this was the 16th annual New Mexico Trek for Trash, and the fourth one to be focused from the Taos area. The trek, which is four days long, draws 10-20 cyclists. They collect about 125 bags of trash a day and have filled huge contractor-sized dumpsters with discarded refuse along our roads.
They’ve encountered all sorts of critters besides trash, Seah said, “including rattlesnakes.”
“Unfortunately we find a lot of dirty diapers,” she said and onetime, she added, “they founded a double mattress. They’ve also found that some of the same people have returned to dump, year after year, at the same site.”
You know who you are.
Most of the New Mexico Trek for Trash participants come from the Santa Fe area.
Soon, a group of bikers labored up the hill and Seah said her dad was in that bunch so I hung around to snap a picture and chat a bit before I continued on to Llano San Juan.
Johnson moved to Taos Ski Valley four years ago after serving as Republican Governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003.
The Forest Service was supposed to pick up the bags that lined the highway every few feet — that’s how much trash is found. As I drove to Angel Fire this weekend, I still saw bags lining the highway. They were the same brand the bunch that went up Highway 518 used — black with red string ties. Let’s hope those folks didn’t do all that trash treking for nothing.
Thanks Gary!
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