Amtrak created National Train Day in 2008. Celebrated on the Saturday closest to May 10th, the made-up holiday is one I've enjoyed nonetheless - certainly more than others such as Groundhog Day, April Fool's Day and the multitude of National [name a food] Day.
So here we are - May 9th - for National Train Day 2015. Right?
After seven years of successful National Train Day events, where train enthusiasts would gather to show their support of the trains and train travel in over 300 communities across the nation on the same day, we decided to make it even bigger and better. Amtrak Train Days is kicking off at Chicago Union Station on May 9th, and then will hit the rails, traveling to multiple locations across the country May through November.
Bigger and better? Rather than add an "s" to National Train Day, they rebranded the deal as Amtrak Train Days?? In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny...
As for me, I'll continue to refer to what I believe is the generic yet appropriately-named National Train Day. How about another annual six-pack batch of train songs to help commemorate NTD.
I first heard Boxcars sung by Joe Ely on his album Live Shots. Later I learned the song was written by Butch Hancock. Ely recorded many other songs written by Hancock and collaborated with him in The Flatlanders.
TMC's Great-Granddaddy - far left in shirt & tie
A lonesome yet rhythmic sound - words often used to describe a train - and perhaps the music of the late, great Townes Van Zandt including BW Railroad Blues.
Credit: Chad Cochran
A Man And A Train - Not only am I partial to trains - but also to a good bit of music favored by my dad. Included in the list of performers he has long enjoyed is Marty Robbins.
Perhaps my favorite album from 2014 was the haunting Souvenirs of a Misspent Youth by Otis Gibbs (web | Twitter). Included on the album was the fantastic song It Was A Train.
It's a bit hard to believe it's taken me three years to include Georgia On A Fast Train by the legendary Billy Joe Shaver in my NTD compilations. Here is a video of Billy Joe performing his classic with his late son, Eddy Shaver on lead guitar.
Sturgill Simpson hit my radar about a year or so ago, and I'm playing from behind to catch up to his music. But in keeping with the fast pace of Billy Joe's song, here is Simpson's Railroad of Sin.
Well, I said I'd include a six pack. But how 'bout we have one for the road. With the earlier mention of Joe Ely, I'll include Midnight Train sung by him.
So today, hop a train, visit a train, introduce a child to a train, go watch a train, lay awake tonight with a window open to listen to a train, or simply smile peacefully as you enjoy your own favorite train song.
May 2012 bring you much joy, fresh challenges, exposure to new music, renewed commitments, and plenty of cold beer.
Charlie Robison - New Year's Day
I can't let January 1 pass without mentioning the anniversary of the death of Townes Van Zandt. I've said it before and will again. His artistry and tragedy are inseparable. Townes' lyrics were profound, wonderful, challenging, deep, compelling, depressing, enlightening, and coveted. His life was complex, troubled, lived large, sacrificed, misunderstood, carefree, arguably selfish, and most of all tragically yet predictably shortened.
I've been a fan in one way or another of Americana - alt.country - singer/songwriter - 'grunge country' - or whatever you want to call it for over 25 years. About 10 or 15 years ago, I started to notice how one songwriter after another consistently mentioned someone named Townes Van Zandt as an influence. Sometimes the reference was to a Townes song they were about to cover - or simply as an inspiration for a song they wrote. Either way, the name was often spoken almost in reverence with sometimes tear-filled eyes and a catch in their voice.
Yet I didn't get it. I listened to latter day songwriters, and I even enjoyed songwriters of days gone by such as Roger Miller. Yet, somewhere along the way I had missed Townes. About 5 years ago, I finally started listening to him myself and was stunned by what I heard and what I'd been missing.
As I started listening to Townes and learning more about him, the name Blaze Foley popped up often. I still don't know much about Blaze, and I'm not sure many folks do (at least the truth about him). But I do know he was a running partner of Townes and a damn good songwriter in his own right.
Blaze lived a paradoxical life - the simple life of a homeless vagabond yet with as many complicated tangles as a bowl of spaghetti. Songwriter, performer, committed, aloof, here, there, yonder, lover, abandoner, irritant, compassionate.
He was murdered in 1989 by being on the wrong end of a .22 caliber rifle. At the time of his death, he was more than a half-decade younger than I am today.
Lucinda Williams penned her song Drunken Angel for Blaze. Also, a few years after his death, Townes released a song in tribute to his friend titled Blaze's Blue. Sadly, a couple of years after its release, Townes too was dead.
For the better part of the last 10 years or so, an electrical engineer turned filmmaker, Kevin Tripplett, has worked on a documentary about Blaze. The movie is about ready for release and is titled Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah. Saturday night, a condensed version of the movie was screened at Nashville's Douglas Corner Cafe. About 40 to 50 people came out to see it. To the rest of Nashville? Your loss folks.
Following the screening, singer-songwriter-instrumentalist-producer Gurf Morlix played a significant number of tracks from his recent tribute release Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream. Morlix is more than just a fan of Foley's. He often accompanied him at his shows by playing guitar.
Right before the movie began, Sybil Rosen was introduced and asked to come to the stage. To say she knew Blaze in an understatement. She was Blaze's true love...for a while. Her time with him is documented in her book titled Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley. She read a couple of passages from her book before the movie began.
After Sybil finished and sat, Kevin Tripplett quickly raised a movie screen and turned on a projector. With that, the documentary Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah began.
The trailer...
The opening...
I'll try not to ruin the enjoyment of others in watching it by giving away a bunch of spoilers here. But I think I can note a few things without ruining the overall movie.
Blaze admired the songwriting of John Prine; however, his running buddy and real songwriting inspiration was Townes. Based on some video footage included in the movie, when Blaze and Townes were together, Blaze's antics could make Townes look like the 'straight guy'. And that had to have been a tall task.
As great as the Austin songwriting and performer scene is now, the early 80s had folks such as Joe Ely, Billy Joe Shaver, Townes and Blaze amongst its songwriting residents. Amazing.
The movie aired for around an hour. Before Gurf Morlix took the stage to sing, Tripplett offered to answer a couple of questions and stayed around the rest of the night to answer additional ones. I approached him after Morlix's performance and commented about the length of the movie. With so many years of preparation and the various interviews and research he did, it seemed the movie would last longer. He told me the 1-hour condensed version was shown to couple with Gurf's set. The idea was to hold the audience's attention with a healthy dose of both. The final cut will likely include another half-hour or so according to Tripplett.
He also told me that while he never met Blaze, he feels like he knows him through stories told to him my relatives who had met Blaze and through the research and interviews done for the documentary.
Gurf arrived on stage with no introduction or fanfare. I was actually in the middle of checking Twitter when suddenly I realized he had just walked on stage, said a couple of introductory comments, and began.
Set List:
Big Cheeseburgers and Good French Fries Clay Pigeons (Gurf noted this song has been covered by Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Lyle Lovett. He also noted John Prine covered it on his Fair and Square release.) If I Could Only Fly
Story about meeting Blaze in 1976, watching him perform in an NYC disco and becoming friends with him. He joked that Blaze was homeless and Gurf had a home. So Blaze had an immediate friendship connection to Gurf.
Story about Blaze hitchhiking. Gurf told a story that Blaze was hitchhiking and no one in a long stream of traffic would stop for him. Finally, the traffic backed up, and a woman found herself stopped next to him. She reached over to the passenger side of the car, and Blaze thought she was going to let him in. Instead, he pushed down the door lock. As a tribute the woman, he recorded...
Wouldn't That Be Nice?
Story of Gurf's parents meeting Blaze for first time. He had cautioned them that a large, drunk, smelly, bearded, homeless singer slept on his couch. His parents arrived at Gurf's place before Blaze rolled in from an all-night bender. As he introduced his parents to Blaze, Gurf's mother supposedly said "Wait. Did we just see you hitchhking earlier this morning?" Gurf said he wondered sometimes if perhaps... his mother... door lock... song.... naahhhh.
Ooh Love Oh Darlin' For Anything Less Baby Can I Crawl Back to You? Picture Cards
Gurf said he wrestled a bit with the title for his tribute album. He didn't want a primary title and a secondary, smaller, obscured "tribute to the works of Blaze Foley" or something like that. Finally, he realized the title he needed had already been written. Blaze titled one of his songs Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream. Gurf realized he simply needed to roll with that one for his release.
Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream
Gurf neared the end of his set by mocking other performers and bands who close a show, step to the shadows, leave on the stage lights, wait for a bit of audience applause, and the return with fake humility to perform an encore. Douglas Corner has a relatively small stage and not much of a place to get in the shadows. He dead-panned "I could go outside to the street and just back in. Or I can just stay here, pretend you applauded for me to return, and just play my last song." After the laughter settled, he closed with what he said was his favorite Blaze song.
Cold Cold World
As the movie continues to be screened around the country, get out to see it if possible. If nothing else, look for its full release in late May according to Tripplett.
Meanwhile, head over to YouTube and get lost in the various Blaze performances and covers uploaded there.
After a tough week of funeral traveling, I was ready to put this week behind me. We were invited to dinner by our neighbors a couple of houses down. Their son and our son are best friends. We've visited often, gone out to dinner a handful of times, trade-off taking each other's kid to the pool, scouts, school activities, etc. But we've never really gotten to know them much beyond that.
We were invited along with a few other folks to sit on the deck, eat grilled ribs, that ambrosia fruit salad stuff, tomato and mozzarella salad, cheesecake, etc. Also margaritas, wine, and brew were provided. Ummm-hmmm.
After quaffing a couple of after-work Dos Perros from Nashville's Yazoo Brewing, I was willing to experiment with something different. I tried Pilsner Urquell from the Czech Republic for the first time. Good stuff.
One by one, the others left until it was just our two neighbors, my wife, and me. The night air was fantastic with a nice breeze, lightning bugs were plentiful, and beer remained. I was then offered an Italian beer, Birra Moretti. Mamma Mia, it was a good and tasty brew. Capiche?
The four of us don't have a whole lot in common beyond having sons as best friends and living on the same street. My wife stays at home and runs Mom's Taxi Service for our two. I work in a corporate office setting, roll pretty conservative, and dig NASCAR and Americana music. Our neighbors are both chemistry professors - one at a state university and the other at Vanderbilt. They list pretty significantly to the political left. Her van may be the only one in our subdivision sporting an Obama sticker. But hey - we all have to get along, right?
Because the evening was ultra low-key, I wore a pair of flip-flops, a pair of shorts, and my John Prine concert tee. Once other conversations ended, my neighbor said she didn't know I was a Prine fan and that she'd been a fan of his for years. We talked lyrics, his early job as a postman, his getting discovered by Kristofferson, her meeting him in a Nashville book store, the recent show at the Ryman, etc.
Her husband then asked me if I knew who Townes van Zandt was. I responded with an "absolutely!" He then told me a story of his meeting Townes and having a meal with him years ago via a friend. When he met him, Townes introduced himself simply as "Hi, I'm Townes." He said his friend whispered that it was THE Townes van Zandt. I laughed when my neighbor said he thought to himself at the time "So? Who the hell is Townes van Zandt?"
We then discussed how Townes really never promoted himself in his time. He's one of those artists whose fame seemingly came largely after death than during life. They didn't know Townes once lived in Franklin, TN for a while. I told them the story of Joe Ely picking up Townes as a Texas hitchhiker and getting one of his LPs from him (an armload of albums was the only possession he was carrying). We debated on how great a songwriter he was - as measured back in the day and as compared against today's songwriters. And we talked about his decline, hip surgery, and eventual death on New Year's Day 1997.
Talk about Townes and Prine then led rapid-fire to Dylan, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Luke the Drifter. Before we could go far with those discussions, my wife not-so-subtly gave me the throat-slash sign. Cut it off - its getting late - time to go.
But it was definitely an enjoyable Tennessee summer evening. Got to know the neighbors a bit better. Sampled two beers that were new to me. Agreed to share some TVZ boots with them. And my week ended on a far better chord than the minor one in which it began.
Got a tip through the Todd Snider list-serv today about a fantastic, limited offer at Amazon. New West Records and Amazon are offering Steve Earle's new album Townes in MP3 format for $2.99. That's the entire album - not just a sample track or two.
I've not been the biggest Earle fan over the years - either musically or politically. I do have Copperhead Road and El Corazon - both of which are good. And he's had singles off and on over the years that have been pretty good as well. But I do know he idolized Townes Van Zandt. He did so to the point he named his son, Justin Townes Earle, after him. From all that I've read, Earle really put a lot of effort into the recording Towne's songs and tried to pay the songs and TVZ himself with as much respect as possible.
Steve also uttered his infamous quote "Townes van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." To which TVZ laughingly replied "I've met Bob Dylan's bodyguards, and if Steve Earle thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table, he's sadly mistaken."
Enough with the typing. Just click the album cover and fork over the $2.99 for what is certain to be a great listen.
Every 4 years on January 20, we swear in our President of the United States. Sometimes its a new one, sometimes its a second termer. In 2009, we get a new one. I didn't vote for him, but I do wish him well. As a nation, we need him to have a successful term - however that ends up being defined. I'm pretty sure I'll disagree with just about every policy decision he'll make, but we'll see. In transitional times like these, its often easy and natural for us to take our eye off the ball a bit. Some are euphoric, some are despondent, and some are wait-and-see'ers. But we can't let our guard down against the folks who mean us harm - regardless of the political parties that are going or coming.
Rather than dwell on politics, I prefer to blog about a language common to everyone - music. And I want to recognize January 20th in doing so.
On January 20, 1991, Townes van Zandt and Guy Clark played the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Two different versions of the recorded show are floating around out there. One is a 2-disc, high-quality soundboard version. The other is a 3-disc, lower-quality version. For storage size, download speed, and sound quality reasons, I've chosen to share the 2-disc version.
I got this show in a lossless FLAC format and prefer to share it that way. It makes for a larger download, and the tracks will have to be converted to WAV or MP3 for you to listen to them. But its worth it to me for you to have the original lossless files to keep and to pass on to others in the same manner.
January 1 marks the beginning of a new year. New beginnings. New chances. Resolutions soon to be broken. New budgets. New calendars. Generally lots of optimism.
NYD can also be a time of reflection. Of what was. Of what could have been. Two musical geniuses breathed their last on NYD. Hank Williams (d. 1953-01-01) and Townes Van Zandt (d. 1997-01-01). And, Eddy Shaver - guitar slinging son of Billy Joe Shaver - passed away from a heroin overdose on 2000-12-31.
Steve Earle wrote his song Ft. Worth Blues as a tribute to Townes.
Todd Snider wrote the soul-tugging Waco Moon as his tribute to Eddy, who played guitar in Todd's band for a while.
In re-reading some of the initial entries I've already posted, I realized I've written a good bit about deaths and even drugs; however, I don't plan to continually dwell on those subjects as we head into this new year. Just happens that way sometimes. But let's face it. The deaths of these 3 gifted individuals does has something in common - booze and dope. Even Fred Eaglesmith knows that ...
