Red Dirt Harvest Festival 2007

Okemah, Ok. Sept. 1-2, 2007

The Red Dirt Harvest Festival held each September at The Grape Ranch, a vineyard six miles south of Okemah, Oklahoma, has, in just three years, become a major gathering of the tribe for Oklahoma’s Red Dirt musicians and fans. The festival is a unique opportunity to get a full dose of the pure, unadulterated strain of Oklahoma Red Dirt music. All the performers on this year’s roster are from Oklahoma, and most have known each other for years, decades even –as have many of their fans. Speaking of the fans, this may have been a watershed year for Red Dirt music, as it has begun attracting large flocks of teenage girls. The girls were there to dig the younger generation of musicians like Stoney Larue, No Justice, Dustin Pittsley, Randy Crouch (;-)), Mike McClure, and Okemah’s own rising star, John Fulbright, who is so young that it is rumored that two years ago he had to skip school to play at the festival. We hope that’s true.

Several of the bands performing at the festival have been dominating the Texas music charts this past year and it was clear that they have been working a lot. Brandon Jenkins, Stoney Larue, No Justice, and Mike McClure each put on a well-rehearsed show, settin’ ‘em up and knockin’ ‘em down, boom (Hey, y’all, it’s great to be back in Oklahoma!), boom (Y’all havin’ a good time?), boom (We got time for one more! This’n’s done real well for us on the Texas charts! We love ya!).

What their shows lacked in the kind of laid back spontaneity we associate with Red Dirt, they more than made up for in the solid high energy Rock & Roll delivery of one great song after another from the extensive and growing Red Dirt Canon. Those from an earlier generation of Red Dirt musicians, such as Tom Skinner’s Science Project, Randy Crouch, Bob Childers, The Red Dirt Rangers, Greg Jacobs, Bill Erickson, and other Reddirt Graybeards, were, as always, onstage to amuse and entertain themselves as much as the audience, sitting in on each others’ sets, tossing offhand jokes around the sometimes crowded stage, and conjuring that organic magic that always occurs when they settle into a loose, comfortable groove. This is the source of Red Dirt music -its communal sensibility, its groove, and its canon.

Missing in action this year: Jason Boland & The Stragglers, Jimmy LaFave, and Cross Canadian Ragweed.

FROM OUR RED DIRT FASHION REPORTER TERRY “WHITEBEARD” HUTSON*

“The sudden influx of teenage girl fans has greatly improved the Red Dirt fashion scene. Out with last year’s ubiquitous cowboy hats-and crocs ensemble, and in with short, short denim skirts, flipflops and toe rings. For campside morning attire, velvet robes and hightop tennis shoes never seem to go out of style. Onstage remained a fashion-free zone, where even the familiar pearl snap shirt was abandoned this year in favor of the musicians’ uniform of choice for outdoor work: tee shirt and jeans.”

*disclaimer: Terry Hutson is not really our fashion reporter, and this is not his dispatch, although he does, in fact, have a white beard. We just named him to mess with him a little. Sorry, Terry.

A FEW RANDOM NOTES ABOUT THE PERFORMANCES

Stoney Larue

Greg Johnson, the emcee, and proprietor of the legendary OKC venue The Blue Door, caused a few titters in the crowd when he introduced Stoney Larue by welcoming him “back to the Blue Door!”

Is there any performer more at ease in the spotlight than Stoney Larue? He has a real presence onstage and seems to be genuinely having a great time up there. He also can really sing, writes great Red Dirt songs, and has assembled a crackerjack band. We predict he’ll be the next Red Dirt act to break out of Texas-Oklahoma regional fame into national prominence. If they could just get him to wear the danged hat instead of that red bandanna they probably would have already made him a star in Nashville. More likely he’ll do it his own way, ala CCR.

John Fulbright

Okemah’s own fair-haired, freckle-faced favorite son (well, maybe second favorite), John Fulbright astonished everyone again, as he did in July at the Woody Guthrie Festival “over in town”, with how much he’s grown in confidence and style over the last two years. He sings like Tom Skinner, knows a lot of great old songs, writes, and plays a mean keyboard as well as acoustic guitar.

To paraphrase Emerson to Whitman, we greet you at the beginning of a great career, kid.

Travis Linville

It’s kind of thrilling to watch Norman, Oklahoma’s Travis Linville play the guitar. Most guitarists become ultimately predictable, playing within the conventions of their genre. There is the time-honored contract of fulfilled expectations between genre artists and genre fans of all disciplines, be it detective novels, landscape paintings, horror movies, or even the amalgam that is Red Dirt music. The thrill is in never quite knowing where Linville is taking you although he knows exactly where he’s going with the music at all times.

Linville’s music is more descended from Bob Wills than most of his fellow Red Dirt musicians, so our relative unfamiliarity with the form may account for the unexpected turns in his playing. Regardless, his playing is nuanced, disciplined, and confident, and when he cuts loose it’s in short controlled bursts of pure hellfire that seem to come out of nowhere and are gone before you quite know what hit you.

Linville and his bandmate, fiddle player and vocalist Jeremy Watkins, are very simpatico in taste and style. Watkins sang a perfect reading of “Trouble In Mind”.

No Justice

Stillwater’s No Justice is a straight-ahead solid guitar band. Two electric guitars, one acoustic guitar, electric bass and drums. Nary a fiddle, mandolin or accordion within twenty feet of the stage. Their songs and their show are airtight. Boom, boom, boom. They developed such a momentum, such a faith in their prepared show, that they sang and played right through a sound outage without apparently noticing.

They’re among the youngest of the Red Dirt acts, and the teenyboppers were out in full regalia dancing and singing along to their music between the front row and the stage. We know from the Texas music charts, that No Justice is getting a lot of airplay in Texas, but how, we wondered, did these Oklahoma girls hear and learn their songs? Is No Justice being played on the radio in Oklahoma? On stations that teenage girls would be listening to?

Mike McClure Band

A story with a moral:

While the Mike McClure Band was setting up, a plan was hatched at one end and passed down the first row of patrons (who’d staked out our positions in the full afternoon sun and sweated it out until after dark, so we had an investment) for everyone to scoot their camp chairs all the way up against the stage to prevent the expected influx of mini-skirted teenagers from crowding up front to dance and sing along, thus obscuring our view of the band. For some of us this presented a real dilemma, so the execution of the plan only made it about halfway down the row, where it began to meet with halfhearted compliance, meaning our chairs got scooted up, just to go along, but not all the way, and the further along the row, the less compliance, thus creating a wedge of open space in front of the stage. This wedge was all the girls needed.

In retrospect, nothing could have stopped their grrl power from flowing in. Even at the supposedly sealed end of the row, they somehow filled the tiniest niches. They were oblivious to those of us behind them in their unrestrained Red Dirt Rock & Roll joy. Soon, all we seated patrons could see were young mini-skirted behinds waving enthusiastically mere inches from our faces. Some of the girls even had brief choreographed moves worked out. (They knew the songs! How?) We grumbled and rolled our eyes at each other up and down the row but with rapidly diminishing conviction. Soon, we were asking ourselves, “Who’s really being the assholes here, us or them?” Clearly it was us. Who were we to try to inhibit these fan girls’ fun?

The moral of this story is “Either get up and dance, or get out of the way!” We got out of the way.

How was the band, you ask? Well, I was kind of distracted. I’m sure they were great as ever. It was, after all, Mike McClure, Tom Skinner, and Eric Hansen.

Greg Jacobs

Jacobs is a real Oklahoma folksinger. His body of work is filled with stories that come right out of the history of Oklahoma, and form a foundation for the folk-end of the Red Dirt Canon. He’s also a teacher and a rancher. We talked for a while under the beer tent Sunday afternoon. Until this summer he hadn’t performed for about three years. In July he’d played a set for Okemah’s Woody Guthrie Festival, and hadn’t been at all pleased with his performance. But, since he’d decided to perform again, when and where it pleases him, he “got back on the horse” and accepted an invitation to play at the Red Dirt Harvest Festival. One of the great things about Jacobs is that he’s a musician you can talk to about things other than music. While we chatted about the weather, the cattle business, and the price of hay, several musicians came by to tell him how much they’d enjoyed his set, how great it was to see him back onstage.

He told us that in July a fan had come up to him and said, with evident concern, “Greg, it’s so good to see you out again. How is your health?”

“I don’t know. What have you heard?” Greg replied with surprise.

Tom Skinner’s Sunday Morning Gospel Sing

Mid-morning Sunday, the soulful and soul-stirring sounds of old fashioned songs of praise wafted gently through the pecan grove from the second stage. It was just what we needed to give us the strength and faith to get up and make coffee.

THE FESTIVAL SITE

Six miles south of the small town of Okemah, turn right just before a notorious crossing of the Canadian River, then another mile or so west along a dirt (red) road beside the river. The stages and campground are set in the open shade of a mature thirty acre pecan grove in the bottomland alongside the Canadian. The river this year was flowing full, quick, silent, and thick as red-eye gravy. The grounds are meticulously mown and groomed, and outdoor showers are provided, as are plenty of strategically located portable johns. There are several large public fire rings in the shady grove with free firewood. The vineyard and tasting room is up the hill from the grove, providing an overview of the event. The hillside creates a natural amphitheatre for large crowds.

THE WEATHER

The weather was splendid. Cool starry nights lit by a fat moon for all-night campground picking, and warm sunny days for napping and lounging in the pecan grove, indulging in more campground picking, visiting with old and new friends, or enjoying the afternoon acoustic sets.

BUT HOW WAS THE WINE?

The Grape Ranch has an extensive list of wines they blend, ferment, and bottle from California grapes. This year they will offer their first homegrown vintage, from 2005’s harvest. They had hoped to have it ready by festival time, but it will be a few more weeks. Tip: The 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon is expensive –and worth it!

Diamonds In The Dark by Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles

“I’m gonna throw my big wide arms around your neck!”

–Sarah Borges, from “The Day We Met” ©2007, James and Jean Music (ascap)

The sound of “Silver City”, their previous release, is the sound of Rock & Roll promises being made. Their latest, “Diamonds In The Dark”, is the sound of those promises being delivered.

This record by Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles is how we’d like to think that Rock & Roll in the main would have evolved, had it lived. What a great relief to find that somewhere, somehow, such a cheerful strain has survived, and, yes, evolved.

Borges, who writes much of the material, and producer Paul Q. Kolderie know exactly what they want, musically, and exactly how to get it. Her lyrics exhibit a keen ear for the classic themes of Rock & Roll, wrapped in catchy melodies and irresistible hooks delivered with whipcrack heat and conciseness by the kickass band.

The first song, “The Day We Met”, exemplifies all of that. It starts out at 90 miles per hour and never slows down. When it stops two minutes and twenty five seconds later, you feel as if you’ve been tossed out a side window, but still glad for the ride. Here’s a cheerful thought: listen to this song on your car radio with the windows down and imagine that it was this summer’s runaway radio hit.

On a couple of cuts, like “Around 9″, Sarah and the boys dabble in steel guitar-tinged country ballads, but with less distinctive results. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that when they veer into the Country genre, they seem a little less engaged, and these songs are not why we really love Sarah Borges.

We love Sarah Borges most when we hear her Rock & Roll heart beating loud and fast.

“Diamonds In The Dark” by Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles is highly recommended.

–Rich

Dave Moore’s “Breaking Down To 3″ –Revisiting An Old Friend

There are very few records that reward repeated listening the way “Breaking Down To 3″ (Red House Records, 1999) does.

Revisiting these songs time and again over the years gives you the feeling after a while of a shared history, as if you’re sitting in a familiar room with an old friend as he speaks to you with quiet urgency about things you both know really matter. As if you’d maybe once helped him paint over certain rooms in a house he where he once lived, or you’d maybe once gone scuba diving together where the sharks don’t sleep, with some other good ol’ boys, all long gone now.

Dave Moore remembers these stories much better than you do, and others, too, that he’s only told you about, and it’s no longer necessary for him to be explicit about their details. The singer of these songs sounds like a man who’s had some peace to make, and has made it.

rlh

You Might Be a Red Dirt Musician If….

A lot of musicians are calling themselves Red Dirt musicians and fans these days, but no two people seem to agree just exactly what that means, so, how’s an up-and-coming young guitar (or, for that matter, accordion) player supposed to know if he’s Red Dirt or not?

You can help! Just for fun, complete the following sentence:

“You might be a Red Dirt musician if….”

Here’s a couple of example to give you the idea:

“You might be a Red Dirt musician if Tom Skinner has recorded one of your songs.”

“You might be a Red Dirt musician if you own a well-thumbed copy of the “Bob Childers Great Big Book of Guitar Chords”.

Have fun with it!

–Rich

Okies Dominate “Roots Music Report’s” Charts

For more details visit www.folksalad.com and go to the News Page. See the link at right in our Blogroll. Here’s the numbers:

Roots Music Report’s Roots Rock Chart has Mike McClure’s latest CD “Foam” at #1.

Their Roots Country Chart has his fellow Oklahoma Red Dirt artists Jason Boland, Stony Larue, and Brandon Jenkins at #s 1, 2, and 3 respectively.

Their Roots Blues Chart has Tulsa Sound veteran J. J. Cale at #3.

Endless Highway –The Music of The Band

“When you awake you will remember everything…”

From “When You Awake” by R.Manuel and J.R.Robertson

(c) 1970 Canaan Music, Inc.

 

 

When The Band arrived in 1968, they came in through the basement window, after years on the roads and in the roadhouses of North America and beyond, and they disrupted our psychedelic dream of a disconnected present with a deeper dream of revenant visits from long gone ancestors. They sang to us riddles and rhymes from the “old, weird America” as Greil Marcus has so famously described it.

You could say two events in 1969 signified the end of the Sixties: Hell’s Angels ascended to Altamont, and The Band released their self-titled second album. The first event slapped us awake; the second one led us away.

Consider this: nearly forty years after they were first recorded, web scholars happily discuss and debate the meaning of the lyrics, almost down to the commas, of The Band’s songs “The Weight”, “Rocking Chair”, and others. They ponder the nuances of inflection in the singers’ voices, and the possible autobiographical origins of the mysterious characters. One imagines a dwindling number of people devoting their lives to these cultish pursuits. But is anyone singing the songs?

The new tribute album “Endless Highway: The Music of The Band” poses a simple question: “Why should I listen to cover versions of these iconic tunes when I can listen to the originals?” One answer is because, if no one else ever performs these songs, they will be forgotten by most of us, sealed in the amber of that one long-ago performance, as we move on.

From a record company marketing perspective, tribute albums are a no-brainer. Imagine being able to market a cd that allows you to give top billing to a bona fide popular culture icon, and you don’t even have to convince (or pay) them to perform on it. Just bring together a chorus of lesser-knowns, each one eager to put their stamp on one of the chosen icon’s tunes. Plant the tributee’s name in bold letters front and center on the cover art.

It was with more than the usual mixture of curiosity and dread that this fan placed this new tribute CD in the player. Is it worthy? Do they do justice? Yes and no, of course.

Jakob Dylan pleases with his version of “Whispering Pines”. While it would perhaps be unfair to compare his vocal to the incomparable original, he does acquit himself quite well in conveying the yearning and regret this song calls for.

Lee Ann Womack’s version of “The Weight” also deserves praise. It takes a lot of nerve for anyone to record one of the most iconic Band songs, but Ms. Womack’s voice has just the right southern textures to give this elliptical, mysterious Southern myth a new lease on life. The great Buddy and Julie Miller lend their voices to the chorus.

Josh Turner also pleases with his likeable and completely original take on “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. Heck, he even whistles a little toward the end.

A group called My Morning Jacket’s fresh version of “It Makes No Difference” is noteworthy as well.

Tribute albums with various artists are almost by definition uneven, so it’s not surprising that “Endless Highway” has some performances that don’t measure up to the originals.

I didn’t make it all the way through Death Cab For Cutie’s version of “Rocking Chair”. I mean, you’ve got to be kidding. Bloodless and thoroughly unconvincing, it will send you running back to the original.

Bruce Hornsby’s version of King Harvest is completely forgettable.

The biggest disappointment is The Allman Brothers live version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” The idea certainly had possibilities. The Allman Brothers, classic rock contemporaries of The Band when both were in their heydays, are every bit as iconic in their own right. Gregg Allman’s is just about the only voice that could credibly be held up to Levon Helm’s as the True Voice of the Southern White Male. Unfortunately, his fine, world-weary vocal in this live performance is not supported by the plodding, bored sounding noodlings of his backing musicians. A true disappointment.

So, why should you listen to these cover versions when you can listen to the originals? Well, even with the misfires, over half of the 17 cuts on “Endless Highway” present worthy performances that will help carry these songs forward to new generations of listeners and allow those of us who revere the original performances to hear the songs with fresh ears.

Review by Richard Higgs

Adam Carroll –An Appreciation

Adam Carroll was in Tulsa a few days ago, along with his traveling companion Gordy Quist. The last time Adam was here we fed him gumbo, if memory serves. It was a pleasure to visit with him again, and, of course, a real treat to have him perform his songs and stories in an intimate house-concert setting. The music bed for his songs is pleasantly familiar, played on guitar and harmonica. He’s a very good harmonica player, by the way. He’s not a belt-it-out singer, but his storyteller’s voice conveys well the wry humor and yearning in his stories and sketches, set mostly in his native east Texas.

Adam is an unusually fine lyricist. You listen carefully because he takes you to unexpected places, often in the company of people familiar and strange at the same time. There’s the girl who drive a Karmann Ghia with the stereo torn out. There’s the Sno-Kone man and his desirable sister. There’s that sad, funny couple with the Red Bandanna blues.

And then there’s “you” (whoever you are):

I was thinking of you when the rice birds flew

When the false dawn came with the morning dew

You’re a thunderstorm raging outside my garage

You’re the white shirt peeking through my camouflage

From “Rice Birds” Copyright 2005, Adam Carroll

I’d bet you didn’t hear that last line coming. If you’re like me, you believe you know just what he meant, but in a way you can’t explain, even to yourself.

Adam seems to be a genuinely shy person. His endearingly inept attempts at between-song patter more often than not dissolve into non-sequiturs followed by “….well, anyway, here’s the song….” See the photo of him on the cover of his CD “Far Away Blues”, with his downcast eyes and shy smile and that’s what you see when he’s performing. It’s also what you see when he’s in the kitchen talking about the weather. There are five photos of Adam in that CD packaging, and only in the last one does he turn and look you in the eye (from a safe distance).

Before I got to know a lot of performers, I had naïvely assumed that they were all extroverts who naturally preferred to be the center of attention in a roomful of people. While that’s true for some, I’ve come to believe that, statistically, singers and musicians are no more or less extroverted than any other group of people. A surprising number of them are actually quite shy in conversation, and getting up on stage under a spotlight to face a crowd of strangers is difficult, dangerous work for them. Yet they do it, time and again. Why?

Maybe it’s because performing a set of songs is a highly structured arrangement between the performer and everyone else in the room, which makes it actually less intimidating than unpredictable, freeform encounters. A shy performer can take a lot of comfort in the fact that they have to memorize the entire evening beforehand, and then play it out, to applause and laughter, just like last night. Difficulties notwithstanding, Adam finds the spotlight and tells us original stories in rhythm and rhyme, and we’re glad. –Rich

Jesse Aycock releases debut CD “Life’s Ladder” and get 4 star review in Tulsa World

Hey, Jesse Aycock, my son, has released his debut CD Life’s Ladder and it was reviewed in today’s Tulsa World by World writer Matt Gleason. I appreciate the World’s support. Here is the link to read the review, for those interested.  –Scott
http://www.tulsaworld.com/EmailStoryDisplay.asp?ID=061111_Mu_d3_aycock

My favorite Kinky Friedman Quote

I just read this quote from Kinky Friedman. One of the many reasons why he should be the next governor of Texas:

“Musicians can run this state better than politicians. We won’t get a lot done in the mornings, but we’ll work late and be honest.” –Rich

“The Colors Of Oklahoma Music” by John Wooley

John Wooley, long-time music writer for the Tulsa World, and the only writer to have been inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall Of Fame, has just come out with a new book, entitled “The Colors Of Oklahoma Music –from the Blue Devils to Red Dirt”. In the interest of full disclosure, we must confess that he is a fellow deejay on KWGS, Tulsa’s National Public Radio Affilliate. Now, on with the unabashed plug!

The Colors Of Oklahoma Music, commissioned by the Oklahoma Arts Institute, is a sweeping history of the major musical trends and genres that have come out of Oklahoma to the world. I know that sounds grandiose, but read it. You may be surprised. It is an authoritative, useful reference work for anyone interested in the history of America’s popular music forms. It’s also a helluva fun, entertaining read. Buy it! –Rich