My Grand Plan

Over the past few years I've simultaneously balanced (or imbalanced) my musical life through several bands, and by researching and writing about musicians from days gone by.

I've known for several years now that I'm at a crossroads in my life; now that I've achieved some stability for myself, I need to make a shift from what I DO do to what I WANT to do. Does that make sense? In a nutshell, I am a musician, music buff and music historian who works at a deliciously cubicle-y day job in Clinical Research.

Luckily, my educational level hasn't seemed to matter much up to this point, as I have been chasing some of these scholastic pursuits and been published numerous times. But the way I see it, it can only go on like that up to a point. I mean, who wants their biography written by someone who doesn't even have an Associates' Degree? I cannot be taken seriously as a historian unless I have the academic creds to back it up. And naturally, I know very little compared to what I need to know... I must learn about it in more depth, not just from Half-Price Books, 'zines and liner notes.

Did I mention I'm also a total academic nerd who loves writing papers, school, deadlines, and all that schtuff?

After my father died in 1997, I wanted to take a break from school and I found myself with my first band. It felt so right, although I was really scared of the possibilities. After some fits and starts, I finally found the group that got me some recognition (The Casey Sisters) and creative satisfaction, and I started to really get on a roll. And then when Swedish record labels came a-knockin,' it was like...forget school! Why not move to Austin, get a record deal, make some albums, play a bunch of festivals and tours in Europe? School will still be there when I get back.

And there I stayed for ten years.

One day about a year and a half ago, I found myself on the website for the Center for Texas Music History (CTMH) at Texas State University - San Marcos. I sat, idly clicking and wishful thinking...until I saw on the webpage that one of my gal pals, a super musician, was listed the Director of Programs for CTMH at TSU-San Marcos. I mean, I hadn't seen her in a while, but DAMN! She had my dream job! I literally got goosebumps and FELT my life change at that moment (even though my butt was sore from sitting in my stupid computer chair).

I wasted no time in contacting her, and we met up soon after. We had a glass of wine and I showed her a few of my writings and told her what I wanted to do with my life, and how I hoped to make the transition. Lo and behold, she got tears in her eyes, said how amazed she was by my interest, and promptly gave me a writing assignment to be published on her website. Ever since she's been my mentor and my cheerleader. I love her.

I've now started planning my education in great detail. While taking core courses at ACC and working full time, I've been planning for a transfer to Texas State in the fall of 2010. My goal is clear: B.A in History, M.A. in Public History. Oh, how I thrill at the thought of taking an Archiving class, or a class on the history of country music, or a class on how to research and write historically-oriented publications. We're talking drooling here.

What were previously my attempts to FEEL like a scholar are now slowly being realized. Rather than just writing for 'zines, I'm now a writer for Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), which is bona fide and has been around since eighteen ninety-fucking-seven. I'm ready!

Once of my articles is about to be posted on TSHA Online; it's about Ronnie Dawson and is the article my friend assigned me last year. The TSHA editor then asked if I would write on another group...and there are more to follow, or so she told me on the phone the other day. What? You got it, lady! So now I'm researching The Levee Singers.

Later on will come some information on a cool idea I had that my mentor says will get me on all the documentaries as a "talking head." Who doesn't want to be a Talking Head? I mean, even David Byrne and Tina Weymouth wanted to at some point. Haha.

Swingin' Back In.....

It's been 3 years since I last posted on my "No Future" music blog. I suppose I should feel ashamed, but I'm not really. Aside from scholastic and work and personal endeavors, I have more blogs, FB and Myspace profiles than I know what to do with.

HOWEVER - my musical life has taken on a lovely new direction, and this blog is now going to chronicle my journey.

Off we go!

Here's to you, Uncle Sam!

I'm so excited that someone did a mini-bio on my uncle, Sam Hinton. He's so amazing.


Here's the link:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2669329089073228615&q=sam+hinton

My new record

I've got to get rolling on this. The response from those who have heard it has been utterly overwhelming!

Barbara from Get Hip loves it and wants to do something with me. I can hardly believe it. Hooray! But of course, this album is El Toro's (Mario's) so there won't be much they can do for this project. But then, I will soon have my new band together, and can always work up something for the future. The fact that any comparison to Gram Parsons was made thrills me to the core. Wow.

And then, last night I had dinner with my friend Laurie Gallardo who works at KUT. She asked me if I want to maybe play KUT live sometime, if she can get Jeff to agree to it. Ummm....YES???? Good lord.

Later this year, according to Laurie, I'll be on a "Before the Break" and probably another "Austin Music Minute" since she took it over. What a great friend! Hehe. If she ever runs for President, I will be her campaign slave, no doubt.

As for the record, I need to:

1) Talk to Mario and make sure El Toro is paying for extra recording sessions.
2) Get the music to D.B. Harris so he can listen.
3) Get together with Brennen Leigh so we can learn out "Daddy's Girl" and she can play her mandolin.
4) Get someone to write a good bio for the press packet.
5) Get some new photos done.
6) Make a list of "Thanks" to include at least Steve, Al Urban, Laurie, Rachel, DB Harris, Brennen Leigh, Beth Harrington, El Toro, etc.
7) Create my story--liner notes, etc.
8) Get a designer to create the cover.
9) Register my stuff with BMI.
10) Finish all my production notes.
11) Think of a good title.

12) About ten zillion other things that I am forgetting.

Something to be proud of! Woowoo!

Crackpot musical theories...hooray!

So today, I have a theory.

My theory is that this band:

Was heavily influenced by THIS band:

I also learned that Dave Edmunds, in the mid to late 60s, had a band called "The Human Beans"...not to be confused with this U.S. band at the exact same time.

TWISTED MISTER: My Delta’s Done Spilled Over With Them Copulatin’ Blues

This month’s “Twisted Misters” column is devoted to not one particular person, but rather scores of songs from the early 1900s to the 1960s (at which point the sexual revolution rendered them virtually obsolete). I am one among many roots music enthusiasts who find they have become avid lovers of the “dirty blues.” These are the X-rated, ribald, licentious, salacious, sordid, and perverted “tell-it-like-it-is” odes to life from the first half of the 20th century. They’re not “Twisted Misters” from a psychological standpoint, but instead the often shocking and sometimes humorous day-to-day chronicles of men (and women--our dear “Twisted Sisters”) who grew up deprived of personal expression in damned near every aspect of their lives.

Allusions to sex in songs began well before the twentieth century. Once Edison’s inventions took hold, a genuine “popular culture” began. The latter half of the nineteenth century showed America experiencing intense struggles with social classes, slavery and race issues, and growing pains with industrial revolution. The growth of modern transportation rode alongside these issues and made it possible to broaden popular entertainment’s horizons in both content and geographic area. Vaudeville, circuses, and minstrel acts (particularly “blackface” by blacks and whites alike) rose to national prominence. It was here that the difficulties of the average black man or woman were truly made aware to the rest of the world.

What was life for most black men in the early 20th century? We all know that it was generally poor, oppressed, backbreaking, and filled with strife. But that strife is where freedom begins to flower amidst the rubble of man’s psyche. Music was the most common form of relief. 1920s vaudeville pianist Tom Delaney, for instance, gave us “Georgia Stockade Blues,” which tells us of one life more common than not:

Days are weary
Night seems long
Down in Georgia Stockade town
Doing time for a crime
They found me guilty without one dime
Guards all around with their guns
Shootin’ me down like a rabbit
If I start to run.

Alan Lomax (a well-known folk-life historian) sums it up in his book “Land Where the Blues Began:”
“Blues is the only song form in English that allows us (anyone) to pose problems, raise issues, make complaints, and then provide a cynical or satirical response.” When these songs started to come out of the Delta and other rural and downtrodden urban locations (often via minstrel shows), the white man stopped and listened.

Prison life. Street life. Homeless life. None was a life any white man could envy. But a sex life? Now there’s something no white man could control. Because of the “lower-class” association, he might shake his head with an (often false) air of righteousness, but it was also with awe and envy. White folks have been obsessed ever since.

These songs were adopted and adapted into white culture as the years passed, with some interesting results. As children, many of us learned kids’ songs with seemingly nonsensical words. We often sung the phrase “ta-ra-ra-ra-boom-de-ay”, for instance. What we (and I assume our delightfully clueless parents) didn’t know was that while this phrase seems simply one line in a children’s folk song, it actually originated in song around the late nineteenth century as a euphemism for, well—fucking. It’s good to know that my mother the nun taught me a sweet little “fucking ditty” as a wee one. Ammo’s always good to have.

As the blues movement progressed, these phrases got more direct—“doin’ the jelly roll,” “ringin’ my bell,” “blowin’ my horn,” “trucking” “ rocking” (who doesn’t like to rock?), and “salty dog”…but even so, the euphemisms were still pretty coy. You’d get that little “hand to mouth” gesture, the raised eyebrow and the “tut-tut”; the nervous giggle. But if I wanted the Playboy channel I think I’d just subscribe to it and give up my sojourns to the AAA Newsstand (I am only there for the articles, by the way). And I know that these days, merely the word “fucking” does the trick, does it not?

But when I slip that disc on the player and it’s Lucille Bogan’s 1936 special, “Shave ‘Em Dry,” I find it more loads more titillating than, say…Paris Hilton’s night-vision sex video with her choad-y boyfriend. Well, on second thought…who doesn’t? Did you see that video? Paris Hilton + sack= B-O-R-I-N-G. Maybe I should play her John Oscar’s “New Rubbin’ on the Darned Old Thing” from 1936.

“Aural porn” is what I call the dirtiest of the dirty blues; these are the songs that never really made it into the public spotlight. Perhaps the only exceptions to this would be Bull Moose Jackson’s “Big 10-Inch (Record)”, covered by Aerosmith, or the Dominoes’ “60-Minute Man.” However, most of the brown-wrapper verse of which I speak rolls like the following (an old blues song accredited to, tada! No one? What a surprise):

Ole’ Aunt Milly from Salt Lake City
The way she’d do it was really a pity
She starts with tectish and ends with gas
She’s got a Cadillac pussy and a Packard ass.

Just stop for a second and let that mental picture sink in. Or perhaps, a verse from a song called “Tight Like That”:

Old Uncle Jack with his wooden leg
I’ll hold his head while you set the peg
Cause it feel so good, tight like that
Baby don’t you hear me, tight like that

And sometimes, just sometimes, we are given the folk story of the song’s inspiration. This is one for a song called “Drive Them Cows,” that Alan Lomax collected in the Delta many years ago.

You might not believe this, but there was a woman once who never had had no man. This woman lived away out in the woods, you know, by herself. And she never did ‘low no mens in her house. Couldn’t nobody; see, nobody be there. So there was a man in town one evening about three o’clock you know, he was a cow buyer and he was talking to the people at the market and they told him about this here woman, name Annie. Man say:

“Didn’t nobody go around and see Annie?”
“No, I never did hear nobody goin over and seeing her.”
“I wonder who go with her?”
“I don’t know. Nobody there at all.”
“Tain’t?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m goin over there tonight and I’m gonna get on her.”

He went and bought up a lot of cows and he drove ‘em past this woman’s house. He says, “Hello.”
She says, “Hello.”
He says, “Now lady, can I stay here all night?”
She says, “Why mister, I don’t ‘low no man to stay here.”
Says, “Well, I ain’t no man, I’m a woman-hater.”
“Woman-hater?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Bein you is a woman hater, you can stay here all night.”
So when he got down, he went on into the house. She says, “I ain’t got but one bed.”
He says, “Why, I can sleep with you then. I’m a woman hater.”
It’s hot, in summer, so him and her laying in the bed, you know, laying there with his shirt up and prick near hard as a brick. Directly she looked over there and seen that thing, she said, “What is that?”
“Them my cows.”
She felt down a little lower and she said, “What is that?”
“Them my oxen.”
So he lays on across her and he feels her and he says, ”What is that?”
She said, “That’s my hole of water.”
He lay there awhile. He say, “Well lady, can I water my cows in your pond?”
She say, “Yeah.”
So he gets on her, commence getting it from her. And it got kinda good to her, she thought he could go in deeper. She said, “Listen, drive your cows on in.” So he left it right there. It get so good to her, she said, “Listen, drive the cows and oxen all into the clear water. Damn hole ain’t boggy!”

I’m not going to hide behind a crooked brow or “tsk, tsk” myself into a corner. So I’m a big fan of aural porn. I like to hear what’s going on. It could be called a sort of mutual “masturbation”—the record player turns me on, and all I have to do is I turn it on. I slip that “Big 10-Inch” record in, get that needle into the tiny groove and listen until a big smile spreads right across my face.

--Caroline Gnagy

I'm just not a one-man woman, I guess....

I'm such a cheater.

The "practice space" (read: eensy weensy, well-graffitied storage unit in East Austin with a run-down ice cream truck parked directly in front of the door) apparently didn't work out so well, Shannon told me. So, I must wait until we get the proper equipment to rehearse and then we'll hit up the old Music Lab. After I get back from Spain.


Speaking of, I need to hit up Music Lab twice a week or so until I leave. These songs ain't gonna learn theyselves. Where will I find the time and energy? I'll never know.



Today I found out (hooray!) that my hotel stay in Spain is taken care of, which leaves me free to put together a decent album and play a good show...and relax...and meander...and smell foreign breezes, hike on foreign lands, hear foreign tongues. One of those days I'm going to take a trip to see the Roman ruins. Other options are the Monastery of Montserrat, the La Sangrada Familia by Gaudi (although that may be altogether TOO Gaudi)...and maybe, just maybe, I will stand and finally be able to breathe deeply atop this mountain pass (The Bonaigua Pass):











But anyway, back to the way I cheat....


I knew this was going to happen. I'm all of a sudden full speed ahead on trying to get some more country shows around town for later in the summer. So much for my new "garagey" boyfriend. Although the sex is better...louder, meaner, more distorted, harder on my body...you get the point.


Tomorrow I'm going to to to Patsy's Cowgirl Cafe, although Monica, in her own stern little Monica way, strongly advises against ordering any food (JJ and his girlfriend got food poisoning from food that was already, apparently, distinctly unappetizing). But, the Stepsiders are playing and I'd like to see them do "I'm Not a Wino, I'm a Whiskey-O" one more time.



For better or worse, part of getting new gigs is going out to untried places and seeing shows--especially more venue-ally adventurous friends who let you "sit in." So that's my tomorrow night, and so far, I'm going alone.


Not that I have a problem with that.


The way I see it, I'm cheatin' on my new musical boyfriend while he's out of town, sure...but my old stand-by musical boyfriend will always be there to get me drunk, comfort me, and allow me to write more songs about how bad I'm cheatin'.

There's something to be said for that.