Sunday, May 22, 2016

Loathe to Grind an Ax

Last weekend a print essayist posited there are some things in life that are just too long.

The piece evolved into a rant about everything that is too long. I smiled in agreement at so many of the items mentioned. Then the writer said something that ticked me off. But before I tell you why I loathed him, does the name Laith mean anything to you?

I won’t publicly admit to liking the television show “The Voice.” In the first place, nowadays it’s not so cool to say you watch TV. Many of my friends don’t even have cable, and if you mention you have cable, you are going to set yourself up as the oddball. Not that my friends who don’t watch television read Proust in their spare time--well one of them probably does--but the point is, people posit TV is fluff. Yet I’ll confess there’s no better TV porn than a medical drama series. Given all the time I spent in the Texas Medical Center as a young doctor, my penchant for this genre shouldn’t be a head-scratcher. Those TV dramas transport me back to a time when I was more…nubile.

Not too surprising, either, that I also watch music on television. “Austin City Limits.” “The Voice.” “The Voice?” My cool factor just went way down, didn’t it?

Last season I watched “The Voice” one night because I had seen a No Doubt music video from the 90s, and I was curious what Gwen Stefani would be like decades later as a coach on the show. Once her interfaith romance with fellow coach Blake Shelton ensued, I couldn’t make plans for 8 on Monday and Tuesday nights because I was watching Gwen and Blake for tells that they really did like each other (like the tabloids said they did). That is so last year.

This year Gwen is gone, and I latch on for Laith.

Laith is an anomaly as far as “The Voice” contestants go.

Laith is old. How old is he? Oh my God, he is 38!  He’s roughly two decades older than the rest of the contestants.

Laith has long hair. Seems like he doesn’t have the same hair stylist as the long-haired lady coaches. Humidity might be his beauty secret.

Laith has an untrimmed beard that suggests weeks of being “Naked and Afraid.”

And can you put a bluesman in on the spin cycle and have him come out ready for gross consumption? Well, he went straight to the top of the iTunes charts once Pharrell Williams suggested America check out Laith’s electric blues records on iTunes.

For those of you who don’t watch “The Voice,” last Tuesday on the results show, there Laith stood onstage waiting to find out if he could be instantly saved by viewers who would vote him on to next week’s final round on the basis of his cover of “All Along the Watchtower.” If you watch Laith’s last stand, you’ll see he spent some of his precious time on guitar solos, causing Adam Levine, his coach, to plead with American to pick him in spite of, or maybe because of, his rare penchant for ax-toting on a show about vocals.

When Carson Daly, the host, invited the viewing audience to tweet which of the three remaining contestants they wanted to save, I had one thought. Uh-oh! I don’t tweet. And I worried that most Laith fans might not be in the Twitter demographic.

America voted. Turns out guitar solos are okay after all.  And I am guessing that Laith could have made his solos longer and still gotten the save.

So yes, some things in life are too long. Blue jeans off the rack are way too long, but electric blues solos are not.

Now for an acoustic memory, here’s one of my all-time favorite blues guitar solos. I probably first saw Louisville’s own David Grissom play this solo live in Houston at a Thursday Party on the (Jones) Plaza with Drs. Gregg and Barrow Barré in 1996. And bonus! You can still see David Grissom (pictured below) play long blues solos every Tuesday night at the Saxon Pub in Austin.


Perhaps this year’s presidential election has you down. Maybe there is no way to win with your vote in November. I say, cast a vote in May for Laith. You’ll be endorsing long guitar solos. What could be more important?

Did I tell you about the newspaper essay last weekend that said guitar solos are too long? 


"So let us not talk falsely now/The hour is getting late"
-Bob Dylan, "All Along the Watchtower"

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Some Acoustic Memories Shaken Loose upon Screening Shuichi Iwami’s Loose Diamonds Documentary


One night at the Continental Club, while Scrappy was putting away his guitar after a Toni Price show, I asked him if he had written any songs of his own. Scrappy told me that he was in a band called Loose Diamonds.

The next day at Cactus Records, I purchased two Loose Diamonds CDs. Those CDs contained an interesting mix of songs written by Scrappy and his bandmate, Troy Campbell. The Troy cuts were Bobby Darin influenced ballads.  The Scrappy cuts sounded like bootleg, unrecorded Stones songs. I was hooked and needed to see the band live.

But before I ever saw Loose Diamonds, I went to a Kris McKay CD release party at Cactus Records. That CD, Things That Show, included a cover of the Jo Carol Pierce song “Loose Diamond.” At the time I had no idea of the connection between that song and the name of Scrappy’s band. It turns out a long-haired fella (Willie Nelson) that Red Duke had already introduced me to in the doctors’ dining room in Hermann Hospital, had taken the name the Highwaymen for his project with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson, without regard for the younger, scrappy band.

The year was 1996. I lived less than a mile from an acoustic venue called the Mucky Duck, and I kept their pub calendar on my refrigerator. The previous year, during my fellowship at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, I bought an acoustic guitar at Guitar Gallery and started playing songs that I would have never played in the 70s when I stood on the altar and played songs like my mother’s favorite (well, her mother’s name was Rose), “Bring Me a Rose,” at my church named after a Byzantine bishop, St. Athanasius. 

In 1996 I would go to Mucky Duck shows and come home and play my Yamaha guitar and try to write my own songs, which I later shared in my living room with friends like Gregg, who altered my lyrics ("alone in my room, again" became "a bone in my nose, again"), or Antonio Estevan Huerta, who already had a few songs of his own. But I digress.

Thanks to advance notice from the Mucky Duck, in the form of a calendar they mailed and I taped to my refrigerator (yes, millennial reader, venues used to snail mail their calendars), the next time the Loose Diamonds played the Duck, I had an advance ticket to see the band play in front Rusty and Teresa’s red velvet curtain on Norfolk. I recall sitting out back at the Duck between sets, talking to Troy and Mike Campbell for the first time that night.

It struck me that Troy wore his soul on his sleeve, and I liked the open way he shared when he sang or spoke. In fact, I felt like I had known Troy for five lifetimes. He told me about riding the coal truck in Appalachia. I told him about visiting Susan there one summer when she and other University of Dayton students worked with youth in the hollars. Troy’s time in Appalachia sure gave him the street cred to cover Ralph Stanley.

The Loose Diamonds played at the Mucky Duck a few times more than once that year that I discovered the band. They seemed to have worked out all the kinks Troy mentions in the documentary; Scrappy sure looked comfortable on lead guitar. At the time I had no idea how much Robin Shivers, a cofounder of Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, had done to promote the band.  But I do recall Scrappy singing the praises of Stephen Bruton, who produced a couple of their CDs. I never got to meet Robin, but I came to love Stephen in the next decade as I watched him play with Scrappy on Sundays at the Saxon Pub in Austin.

As time wore on and I moved away from Texas, I still played the band's CDs, including Fresco Fiasco, the one that brought them NYT acclaim. Loose Diamonds reunion shows have provided many an excuse to return to the Lone Star State. This November in Houston I had the pleasure of reuniting with Troy, Scrappy and Mike while meeting some other die-hard LD fans--Scott, Brad, Jeff and Pats.

I look forward to meeting Shuichi Iwami, and I’m grateful to him for creating his wonderful documentary, Diamonds in the Life. Aside from shaking loose some memories, the video taught me a few things I didn’t know:

·      How Scrappy Jud got his nickname
·      What words Stephen Bruton used to describe the band to Bonnie Raitt
·      Why rolling a third might be unrelated to cannabis
·      What fresco fiasco really means



“Excess is a sin I know, but it’s one in which I only seem to grow.”

(Jud Newcomb, “Advice” Slow Roses/ASCAP)