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Paul McCartney’s  new live CD/DVD package, Good Evening New York City, is coming out soon.  He will give you a free video (“Highway,” below) and a free MP3 (“Let Me Roll It”) in exchange for your e-mail address.  Go to the Paul McCartney website here.

Earlier this week we roamed over to Luckenbach to soak up a little of that Texas mystique, and I thought while we’re in the neighborhood we oughta just keep goin’ about the good old days.  Well, as I said, back in the 1970s Texas became the epicenter of something called the outlaw country music movement.  It kinda started around 1972, right about the time Willie Nelson’s Nashville home burned down and he moved back to Austin.  Later that year Nelson held his first Fourth of July festival at Dripping Springs – featuring Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser, Kris Kristofferson and Leon Russell – and that sort of kicked off the whole shebang.

Michael Martin Murphey

You’d hit the usual hangouts, like the Armadillo World Headquarters and Soap Creek Saloon, and you’d see musicians sipping their beer from longneck bottles and longhairs and rednecks co-inhabiting peacefully.  The music could turn a redneck into a “cosmic cowboy,” and hippies became “redneck rockers.”  Michael (not yet Martin) Murphey wrote the movement’s unofficial anthem with “Cosmic Cowboy,” off his Cosmic Cowboy Souvenir album.  Willis Alan Ramsey cut his one eponymous album on Leon Russell’s Shelter label in 1972 then he dropped off the face of the earth.  Jerry Jeff Walker walked onstage at Castle Creek in his boxer shorts, and Gove Scrivenor played the harmonica and the autoharp and did a solo with his foot (stomping percussion).  Over in Houston, Townes Van Zandt played in places like Anderson Fair and the Texas Opry House, commuting from the dilapidated trailer where he lived in Austin, while Guy Clark gave voice to his great songs.

Yeah, good times.  By the late 1970s Texas would be crowded with great singer/songwriters, from Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore to Shake Russell and Jack Saunders.   Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen would come along in the 1980s and this Texas sound would be set in stone.  There’s still nothing like being outside on a warm Austin night, wrapping your fingers around a cold longneck and listening to someone pluck a guitar and sing.  I said it before, Austin never really got over the 1970s; going there is like taking a trip back in time. Texas music is the same way, it still has that mixture of country, folk, rock and blues.  As Longhorn coaching legend Darrell Royal used to say: “Dance with the one that brung you.”  Down here, they do that every night.

MP3: “Cosmic Cowboy (Part 1)” by Michael Murphey

MP3: “Northeast Texas Women” by Willis Alan Ramsey

MP3: “Rapid City, South Dakota” by Kinky Friedman & the Texas Jewboys

MP3: “Wild Side Of Life” (live at the Armadillo) by Doug Sahm, Leon Russell & Jerry Garcia

MP3: “Alleys of Austin” by Michael Murphey

MP3: “No Place To Fall” by Townes Van Zandt

MP3: “The Party’s Over” by Willie Nelson

MP3: “Texas Cookin’ ” by Guy Clark

MP3: “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand” by Waylon Jennings

MP3: “Gonzo Compadres” by Jerry Jeff Walker

Armadillo World Headquarters website

Back when I had HBO I saw this movie, it was called Lost Horizon.  It was about these people, they all had some kind of hole or emptiness deep inside their lives, and they wound up in this mythical place called Shangri-La.   It wasn’t on any map, it was tough to find and in fact it may have existed only in some people’s imaginations.  If you didn’t have the right kind of attitude, the right kind of feeling in your heart, you could walk past it all your life and never find it at all.  There’s a place like that in Texas.  It’s called Luckenbach.

Luckenbach is a town that has a history and a legend.  The history is that the town started in the 1800s, and at one time it had about 400 people living there.  It’s located in Gillespie County, near Fredericksburg, about 50 miles north of San Antonio and about 70 miles west of Austin.  In the 1960s the place was for all intents and purposes a ghost town – it’s not located on any major highway and even then there were precious few road signs directing drivers to the place.

So here is where the legend kicks in: in 1970, the town (with a population of three at the time) was bought by a few people including an actor Guich Koock, and rancher Hondo Crouch.  The town itself was little more than a small wooden store and a dance hall where they had big German dances and polka festivals.  Crouch allowed some of the Texas country rockers to play there, and in 1973 Jerry Jeff Walker and his Lost Gonzo Band recorded an album in the dance hall: Viva Terlingua.  That album became a classic of what was called at the time the “outlaw” music movement, or the “cosmic cowboy” movement in Texas.  This was a combination of hippie rock and country music, as played by Walker, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Rusty Wier and others.

Anyway, after Jerry Jeff’s album everybody wanted to go to Luckenbach.  The album had a number of classics, either written by Walker (“Gettin’ By,” “Little Bird”) or written by others (Guy Clark’s “Desperados Waiting For A Train”, Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Up Against the Wall Redneck,” Michael Murphey’s “The Wheel”).  And on the album’s finale “London Homesick Blues,” written and sung by Gary P. Nunn and recorded live in the Luckenbach dance hall, you can barely hear Walker singing in the background.  When I was in college people used to plan their entire parties around this record, and the album Cosmic Cowboy Souvenir by Michael (not yet Martin) Murphey.  At these parties people would make sangria wine (on Terlingua, Jerry Jeff’s song “Sangria Wine” pretty much gives the entire recipe) and get really shit-faced and do weird dances.

Ah, but it seems I’ve strayed far from Luckenbach.  Not really – the little ghost town came back to life whenever a live music concert or dance was scheduled, and it still does to this day.  The outlaw country movement eventually settled on Austin as its capital, and guys like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and Joe Ely and others took the music nationwide.  When you go to Austin, you can still hear people play and sing that peculiarly Texas-centric mix of country, folk, blues and rock – in some ways that town never got out of the 1970s.  Not sayin’ that’s a bad thing, not at all.

Even though Hondo Crouch died in the mid 1970s, you can still see his face everywhere in Luckenbach (not hard to do since there’s only about three buildings there) and at a fancy restaurant named after him in Fredericksburg.  People now regularly steal highway signs so the state just stopped putting them up, and it’s just as hard as ever to find Luckenbach if you’re lookin’.  It really doesn’t matter where in the world you are – if you really want to find Luckenbach all you have to do is put on Viva Terlingua.   Close your eyes, and put yourself in that place.

MP3: “Sangria Wine” by Jerry Jeff Walker & the Lost Gonzo Band

MP3: “London Homesick Blues” by Gary P. Nunn, Jerry Jeff Walker & the Lost Gonzo Band

MP3: “Gettin’ By” by the Lost Gonzo Band

MP3: “Up Against the Wall Redneck” by Jerry Jeff Walker & the Lost Gonzo Band

MP3: “Luckenbach, Texas” by Waylon Jennings w/Willie Nelson

MP3: “Viva Luckenbach” by Jerry Jeff Walker

Luckenbach, Texas official website

It wasn’t St. Patrick’s Day but Thursday night sure felt like it – or something like a wild, drunken Irish party – as the legendary Pogues rolled into town to play at the House of Blues.  This punk-Irish-rock unit hasn’t visited Texas in 20 years but here they were in all their glory and best of all, they were led by dissipated frontman Shane MacGowan, singing and smoking and drinking and slurring right where he belongs.

To see MacGowan in the flesh is to wonder how this man is alive at all. Obviously damaged by decades of boozing and whatever, MacGowan is a serious mess.  But he is also the brilliant songwriter who created the great songs that the Pogues are famous for.  And they rolled out one after another Thursday night: “The Broad Majestic Shannon,” “Sunny Side of the Street,” “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” “A Rainy Night in Soho” and so on.  As I said, brilliant – and MacGowan, magically, sang with growing strength as the nearly two-hour set wore on.  Was it the frenzy of the (obviously) alcohol-fueled crowd, or was it the glass of liquid he kept sipping (gin? vodka? water?) during the set?

The band, led by the fiery theatrics of accordionist James Fearnley and singer/tin whistle player Spider Stacy, roared through the songs with fire and passion.  “The Body of An American,” which starts slowly and reels into a joyous Irish romp, was a highlight, as was Stacy’s lead vocal turn on the Pogues’ biggest hit, “Tuesday Morning.”  Philip Chevron also shone, on his “Thousands Are Sailing,” and former Steeleye Span member Terry Woods played a variety of instruments to add authentic atmosphere.

The attention was mainly focused on MacGowan.  When he shambled onstage, he was in constant motion – drinking, smoking – and when he talked between songs it was impossible to understand what he was saying.  But when he sang, it was with authority.  In the homestretch, MacGowan simply announced the title of the song the band was going to play next, and each earned a roar:  “Dirty Old Town,” “Sick Bed of Cuchulainn,” “The Irish Rover.”  In the first of two encores, the Pogues tore it up with the stomper “Sally MacLennane.”  They came out for a second encore with “Fiesta,” with Stacy smashing a cookie pan on his head for percussion and MacGowan pouring something into his mouth (and face and shirt) straight from a bottle.

The evening that had a wild end had a great beginning – with opening act Justin Townes Earle (son of Steve) delivering a charming set of old chestnuts and heartfelt originals, all highlighted by his lightning fingerpicking on guitar.  This kid is great, maybe better than his old man, and I think one day he’s going to write the songs to prove it.  Catch him live, if you can.  And if you get a chance to see the Pogues, do that too.  I am glad I did, that’s for sure.

In The Wake Of The Medusa: The Pogues official website

Justin Townes Earle MySpace page

YouTube: The Pogues at Stubb’s in Austin, 10/28

YouTube: The Pogues at House of Blues Houston, 10/29

Partyin' with the Pogues!

"Fiesta": MacGowan, left, and Stacy

This is our third interview with the great Tommy Farese, vocalist, for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO). Farese is lead vocalist for the tunes “Ornament” and “This Christmas Day,” two show highlights. With a new album and a new tour starting this weekend, we figured we would check in with Tommy to see how things were going. Enjoy.

30 Days Out: What’s it like after you guys have been away from each other for a year? How long does it take to get back to being a band again?

TF: It’s like having family far away who you haven’t seen all year. Once you’re together you just pick up where you left off.

30 Days Out: How long does it take to get your voice back in shape for the more than two month grind? Are there any special things that you do to get yourself ready?

TF: With the voice I use for TSO, I don’t really need to do anything. The raspier, the better for the songs I sing. Now for other types of songs, or should I say other projects with a cleaner sound, I recommend getting at least 7 hours of sleep a night.

30 Days Out: Why do you think people keep coming back year after year? Is it the band or the story?

TF: I believe it’s both. One can’t live without the other. If you have a brilliant idea and the right people at the right place at the right time, it’s just magic, which is what this show is.

30 Days Out: What was your part on the new album, Night Castle?

TF: I just did some background vocal. There are so many great singers with TSO that it’s only fair that some of the others get their shot to be on our records.

30 Days Out: How much of the album will you guys be doing on tour this year?

TF: I’m not going to give that one away. Lets just say that everyone, both east and west coast tours, are in for some new stuff and a lot of surprises.

30 Days Out: Tell us about the grind of playing two shows a day. How do you guys stay healthy?

TF: LOL. We don’t stay healthy. We shake at least 700 to 1,000 hands per show, and as many precautions as you take, there’s really nothing you can do to avoid getting sick. We just all tough it out. The travel and the two shows a day can be a little hectic, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

30 Days Out: How does the “meet and greet” work with the band after the show?

TF: Meet and greets before the show are usually for radio and special guests. After the show, whoever gets in line first gets the first crack at us. I think its what sets us apart from most other acts and meeting new people every day is the best part of the whole experience for me.

30 Days Out: How important is it for you guys to connect with fans on the road?

TF: Connecting with people is the whole point. Without it we wouldn’t be where we are today. There is no way we could have lasted this long with our fans if we didn’t get out there and meet them.

Check out our other two interviews with Tommy Farese. Also, check out our interview with TSO violinist, Anna Phoebe.

Tommy Farese Official Website

Trans-Siberian Orchestra Official Website

“Ornament” – TSO (featuring Tommy Farese)

“This Christmas Day” – TSO (featuring Tommy Farese)

Anna Phoebe is the dynamic, sexy, and ultra-talented violinist for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO). When Phoebe is on stage, her presence is such that it is hard to take your eyes off her. She’s that good. After releasing their latest disc, Night Castle, Tuesday, she and the rest of TSO hit the road for their annual winter tour beginning this Sunday. If you haven’t seen them yet, I suggest you buy a ticket. It’s amazing show with some of the best musicians in the world. Phoebe was nice enough to take the time to speak with us during a break in rehearsals and tell us about her beginnings, how she got involved with TSO, her love for Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull and her solo work.

30 Days Out: How did you get your start in music?

AP: I started playing violin when I was 7. My mom started me off because she plays violin, more as a hobby. She didn’t let me start playing until I promised her I would practice every day, she was quite strict. She started giving me lessons, but we argued so much that after three lessons, I was shuffled off to a teacher at school. I played all classical until age 18. I had a music scholarship and I went to an all-girls boarding school. I actually had an academic and music scholarship. I could have gone on to study music, but I didn’t want to sit in an orchestra or be a music teacher, which is what I thought my options were at the time. So (instead) I went to study politics at the London School of Economics and while I was studying I would go out and listen to music and go up to bands I like and say “listen if you want any violin on your record, I’ll come and play with you.” This led to jamming with various bands and through that I got work. When I finished at university, I did a little bit of temping work at an office, and I was really bad. I wasn’t very good at that type of work and I think I was told off a few times for wearing the wrong types of outfits. I was a document controller for the public train stations and it lasted like six weeks and I said to myself “I can’t do this.” By then, I was making enough to live by playing music.

30 Days Out: How did you get involved with TSO?

AP: I was randomly in New York City having a meeting about something else. I was working on various projects with different artists at the time and I met a woman named Dina, who was also at the meeting and happened to be the talent recruiter for TSO. She told me she had some people for me to meet and I went along. The next thing I knew I was in the studio with all these guys with long hair and leather.  I was thinking “who are these guys?” They took me to Robert Kinkel’s (TSO songwriter, co-producer) house in Brooklyn to audition. I walked into this random room in Brooklyn with a video camera and I thought “what have I gotten myself into?” I had no idea who these people were and went I got home I Googled “Trans-Siberian Orchestra” and thought “shit, these guys are a big deal.” I did some audition tapes and sent them in. One day I was playing on a rooftop in Beirut, I play in the Middle East a lot, and I got a call from Dina telling me I was one of the three finalists for the gig. So I scraped together the money, flew to New York, and I eventually got the gig.

30 Days Out: Tell me about your participation in the new record, Night Castle?

AP: Paul (O’Neill, TSO composer, lyricist) had everyone fly down to Tampa to do some recording and I went down there for a week and recorded a bunch of things. It nice to finally be on a record. At the end of every tour, we get these gold and platinum discs from all the other records, but I wasn’t on any of those, so it always feels like you’re faking a bit, but it’s nice to finally be on the record.

30 Days Out: I understand you guys rehearse in Omaha, NE. Why Omaha?

AP: In the arena we have both stages set up, the east and west tours. It’s really cool because it really feels like one big band. We get to hang out with each other, it’s really good.

30 Days Out: Tell us about rehearsals?

AP: It’s hard, long days. We have a lot of music to go through. We go through the whole show a few times every day and pick out bits to work on and getting everything up to snuff.

30 Days Out: You put so much into every show, how grueling is it to do every day, sometimes twice a day?

AP: It’s a lot of hard work because the day is more than about being on stage. I think a lot of people think that being a musician is a bit of an easy job, you just get on stage, do your bit and then you party afterwards, but it’s not like that. It’s the most full day you can imagine. Not only are you traveling, especially on this tour you are traveling long distances. Your body is on a completely different kind of clock. We have string rehearsal every day with string players from the local cities that I have to direct, then you have sound check and then sometimes we have two shows a day, and the shows are quite long (many times in excess of three hours). I play with other bands throughout the year and we only do 90 minutes and that’s a workout, but it’s also a club gig and the stage is much smaller. You forget how huge the TSO stage is and how fit you have to be to do this show. It’s physically demanding and being on tour is emotionally demanding. You’re away from your family, your friends and, for me, I’m on a completely different time schedule (she lives in London). I sometimes will only speak to my best friends once in three months, so you have all that before you even get on stage. The saving grace is that when you are on stage the adrenaline kicks in and you get in the zone that “this is what you’re meant to be doing in life” and it really gets you through.

30 Days Out: What does being the “string conductor” for TSO entail?

AP: We meet with the string section in different cities before the show and go through parts. Most of the people have been doing the show for a few years and they are great. We have a guy who books everyone who is right for the show. I think for a lot of people in a symphony orchestra this is a very fun gig to do. You’re playing with all the lights, fire and lasers and, as a string player, it’s a fun show.

30 Days Out: Watching the show it looks like fun, but also very intense. What’s it like being on that stage?

AP: It’s amazing. It’s one of the best bands in the world to be in. When you’re on stage you’re not really aware of how big everything really is because you are so in the moment. Everyone from the band to the crew is the best in the business. It’s an amazing experience.

30 Days Out: Where does your dynamic stage presence come from?

It’s just me really. You can’t fake it. I get so much energy from the audience and from the people on stage. It’s all about being in the moment, without getting to spiritual about everything. When you’re on stage and you know the arena is sold out waiting for you to get on stage, I can’t describe how amazing that adrenaline is and a lot of it comes from the audience. It’s like you soak up all the energy in the room and give it back and that’s what the process is for me. Playing music is like another form of communication.

30 Days Out: The tour starts on Nov. 1 and goes through the first of the year with only a few days off. How tough is it to play for more than two straight months with little downtime?

AP: It actually goes by really quickly. It is a long time and being away is tough, but you’re on tour, you’re living the dream. It’s quite amazing. I love being on the road. I love being in different cities, hotels. I feel really privileged after doing the west coast tour for four years to now be on the east coast tour to see the rest of the United States. Playing the shows is an incredible privilege.

30 Days Out: Tell us about some of the other artists you have played with?

AP: I have been playing with Jethro Tull on and off for the past few years. Playing with Tull, I learned so much from (frontman) Ian Anderson. He’s been kind of a mentor to me. Anyone who has had a career spanning 40 years in anything is a hero in my book. As a musician touring, he’s in his early sixties and still doing between 100 and 200 shows a year. I quite like to be like that when I’m old, older. He’ll kill me if I call him old. Ian’s one of those people who, no matter how long he’s played a song, he’s looking to make it musically better and that makes your playing so much better. He would come up to me and say “Anna, the way you are approaching the second note of the second verse, you’re kind of sliding up to it, maybe if you approach it this way.” His hearing is great and he’s such a perfectionist. That makes me play better knowing that someone is really listening to what you are doing. That’s definitely a highlight. There’s another band called Oy Va Voi who I’ve been touring with. It’s kind of gypsy-Balkan music. It’s an incredible band. We play all over…Slovakia, Budapest. It’s really great.

30 Days Out: Tell me about your solo work?

The latest album I’ve recorded is Rise of the Warrior (available at iTunes). I did it with a guy named Joost Van den Broek, a classically trained pianist. He also plays heavy metal, so he has a great mix of classical and metal. We really brainstormed quickly. Within six months of meeting each other we wrote and recorded the entire album. It’s kind of symphonic metal. Very dramatic and theatrical.

You can catch Anna Phoebe on the East Coast version of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra tour. It all kicks off this Sunday, Nov. 1. Check out all the dates at the official TSO website.

Anna Phoebe Official Website

Anna Phoebe MySpace Page

Anna Phoebe Twitter Page

Nobody's big sister, that's for sure.

That’s not my big sister up there … I don’t have a sister and in fact I was the eldest child in my family.  Growing up in the 1960s, and hitting my teenage years in the summer of 1968, I was in a position to be the big brother who was knowledgeable about music.  And in fact my younger brothers did indeed “borrow” my albums – my first hope is that they learned something, and my second hope is that one day they will return them.

Ha, ha.  A little levity is in order, because today we’re talking about the Moody Blues.  Just their name implies gloominess – or at least moodiness – but in fact these guys were quite enjoyable and upbeat back in the day.  In 1968 everything was pretty heavy: that was the year of RFK, MLK, the Watts riots, etc.  The Beatles were trying to make it better for Jude, the no-longer-Young Rascals were saying people got to be free and the Jefferson Airplane’s newest album (Crown of Creation) pictured the group in an atomic fireball.   The Moodies were sort of psychedelic Lite – their breakthrough album (from ‘67) was Days of Future Passed, with an orchestra no less.  “Tuesday Afternoon” and “Nights In White Satin” from that LP got played enough on the radio to hook us all on the Moody Blues.

When In Search Of The Lost Chord came along in 1968, they just gave us more of the Moody sound – only without that pesky orchestra.  The Moodies were their own orchestra, overdubbing their voices and instruments using a device called a mellotron, a keyboard instrument that plays back pre-recorded sounds from tape (now that job is done by a synthesizer).  British musician Mike Pinder worked for the company that made these instruments, and after he introduced it to the Beatles (who used the mellotron on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), Pinder joined the Moody Blues.

So you drop the needle on In Search Of The Lost Chord and what do you hear?  Sitars, drums and some guy reciting a poem.  Back in ‘68, that could be described as “heavy.”  Today, that would certainly be described as “full of shit.”  But that was the Moody Blues – ponderous, pompous and “heavy” even while they cranked out these melodic tunes that never wanted to leave your head.  The poem rolls right into “Ride My See-Saw,” which is one of the most rockin’ tunes the band ever had.

Fans of this album – and the Moody Blues – will cite a number of other tunes from this LP, but the other highlight for me is Ray Thomas’ “Legend Of A Mind.”  Yes, the “Timothy Leary’s dead” song.  What’s it about?  Damned if I know, or care – if you get caught up in the “meaning” of all this psychedelic (or psychedelic Lite) garbage, you’re not enjoying the music.   And what about this song, “The Best Way To Travel” ?!  Could they mean …?

“Voices In The Sky,” by Justin Hayward, is another favorite of many.  Hayward’s expressive voice was the hook behind many of the Moody Blues’ radio hits well into the 1970s – and even in the 1980s, when the group erupted from the grave with the hit “Your Wildest Dreams.”  John Lodge, the band’s other front man, wrote “Ride My See-Saw” and future Moodies hits, including “Isn’t Life Strange” and “Just A Singer In A Rock and Roll Band” would come from his pen.

Today Hayward and Lodge, along with drummer Graeme Edge, are the only members of the Moody Blues from those heady days.  The band has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide and continue to tour regularly, making them more than just a flashback from some drug you never took.  The Moody Blues were the best way to travel back then, that’s for sure.

MP3: “Departure/Ride My See-Saw” (I tried to combine these two as you heard on the LP, hope my editing job isn’t too crude)

MP3: “Legend Of A Mind”

MP3: “Voices In The Sky”

YouTube: “Legend Of A Mind” in glorious psychedelic black and white

The Moody Blues official website

OK, enough is enough.  Yeah, I know Rod Stewart has been selling a shitload of records with his “Songbook” series.  And I realize that boomer nostalgia is golden and it makes those cash registers ring.  And really, an album full of Rod Stewart covering mostly Motown songs is probably a good thing to sell at Starbucks and Wal-Mart around Christmastime.  But man, I listened to this a couple of times and really got a miserable feeling.

Because despite the title, nothing here even remotely resembles “soul.”  When songs like “My Cherie Amour” and “Tracks Of My Tears” were big hits, nobody really considered them “soul” songs – they were more like “pop” songs, you know?  Rod also covers a few Sam Cooke tunes and duets with people like Stevie Wonder, Mary J. Blige and Jennifer Hudson but this is all pretty cold stuff.  Aside from a few high spots – his cover of Tony Joe White’s “Rainy Night In Georgia” comes close to being interesting and his version of the O’ Jays’ “Love Train” is peppy – everything here is pretty slick and overplanned.

Maybe Rod could have picked some lesser-known tunes, maybe he could have played them more “live” with less slickness.  But he didn’t.  So we have Soulbook – all cleaned up for the “American Idol” crowd and pretty soulless.  “It’s The Same Old Song,” indeed.

MP3: “It’s The Same Old Song”

YouTube: Soulbook photo session – this is what it’s all about, I suppose.

Rod Stewart official website

Riffling through your big sister’s (or big brother’s) records, you often came to the conclusion that maybe he or she was cooler than you.  Maybe not a lot cooler, maybe just a little.  And you usually came to this conclusion by realizing that your elder sibling listened to music made by people you never heard of.  So today we focus on Ramatam, the 1972 self-titled debut album of a band that had big aspirations.

Ramtatam has been described as a “poor man’s Blind Faith,” and I suppose that’s appropriate – the band included guitarist/vocalist Mike Pinera, best known for writing and singing “Ride Captain Ride” with the group Blues Image.  He served some time as a member of Iron Butterfly before forming Ramatam.  The band’s drummer was Mitch Mitchell, formerly of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the focus of the five-piece group was April Lawton, a chick who was hyped at the time as a guitarist as good as Hendrix himself.

So this group had a lot to live up to – Tom Dowd (Allman Brothers Band, Derek and the Dominos) produced the album but its combination of hard rock and jazz rhythms with totally incongruous horns kind of made it sound like a mess.  “Heart Song,” written by Pinera with Les Sampson (also a drummer, he played with the Experience’s Noel Redding), takes the group into Traffic territory, while the harder rockin’ “Ask Brother Ask” sounds like Rare Earth or Jethro Tull with a sax instead of flute.  Lawton does some nice shreddin’ lead guitar on “Ask,” and she contributes three songs co-written with Ramatam keyboardist Tom Sullivan.  Probably the best of these is “Changing Days,” which sounds like a Crosby, Stills and Nash throwaway.

Then there’s “Wayso,” writing credited to the entire band, which sounds uncannily like Blood, Sweat and Tears invited Chicago’s Terry Kath to sit in but everyone got drunk so they threw away the tape.  The band released another album without Mitchell and Pinera, presumably because they had a two-LP deal with Atlantic Records.  April Lawton never did make it to the exalted ranks of guitarists like Clapton, Page or Hendrix – she played in some bands but left music to become a painter and graphic designer.  She died in 2006.  Mitchell was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Experience and died in 2008.  Pinera played with the band New Cactus and toured as Alice Cooper’s guitarist in the 1980s and played on a number of Cooper’s albums, including last year’s Along Came A Spider.

MP3: “Heart Song”

MP3: “Ask Brother Ask”

MP3: “Changing Days”

MP3: “Wayso”

Mike Pinera’s home page