The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Will the Circle Be Unbroken

On this episode we talk about the historic seventh studio album by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band,Will the Circle Be Unbroken. 

Having proved their worth with a hit cover of the Jerry Jeff Walker's "Mister Bojangles," the Dirt Band and were given the go ahead to work on  an unusual yet inspired project: an album of old county and bluegrass tunes where the Dirt band would act as a supporting a cast for several legendary bluegrass and country artists, such as Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, and Jimmy Martin, to name a few, allowing them to be the real stars.   The songs were performed live, and often in one or two takes, giving the album immediacy and warmth.  

Released in November 1972, the album bridged the generational and musical gap between the old guard of Nashville and the burgeoning country rock scene of the early 1970's and was an unlikely, yet huge success.  

Visit us at www.tappingvinyl.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:47

In 1948, Columbia Records introduced the 33rd and a third RPM Long Player Record. One year later, RCA Victor introduced the 45 RPM single. Listeners now had a choice: only the hits or the full album. In the last half of the 60s, the best bands realized the potential of the longer format and began to build a cohesive body of music that must be heard unbroken. The arrival of downloadable music has increased the temptation to stay in the shallow end with the hits. This podcast believes every album tells a story. Tonight, we tell one of those stories.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We've had some logistical difficulties recently. So uh we're a little behind in our podcasting schedule. We're not we're not at the same uh temperance, or what's the word I'm looking for?

SPEAKER_04 1:50

If this is your first time to join us, everything's perfect and we always do a great job.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Anyway, this this is uh we're coming to you live from the Benegaroon Saloon in Wildwood, Texas. I have with me Mr. Doug Cooper. Our usual host and our usual co-host, Mr. Tony Slagle. Hello, everybody. And I'm your humble producer, Mr. Jonathan J. M. Rowe, and as you can tell, I am in the hosting chair today. And we're talking about an album that came out in 1972. It was kind of uh Whoa, whoa, hold on.

SPEAKER_25 2:25

We're talking about an album that came out in 1972? I wonder who picked it. There's no way. Have we ever talked about an album?

SPEAKER_02 2:33

We're going back, we're in the way back time machine.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

Okay, I it's most of the time it's 71, so I just want to point out that I have moved forward.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

He's jumped a year. If you're a longtime listener, you know that Doug Ting uh tends to pick albums that were produced uh before most of our listeners were born. And uh we would like to uh uh ask Mr. Doug Cooper. I don't think that's true. You're being nice to our being nice to our listeners.

SPEAKER_04 3:05

He's pretending like we have a young audience.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Yeah. But I will ask the perennial question we normally ask uh a little bit early in the podcast. But uh Mr. Cooper, uh why did you select this particular album?

SPEAKER_04 3:19

I to summarize it, uh mostly because I'm a wonderful person. Um and anybody who hasn't heard this album, it's it's um it's uh it's not fair. They don't know about it and they would love it if they did listen to it. And I'm talking about I don't care what kind of music you listen to normally, I think this will attract everybody. Also, it is what album are we doing?

SPEAKER_02 3:46

We are doing Will the Circle Be Unbroken by The Nitty Ditty Gritty Diddy Gritty Diddy Diddy, P Diddy? Yes, the nitty gritty the P Ditty Dirt Band. The dirt band. The dirty boys, the dirty, that's right. The nitty gritty dirt band. Right and company. And company, yes, and some of the greatest bluegrass players in the history of blue grass.

SPEAKER_04 4:16

This is this is an album. It reminds this album reminds me of the moody blues and the uh the uh day in the future. What is it called? Days in future past in future past. Future and gods past how in the world did this happen? When I think about Days Future, that was supposed to be a um rock and roll version of New World Symphony by Dvorjak, which is the stupidest idea I've ever heard. Maybe. And uh then they've they completely did whatever they wanted instead of following that and came up with an album that to me seems impossible. And this is this is the same kind of album. This is not an album, this is three albums, and the fact that a band with a little bit of success was able to talk a record company and uh the biggest stars in country music to come and put an album out, it just seems unlikely, and it's a little piece of magic that happened. It uh it was lightning caught in a bio Bible that struck twice. Right? Yeah, this is a a remarkable and unlikely record that I think everybody will be happy to have in their collection. Yeah, if people still have collections, Doug.

SPEAKER_25 5:35

Yes, it's uh it's unusual that we would be talking about one of your picks or one of our picks in general and have it be a violation. Can you explain? I'm just curious why is this a violation podcast?

SPEAKER_04 5:48

Because there's three albums, and we are not uh cut out for that. Well, our listeners aren't either, yeah. It's us also almost a live album. It is, and everything was taken in one or two takes or recorded in one or two takes, and it's also a it's similar to a compilation because you have uh a whole bunch of different artists uh participating, so it's it does not follow our usual criteria.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Yeah, there's so there's a couple of things to say about it as well. We were talking about this a little before we started recording the podcast. These are a bunch of very good musicians that I had always assumed they'd played with together, they they'd played together before. You're talking about the old time musicians, the old time musicians that were on this. And and one of the things that's very fascinating about this album, or it's just some of the dialogue that happens before and after some of the songs when they are actually talking about the first time that they've met. There's a couple of parts where they're talking about the recording strategies and all that that are just fascinating. And uh then if you actually listen, there's the there's some bonus if you're listening to it in the uh the digital way. There's boo yeah, boo. Uh there is some you can actually tell that this was recorded almost totally live, almost every and it's three albums of totally live recording.

SPEAKER_25 7:20

Well, what they did was they had they had a mic running all the time all the time. Yeah. And then they had the setup for the musicians. And I guess they sat around kind of in a circle. A little bit like the Rolling Stones did on the album we talked about, right? Very similar. No, they sat around in a circle and played and played. But yeah, you you mentioned uh some of these musicians had played with each other, but one you know, some that you would just take for granted that they had played together, you know. Yeah, like Merle Travis, Merle Travis and Doc Watson.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

And they'd never played together before this happened. And they never met before they got in that studio.

SPEAKER_04 7:56

So we have Merle Travis, Doc Watson, Royko, Mother Maybell, Carter, Earl Scruggs, uh Ray Scruggs. Yeah, and Bastard Clements. Yeah, uh Jimmy Martin. Jimmy Martin of Great Bastard Clemens, Norm Blake, Pete Oswald, Kirby. So uh this is uh I tried to think about if you did this in rock and roll, it would be like if you got Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, um all together to to uh do an album. Yeah. But by and the guys would be like Jimmy Page gets them all together. Led Zeppelin got together to have all these guys put an album together and they played backup for him.

SPEAKER_25 8:39

Well, there's something fascinating about that, thinking about that. And it may just be this situation to me, but this recording, first of all, all of these legendary musicians, uh at least from what you hear, there's very little little ego in anything that they're talking about. And these are great, like legendary bluegrass countries.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

I mean, from the very yeah, you hear mother made Belle Carter may be the most the the she's gotta be the major of this whole thing.

SPEAKER_04 9:10

The what do they call the king of country music, Roy Kough and uh and the and the what they call the god godmother of lead guitar or whatever?

SPEAKER_25 9:18

Yeah, but but not only these are the people that invented country music and not only are they you know, whatever ego they have is at the door, but the band backing them up, the band whose quote album this quote unquote is, the Nitty Gritty Durban, doesn't have an ego either. In fact, you hardly hear them. They're they're on all the tracks, but they really are playing a supporting role. A supporting role, right? And and I don't think that would be possible with rock and roll musicians. I just don't think it would be.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

I think the the ego involved in the Well these guys, yeah, they kind of were rock and roll musicians, but they yeah, but they're it's so obvious that their the reverence that they have for these guys is just through the roof, and they're like, nope, you guys are you're running this, we're doing songs about that you guys know. We're just here as your backing band. We're not doing anything else. And the hippies. They're hippies, that's what they call it. Yeah, they bring that out in the album cover. Which I we got I also gotta admit, if you don't own this album, it's the album itself is just this is one to buy on vinyl, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:22

And I'm I'm so depressed that I don't know where my copy is anymore. It's a it's a amazing. It's another thing that couldn't happen. Nobody could put out an album with a Confederate flag on the well on the front of it anymore.

SPEAKER_25 10:36

But the picture is of a Union naval officer, which is uh was unheard of by most of the bands that were sort of attaching themselves to whatever nostalgia there was to the Civil War at the time. Yeah, they were all shooting for the South and images of the South. This is you know, front and center is a Union naval officer on it.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Even though the it looks like they're they are writing uh the Declaration of Independence on the front of it. So Tony, what let's let's move into a little bit of our personal history with this album. What what had were you aware of it before this podcast? Or yeah, of course, of course.

SPEAKER_25 11:15

Um I you know, I I will say that I didn't listen to it a whole lot, um, but I did listen, I have listened to it uh a number of times over the years. Um this may be, I mean, outside of the couple of singles of the nerdy nitty gritty of the nitty pity nitty dirt brand band, the nitty gritty dirt band. Uh this may be the only thing of theirs I've ever listened to to any extent. Uh going back and listening to stuff before this album, there's probably a reason why. I'm not a big big fan of the Folky stuff they did.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

And um Yeah, and even the post stuff they did.

SPEAKER_25 11:52

Right. I mean, this was this was definitely something that um it's an anomaly. Well, they're very good musicians. Oh, they're fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 12:00

A lot of music that I'm not interested in.

SPEAKER_25 12:02

Well, what what's really funny is that, and we can talk about it when we you know talk about the history, but when they during the period when they broke up, because the band broke up for about six months, and two of the guys started a band and they ended up being Linda Ronstadt's backup band, they recorded songs that are amazing songs, absolutely amazing songs. I've got samples of them, and I'm like, Man, where is I mean, this is the that's my kind of stuff, these songs that they did as the Corvettes. But um anyway, yeah, like House on Pooh Corner is not that's not my cup of tea. No, and and uh they covered that.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

I thought they wrote it.

SPEAKER_25 12:44

No, no, no, it's a Kenny Logan song. That's Logins and Messina. Yeah, they did they did it on the same album they did uh Mr. Bojangles. Did they really? Yeah, and then if you nobody needs to do that, so well we'll we can I've got the I've got I've got like samples, I've got samples of all these stuff so we can hear them for and the audience can hear them. And then again, just to throw this out, their version of these days, you know, we used to talk, we've talked previously about bands that don't know how to interpret a song. I I don't know how they got away with that. I mean, you listen to their version of these days, it's like, what were they thinking? I'd rather listen to Nico singing it than this. That's saying something.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Yeah. Um, anyway. Yeah. So my history with this goes back to um in in 1985, when I was a senior in high school, my family started moving from one part of San Antonio to the other, and my dad was saying, hey, just pick some albums out because I want to try to get rid of as many as I can. So I was just going through his record collection, and that's where I found the Chris Christofferson, that's where I found the band, that's where I found like, you know, some jazz records and stuff. And there was this album. And I remember looking at the album, and I uh was taking guitar lessons at the time, and the guitar teacher said, you know, you need to listen to Doc Watson, and I saw that Doc Watson was on it. And I also saw a whole bunch of songs that I had played before, you know, at youth groups, played before at camp, like I saw the light and all that sort of stuff, and I just went, All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna grab this and give it a listen. And so my freshman year in college, I was listening to it, and I just could not freaking stop listening to this album. I listened to every song, and it was uh it was one of the first albums that I ever listened to where I figured out that you don't a guitar is not just about playing lead, the guitar is not just about strumming chords, it could do so many other different things, and just listening to this album, and I'd heard this kind of stuff before, I'd heard bluegrass before, but it was just listening to this album was the first time that I just started saying, This is what a guitar is for, this is what a mandolin is for, this is it, it just it really introduced me to introduce really listening to instruments and um you know and bluegrass in and of itself isn't all that uh diverse. It's you I got the same instruments, and it's and it's kind of like the blues, but there's songs on here that the way that these guys are playing them are just it's difficult to I could not stop listening to some of this. Like I kept wanting the songs to go longer.

SPEAKER_25 15:26

I'm gonna be I'm gonna be controversial here. All right. You all know my opinion on double albums. Yeah. Well, I'll double down on that and have that opinion on triple albums. I don't think this needed to be three three sides, to be honest with you. I mean, there's I I don't dislike anything on any of the sides of this album. I don't dislike any of the songs, but um I do I don't find myself listening to the whole thing all the way through. Um and it and in a lot of ways, and we can talk about this when we get to the album, a lot of ways it feels like it's top-loaded towards the first album anyway.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

I'll give you that, you know. But one of the things I wish that you could do, and I'm sure you could do with with AI these days, is like, let's get the let's get 12 songs, put 12 songs together, let me listen to it. All right, let's do another 12 songs randomly.

SPEAKER_25 16:13

There's not a bad song, I'm not saying that because it's not there is no song on here that bores me. No, no, no, there's not. It's just that and it's not like here's something else controversial. It's not like all things must pass, where that is a great double album, even though it's a triple album, you know. Uh where there's songs that you just it's just that I I just don't feel like there's there is no home.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

I I think you have to take it out of the category of an album. I I agree. For me, this is something that it's a document. It goes into your C D player and stays there for a long time and you go all the way through it. Maybe you go through uh you go through it a couple of times and you switch to the other one, and it's almost like it's uh a soundtrack for your drive. It's not it um it was a soundtrack for I uh yeah if you're trying to what we this is why it's a violation. What we do is look at albums with that are cohesive. They they sit make a statement as an album. This doesn't do this, this is a collection of the greatest.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

This is almost a history. I mean it's like a it's like anthology.

SPEAKER_04 17:25

That's why the album cover is so appropriate. Uh it looks like it looks like history. The history of the United States as told by people with banjos and guitars. Uh there's something of uh to that. Um there's no but it's not it's not a cohesive album, it's it's more like a live album. What what's your history with this? Well, uh, I heard it at camp the first time. Really? And uh, I guess that was in the 70s, and I just kept hearing it. Uh someone was playing it in the kitchen over and over and over. It wasn't Dinah, was it? Dinah in the kitchen. Dinah in the kitchen. No, someone else was in there with her. Ah but um yeah, and then I had it. I don't know where it went. I'm very sad to find out I don't have it anymore. But I it's not one that I go, I gotta hear something and put it on. It's one where I haven't heard that in a long time, and then I listened to it, and then I can't stop listening to it for a period of time. But it also introduced me to so much other right things. That's that's a pretty important part of it.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Yeah, that's what I was saying earlier with the guitar. Like it made me listen to instrumentation differently because it was I was so used to guitars taking uh you know Springsteen type solos and or you know Dylan Strummand holy hell out of something.

SPEAKER_04 18:50

I've only had uh three triple albums, and I think I've listened to this one the most. I had I'm sure I've listened to this one the most of the I know I listened to it more than yes songs.

SPEAKER_25 19:04

Well, and I guess putting it in, you know, framing it in that sort of historical document and not thinking of it as cohesive. Um that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Yeah. Well I was when we when Doug picked this album, I'll I was going through the uh I was looking at it on my my my Amazon audio and I was just noticing how many had I'd already picked out songs that I just liked to look like are on my set list and stuff, and just like, oh man, yeah, that's a great song. That's a great song.

SPEAKER_04 19:33

Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of like a document, Ms. It is. That's what I that it's fun, a document, a fun document. A fun document. And it's and again, it's just such a weird thing to have happened.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about how that actually happened. So uh of course, when I when I host the show, I always like to kind of put it in the context of what was going on. So this is 1972, it's the end of 1972 when this album came out. I've I've saw two different things. One said it came out on October 1st, 1972, and another one said it the thing I read said it came out in November. Yeah, I heard November. Yeah. Um so it's 1972. The the election is about to take place, 1972. I and I was just going through like what some of the the big hits were during that time. But the I think the bigger thing is Credence Clorado Revival broke up. Uh the Velvet Underground broke up in 1972. I'm sure the MC5 disbanded in 1972. So you were kind of seeing these bands that were kind of set as sort of these protest bands, and then you were seeing this stuff like Carol King won her Grammy for tapestry. Carly Simon was the artist new artist of the year. So you kind of saw that the music I mean the 60s were pr pretty much dead. It was also the end of when Vietnam the the last year of the draft uh from 1972. So you saw and and uh ground forces were being removed. So the the the protests, the the whole zeitgeist, as I like to say during that time, was changing. Like music was changing. We had Sweetheart of the Rodeo by the Birds, you had um New Riders of the Search of Purple Sage, New Riders of the New Riders of the Purple Sage. So this so you had rock fans that were kind of revisiting Beauty. You had American Beauty. The Burritos. Yeah. This is different to me though. Well, that's what I'm significantly different.

SPEAKER_25 21:41

And that's the part I'm trying it is significantly different, but I couldn't in my mind I could not give a good explanation of why it's those other sweethearts of the rodeo may be closer to this, but when you're talking about the burritos or American Beauty or or Poco or some of these other even the Eagles, uh the band that we did um the um Um Pure Prairie League. Those are bands that are infusing rock elements into country music. This is a country.

SPEAKER_04 22:09

This is unadulterated. This is unadulterated.

SPEAKER_25 22:17

So to I I don't I don't feel comfortable calling this country rock because it's not.

SPEAKER_04 22:26

I don't think there's anything rock about it. That's the the reason it gets classified in that area is this helped people who thought they didn't like country music learn that they did like country music.

SPEAKER_25 22:38

Agreed, agreed.

SPEAKER_04 22:38

And the country music is not taking a step towards rock and roll. It's pulling them into their world.

SPEAKER_25 22:45

But how did that happen? That's what I don't understand. Because there were other bands, like I'd say Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The reason why I say it's closer to this is because the vast majority of that, with the few exceptions of the um Graham Parsons uh originals, yeah. That's a country album. Right. A country album.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Doing a country album doing country songs. Yes, yeah. It sounds country, that's what it is.

SPEAKER_25 23:09

Yeah. Exactly. Um, but uh it it's interesting to me when you hear about what how this bridged that gap. I I think I I just I it's a head scratcher to me because there were bands at this time, and we talked about it when we talked about Robbie Folk, there were these new grass bands, right? These bands that were hippies, that smoked pot, that had long hair and beards, that were playing bluegrass and country music, and they weren't putting rock into it. They were traditional bands, but they played it with an attitude with a little edge to it.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Yeah. I I don't know if that's what's happening here. That's the thing that that's kind of the point that I'm trying to make. It's like I guess there were people trying this, like thinking they could and then the nitty-gary nitty gritty dirt band just took it and said, nah, the hell with it. We're just making we want to get guys in that we we don't need, you know, the taking care of a business band backing us up or something. We let's get the guys that made this music, let's and we keep talking about using this word, is like let's make a document of what these guys have done, and let's have the privilege of getting to back them up.

SPEAKER_25 24:17

So what I find this more akin to, if if I can be so bold and say this, is what Rick Rubin has done, we did with Johnny Cash. Right. Um it's it's this idea of taking people that the country music uh uh establishment had basically put in the dustbin because none of these people were on the radio anymore, even though they were they're on the grand old operating. Right, but they weren't on the radio anymore. Young people weren't really listening to them. The nitty-gritty dirt band got into the studio and kind of made them hip again. And I feel I mean the same thing with Johnny Cash. He was before Rick Rubin grabbed him, he uh uh I've heard from Columbia, yeah. I well, I heard that he said he had a one-way ticket to Branson. Yeah. So I mean, that's you can think about that. So I I find this is more like that. It's it's as you said, a document, it's resurrecting these people.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

I mean and thank God they did, because a lot of these guys, this is some of their la this is some of the last recordings they ever made. Yeah. Roy Husky Jr., I think was his last.

SPEAKER_25 25:19

I I just I just f that I've part I find fascinating, and I find it fascinating that so many young people grabbed onto this. This is a huge selling album. There's no reason why this album should have been huge selling, but it was. Yeah, and and vast except that it's so good. No, well, okay, so freaking good.

SPEAKER_04 25:36

Other good things come and go and don't don't sell like this, so there is a mystery there. Yeah. But I don't know. I I can't answer that question either. I just know as a young man who's getting a drink of water at at the camp, I hear this and I want it. And I I I don't take time to categorize it or figure it out. I don't I don't think this is necessarily an easy album to classify because some of it's bluegrass and some of it's not bluegrass. Right. I well, yeah, they do see my category name for this is great country music that's not from Texas. That's how I categorize it.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

Because it isn't the Dobro instead of the pedal stealing.

SPEAKER_04 26:20

So the it's very different than what Texans listen to. Yeah, it's it's appellation, yeah, but it's not all bluegrass.

SPEAKER_25 26:28

Right. So there's this story, you know. Roy Acuff did not necessarily want to do this when he was asked. And there's a story of him showing up in the process. I think they'd been recording for maybe a day or whatever, and he showed up just to see what was going on. And I forget what song was playing. They put some song playing, and at the end of it, he asked uh Mikuan's brother, who was the band manager and producer at the time, what would you call that? And the guy said, Uh, I don't know, America. He's trying to figure out something called. And Roy F cup Roy Acuff says, That's just good old country music. Let's do some more. So, I mean, that's the case. He went and saw what these guys were doing. It's funny, I I I read that the reason why he, one of the reasons why he was tentative to do it was because they all had facial hair. He liked to see a man's face. He liked to see a man's face when he talked to him. And as a bearded gentleman, I I find that's well and then look at the album cover. Yeah. So uh, but but I mean, uh the reason I bring that story up is because Ray Roy Acuff heard it and said, This is country. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

Even Roy Acuff himself. What didn't he know? Didn't he host the Grand Old Opry? Yeah, he was one of the one of the hosts. Yeah, the king of country music. Yeah. And uh so yeah, so we're we're talking about this being a document, and it's not just a document of them recording, but there's so many good uh little anecdotes that they say before and after the song that just that they're just you know, Mother Maybelle Carter talking about, well, I've never played that on Auto Heart before.

SPEAKER_25 28:06

And just it's well, she doesn't on this either. That's what's so funny.

SPEAKER_04 28:10

It is um it is someone said it's like sitting on the front porch with a bunch of great musicians, and that's exactly the feel of this album. That's that's why it's such a perfect Saturday morning album when you're uh tootin' around the house trying to get things done, and you can just put this one on and let it roll.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Makes me want to go shoe horses. All right. Well, uh speaking of horses, that kind of is a good segue into uh the history, maybe not necessarily of this band and how this album kind of came into well.

SPEAKER_25 28:43

Yeah, I mean it's it's worth talking about that uh after the release of their third album, Rare Junk, which is a funny name for an album, uh the band started names. The band spent a couple of months, uh this is around mid-1968, in Oregon playing the musical parts of the movie Paint Your Wagon. And if you those of you who don't know, Paint Your Wagon, it's got Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood in it, and uh they end up being married to the same woman. And it's it's uh I wouldn't say it's a great movie, but it's one you should probably see. It's a good movie. It's a musical.

SPEAKER_04 29:17

It is with those guys singing. I know. Clint Eastwood sings. So I remember being crushed as a child watching my hero Clint Eastwood start singing when he's supposed to be shooting people.

SPEAKER_25 29:29

The reason you said uh speaking of beans, is here's a song from the movie called Hand Me Down That Can O'Bins. And it's uh it's a musical number in which there's a rowdy drunken Lee Marvin. And I don't know if he was acting much. I don't know if he was acting around and singing, committed to the craft. He misses the broadside of a barn. Here we go. We're gonna play you a little bit of uh Paint Your Wagon, which I never thought we'd do on this podcast. Okay, that's an idiot, Brent. I did cut it out before. You can actually hear Lee Marvin singing in the background. Yeah, which is great. Um good thing he can act.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

Although I'm not sure anybody was I thought his voice was hilarious on that, but anyway. There's a lot of hilarious, yeah.

SPEAKER_25 30:45

I'm not sure it was a polarity. Um but anyway, so just briefly talking about the history of this band. Um, there are two people in this band that have been in it since pretty much the beginning, and there's been a lot of personnel changes. Uh, the two people are Jeff Hannah and uh Jimmy Faden or Fadden. Fadden. Uh probably Jeff Hannah is the best place to start. He's born in Detroit. Uh his family moves around a lot. They go to Phoenix in 1955. He's born in 47. They go to Phoenix in 55, lived there for five years before moving to Littleton, Colorado. We lived for a couple more years. Um, during this time, he says the music that was played around their house was stuff like Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, so no indication that there'd be this interest in anything. But as a young boy, he took a shine to early rock and rolls, things like Dwayne A Dwayne Eddie, Eddie Cochran, the Everly Brothers. And at the same time, his older brother started bringing home Folkways and Vanguard records. Now, those were records that were kind of at the forefront of the folk boom of the early 60s. The people like uh Ramblin' Jack Elliott and then Jim Quitskin Jug Band. Um and he starts listening to people like the Kingston Trio, the Greenbrier Boys, the Lost uh New Lost City Ramblers, and Joan Baez. In fact, he said his gateway to Bluegrass was Joan Baez Volume 2, which was released in 1961. And on that album, she's backed by the Greenbrier Boys on a couple of songs. And he said that was a game changer for him because he really started getting into bluegrass. Um, and then he started looking at other people like you know, uh Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, Sonny Terry, uh I already said Ramblin' Jack Elliott, but anyway. Uh they moved to his Hannah's family moves to Long Beach in 1962. He gets a Harmony uh Monterey model guitar. I don't know, Jam. Do you know what that is?

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Well, I know Harmony was kind of the slow end. Yeah, you got it from Harmony. Yeah, that's a catalog guitar. Yeah. Um I used to have one. I had one too. Yeah, my first electric guitar was a Harmony. Really? Yeah, it was action.

SPEAKER_04 32:55

I got one at a thrift store. Yeah. Just the action was like playing barbell.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

Yards, yards off of the fretboard.

SPEAKER_25 33:03

Well, during during his first year in high school, first day actually in high school, he meets Bruce Kunkel. But the two of them start talking music, and Kunkel asks Hannah if he plays the guitar. And when Hannah told him he did, but he didn't really know any songs. Kunkel starts showing him some chords, and Hannah says he has this epiphany. Oh wow, you can put your fingers together and actually make music, that type of thing. And the two of them became friends and start playing music together as a new coast too. They not only start playing together, but they go and hang out at the Long Beach City College and play on the grounds there and at McCabe's music store in Long Beach. Now, this is not the McCabe's we talked about earlier. We have talked about McCabe's when we talked about John Wesley Harding because he played there with Bruce Springsteen. And oddly enough, we'll get to this later. The song they play is um uh Springsteen's Wreck of the Highway.

SPEAKER_20 33:54

Dun dun dungeon, I just uh did three blue boobs.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

Okay. All right. Doug's warbling and uh so we are at the segment of the show that we like to call connections, and that's where we like to uh connect albums and artists that we've spoken of before with this particular album and the artists on it uh for this show. So I'm gonna go with Doug first. Do you have a connection?

SPEAKER_04 34:44

Well, the most obvious one is Jackson Brown. Damn it. Jackson Brown? Uh-huh. I don't know that when he was a young buck, he was a uh a guy hanging out at McCabe's. Uh and there's questions about whether he was really a member of the nitty-gritty dirt band or not. For six months he was. Yeah. I saw one of the members of the nitty-gritty dirt band saying he wasn't. So um November. I mean, who the hell? It's Hannah says he was a member of the band. Yeah. I don't it's fine with me if he wants to be a member. I'm just saying that they played together and they hung out at that uh the caves, the caves, at that uh at that guitar shop. And uh so and we covered his album, Everman. If you haven't heard that, that's one of our best.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

Uh I've got one.

SPEAKER_04 35:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 35:34

Um The Birds. They do a version of I Am a Pilgrim on the album that we talked about, and this album has I Am a Pilgrim on it.

SPEAKER_04 35:46

They have a little disdain that these guys don't have yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_25 35:52

Um, okay, the Allman Brothers.

SPEAKER_17 35:55

Hmm.

SPEAKER_25 35:56

These days. Oh, we're talking about that. So on their out third album, Rare Junk, uh they had um a bunch of guest musicians. Is that that was the first album that they allowed some uh electrical musicians or electrical instruments to play, and the musicians on it were Rodney Dillard on Dobro, um Bernie Leadon plays guitar, Paul Hornsby and Johnny Sandlin play drums, and Paul Hornsby plays piano, Johnny Sandlin plays drums. They were both members of a band called Hourglass. Oh, yes, and Hourglass was managed at the time by Bill McEwen. Yeah, Bill McEwen. And they had really nice outfits, and and this is and that was the precursor to the Allman Brothers, the uh the Hourglass, yeah. So anyway.

SPEAKER_04 36:47

How about this is uh one I might get a violation for. Um Billy Joe Schaefer. Okay. Billy Joe Schaefer made an album with his son. And his son died, his son died right after they made the album. Yeah, and Doc Watson made an album with his son, Merle, who died right after they made that album together. That's true, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

So we ought to do that album. Even though it's a live album. Which one? Uh Doc and Merle on stage.

SPEAKER_25 37:22

Linda Ronstadt. But these had players. So when I I mentioned this earlier, when they broke up and they formed the Corvettes, uh, the Corvettes backed Linda Ronstadt after the Stone Ponies uh um left her, broke up, um, while they were, and this is a good time I want to play these since we're talking about them. Uh Hannah, uh Hannah and Darrow, um uh the two guys from the is it Chris Darrow? Anyway, uh he they're the ones who started this band of Cor Corvettes. And uh depending on where where you look at the who you talk to, where you look at the source, Bernie Leadon was um at either in the band at the time they were both in it, or he joined later. Um I mean it makes sense, wasn't he part of the backing band that ended up being the Eagles? Yeah. Anyway, uh they got a record deal, the Corvettes got a record deal on Dots Records, and both of the both of the singles that they produced, they didn't go anywhere, but they were both, I mean, they were both produced by Michael Nesmith of the Monkeys. But I want to play you these songs because I think they're great. So here's the first one called Beware of Time. I didn't like that quite a bit. Okay, I'm gonna play the other one now called Back Home Girl, which is just as good.

SPEAKER_11 39:11

I'm trying to make it into big time to get my records on the radio. But I can make anything without you.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

I like that one quite a bit.

SPEAKER_25 39:32

Is that Bernie Leading singing on that?

SPEAKER_02 39:34

That sounds like the birds. I was about to ask if that was uh Jeff Hannes.

SPEAKER_25 39:38

It might be, yeah. I don't know. Uh I just couldn't tell you, but anyway, um, yeah, those both those songs I think are great. And they went nowhere. So again, going back to the fact that that is what I would call country rock and not what we're talking about tonight, and those two went nowhere, and this album goes to the roof. So it's yeah, uh you know, I don't know what to tell you about that. Um folks just weren't ready yet, Tony.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

All right, I got a connection, but okay, sure it's other than a Jackson Brown connection. Is it a violation connection? Yeah, it's not a violation connection. Jerry Jeff Walker. Oh, that's a good one. That's yeah. What's the connection?

SPEAKER_04 40:20

He funded this album that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 40:22

He basically funded their whole career. Uh Jerry Jeff Walker wrote Mr. Bo Jangles, and probably the biggest hit that the nitty-greed dirt band ever had was or Jerry Jeff Walker. Or Jerry Jeff Walker read was Mr. Bo Jangles.

SPEAKER_14 40:41

I knew a man Bo Jangles and he danced for you in worn out shoes, silver hair and ragged shirt and baggy pants, the old soft shoe. Jump so high. Jump so high.

SPEAKER_04 41:06

It's easy to tell why that's a hit. Yeah, yeah, it's great. It's if I were an AR guy, I would say, yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_25 41:13

Yep. So uh you you know the story behind how they ended up recording that? No, I uh I've always wondered So that's on their Uncle Charlie and his dog Teddy album, it was released in September. Um there were three singles on that album, that being the first one, and Hannah heard that song on the radio one night and he mentioned it to the drummer of the band at the time, Jimmy Iblesson.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_25 41:36

Iblesson knew the song. He's actually been carrying the single around with him because somebody gave it to him as a gift. So he's a single by Jerry Jeff? Uh yeah, the Jerry Jeff, sorry, the Jerry Jeff song. Uh he pulls it out of uh of this trunk he'd been carrying in, they clean it off, and they transcribe the song as best they could. The engineer who was working on uh Uncle Charlie and his dog Teddy uh transcribed the um the lyrics and he got a few of the words wrong, and then they went in and recorded it after that. So what words did he get wrong? I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 42:05

I haven't I I haven't gone back to listen to it to see, but um that's number four in the country charts, and it it charted on the pop uh pop charts too, I believe.

SPEAKER_25 42:17

It hit number nine on the US uh pop charts. That's pretty good there, boy. It's an interesting album. Well, the the the amazing thing about that song compared to when we play these days a little later, is they absolutely embrace and and cut they get it the soul of that song. That that song is got so much melancholy to it. Yeah. And they hit the nail on the head with it.

SPEAKER_02 42:44

And it's and but when you listen into it, it it there's it's uh danceable, you know, and but that's the thing that when you're the way that they they get that sort of balance. Yeah. That I it's uh they knocked it out of the park with that song.

SPEAKER_04 42:57

So I'm gonna I'm gonna play We're not gonna hear Sammy Davis.

SPEAKER_25 43:00

No, I'm gonna play I'm gonna play two other songs uh that were also singles off that album. Uh the the album we're talking about is Uncle Charlie and his dog Teddy. And the other two singles were um the one I'd mentioned earlier, House on Pooh Corner, which was a uh Katie Loggins song, Loggins and Messina.

SPEAKER_05 43:27

Christopher Robin after long and the branches lit up by the moon. Posing our questions to Owl and be, or as our days disappear all too soon.

SPEAKER_02 43:45

Well, that's a bad song to begin with, and they just made it worse.

SPEAKER_25 43:48

It is, and then the third, and that but it hit number 53 on the charts, and now the last song they had as um as a single on this was called Some Shelley's Blues, which was written by I'm Michael Nan Smith.

SPEAKER_05 44:09

Tell me just one more time the reason why you must leave. Tell me once more why you're sure you don't need me. Tell me again that don't think you convince me.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

That's pretty good. They don't need to I don't know why they had the click let the click track in at the beginning. He's he's he writes a lot of good songs. Michael Nelson.

SPEAKER_04 44:41

Yeah. Yeah. That should be a pure prairie league song.

SPEAKER_25 44:44

Two things. One is that's Doctor Absolute in the camp of country rock. And uh he's really laying into that phony accent on that side.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

I was about to say, but he's he's got a good voice. He does, he's got a great voice.

SPEAKER_25 44:57

Yeah, crystal clear voice. So that was the album that got um Yeah, when they're in uh Denver. Yeah, that was the album that got Earl Scruggs knowing about the band because his kids were playing, they kept playing um Uncle Charlie and his dog Teddy. They kept playing it, and Earl Scores they the the band and Nitty Dirt Band's playing in uh in Nashville. I think they're playing at uh what's the college down there? Big college? Um Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt. That one.

SPEAKER_04 45:28

Yeah. The former basement of the uh SEC.

SPEAKER_25 45:33

Anyway, they're they're playing in Vanderbilt, and uh and the whole Scrugs clan comes to see them, and uh they meet, they get to meet Earl Scruggs in the back, and uh he tells them that their kids his kids have been playing the stuff and he really likes it. And then he also says um that he wanted to meet the band that played the Randy Lig Rag, which is a song on that album, the way he intended it to be played. Wow, that's a compliment. Very good compliment. Uh that that album's actually transitional in a certain way because it was the first album after they broke up that they went in the studio and recorded. And prior to that, um, they were pretty much what they would call a jug band. Illegitimate. Illegitimate? They said they called themselves an illegitimate jug band. Yeah, yeah. Well, what what's funny about them transitioning is uh 134 elevators. Yeah, there's a jug band. Uh Hannah runs into John McEwen after they break up at um who had joined the band. Um we're kind of jumping around, but he had he was in the band before they broke up at a Poco show at the Golden Bear, this club uh in California. And they hadn't seen each other in a long time, and they're both big Poco fans, but they're watching what's going on on the stage and they're like, we could do this, we could do our own version of it. So essentially what they did when they went back into the studio was to do that, but they wanted they wanted to get a drummer who could sing because they love the fact that Poco did that. And at the time, if you think about this, this is late 60s, early 70s. What was the most influential band that everybody talks about this one band that had a drummer singer? The band? The band. And so they also mentioned that. So that's when they got um uh Jim Abatasin. Yeah, what say say his name? Jimmy Abatasin. Yeah, because he could sing, he's also multi-instrumental, yeah, played a lot of stuff. Play a lot of guitar and drums and washboard. I I did want to just talk briefly about the albums that came before that big hit. And that that album, the one we just talked about with with um Mr. Bojangles on it, as you guys mentioned earlier, that sort of funded this this album we're talking about tonight. It gave them it gave them the ability to do we've talked about that before where band knocks it out of the park and all of a sudden they've got a lot more freedom than they had prior to that. But when they go in to record their first album, which is self- the self-titled Nitty Green Dirt Band, it's released in 1967. It's produced by Dallas Smith. In fact, the three albums before the one we just talked about are all produced by Dallas Smith. Um, and they they follow this pattern where they record a bunch of sort of bluegrassy, old-timey covers. There's a couple of originals, and then there's always a couple of Jackson Brown songs on their albums. Always. So that's what they did from the start on this first album. They uh they have a song, their their single, which is called uh Buy Me the Rain, and it's uh I'm gonna play that so you can hear what their very first single in the band sounded like. And here's mamas and papas, yeah. Here's the here's the bat the B side of that single called Candyman.

SPEAKER_12 49:32

It's all the dog, and the man, it's all the dog, and the man, it's all the doll, and I do it anything, and it's got a mighty world to have a candy man.

SPEAKER_25 49:46

That reminds me of Bobby Dylan. I do it a thing, it's got a world just the sound they're going for to me is very love and spoonfully.

SPEAKER_04 49:54

Uh-huh. That does sound like love and spoonful. But what's what's the song I'm thinking about with I Do It's Gotta Mighty World. Just to get with you. Wait, what's that Bobby Dylan song?

SPEAKER_02 50:03

Oh, give me one more chance. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:09

So it also uh that's another uh Sammy Davis Jr. song. Candy Man. Oh, yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_25 50:14

Different candy man. So the uh the album peaked at number 61 on the Billboard charts. It's on there for eight weeks. That single peaks at number 45 on the Billboard Hot 100, and they actually perform it on the Tonight Show. So it's kind of a big deal. Here's a funny little side note the album liner notes were written by uh Tiger Beat feature editor Ann Moses, and it focused mainly on what the members looked like, their nicknames, their and their personalities.

SPEAKER_04 50:41

Oh, I like a guy that has a good personality.

SPEAKER_02 50:44

This band has got so many like left turns.

SPEAKER_25 50:48

Yeah. Well, here's another one. So they go in the studio and so that album was released. Their first album was released in I think uh March of 67. They go in and they release their second album, September of 1967, and it's the same formula Jackson Brown songs, a couple of originals, lots of old covers, including including this one. Well, I talk about it being all over the map. Yes, that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 51:44

That's the teddy bears picnic. Okay. So I'm guessing that's not a Jackson Brown song. No.

SPEAKER_02 51:50

Yeah, I it won at I thought it was gonna be White Room.

SPEAKER_25 51:55

Um believe it or not, that album did not do as well as the first one. Really? Yeah, and what's uh and think and think about it. We're talking, uh I mean, if you think about between March and uh September of 1967, what happened in between those two dates? Sergeant Peppers. Sergeant Peppers. Nobody cared about anything like that anymore. Nobody's interested in the type of music. In fact, Kunkel leaves after that album's released um because he doesn't like the direction the band is going on. He's replaced by Chris Darrow, who we talked about earlier. Chris Darrow is actually in a band called Kaleidoscope. Do you guys know Kaleidoscope? I love that band with David Lindley. Yeah. So he was that's uh Chris Chris Darrow was in that band. They're a great band. Yeah. We talked about Rare Junk, that was their third album released in '68. Um so then they break up and they, you know, do all the other stuff we talked about. They, while they were broken up, uh Liberty, who was the label they were signed to at the time, released a live album called Live in 1969, which was recorded at a show at the Troubadour mere weeks before the band actually broke up. Um and then they get back together and they do Uncle Charlie and his dog Teddy. Um, and then we talked about how they met Earl Scruggs. Um in 1972, Liberty, uh, the label they were on, ends up merging with United Artists, and they would release their next seven albums on United Artists. Their first LP on the United Arts label was called All the Good Times. And as with their previous LPs, it had covers including a cover of Hank Williams' Jambalaya, Doug Kershaw's Diggy Liggy Low, and the Jackson Brown saw Jamaica Say You Will. Love that song. Issued as a single, would you guys?

SPEAKER_04 53:34

There's no way they needed to do that one. Somebody needs to redo that song.

SPEAKER_14 53:38

Let's hear it. One, two, three, four.

SPEAKER_13 54:01

As we lay in the tall grass where the shadows fade. Hiding from the children, so they would not tell.

SPEAKER_02 54:14

We would stay there till there's my favorite of their butcherings so far. Oh, wait, wait, wait.

SPEAKER_25 54:20

They don't need to do that. So what a great album. You want to hear what they don't need to do? I forgot to mention when we were talking about uh when we were talking about rare junk, although we've mentioned it a few times, their cover of this. You need to open this up, Doug. You gotta hear it from the beginning.

SPEAKER_11 54:52

We're loving our walking. And I don't do too much talking these days.

SPEAKER_04 55:05

Where where did where did Herbal Albert come from?

SPEAKER_16 55:08

Exactly what I said.

SPEAKER_04 55:11

That may that may be worse. Did they want to never talk to Jackson Brown again? I don't know.

SPEAKER_25 55:17

That may be one of the worst recordings of a Jackson Brown. And then don't leave that. No.

SPEAKER_04 55:23

Worst recordings, period. How do you hear that song and decide? You know what, this needs a happy trumpet. It's a World Prairie song written by a 16-year-old, which is bizarre enough. But then you have to put the happy trumpet in. Yeah, you gotta. There are women covered with whipped cream dancing in the background. They put the Preservation Hall jazz band on. One character. Oh, that's bad. It's horrible.

SPEAKER_25 55:50

It's horrible.

SPEAKER_04 55:51

Now nobody's gonna want to hear this record. Hey, it's a lot of other people besides these guys. Right.

SPEAKER_25 55:58

Well, we're done. We're done with their we're done talking about their past stuff. So let's get back to the album we're talking about tonight. So um we mentioned when Earl Scruggs went to see them. Uh that later that year, um, well, McEwen said after that night, I guess he'd been in touch with Earl Scruggs a little bit and they'd sort of become friends. Later that year in 71, he goes to see the Earl Scruggs Review, who were playing a five-night stand in the Talooki Club in Boulder, Colorado. McEwan goes to see them every night of those five nights. And what he does is he takes Earl Scruggs back to his hotel and he hangs out with them and uh and they talk about stuff. And um one night Hannah shows up, Jeff Hannah shows up, and uh McEwan says, I'm gonna ask Earl Scruggs if he'll record with us. And in the car on the way to the hotel after the last show, he gets up the nerve and he asks him. And Earl Scruggs' response is I'd be proud to. Not even hesitating. I'm guessing he hadn't heard uh their version of these days. A week later, Doc Watson's playing at the same club in Boulder, and McEwen was back ready to ask him the same question. He'd already talked to Merle Watson a few months earlier in Pasadena, and it turned out Merle was a huge fan of the dirt band, so that went went well. Merle Watson was. Yeah. Why are you making that face? Because they he hadn't heard the I guess he hadn't heard these days version. Anyway, uh back in Colorado, McEwan tells Doc Watson that the dirt band had already enlisted Earl Scruggs, and that's all Watson needed to hear. He was on board. Later that night when McEwen's talking to his brother, who, as we mentioned earlier, was the manager of the band at the time, they're on the phone for a couple hours and he's telling him all this stuff, and his brother says, you know what, I'm gonna get Roy Acuff and Earl Travis to be on this thing too. And as we mentioned, Earl Earl uh Acuff wasn't initially into it, but uh but he but he ended up. He came around. And then Jimmy Martin ends up joining. Now, they really want to get Mother Maybelle Carter on, and they ask Earl Scrugs, who had recorded with her previously, if he could help out. Um, and there's a there's a pretty funny story about her participation in the album. Um at one point they're recording and she's at the microphone getting ready to start one of her songs, and the phone rings. McEwen answers it, and it's the Columbia Records attorney telling them that they've been approved to do one Maybelle Carter song. He tells the attorney thanks and then let everybody know, and he hangs up. His brother turns to him and says, Who was on the phone? And McEwen says, Eh, it doesn't matter, it's not important. Maybelle Carter was at the mic starting her fourth song. And McEwan says it's a good thing there were some hippies behind the glass because they just ignored what the what the guys the attorney said and just kept on rolling. I read that story.

SPEAKER_02 58:50

Um well that's a connection we missed. What's that? Johnny Cash. Oh, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_25 58:55

And he's he actually recorded one of the songs you're talking about, right?

SPEAKER_02 59:00

One of the songs you picked, JM. Yep. And he uh Tennessee Stud. Tennessee stud, but and he did uh Dark as a Dungeon. Did he? Yeah.

unknown 59:10

What a great song.

SPEAKER_02 59:11

But he was uh that was his mother-in-law.

SPEAKER_25 59:14

Yes. Yes. By all accounts, everybody that talks about her says she was the glue to that record. That she's the only woman on the album. Doesn't surprise me one. And that she uh not only did she bring her talent, her wealth of talent, but evidently she was just a calming influence.

SPEAKER_04 59:32

Well, but don't you want to behave better just listening to her voice?

SPEAKER_25 59:35

Yes. Well, and thinking of her in the room, you don't want to be a jackass.

SPEAKER_04 59:39

Yeah, I mean, I sit up straight as soon as I hear her voice.

SPEAKER_02 59:43

Now you know I do that on auto heart.

SPEAKER_04 59:46

And she's so she's so gentle and kind, and it's but you also know that she's so funny how powerful it's it's it's like women have this opposite power where the the more gentle they are, the more power they have over you. Yeah, and she she uh she's I think she's the highlight of the album myself.

SPEAKER_25 1:00:05

I think well, she's definitely I think the heart and soul is and I think the second song on the album, which is her song, is really the soul of the album. Yeah. Um the do you guys know how long it took from the moment he asked Earl Scruggs to be on the album to the moment they're in the recording studio? It happened real fast.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:22

It's like 72 hours, wasn't it? Eight weeks. Eight weeks. Yeah, eight weeks. Something happened, but then 72 hours.

SPEAKER_25 1:00:28

They get everybody together. So August of 1971, they have their essentially their cast. As we talked about earlier, I'll just remind everybody Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Jimmy Martin, Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter, Merle Travis, Pete Oswald, Kirby, Norman Blake, and Vassar Clements.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:44

And Roy Husky Jr. We can't forget about Roy Husky.

SPEAKER_25 1:00:46

Roy Husky Jr. There's only one musician who declined that they asked. And Bill Monroe. Bill Monroe. Why on God Yeah, there's another man who played a hippie scene. Supposedly, because they've played with him since then. So he doesn't uh Hannah said it, he didn't think it was anything personal. He thought that Monroe wasn't sure how his fans would handle him playing with a quote unquote rock and roll band. Um yeah. But his offspring were all there. Yeah. Yep. Uh once they had that cast together, that's when they went and talked to um um Mike Stewart at Liberty Records, the president of Liberty Records, about the album. They go in, they make a case of the album. It's it's uh the McEwen brothers go in and talk to him about we want to do this album. This is who we have lined up. And evidently Mike Stewart listens for about a half an hour and he says, I don't know how I'm gonna sell this, but I'll put up the money. So he gave him $22,000 to record it. That's great. Yep. Do you know anything about the studio they recorded in? Woodland Sound.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:52

Oh, that's in Nashville, isn't it? Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Uh it's on that uh It's where they recorded Devil Went Down to Georgia.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:59

Is it really? Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:01

It was a so if you uh ever been to Nashville back, especially back then, there was uh I can't remember what the name of the boulevard was, but they they called it Music Row, and it it was there's several music rows, but there was the music row of Nashville, and that was one of the that's where all the house like the house studio offices were and the And the studios themselves. RCA studios there, and it was it was you know, for a guy like me back when I was living there, it was that the place Chris Christopher lived across the street from?

SPEAKER_25 1:02:29

Yeah, the Columbia on that area. Um so good just real quick, uh there's 33 songs on the original version of this album. It's released as three LPs and three cassettes. I didn't know cassettes were around in 72, but I didn't know. Um it took them six days to record it because as you mentioned, Doug, they did everything in one or two takes, which really gives the album a sense of it's fresh because of that.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:57

Well, it's and there's even a conversation Is it Roy Acuff that says everything he's talking about? Let me tell you my theory on recording.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:04

Yeah, every time you every time every time you do it, you lose something. Yeah, right. No, it's it's a wonderful, uh, wonderful. I uh it really makes me think that this will be appealing to people who've been hearing uh music that's made now where the people aren't even in the same state when they're making the music. Yeah, this this is entirely different, and there's so much energy and fun. You and it's hard to believe. It's hard to remind yourself that you're not in the room with them while you're listening to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:38

And what's also so amazing about it is they know when to lay out and then they know when to take a saw. It's not like they're pointing at them or anything like that. It's like they know when I'm gonna take my mandolin sauce.

SPEAKER_25 1:03:49

We're talking about pros here. Yeah. But these are there's nothing but pros on this song. Nothing but pros. They've been doing this all the time. It's such an intimidating environment for musicians. People you admire. I I did want to say how we, you know, we talked earlier about how important this album was in terms of being kind of a not only a crossover hit, but bridging that gap between not just generations, but also styles of music, even though I don't know if there's a bit of rock and roll on it. But it was a problem with some people. Um, Hannah says that the Scrugs family and Roy Acuff and the and the Carter family had to explain to a lot of their friends why they were doing this. People were saying, what are you doing with all those scruffy looking dudes from the West Coast and all these hippies? And then a Nashville newspaper columnist dismissed the whole recording session as being a bunch of California long hairs cutting some country uh cutting with some country dinosaurs.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:37

Well, didn't they put that in the album? Did they? Yeah, I think they actually put the um I don't know if it was then in the version that uh the reissue of it, but it yeah, they actually put that in the um the album itself. Well, they had the last laugh. They did.

SPEAKER_25 1:04:52

They did because it uh it it's it it was a crossover hit. It's the first time I think they chart on the country charts, right? Um they they get nominated for a Grammy. Uh two Grammys. Well, Grammy for the album and Grammy for which song did was it?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:06

Was it the um and then they got the Lifetime Grammy and uh what's it double platinum now?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:16

Uh a triple album, it's double platinum. It's not Jordan not a Beatle.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:24

No, it's something else.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:26

Yeah. Let's hear some music. All right, let's get into the uh album itself. Okay, so uh just to let you guys know, this is a triple album, so we're not gonna be able to go through the whole album, but uh each of us all of them just went yeah. Well, that's another reason it's a violation, is we don't talk about every song. We can't talk about every song. So we're gonna each of us picked four songs uh from the album that we think are are exemplary from it. But I I had a really, really hard time doing this. In fact, there was a I wanted to do just one whole side that instrumental side that they Dude, it's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_25 1:06:02

I think if I may be so bold, I think though that would have been tough to talk about, other than just going, man, listen to the man, listen. Listen how fast that is. Yeah. So I think I think we did the right thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:14

Okay, so why don't we start with the first song?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:17

I'll tell you what. So since we're gonna get into the whole album itself, but let's just give uh uh uh everyone a taste. And the first song on the album was a fantastic song. It was almost one of it was almost gonna be my pick, but I thought somebody else was gonna pick it.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:32

And again, what a great way to start an album. It's a fantastic album.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:36

Especially this album.

SPEAKER_25 1:06:38

I mean, uh give a little bit of the banner, not all of it, but then you then it goes just crashing into it.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:45

It is um but it's it's it's a great song, and I I have a hard time not singing this song at all.

SPEAKER_25 1:06:50

It's called the Grand Old Opry Song. And Jimmy Martin is the one singing lead on it.

SPEAKER_10 1:07:00

I'm gonna listen to my story. If you will, I'm gonna pill up another game of pillars, and it's filled.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:20

No, keep going. I wanna hear the I wanna hear the where do you go up?

SPEAKER_10 1:07:24

It's number two and run it, no that you win.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:57

Well, ladies and gentlemen, they picked the right song to start with.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:00

And that is just a it gives you it really this is a fun, fun album. And these are some guys that are just having the time of their lives getting.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:07

And they're saying it, he's singing this song, and all the some of those guys are sitting right there next to him.

SPEAKER_25 1:08:13

So here's what's interesting, uh kind of amazing about that. So Jimmy Martin is the one singing lead. Never ever invited to join the Grand Old Opry. Are you serious? Whoa. Yeah, and he's singing a song about the Grand Old Opry.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:26

I had no idea. Well, he was in Belle Monroe's Bluegrass Boys. Yeah, yeah. And I kept trying to find if there was some bad blood when he left, and you know, everybody calls him, everybody calls both of those guys the king of bluegrass. Yeah. So I would think that that would be uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_25 1:08:44

What what what I want to say he's a very forceful personality. Well, what I wanted to say about this, Doug, you and I talked about this a little bit um earlier was his voice is uh it may be my favorite voice on the album, even though he doesn't sing necessarily all my favorite songs, but it's got he's got that voice, it's got a characteristic like Buck Owens, he's got it just rings out over everything else.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:06

Yeah, and it's almost a template voice, right? I mean it's like I almost there's you can tell how many people he has influenced with that. Yeah, he just came natural to him. Yeah, and what a fun song.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:17

Oh my god, what a great and just yeah that's it's uh it's a bluegrass voice, but it's better than Bill Monroe's yeah, no, it is it's much more appealing.

SPEAKER_25 1:09:27

It is, it's richer sounding.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:29

Um it's high, but it's it's got such a resonance.

SPEAKER_25 1:09:32

It does, it is very very full. Um, and for those of you out there who have never ever listened to little Jimmy Dickens, go out and listen to Sorry too. He got Take an Old Cold Taylor Wait, you got May the Bird of Paradise fly up your nose. And these are great things.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:46

And he's he's called Lemmy Little Jimmy because he uh is actually Lil, but you would not be able to tell by his voice. Yeah, it's not a good thing. It's good stuff good, good, good stuff.

SPEAKER_25 1:09:56

Anyway.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:57

Well, like I say, boys, uh fellas, fellas, fellas, fellas, fellas, you fellas, that's a good song there.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:07

All right, so uh as I was mentioning earlier, we're uh because this is a three album set, we are not able to go through the whole album. So we have each picked four songs that we uh think are exemplary or we just really really like from the or that someone else didn't pick. I mean I got my picks in early.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:26

I know, and uh let's go first.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:28

Yeah, and it it's it's it's really difficult for it was really, really difficult for me to come up with this. But uh I'm gonna go with myself first. Um and the first song that I picked is uh Keep on the Sunny Side.

SPEAKER_25 1:10:41

Which, as I mentioned earlier, I think really is the soul of this album.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:46

That's such a great it's a great song, and her voice oh my god. I don't I don't know what to say about her voice, but it's comforting. It's uh it's like she's rocking you to sleep. Yeah. She's um it's just like a woman with profound faith that's it's just like the ultimate like something about everything is just grandmother.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:09

Like it's like that everything that you want that's warm and uh safe wise, and yeah, that that her voice just no foolishness.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:17

No foolishness will not abide by the it's a lot like car Carly B isn't.

SPEAKER_16 1:11:29

Stay tuned like that for all the time.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

Um, I may do Wildwood Twilower on the auto harp if y'all don't mind. I've never recorded it on the auto harp, and I've done it with a guitar about a dozen times. But uh and I do it in F standard.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:46

You know F standard, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:47

And I'll probably do it in F standard key on the auto harp. And um thinking tonight in my blue eyes, I'll have to do it the same place. Right there, yeah. And then I don't know where we'll do uh will a circle be unbroken if everybody sings it, you just you know get the key that suits everybody.

SPEAKER_18 1:12:05

Maybelle, do you remember the old ending you folks put on that thing?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:09

There's not what's in talking to Maybell.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:12

On the old record, I started it like this.

SPEAKER_15 1:12:20

There's a dark and a trouble side of There's a bright and a sunny side. So we meet with the darkness and strike the sunny side we also maybe keep on the sunny side.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:45

You can you can see a bunch of smart Alec teenagers making fun of that song. Yeah, and then she just looks over at them and they would just hush because they understand the gravity and the gravitas of this woman.

SPEAKER_25 1:12:59

You know what's really uh this just came to me when we were listening to it this time. What's really interesting about it is Merle, or well, I'm sorry, Jimmy Martin sounds uh country. Yeah, she sounds country when she's talking. As soon as she sings, that all leaves completely leaves. Straightforward, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:20

Like she's like what's it, Mel Tillis?

SPEAKER_25 1:13:24

What do you think? Yeah, I mean it's uh it's funny. There's uh there's little, very little of that accent you just heard talking in that song. I mean, I this what a great song.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:33

I know, and the song itself brings a smile to my face every but whenever I hear her version of it, it almost brings a tear to my eye, too, because it is just the world.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:44

Such decency. Yes. That's you just hear decency oozing out of this one. Yeah. I love I love that.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:51

There have been times when I actually I felt you know like a little low or something like that. I will just put this song on, and it is just it's it this is makes you not boo-hoo. Yeah, it makes me not boo-hoo. But I mean, it's just it's a it's a beautiful song, it's a beautiful sentiment, and the way that she sings it, and I was it her husband that wrote it or supposedly wrote it.

SPEAKER_25 1:14:11

No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, I think he's AP.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:14

Oh, he's listed as a writer. I know, but he picks it up. But he he I know he he was. He's the Led Zeppelin of uh country. All right, so that was uh a wonderful song. And uh my next song And good advice. Yes, it is very good advice, uh especially for the children. All right, so my next song is uh another one of my favorites, and uh it the the fact that it's done by Doc Watson is just blow just well and this is the song that Johnny Cash did on the album we talked about record recording.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:52

It is Tennessee Stud. I think this is a superior album. The best thing about this song is listening to Doc Watson plays a guitar. It's like a the song is a vehicle for this extraordinary flat picking. Are you telling me that he doesn't have a big fat thumb? You know, uh he credits uh uh Ma Carter for uh his guitar style. I can't believe that. So does um Chet Atkins. Really? He says that's who that's where it all started with him. Huh. So I think he went further.

SPEAKER_25 1:15:28

Both of them went a little bit more. It's funny because I I you know you hear that and you're like, Do I do I hear where that comes from? I mean, because you can listen to Willie and see Django all over the world. But I don't know if I hear Ma Ma Carter. All right.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:42

This is Tennessee Stud.

SPEAKER_18 1:15:45

Whoop her brother in her paw and sing a chorus.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:48

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.

SPEAKER_18 1:15:51

Yeah. Now, that is about as pretty a bass line as I've heard played in something in a long time. Now compliments that boy back there. That's a horse's foot in the gravel, man. That ain't train. Running through a ford in the creek. Let's see if we can put down a take. Where's the harmony at, right? Along about 1825, I left Tennessee very much alive. And I never would've got through the Arkansas, but if I hadn't been around that Tennessee stud I had some trouble with my sweetheart's paw. I wanna heard brothers of the bad law. I sent her a letter by my uncle, but then I rode away on the Tennessee stud. The Tennessee stud were long and lean, the color of the sun, and his eyes were green.

unknown 1:17:10

He had to learn.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:11

So I chose this for several reasons. Um first, I just love that uh banter before it starts. And and something, and for those who don't know who Doc Watson is, Doc Watson was blind, and so when he's talking, when he's saying that's he who is that on the base back there, he he's he's he's literally asking. He's literally asking because he he can't see and he he's so uh there's a couple other parts where you can just put didn't we go see him together at the at the uh cactus cafe?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:44

I don't think I was with you on that. I saw him well that's my that's my uh claim to thame. He told you to shut up. Yeah, I got told to shut up by Doc Watson. What were you doing? Well he played it. It's his fault. Um he was playing uh he played San Antonio Rose. Uh-huh. And you did the naturally there was no aha's going on, so it was incumbent upon me to fill in, and I gave it a ha and he goes, ah, shut up.

SPEAKER_25 1:18:13

But here I will say this uh you did the right thing. What you did was the right thing. I'm sure he would like to apologize.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:21

Well, if he could, he would apologize.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:23

Well, it's he doesn't need to because that that's there's only about five things I'm proud of in my life, and one of them is that Doc Watson told me to shut up. I got I got told to shut up by the best flat picker in the entire world. Yeah. Um and he doesn't know what I look like. Yeah.

SPEAKER_25 1:18:40

Do you know uh what is that that harmonica reminds me of uh guess who? Mickey Ram. Mickey Raphael. Yeah, I can see it. Yeah, it's got that, you know, because he does that uh it's funny that he mentions a horse and not a train because when Johnny Cash is playing it, it's chugging like a train.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:59

Yeah, I mean, and and I one thing that Doc Watson has a great voice. I mean, he just has a nice I really like hearing him sing quite a bit.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:08

And his I mean, of course, his guitar playing is just I could just go to I had uh that album of his um down south. Yeah not the live one with Merle, but Merle was on that one too. And uh I I I I can I can still see the street where I used to park to go to college. And I would I would sit there in my car and listen to it until the last minute before I had to leave to walk to school. And I just loved that album and loved what he did with those songs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:40

Well he's this song, and I've I've heard other versions, uh Johnny Cash version, of course, but over you know the course of playing in in bands and stuff, I've I've heard other people attempt to do this song. This is just such this is this nobody else needs to cover this the song never needs to be covered again. This is absolutely and it's a weird song. I mean, just uh structurally harmony-wise.

SPEAKER_25 1:20:05

It's almost a novelty song. Yeah, it is a novel, and and and what's great about his delivery, and I would give I'd take give a John, I know you said nobody else should do it, but I think Johnny Cash's version is great. And I think he does the same thing. Both of them sing it with their tongue in cheek, but not overly so. Just the right amount of reverence. You know, to to what they're delivering.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:26

But just but it's a weird song. If you listen to the the the where the harmonies come in, and it's it's almost like uh a uh it almost sounds Middle Eastern to me. The way that some of those lines are going through it are just it's it's strange. It's a very strange song. I mean, just if you try to play it on guitar, it's not a 1-4-5 progression, it's a it's a weird song. But anyway, I I it's one of my favorite songs. The first time I ever heard it was on this album, and I've heard it since, and I've never liked any other version. My next pick is I saw the light.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:08

Okay, sandbox. Uh let me say this, uh, all of us. Watch our timing. We picked it up after dark. I know that, but let's try to stay with it.

SPEAKER_20 1:21:16

Johnny? Johnny, can you in? Is that the microphone there close enough to dock, or did you move away? Uh yeah, I moved it in and he's gonna move in on this break. Okay, thank you. Well, maybe you should move it back a little bit. I'll just sit still. No, I think it was too far away to begin. Yeah, it got knocked back there a little bit. No, it's fine the way it was there. There you go, right there. Leave it right where it is.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:37

Well, don't listen to Doc. He's the only one that can't see where it is.

SPEAKER_08 1:22:22

And Jesus came like an angel in the night. I saw the light.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:30

Alright. If you don't like that one, yeah, I mean you're a horrible person.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:33

That is just such an insight. I love that song. It um this is a song that I used to play when I was younger. I used to play with my dad uh at at church, and uh we played at a camp a lot, and uh I just one of my favorite songs of all time.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:51

Roy Roy Acuff with the lead. Yeah, and you got Earl Scruggs playing that banjo, which is which still's a show on that one.

SPEAKER_25 1:23:00

Yeah, I agree with I agree with you. Um and it's just well I the Dobro's pretty fantastic on this song.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:06

I know if you don't like Dobro, you're gonna have a hard time listening to this album. Yeah. But it's a um it's just a it's a great song. I mean, Hank Williams to me some things that Hank Williams wrote just seemed completely timeless, and this is one of those. I mean, this sounds like one of those Baptist songs that written back in the 1860s or something.

SPEAKER_25 1:23:30

I do want to point out that Doug would have picked this song as well had you not jumped in and said you had it. That's true. I I'm every time I hear this song, I think about how rousing this version of it is. And you know what I think of good words. You know what I think of? I think of that scene in the Blues Brothers in the Baptist church. Oh, yeah, right. They're doing all the flipping. Because it seems like that's what's going on in the studio when they're recording. It's it's um well you got you believe them, you know, when you're hearing yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:03

Uh we uh I I don't know, everybody doesn't know that I'm a teacher, and we have morning prayer and evening prayer, and we sing songs before we start, and this is one of those songs we always sing. Yeah, and I got all these kids from uh uh the Congo singing hey Williams and they love it and they do a great job and they play the bongos while we sing.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:30

So when I was a uh I was first learning guitar with my dad, this was because I would play out a D G A a lot, you know, and it but he said, Oh, gotta learn that EAB. So it was I gotta learn that so my this is the song that I learned to play with my dad on the EA. EAB.

SPEAKER_25 1:24:51

That's a great one. I love that bit in the song where all the instrumentation falls out, and you just hear the doghouse bass and then the ding, the like hitting the um and I and I'm assuming it's the Dobros making that because that's it replacing the steel, right? So that's just making that high-pitched kind of howl in it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:09

Uh yeah, it's it's a Dobro is used as um not so much as a it's it's used as atmosphere a lot on this uh like the steel would be which which makes sense.

SPEAKER_25 1:25:21

Um yeah, this is such this is a great song. And you know what? I I think it's a this is a good point to talk about. So in 1972, you're just sort of I don't know, maybe on the tail end or towards the end of the Nashville sound kind of taking over country music. Yeah, and what you get with this, and this song is a prime example of it, is this is authentic. Yeah, this sounds authentic. There's nothing about it. I don't think Hank would have been one bit pissed off at that point.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:52

Oh no, no, no. And and he would have said, I just lost my song.

SPEAKER_25 1:25:56

And I think I think I think almost all of that has to do with Roy Roy A. Cup singing on it and just his attitude. It's funny with the bit we listened to before it um it sounds like he's the only one who's like you know, pounding and sorry, we gotta get back on this. Yeah, um, you know, and everyone else is kind of loosey-goosey or whatever, but man, it it works. I mean, this song this song is the test of the side.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:20

You got a room full of pros there. Yeah, oh it's just uh one of my favorite songs and one of my favorite versions. I mean, easily my favorite version of that song. All right, so uh my next and last song is uh I had to do an instrumental. I had to select Earl's Breakdown because I just wanted to I just to hear these guys play, it is they're just amazing. So there's some technical stuff going on here. So he set says the most obvious person in the room.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:29

Captain Obvious.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:30

So he uh so what he's doing is he? Oh, he's doing that uh that banjo three finger roll. Yeah, he's doing the three the the banjo roll, and he's somehow he is able to keep that roll going while he's taking his left hand and dropping the tuning uh the tuning down and then bringing it back up. And just to do that so freaking quickly as he's doing it and then get get back and doing it multiple times. They do it throughout the whole

SPEAKER_25 1:28:01

So this is uh a little bit of a showcase case for Vassar Clemens, too. Yeah. Oh god. Uh-huh. I mean, and and you know, he's uh he's in the spotlight in a lot of these songs. Well, he's and supposedly he was the young in all in all of that. Here's an interesting thing about him that I just I saw right before we started doing this. Uh so he was a member of the bluegrass band Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys, but he joined Flat and Scrugs in the studio when they recorded the theme to the Beverly Hillbillies. Yep. So that's him playing the fiddle on the Beverly Hillbillies theme. But he yeah, he's uh done a ton of stuff, but he's really in the spotlight in a lot of these songs in a way that he is.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:42

I I wonder when you do a tune like that what your residuals are on the Beverly Showbellies. Yeah. I wonder if they got one-time payment or if they got uh residuals and I I I heard him interviewed after that.

SPEAKER_25 1:28:57

That just made our like that well, because they they they were on the show a couple of times, but then they the single was like a longer version of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:05

Yeah, you know, and then it's played over and over and over again in syndication.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:09

But supposedly this is what made like Vassar Clemens became just a sought-after like yeah, he became the Hal Blaine of Fiddle.

SPEAKER_25 1:29:18

So my brother-in-law uh told me this story. I'm pretty sure it's Vassar Clemens he did too. My brother-in-law's a uh, I don't know if you can say former because he's still pretty ensconced in the whole uh thing, but he was a deadhead, like the kind that went to lots of shows. He sold tie-dye, that kind of stuff. Yeah, and he gave Vassar Clements two tie-dye t-shirts he made. Um and he said he remembers him taking them and throwing them in his fiddle case and just you know, because he's my my my brother-in-law is a really good mandolin player, he's a big fan of bluegrass. Um uh hey Sam, by the way, I'll just call your name out. Um, but yeah, he's uh I believe that's the story. You can tell tell me if I'm wrong about that, but uh we won't correct it anyway.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:04

We're about being interesting, not uh not accurate.

SPEAKER_25 1:30:07

Because what never let the truth get in the way of us? Because Vastor Clements was on the periphery of that stuff. I th I'm pretty sure he played with um with Jerry, Jerry uh Garcia at one point.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:20

I mean that uh old and in the way.

SPEAKER_25 1:30:22

Yeah, so he was sort of had feet in both.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:25

Yeah, and he was a well he's a superstar in this album.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:28

Yeah, he really is. Yeah. So all right, so those are all my picks. We're gonna I'm gonna move on to Tony next. Thanks, JM.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:40

Did Tony find a PowerPop or Prague song on this album? No.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:47

So Tony, your first pick was wreck on the highway.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:54

Yes. Last night I was out driving, and I didn't hear anyone pray.

SPEAKER_09 1:31:06

Who did you say it was, brother? Who was it found by the way? When whiskey and blood together did you hear anyone pray? I didn't hear nobody I didn't hear nobody pray. I heard the pray show I way, but I didn't hear nobody pray.

SPEAKER_25 1:31:46

So I love this song.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:49

Oh such a good song.

SPEAKER_25 1:31:50

And again, talking about Roy Acuff's delivery, he's so tortured sounding in this song. It sounds like he really did witness this wreck on the highway and that he's utterly dismayed that nobody's praying about it. It's like he's going into the church going, Why didn't you pray? Yeah, it's it it is really a standout on this album for me, uh, his song his singing on this particular song. And as Doug sort of segued into the song by singing the Springsteen version of Wreck on the Highway, that in fact, the Springsteen version was in fact uh um inspired by this song.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:27

So I gotta yeah, so one of the ways that I came into this album was because I was into the river in in high school and I was telling you Did you dog paddle or you know the album by Bruce Springsteen? Not some river that not some yes, the album by Bruce Springsteen, The River, on which he has a song called Wreck on the Highway. I told my dad how much I loved the song Off the River, the Wreck on the Highway, and he was asking me if it was this if it was the uh Dorsey Dixon version.

SPEAKER_25 1:33:02

So as I mentioned earlier, just sort of a meta connection thing when we talked about uh McCabe's that this the Springsteen song Wreck on the Highway is a song that John Wesley Harding nay, Wesley Stace, and Bruce Springsteen duet together at McCabe's when they sang together.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:19

Oh wow. All my life's a circle. So well, I I put hundreds of boys to bed at camp to uh the Springsteen version of what what was the uh I'll drive all night and wreck on the highway. Yeah. So all those boys went to their dreams dreaming about somebody dying. Getting their face thrown through the glass. And the state trooper said, knocking on the door, uh your baby died. But you can see where they kind of, yeah. Not far apart. Not far apart at all. He's he uh Dorsey Dixon Dixon's more upset the f at the fact that no one's praying than Springsteen was.

SPEAKER_25 1:34:08

If he didn't hear nobody pray, didn't he in fact hear somebody pray? Isn't that a double negative? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:13

Well, I don't I'm not sure that this is Aphaletia. They ain't got no double negatives out there.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:23

All right. Your second song was a song that I was vacillating between whether or not I wanted to pick or not. Uh Nine Pound Hammer.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:32

Ah, love this song. They're fantastic songs. I don't know why I love this song so much. It's irresistible. Merle Travis. Yep, here we go.

SPEAKER_25 1:34:44

Nine pound hammer.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:49

Can I do us to move the boot back a little bit?

SPEAKER_13 1:34:59

This thing works for that.

SPEAKER_24 1:35:02

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_23 1:35:02

How can I roll? Yeah, they're rolling, I think. Give us a cue.

SPEAKER_22 1:35:21

It's a little too heavy for my side. Well for my side, I'm going on the mountain, gonna see my baby, but ain't coming back. Well, ain't coming back. Roll on buddy, roll buddy.

SPEAKER_23 1:35:40

Just hop for our roll. When the wheels won't go. Roll on buddy.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:45

That's a hard song to stop. I'll tell you. Oh, I love that song. And it is a uh that guy's singing and playing guitar at the same time.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:54

And he's playing that Travis Pickin that we've talked about his uh guitar style with uh where we talked about it with Paul Simon and what's that well that alternating bass line on the Travis Pickin.

SPEAKER_25 1:36:08

And and another thing, uh, we've kind of mentioned this, but I think it's worth mentioning again and again because you when you listen to these guys play, that's the easy thing to talk about. But the the vocal performances on this album are fantastic. And this is another one. His voice is great.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:22

And the thing is, they just picked up on the harmony. Like there's harmonies that they you know they didn't rehearse this before they said, Oh, we're gonna heard okay they've been doing it their whole lives. They've been able to figure out where their note is on this.

SPEAKER_25 1:36:39

So this was a song that that Merle Travis reworked around 1946, and it's a song when people do Nine Pound Hammer, it's his version that they take off of. Because if you listen to all the other recordings of this, you can hear his DNA in every one of those versions of the song.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:57

It's just a that's a phenomenal song, and it's just that the the the I love it's it's not Doc Watson playing the guitar part on that, but I I just love that that banjo role on a guitar that he's best Travis.

SPEAKER_25 1:37:12

Yeah. So uh a little bit of a confession. One of the things that has endeared me to this song and Wreck of the Highway, both is uh the Waco Brothers, a band I talk about lots on this podcast, both recorded, or they recorded both of those songs in their sort of uh sloppy, drunken clash meets cash way, and it's a wonder they're wonderful versions, but uh yeah, I I've played it in uh on a in a couple of instances where I was not entirely sober, but it was uh it's fun, it's just a damn fun song. Well, and considering what the subject matter is, you know. Yeah, but yeah, it's uh roll along, but it's a good song. And we got a nice baritone voice. No, he's great on it. Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:59

Yep. Fantastic song.

SPEAKER_25 1:38:01

He's great on the next song that I'd picked up.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:04

Oh, this is one of my favorite songs of all time. And if you had not if I'd not seen your pick, that was gonna be.

SPEAKER_25 1:38:10

I told you I jumped on it early, man. I didn't want to I didn't want to screw anything up. I needed to, I needed to have the songs.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:16

This is easily one of my I this is just a a fun a fantastic song. It is just hands down, it's as dark as a dungeon. It may be my favorite song on the album.

SPEAKER_23 1:38:26

I don't know why, but it is come and listen, you fellas, so young and so fine, and seek not your fortune in the dark, dreary mind. It will form as a habit and seep in your soul till the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal, where it's dark as a dungeon, deaf as the dew, where the danger is double, and the pleasures are few, where the rain never falls, and the sun never shines, well, it's dark as a dungeon, way down in the mind.

SPEAKER_25 1:39:20

So, one of the few songs in the album where the instrumentation is fairly simple and straightforward. Again, his voice that's all it needs.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:30

It does not need any more atmosphere or anything behind it because the lyrics are just so the background singing is very appealing.

SPEAKER_25 1:39:39

Yeah. Well, and I just love how resigned he sounds when he's singing it. You know, just it's so it's sort of matter-of-fact, you know. But it's it's it's what adds heft to the lyrics he's singing, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:50

You're gonna have to go down there, but you one of these days I'm gonna be the cole.

SPEAKER_25 1:39:57

Can uh can I can I play you guys a version of the song that I'm not sure you've heard before? I'm sorry, I shouldn't ask the question. I'm gonna play a version of this song that you haven't heard before either. I think you'd ask first.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:23

So young and so fine, and seeking out your fortune in the dark dream. It will form as a habit, and seep in your soul till a stream of your blood is as black as a corn.

SPEAKER_25 1:40:42

No idea, Jam.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:43

Whether it's dark.

SPEAKER_25 1:40:45

Joni Mitchell obvious. That's that's great. Yeah. Yeah, she they released something a couple years ago. It's a collection of early stuff that she did from 63 to 67, and that's on it.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:58

So see something else. We were so who picked that album? That was such a good choice. You're so funny.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:08

Yeah, that's just it's just a uh that's a great song.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:10

It is an amazing, amazing song. Uh uh Merle Travis is that uh not inserting himself at all. He's just right.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:20

It's just it's that almost like Reed's like reading.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:23

Oh, I guess I'll I'll I guess I'll just do a song with y'all if y'all don't mind. I mean But that's why that song's so powerful, is because it's just this guy sort of same with nine pound hammer.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:33

But yeah, but if you if you tried to put some emotion into it, like you'd ruin it. You would ruin it.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:40

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:40

And he just you hit some.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:44

I just invented this great this this great way to play. I I got this great guitar uh picking method that everybody in the world's copied from me. And um again, there's no ego in any of these guys.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:59

It's like it's it's like he's not trying to do the definitive version of the song, he's just doing the song.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:04

He's just doing the definitive version of the song, you know. I hope y'all don't mind if I put this down. I just can't relate. If that were me, I'd go, do y'all know I invented this kind of I would never shut up.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:17

You know, this is a song for some coal miners that I know. Y'all mind if I put this down?

SPEAKER_03 1:42:21

Yeah, and and a lot of a lot of people in this country don't recognize what coal miners go through. It's none of that garbage we have now.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:30

Which Johnny Cash, if Johnny Cash did it, there would be a little bit.

SPEAKER_25 1:42:33

Even if he didn't do that, it said that before, it would have been a little bit of a subtlety is often stronger than smacking somebody in the room.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:42

Yeah, exactly. That's that's that's kind of a summation of this album. Yeah, I think that's exactly a lot of humility in that room with a lot of people that have nothing to be humble about. Unlike this podcast. We are blessed with ample amounts of things to be humble about.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:01

So Tony's last pick is a song called I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes. It's Mother Maybell. I'm gonna start crying pretty soon.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:12

Better sit up straight.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:14

I don't know.

SPEAKER_25 1:43:59

Okay, is there anybody that's not crying right now? So this is one of the old songs that AP Carter quote discovered, unquote. Um It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this song because that tune is so old, but shows up everywhere. Uh The Great Speckled Bird by Roy Acuff, The Wild Side of Life by Hank Thompson, and of course the one we just sang, Kim Rose. It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels. Uh yeah, and it's and it's supposedly adapted from um from a song called The Prisoner Song by Guy Massey. But yeah, it's and it's and it's been a hit in every every version of that. It's such a it's it's hard not to make that a hit. Well that song, I mean the tune's an earworm. Oh yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:54

Complete.

SPEAKER_25 1:44:55

But yeah, it's it's a fantastic and she just sounds so great on it, you know. I'm sorry, I dissed AP.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:04

Well, he was supposedly not the decentest man in the world, but um Well he he knows how to marry. Again, lucky, lucky man.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:13

He knows how to recognize talent in his family.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:15

That's right. That's the smartest thing a man can do is marry a good woman. That's what I always say.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:20

But yeah, such a and there's there's some stuff we didn't, there's some auto harp stuff that's going on in that song at one point that's just you don't hear on a lot of kind of gives an Appalachian dulcimer sound, but that's pretty amazing. And the auto harp on this album is not played by Mother May.

SPEAKER_25 1:45:40

No, she does not play a single album. No, it's played by uh Earl Squirrel's son.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:44

Yeah, Roy. Roy. Who actually does the last song on the album, which we'll get to later. All right. That was my last one, right? Yep. Tony does are some great picks. They're they were almost my picks. Is it is it Roy or Randy? It's Randy.

SPEAKER_25 1:46:00

Yeah, Roy A. Cliff's son.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:02

Yeah, Randy. Okay, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:04

I'm not Roy A.C. son, I'm sorry. Uh yeah, we just called him Randy Scrug uh Roy Roy Scruggs.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:12

Yeah, good way to Roy Husky Jr. and there's a Roy take off, and there's a lot of Roy's and Randy's on this album. A lot of Royds here and in the gym. All right, so let's get to uh the person who picked this album, who uh I am so delighted he picked this album. Go to your four picks, Douglas. Your first one is Sunny Side of the Mountain.

SPEAKER_25 1:47:14

How is that guy not in the grand old office? I have absolutely no idea.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:21

It's a great voice. God just in the way you just put that little that almost Yodel that he puts in there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_25 1:47:29

And his voice again just soars over everything. Yeah, it's through it all.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:34

That's Jimmy Martiner talking about, ladies and ladies and gentlemen, with that uh it's not high lonesome sound, it's powerful lonesome sound. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_25 1:47:46

So why'd you pick that song, Doug?

SPEAKER_04 1:47:48

Because of the voice.

SPEAKER_25 1:47:50

You know, uh it's a great voogle performance. Of course, uh Vaster Clemens' fiddle work is great, but it's worth pointing out that plays the banjo on it and he holds his own pretty damn well.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:05

Can you imagine picking up any instrument around these guys? I would be so intimidated.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:10

Well, it's so interesting that we're talking about the the guys that had to be recruited to make this album. We're not talking about this is the first time we've probably mentioned a member of the dirty uh nitty-gritty dirt band.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:23

The dirty the dirty boys, as Mark Carter called them.

SPEAKER_25 1:48:26

I mean, it makes sense because they really are just supporting cast. It's not I mean it's which is why this is such a success.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:34

They they knew their place. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:36

Yeah, and but they held their own.

SPEAKER_25 1:48:38

I mean, they really did. They they didn't when they did these days, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:42

Yeah, Herb Albert saw that one.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:45

All right. Moving on to Doug's next pick. Black Mountain Rag.

SPEAKER_18 1:48:51

When I take my last break on the guitar, Bastar, I'll do it in A, and when we get to the picking part, I'm gonna let you have it. That will you pick the fiddle? Oh, the picking. I'll do a half a break on A at the end, and you you end up on the fiddle. Let me play some hot backup runs behind it. That black mountain rag is really a fiddle tune, and if a record's done of it, I always thought it ought to have a fiddle in there doing at least half of it.

SPEAKER_17 1:49:13

Yeah, that's so good.

SPEAKER_18 1:49:17

I'll start it out like this.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:00

Delegate the fiddle part. Gee, Doug, why did you pick that song?

SPEAKER_04 1:50:25

Yeah, I think it's kind of obvious.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:28

God man. If there's anybody there, he is so amazing as a guitar player.

SPEAKER_25 1:50:33

And here is the epit that the dialogue is the epitome of how unbelievably unegotistic these guys are. Not only that. He tells him, he tells Vassar, you know, we're talking about Doc Watson, great flat picker, sell telling Vassar Clements, I always thought this was more of a fiddle tune. And then you hear Vassar Clements say, Yeah, it sounds good on the guitar, though. You know, it's like it just incredible.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:56

And that's the first time they played it. That's the that's the thing that's like the start working out.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:02

And it just goes, they just go off. Yeah, it's something else. It is yeah, yes, this is why I always every month someone comes up with their list of the greatest guitar players, and it's always the same guys, and it's always rock and roll guitar players, yeah. And I always think, Oh, where's Billy Strings? Yeah, who's who's a a direct descendant of Doc Watson or uh you look well show me one of the top 20 great guitar players that make these lists that could play a classical guitar and and not and not just make a mess of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:41

Well, that's the thing I was talking about at the start of this, is where my view of guitar became very different after listening to this album. Because you just these this is not guys that are shredding, these are guys that are not they're not necessarily showing off, they're serving the song, but at the same time, you're just like this is this is not about them.

SPEAKER_25 1:52:02

It's and these songs are meant for those kinds of breaks. Right. Yeah, they're they're meant for that. They're not I mean, yeah, they're they're they're able to kind of show their chops, but that's exactly what they're designed for. Right. You know?

SPEAKER_02 1:52:15

Yeah. But these are everything on this is like first take. First or second. First or second, yeah.

SPEAKER_25 1:52:23

Well, they didn't want it, they didn't want uh Roy Acuff to come in there screaming at them.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:28

What are you doing another take for?

SPEAKER_02 1:52:32

I mean, I wouldn't want him angry at me. Nope.

SPEAKER_25 1:52:35

Nope.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:37

All right, so this is Doug's last pick. This is the title track from the album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? It's the next to last song on the album.

SPEAKER_25 1:53:52

You know, this is uh this song is Why We're an Expert. Did you know that?

SPEAKER_02 1:53:56

No. Yeah.

SPEAKER_25 1:53:57

Do you know why? Chet Flippo's on it. Do you know who he is? Chet Flippo. Well, Martha Flippo's on it too. Chet Flippo was a music journalist. He wrote for Rolling Stone and a bunch of other stuff. Uh yeah, and he was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and graduated from town from Sam Houston State University in 1965.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:22

Well, this is the Carter family version of the song. Of course, the original song was like 1906, I think. Yeah. Which was like a hymn. Yeah. And then she adapted this to change to a funeral for her mother. And uh it's I love, love, love this song and the sentiment, the idea that all the people we lose will be back together. Uh it's irresistible. And the fact that everybody's singing on this together, uh most of most of these people are gone now. Right now. They're uh they're either reunited or they're not, depending on what you think. Uh yeah. I like to think that they're reunited just like she did. And she does play the auto harp on this one.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:19

Yeah, she does play it, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:21

And you got everybody. The whole lineup is on. And it was I don't know if it was obvious or a work of genius, but this obviously needed to be the name of the album.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:34

I have no idea how they came up with with doing that.

SPEAKER_25 1:55:38

Well, it may it makes sense if you think about what the I don't know if anybody had grand ideas about this album, but towards the end of it, you would think they probably knew that they were doing something special. And the whole idea of the bridging the generations and stuff is the perfect title for it.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:54

Yeah. It's written by A.P. Carter, but appropriated by A.P.

SPEAKER_25 1:56:01

Carter, I think is what we need to say. Isn't that what AP stands for? Appropriation.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:08

Uh great album, great song. Oh, thank you very much for picking it, Doug.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:13

Well, it's the least I could do. Man, it's so wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:18

So the one thing I I I want to point out is that it it starts off with that the grand old opery song, and then it ends with the guy who's been playing auto harp in place of uh Mother Maybell, uh Randy Scruggs, Earl Scruggs' son, uh, and he ends it with both sides now, an acoustic version. I thought that was perfect. Yeah, it's just a great like you have all this pageantry a little bit before, and then they end it with just a song I guess was like four or five years old at the point that this was recorded. But anyway, I think this is a great way to end it because it's Krug's kid bringing it up, bringing it a song by uh a contemporary artist. And and everybody all the contemporaries.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:53

All the contemporaries stayed out of the album until the end, which I think it's fitting for them to have us something to say, and yeah, and we missed the connection when we uh talked about Joni Mitchell.

SPEAKER_25 1:58:05

Joni Mitchell we left her out. So um they did two more versions of this. Which we don't need really volume two and three. Volume two won the Country Music Association's album of the year in 1989 and three Grammys, and in 90, the album was uh celebrated on Austin City Limits. Um, they had a a performance to do it. 2002, I think the third one was released, and it features Willie, Nelson, Iris DeMen, Emmy Lou Harris, June Carter Cash, Johnny Cash, Dwight Yoakum, Allison Krause, uh Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, and Jimmy Martin. So I was gonna say I did want to end on one note that we forgot to talk about. Something that they did in the in the 70s.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:51

Nitty gritty dirt band did in the 70s.

SPEAKER_25 1:58:53

Yeah, something that I uh that they were part of in 1978 that I thought I I would play for you guys uh to see if you were aware of this. Let me know if you're aware of this.

SPEAKER_24 1:59:21

Now, when it was a young man and never thought in sea, people stepped in line to see the boy. How to get the monkey that you do the monkeys?

SPEAKER_04 1:59:39

That doesn't surprise me given the fact that he was hooked up with that whole crowd down there at the open player.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:47

So uh John McEwen's uh brother managed the nitty-gritty dirt band and he also managed Steve Martin.

SPEAKER_25 1:59:57

Well they went to high school together, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_25 1:59:59

Um and and Martin and Steve Martin would occasionally give him banjo lessons, if you can believe that's where he learned how to play the banjo. Anyway, that's so that's King Tut, 1978 uh hit of all things by Steve Martin. How high did that one go? Oh, I don't know. They recorded under the name uh the two Uncommons.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:22

Um trying to figure out how to work that into them.

SPEAKER_25 2:00:28

What's really funny about that is that uh when they played it on Saturday Night Live, I don't know if the nitty-gritty dirt band was there, but Blue Lou, the sax player from the Blues Brothers, is the one who comes out and plays the sax solo on that.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:41

So I love that.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:42

Yeah. Alright, so as longtime listeners know, we've come to the part of the show where we give our ratings for the album. And I'm gonna go to our co-host, Tony Slagle, first to get his rating on this album.

SPEAKER_25 2:01:04

Um, very fun album to listen to.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:42

Alright. Um, my personal rating version. This is an album that I've known for a long time. And I don't treat it as an album, as we talked about this before uh podcast. I it's hard for me to listen to this as an album. There's sides that I will listen to, and every time I put a side on, I'm just like, well, I'm looking forward to the next one. I'm looking forward to the next one. Um so personally um there is nothing wrong with this album. So I'm gonna give it like a a four-nine because it it's just not something I put on all the time, but every time I do put it on, I'm incredibly happy that I did it. As a critic, again, it's difficult. It's not an album, it's a document. And we've we said that before throughout this podcast. It's surprising to me that this came out after like the whole Nash Vegas thing and just all the strings and surfy stuff that uh was coming out of Nashville at the time. And the way that the the fact that this album came out was influenced strangely by rock and roll as opposed to what was going on in Nashville at the time, I think makes it something that you really need to have in your collection. I'm gonna go to Doug, who actually suggested this album. The whole album is everything everything in that whole album is just even the sleeves that they when you pull it out, it's just it's an amazing document. And the last thing I'll say about it is the the album, the vinyl is much better recorded. They did not do a good job of um digital retransfer on this one.

SPEAKER_25 2:06:10

What the hell?

SPEAKER_04 2:06:12

I think you're a funny amount there.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:14

Well, I'll tell you what.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:16

Well we all tried Apple H in there for a little while. All right. Did you already know what's next?

SPEAKER_02 2:06:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:22

Okay, sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:24

All right, Doug, thank you very much for that recommendation. It's a very, very fine album, and uh one we should have probably put on the podcast a lot earlier. At this point, we are really interested in what the kids are listening to these days. So for that, we turn it to our youngest member of the This Is Vinyl Tap podcast, Mr. Tony Slagle. That would be me.

SPEAKER_25 2:06:46

Uh, I am gonna recommend an album that came out this year, actually, JM. No way. Yes way. It's a brand new album from the Long Riders, who we've talked about on this podcast. Not only an album that we've reviewed, but we've recommended, I've recommended a couple albums, and I'm gonna recommend their newest album called High Noon Hymns. I'm gonna play a couple of songs off of it for you. It's brand new, fresh off the uh off the press. The first song I'm gonna play for you is called Down to the Well. Next next song I'm gonna play is called Knoxville on the line.

SPEAKER_21 2:08:48

Something that I left behind. The cannonball is on the track still. What I can find.

SPEAKER_25 2:09:06

Okay, might a fine-tune now. Final track I'm gonna play. It's called a hymn for the city of angels. Which is LA, I believe. That's what I've heard.

SPEAKER_19 2:09:52

What goes on the foot? The light that shines within.

SPEAKER_25 2:10:00

Alright, so that's off of the new out Long Riders album, which I believe was released in March of this year. That's 2026, called High New Times. Two months ago, yeah. Yeah. It's uh it's got some special guests on it. Murray Hammond plays bass, he's from the old 97s, and DJ DJ Bonebreak, the drummer from X, plays on a couple of songs, and then White Ellis, who's a young bluegrass mandaloon player, is on it as well. So yeah, highly recommended. Great album. March 13th, actually, is when it was released.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:29

Fantastic. That's a very much appreciate that recommendation, Tony. And we appreciate you, dear listeners, for listening to another episode of This Is Vinyl Tap, where we mine the layers of long players. Next episode, we'll look at a PowerPop classic by the band Cotton Mather Contiki from 1997. Our host Doug Cooper, our co-host Tony Slagle, and me, your humble producer, Jonathan J. M. Roe, reminding you two wrongs don't make a right.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:32

But three left make a right.