The cellphone rang, if that’s what you can call that tinny annoying sound, while I enjoyed the leisurely pace of the ferry lumbering to Bristol from Prudence Island - to bring its inhabitants back to the real world. It was a voice from the past, yet one more RISD student who had spent a couple years on our painting crew working in the vein of those great impressionists, Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore.
“I know I haven’t called in a while,” he said, “but we’re putting together a Honky-Tonk band. Imagine me singing Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings”. The ghosts – mostly living – of the Talking Heads and the Young Adults, RISD’s contribution to new wave and no wave, are turning over in the band graveyard. But this call certainly reflects a wave of its own as Honky-Tonk music has a tsunami of resurgence for good reason: it’s good music. It wasn’t so strange to get that call because people have a habit of telling me they have a band since I’ve taken to cajoling honky tonks into presenting, you know, Honky-Tonk.
For many of us, who’s first experience of something outside the pop come psychedelic rock sphere was the backbeat of Cajun and Zydeco music, the gathering of the tribe will be this weekend at the Rhythm and Roots Festival in Charlestown, the descendant of the original Cajun Bluegrass festival at Stepping Stone Ranch in Escoheag. And producer Chuck Wentworth early noticed that the backbeat in the bayous wasn’t that much different from the backbeat in New Orleans or the backbeat in Austin or the backbeat of the Grateful Dead for that matter, who were singing in Cajun rhythm about Cajun rhythms before rock audiences knew what they were talking about.
Backbeat is the emphasis on the 2nd and 4th beat of the measure in 4/4 time that picks you up out of your seat and moves your feet. It’s often hit on the snare drum whose high pitch carries distinctly, although in combos without percussion you can find it on the guitar, the mandolin, a wind instrument, almost anywhere. Or, if the audience is on their game they pick it up with a clap. Wherever it comes from, the human response is to dance.
For most of my contemporaries, this began as shaking about near someone of the opposite sex. So, imagine my surprise back in 91, when trying to shuffle around a dance floor in the ‘people barn’ at Stepping Stone, actually holding the woman I was dancing with, and Dewey Balfa singing in French with some kid, Steve Riley, sitting in, that these are the Cajun rhythms the Dead were talking about!
Donna Debut
And apropos of the Dead and the departed Balfa’s creole contemporary Preston Frank, Rhythm and Roots this weekend at Ninigret Park in Charlestown features nothing short of the jam band in the Zydeco tradition: Donna the Buffalo. They are at the festival grounds Friday and Saturday but also strike an intimate pose TONIGHT at the festival opening party at the famous Knickerbocker Café in Westerly (Thursday, Aug 30th). DTB will be joined by an alt. Connecticut band the Carleansfrom New London who tour the eastern half of the country but call the Knickerbocker home court.
The first appearance of Donna the Buffalo in Rhode Island was at Stepping Stone back in the late 90s and it actually heralded a moment in time back when the festival was in transition from its Cajun and Creole roots to including the broader spectrum of American roots. And they boil it all down to good country music.
For those who want the real Cajun fix TONIGHT you can catch Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys in their annual appearance at the Towers in Narragansett as another warm up for Rhythm and Roots, or catch them Saturday and Sunday at the festival grounds. And if you’re planning to drive to South County this weekend for the festival but prefer to stay closer to home in Providence, the Doc Martin of Honky-Tonk, a savant of the genre, Wayne Hancock brings his band to Askew in Providence TONIGHT. Perhaps not as many Connecticut readers although there will be a boatload of Nutmeggers at the festival. But they don’t have to leave the state for great music TONIGHT with favorite son Vince Thompson and the Next Fun Thing lighting up Sneekers Café in Groton.
And that brings us right back to Honky-Tonk, now seen as epitomized by 1920s white country blues of the ilk of Frank Hutchison (commended to me by departed icon John CrawlinSnake Mac). Hutchison influenced quintessential Honky-Tonker Hank Williams who cemented the current style a score years later. Williams added a rhythm section to the more solo stylings of those early porch players and created a genre in which steel guitar and fiddle were the dominant instrumental voices.
This is ironic for a musical form that began as a piano driven derivative of ragtime but the focus on rhythm remained for Williams and remains today, even if a certain return to melody and harmony and the influence of the electric guitar continue to morph the genre. It is speculated that the phrase Honky-Tonk (first reportedly used in, of all places, the Peoira Journal in 1874) was inspired by the poor state of repair of pianos in the nation’s dive bars and jook joints. The latter part of that nomenclature may itself have been derived from the upright piano manufacturer William Tonk & Bros or the entire moniker may simply have been an onomatopoeia constructed from the cacophony of this music that prided rhythm over refinement (and piano tuning).
It’s not surprising to see rock and roll influence reflected in Honky-Tonk because it’s role in the creation of rock and roll is grossly understated. Honky-Tonk piano men continued their craft and evolution parallel to the western swing trends inspired by Hank Williams. Fats Domino’s “Fat Man” is perhaps the first widely popular Rock and Roll recording while the name of Bill Doggett’s famous instrumental “Honky Tonk” gives a direct hattip to the origins of Rock and Roll. The influence of blues on modern rock is well known, but Williams deserved success makes folks think of Honky-Tonk more in the country context and misses that the blues were translated to rock and roll through Honky-Tonk. The Rolling Stones arguably put at least some of this debate to rest with Honky Tonk Woman and the earlier recorded by later released version Country Honk. But RI bassplayer Rory Macleod pointed out to me that the Stones song actually is formed of chord changes more akin to country, and the original version with the fiddle makes clear this influence on the Stones and how Honky-Tonk melded blues and country into a cornerstone of Rock and Roll.
Girls, Guns and Glory
This invitation that so many aspiring musicians of the moment have taken up – to reside in this Honky-Tonk space between modern rock and traditional country – has long existed, if the possibility of popular success from such pursuits was more obscure. This Friday, Rhythm, and Roots will feature a homegrown (Boston) band that was an early adopter and ultimate success, Girls Guns and Glory. It’s a band born of the cowboy code, not a salute to all that is politically incorrect. Singer-songwriter Ward Hayden has remarkably balanced the American roots influences to play original music written and arranged with Honky-Tonk cadence with GGG.
But this will be one of the band’s last performances – not because the band is breaking up, but because they are changing their name to the Outliers. The obsession with Parkland and MeToo that have become litmus tests in our great political divide have poisoned the culture such that their original alliterative appellation embracing cowboy culture seemed an impossible impediment to satisfying audiences of the present generation. So us ole folks will always know them as Girls Guns and Glory, but, as Shakespeare sort of said: “a rose by any other name would sound so sweet”!
Lazy Lester
And speaking of obsessions, it can’t have escaped anyone who has read this far that, in a country obsessed with race, the very real debate about whether our popular music belongs to black or white culture, tends to obscure the answer that turns out to be: both. This discomfort plagues musical institutions that want to be on the cutting edge but have difficulty when that edge seems to transgress racial boundaries. A glaring example is retold in the NY Times retrospective on the passing of Lazy Lester, who has been a musical resident at Rhythm and Roots in the past and was influential in crafting swamp blues that incorporated Cajun, Zydeco and country. Lester was warned off making country recordings in 1966 by his Excello Records producer Jay Miller because he was “colored”. Lester told the Baton Rouge Advocate 40 years later that this episode “was the hurtingest thing in the world”.
Well, the world has gotten to be a more accepting place despite the script we are fed by the mainstream media which confuses heartland resistance to government enforced multiculturalism with a hostility to the melting pot. Somehow they missed the memo that government-imposed integration is nothing but the B-side of government imposed segregation. And this progress isn’t marked just by the token advances of Darius Rucker’s invitation to the Grand Ole Oprey. The real thing has been happening even before that in the jook joints of Louisiana’s bayous where traditional Creole accordion player Geno Delafose has been know to substitute for his white Cajun counterparts at the traditionally homogenous community dances.
No Brown vs. Board of Education here, and yet a tectonic shift in attitudes brought about by the reality that musicians have a comradeship of their own that can outstrip the strong and useful bonds of traditional community that nurture comfort with those who are most like ourselves. Delafose told me in a radio interview a decade ago that the first night felt much like the reverse of the scene from Animal House where the troublesome Deltas found themselves in trouble after wandering into a black bar. But what resolved the tension for Delafose was the playing. No, not everyone is a changed person, and old habits die hard; but, for those who are n’t preoccupied with race, music has become something we have in common rather than something that divides us.
Americana Adventures
And bringing us together once more, Rhythm and Roots, while sporting Cajun and Zydeco music as usual, will be loaded down with these Honky-Tonk sounds as well – enduring a few snide comments from those who have a narrower view of tradition. This festival is a collection of Americana talent that rivals the names at the Newport Folk and Jazz festivals. Dustbowl Revival comes from Venice Beach, CA to our Atlantic beaches. This unpredictable eight piece combo that is influenced as much by funk as by bluegrass are happily stuck at the Honky-Tonk crossroads. They so charmed Dick Van Dyke that he invited them over to make a video.
And Girls Guns and Glory alum Chris Hersch and his new partner in musical crime, Celia Woodsmith, spend this Friday and Saturday at Ninigret with their Honky-Tonk combo Say Darling – in that link performing Lowell George’s anthemic “Willin” that I first heard performed by the least known proto-roots and most adventurously crossover rock band Seatrain who Cajun fiddler David Greeley once recalled from his youth as beckoning the fiddle back into popular music. Greeley will appear at this year’s Rhythm and Roots with former Mamou Playboy bandmate Sam Broussard and legendary east coat bluesman gone Texas, Johnny Nicholas, in their project Golden Triangle. All of that and I haven’t even mentioned the headliners, Steve Earle and the Dukes , Asleep at the Wheel, Leftover Salmon, Hot Rize and the Taj Mahal Trio.
The basic message here is that, regardless of what color you are, or whether white is a color, you need a pretty good excuse signed by your doctor not to show up at Rhythm and Roots this weekend. But if you should miss any of it, you can rest assured for a state that so often finishes last at everything, Rhode Island is simply no slouch at producing its own music scene. Although the redevelopers of Providence have tried their best to stamp out this rowdy Honky-Tonk, you can still find it if you look, because what do we do the other 51 weekends of the year?
The Western Stars light up the Parlour on North Main Street early on Friday, September 7th (and the first Friday of every month). Biscuit City visits the quintessential dive bar Nickanees on Friday, September 14th. And Fall River essentially counts as Rhode Island anyway and the fabulous Narrows Center has a free festival Sunday, September 9th featuring the incomparable Iguanas. A month later, during Columbus Day week, another early entrant in the national touring scene playing original music centered in this traditional genre, Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Review, will drive into town from Louisana, appearing at the Burren in Somerville on Oct. 9th and the Knickerbocker Café in Westerly on Oct 10th. And our adopted favorite sons and daughters, Cowboy and Lady, pop up with house concerts in Providence and visits to the Taproom at the Knickerbocker in Westerly. And you
There will be no shortage of Honky-Tonk anytime soon but Rhythm and Roots will be gone, gone too soon, so don’t miss it.
Brian Bishop is on the board of OSTPA and has spent 20 years of activism protecting property rights, over-regulation and perverse incentives in tax policy.
Related Slideshow: Some of the Most Interesting GoLocal LIVE Interviews—The First 1,000
Enda Kenny, former Prime Minister - the Taoiseach - of Ireland, joined GoLocal LIVE to discuss the growing trade opportunities sparked by the new direct air travel between Rhode Island's T.F. Green via Norwegian Air.
Kenny has been instrumental with his support for the Ireland West International Trade Center in Rhode Island and the RI Trade Center in Mayo.
At the time of the interview, a Rhode Island trade mission was visiting Ireland led in part by Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, who also appeared on LIVE.
Kenny served as Prime Minister from 2011 until earlier 2017.
Johnston native Amanda Clayton was almost ready to give up on her acting dreams when she got the call to travel to Atlanta to meet Tyler Perry and test-read with other actors for the then-new show “If Loving You Is Wrong," an opportunity that has been life and career changing for Clayton.
Having moved to New York at 19, five days before 9/11, she studied on-camera acting at New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts and eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue film and TV opportunities in Hollywood.
She appeared in Disney’s “John Carter," multiple TV appearances like NCIS: New Orleans, Major Crimes, and The Mentalist, and as Vinny Pazienza’s sister in “Bleed for This” filmed and based right here in Rhode Island.
Clayton just finished a Lifetime Movie “Mommy’s Little Angel”, coming out next year, and finished a role behind-the-scenes as a producer for “Dirty Dead Con Men.”
“If Loving You Is Wrong” airs Tuesday nights on OWN.
When your career begins at age 11 as the youngest artist to reach #1 on the Billboard charts and continues on through adulthood, it’s almost difficult to believe one could still have professional firsts, but RI native and “The Voice” Alum, Billy Gilman, did just that with his first ever arena concert at the Dunkin Donuts Center.
Johanne Killeen of Al Forno shared both the story on GoLocal LIVE's "The Taste," of how grilled pizza began -- as well as the announcement on her new cookbook highlighting pizza.
She told the story of how one of America's greatest restaurants was started and where it is going in the future.
Mystic Aquarium’s Penguin Trainers Eric Fox and Josh Davis visited GoLocal LIVE with Blue-Purple and Blue-Red penguins, talking about how you can help the Endangered South African species.
They also discussed trips to South Africa, what it’s like working with penguins, and what’s on the penguin’s lunch menu.
Mystic Aquarium’s mission is to inspire people to care for and protect the ocean planet through education, conservation and research. To help accomplish that mission, Mystic Aquarium offers educational opportunities and fundraising events to continue their conservation work and teach the public about the ocean’s creatures.
“Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” alum, Jai Rodriguez, joined GoLocal LIVE to talk about his new show “Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man’’ currently running in Vegas until January of 2018.
Rodriguez co-stars in the audience-participation heavy live show with reality TV personality, Kendra Wilkinson, and says the subject matter of the show is perfect for the crowd in Vegas.
Lincoln Chafee, former Mayor, U.S. Senator and Governor, took Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s administration to task for promoting economic growth by funneling tax dollars to some of America’s richest corporations, in one of a number of appearances on GoLocal LIVE.
Appearing on GoLocal LIVE with GoLocal News Editor Kate Nagle, Chafee said the Raimondo’s transfer of taxpayers dollars to billion dollar companies such as General Electric and Johnson & Johnson was flawed.
“I have never liked corporate welfare. It's unfair to existing businesses…some out of state business comes in and you give them the candy store. I just don’t like it," said Chafee.
As only the 10th person to serve as the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero said it’s been amazing to learn responsibilities of the position and get to know the staff at the National Archives. He appeared on GoLocal LIVE with Molly O'Brien at GoLocal's downtown Providence studio.
“The most exciting thing is getting to know the records and getting to know the richness of the documentation that tells our country’s history, starting with the oaths of allegiance signed at Valley Forge by George Washington and the troops, all the way up to the tweets that are being created as I am speaking, in the White House,” Ferriero said.
Governor Gina Raimondo joined GoLocal News Editor Kate Nagle on LIVE where she discussed the UHIP technology failure, economic development, the status of 38 Studios, and how she works to build a lasting legacy for Rhode Island.
Who are five of the most influential people to change personal technology? The most important journalist gave his insight on personal tech to date and outlined where we are going.
Super tech journalist and Rhode Island native Walt Mossberg appeared on GoLocal LIVE with GoLocal's News Editor Kate Nagle.
"Well, it was a combination of really important people - and really important technology," said Mossberg. "It took too long for the computer industry to get the memo that these things had to be usable without reading manuals."
Mossberg, who served as the principal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal from 1991 to 2013, founded AllThingsD, Recode, and the D and Code Conferences, and from 2015 to 2017, was Executive Editor of The Verge.
Gretchen Morgenson, a top financial writer for the New York Times [now the Wall Street Journal], joined GoLocal LIVE just hours after her newspaper published her investigative piece that unveiled that claims that financial giant TIAA was involved in improper financial practices took on new momentum.
Rhode Island’s Treasurer Seth Magaziner has nearly $700 million invested with TIAA.
Morgenson was first to report that, “New York’s attorney general has subpoenaed TIAA, the giant insurance company, and investment firm, seeking documents and information relating to its sales practices…”
In October, she wrote a sweeping investigative piece that raised questions about TIAA’s selling strategies. “The subpoena to TIAA, which handles retirement accounts for over four million workers at 15,000 nonprofit institutions across the country, followed an article last month in The New York Times that raised questions about the firm’s selling techniques,” wrote Morgenson.
On GoLocal LIVE, Morgenson told News Editor Kate Nagle in a Skype interview, “I think clients in all states should be worried -- Mr. [Seth] Magaziner should do a little more investigation into this to assure himself and the people in Rhode Island in these plans - that what TIAA is [telling them] is correct.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Ron Powers said his recent book, “No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America” is one he promised himself he would never write.
The book is based on the true story of his two sons' struggles with mental illness. Both were diagnosed with Schizophrenia as young men.
While deeply personal, Powers gave insight on the battles his sons’ fought and details into their family life. He also looked at the history of mental illness, including incarceration, medication and more.
"I was determined to give the mentally ill, invisible to much of society and often denied the very basic acknowledgment of their own humanity, a voice,” Powers said.
Powers is the author or co-author of 14 previous books, including New York Times bestselling “Flags of our Fathers” and “True Compass."
Bastianich explained how she was inspired by family traditions and how she first got into the culinary world. She has since carried on her passion and it now has involved to include her whole family in all her endeavors.
Big news -- Bastianich announced that Eataly could be opening in Toronto, Canada in 2018.
Magician and comedian Piff the Magic Dragon appeared on LIVE before he performed five shows at the Comedy Connection in East Providence over Labor Day Weekend.
“New show, all new jokes, all new tricks, same dog,” Piff said. “Mr. Piffles will be doing a lot of mind reading. He’s got his whole new act with The Dog Who Knows and he’ll be attempting to see all and know all. Ask him anything and he’ll tell you.”
Known for his dry sense of humor and rescue K-9 sidekick Mr. Piffles, Piff gained worldwide attention after his success on season 10 of America’s Got Talent.
Although Piff didn’t win that season, he’s made guest appearances on America’s Got Talent, racked up 50 million YouTube views, and recently extended his show at the Flamingo in Las Vegas until the end of 2018.
“He is the symptom and agent of the emerging nationalism. And, nationalism should not be considered patriotism. Patriotism is the love of your own. Nationalism is the hatred of others,” said Lesieur at the Hope Club.
In a sweeping discussion with GoLocal, he spoke about Europe in the Brexit, the Trump relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the wild French election campaign.
Former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy spoke with GoLocal LIVE about efforts in Rhode Island in 2017 to legalize marijuana - and what he said is the country’s crisis of addiction, and why he is opposed to marijuana legalization.
“We’re going through an epidemic of addiction and depression…and we’re in the midst of the rollback the biggest expansion of healthcare coverage that benefits people with mental illness [and] addiction, and this was the first time the ever got coverage,” Kennedy told GoLocal’s Kate Nagle on Wednesday.
“We ought to think do we want to throw gasoline on the fire,” said Kennedy, of legalizing marijuana in Rhode Island. “We know what’s happened with other addictive substances where’s basically there’s no perception of ‘risk’ — alcohol is ubiquitous; tobacco, until the settlements, there was no appetite for addressing [the impact of that].”
“Going down this road of adding a new intoxicant is not a good thing,” said Kennedy.
Beverly Daniel Tatum, Former Spelman College President
Former president of Spelman College, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D., is one of the nation’s leading experts on race, and the psychology of race.
Tatum recently released a fully revised and updated edition of her bestselling book “Why Are the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race.”
In an interview with LIVE, Tatum said it’s important to have conversations about race and listen for opportunities to have natural discussions.
“We can’t solve a problem if we can’t talk about it,” the Brock International Prize in Education winner said.
To make a change, she said, we all have a role to play and each of us has an opportunity.
“We all have a sphere of influence. Everybody influences someone, and we should not be afraid to use that influence to bring about the changes we hope to see,” she said.
Terrorism and international relations expert Mark Baillie of King's College in London's War Studies Department spoke with GoLocal's Kate Nagle regarding the post-Manchester landscape in England - and the world.
"The young guy...did it in his mother's basement. Any lone actor can make a powerful bomb," said Baillie following the terrorism incident. "We're in the midst of a general election where politicians talk about there being no political or cultural backlash."
"And estimated 300 people are 'ready to go' - 400 who have been fighting with Isis in Syria -- and in a group of about 20,000 supporters," noted Baillie of the UK landscape, calling Manchester and acts like it the "terrorism of the mundane" -- and much more frightening than "spectacular" acts of terrorism.
Baillie, who runs seminars on a wide range of security matters at King's and at the UK Joint Staff College, has lived or worked in more than 14 countries in the fields of news, security, finance, economics, business and politics and appears widely in international news media on terrorism and international security.
Geragos is one of Hollywood's biggest celebrity lawyers having represented rapper Chris Brown and Michael Jackson over the years. When asked about his relationship with the often legal troubled Brown, Geragos said that the rapper is "like a son and an annuity" to him.
In reference to a lawsuit that he is representing Alex and Ani over, Geragos said, "For lack of a better word, we've got a couple of knuckleheads, [and] it's not at the forefront of anything we're worried about."
"Unfortunately when you become successful people want to take an elevator to the penthouse and that won't happen here, trust me," said Geragos.
Geragos explained how he met Alex and Ani CEO Carolyn Rafaelian - and spoke to how the "company culture" brought him in.
"I was at a charity event at Carolyn's Sakonnet Vineyard -- she was doing a fundraiser for an Armenian orphanage," said Geragos. "They have a unique blend of doing humanitarian work...Carolyn was the hit in New York this week."
Model, entrepreneur and activist Gisele Bündchen, co-anchor of Good Morning America Robin Roberts; and Rafaelian were among the women recognized Tuesday in New York City by the David Lynch Foundation (DLF), a global charitable organization that addresses the epidemic of trauma and toxic stress amongst at-risk populations.
