Shows

Roots of the Otis Brothers

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The Otis Brothers - R. Crumb
(The Otis Brother’s first album cover, artwork by R. Crumb)

Todays show features a selection of the original recordings which influenced Queens, NY based blues/pre-blues string band, The Otis Brothers. These guys have listened to a lot of music! An hours worth of their influences provide a listening pleasure and real education in early blues and stringband music captured on commercial 78 rpm records and field recordings. The picture of early blues music painted by a sampling the Otis Brothers influences is a remarkable one. There was so much more to play than there was time for on this one program, but hopefully this is a good sample. Be sure to check out the previous episode of Down Home Radio; an interview with the Otis Brothers.

Also, click the 2nd play button above to hear a mini episode featuring Pat Conte’s commentary on “The Lonely Cowboy,” the only song recorded by cowboy singer and musical singularity Arthur Miles, back in 1927. He sings, yodels, and then something else. Is it throat singing or humming and whistling?!? Hear what Pat Conte has to say, then you decide!

See below for a track listing from todays program as well as a list of recommendations on more music to listen to:

Interview with The Otis Brothers

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The Otis Brothers at Banjo Jim's summer 07 pic by Eli Smith

On today’s show I speak with The Otis Brothers, the amazing blues/pre-blues string band from Queens, NY. Pat Conte and Bob Guida, who form the Otis Brothers have been playing together since the mid 1970’s. They met in high school, where they sang field hollers while working out in the gym! Both Pat and Bob have amassed large collections of awesome old instruments and rare records. But as we discuss in the interview, they’re not collectors, they’re musicians in search of a very particular sound and feeling, and all the instruments and recordings and other objects are a part of how they undertake that search.

My good friend Ernesto Gomez and I journeyed out the end of the 7 train line in Queens where Bob picked us up. We went back to his place, Pat was there and we took a swim in his backyard pool, had some food and then went down into the basement for the interview. The whole basement area was filled with rare records, awesome old instruments, old pieces of recording and playback technology, comic books and weird art. We had a great time!

The Otis Brothers play a mix of blues, pre-blues, old-time and gospel music. All my favorite stuff! Look out for the second part of this episode- “The Roots of the Otis Brothers” coming up in a few days where I will play many of the original recordings that influenced Pat and Bob (as well as some fun surprises!).

Be sure to check them out live at the TenEleven Bar on Manhattan’s lower east side, on Sat. March 1st!

List of Free Internet Music Resources

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On today’s episode I play only tracks that I have downloaded for free from the internet. I actually ended up using only tracks that I got from the fantastic music blog www.eldiablotuntun.blogspot.com , but there are many other great ones out there! See my complete list below. The internet has made it possible to hear pretty much anything you want, even and especially obscure folk music, for free. This is quite a positive turn of events – the only trouble is finding out what you want to hear. Down Home Radio is here to help! But you can now really educate your self thoroughly, feed your aural addiction and generally have a great time, with out breaking the bank. This should be taken advantage of to the fullest extent.

Here’s my list of favorite music blogs, archives and downloading software:

(If anybody has additions to this list, please let me know!)

http://eldiablotuntun.blogspot.com

http://www.juneberry78s.com

http://totallyfuzzy.blogspot.com/ – Search the world of music blogs!

and more… See below:

Interview with Mike Seeger

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Mike Seeger. Photo by Ron Pen

This week I’ll be drawing from my “archives” for an interview with Mike Seeger, multi-instrumentalist, field-recordist, record producer and 1/3 of the New Lost City Ramblers. This interview is from a tape of one of my old radio shows from college. It was conducted in May 0f 2003 at WOBC, the radio station of Oberlin College in Ohio. This was my first real radio interview! I had booked Mike to come and play at the Oberlin Folk Festival and while in town he appeared on the weekly radio show I hosted with my friend Jacob Groopman. We talk about his parents Ruth Crawford and Charles Seeger, Elizabeth Cotton, Dock Boggs, Josh Thomas, Henry Thomas, Alan Lomax, the current state of folk music and more, and Mike plays some gourd banjo and jaw harp live on the air.

Included above are the interview with Mike, and a recording of his appearance at the Oberlin College Folk Festival, May 2003.

Interview with Feral Foster

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This week Eli interviews New York blues musician and song writer Feral Foster. Using an unparalleled knowledge of New York City and a wide array of musical influences including Charlie Patton and Bukka White, Feral has created an authentic new style of old country blues song in 2008 NYC. Feral is part of the Roots ‘n’ Ruckus music collective. Starting January 9th he will be hosting a new weekly series of folk music shows at the Jalopy Theater in Carroll Gardens/Redhook Brooklyn. The show will be every Wednesday from 9pm until late. Free lasagna the first night! Down Home Radio recommends this gig!
Roots 'n' Ruckus at Jalopy

Interview with The Carolina Chocolate Drops

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The Carolina Chocolate Drops with Joe Thompson

Today Eli speaks with The Carolina Chocolate Drops, a great young African American string band hailing from North Carolina. They met at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, NC in April of 2005, an event meant to bring forward the essential history of African American string band music. Since then they have become a very successful group, gaining more and more fans as they relentlessly tour the country. Most recently they have appeared on the soundtrack of the soon to be released film, “The Great Debaters.”

The band is:

Rhiannon Giddens (banjo, fiddle, voice)
Justin Robinson (fiddle, banjo, voice)
Dom Flemons (guitar, banjo, jug, harmonica, snare & voice).

The Carolina Chocolate Drops website

Interview with The Peach Colored Jug Smugglers

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PCJS On The Roof

This week Eli talks with The Peach Colored Jug Smugglers. They’re a great new string band from California who came East this summer and are currently working their way through the South and back across the country using a combination of buses, hitching rides and hopping on freight trains. They inhabit a place in California called the Chad Shack, a structure which they have build on an open piece of land. They pay no rent! They all come from a punk music background but have started playing old-time music in the last year or two.

Peach Colored Interview

Interview with Pete Seeger – Down Home Turns 1!

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This weeks show marks the one year anniversary of Down Home Radio! Sure we’ve missed some weeks here and there, but we’ve now been broadcasting for a full year. Its been great and time has really flown by! Lots more great shows in the works, so keep listening!

This week we have a great interview with Pete Seeger, a man who certainly needs no introduction. We talk with Pete about his experiences dealing with the music industry over his long career, trying to make money as a young artist, the controversy surrounding royalties derived from the South African song he first adapted into Wimoweh / The Lion Sleeps Tonight, his Campaign for Public Domain Reform and his thoughts about the state of the world in general. We also play (almost) all the songs he mentions in the interview!

Pete Seeger Interview

Pete Seeger’s public domain reform proposal to the U.N.

“Old songs world wide now in the public domain are often adapted and arranged and the new song copyrighted. We propose that a share, either .01% or 99.99% of the mechanical, print and performing royalties go to the place and people where the song originated. Every country should have a public domain commission to help decide what money goes where.”

– Pete Seeger
The Committee for Public Domain Reform

Follow-up Interview with Mat Callahan – Mat is the person spearheading the actual implementation of this effort at the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) office of the U.N. in Switzerland. He explains Pete’s proposal as well as who the real culprits are in the rip-off scam that is the current copyright regime. Mat also addresses the controversy over the royalties from The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Alan Lomax’s copyrighting of folksongs, as well as the nature of the folk process itself. Click here for Mat’s previous appearance on Down Home Radio

Historic and Contemporary Protest Songs Links

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Little Red Song Book

Here’s some notes from the show I just hosted on KPFK in LA about the history of protest songs and contemporary protest songs and singers:

By the way, the interview I did with Pete Seeger is not yet posted up, I will be posting it on the night of Friday, October 5th, so check back for that.

Lots of Links, etc. below-

The Songs:

Here’s a blurb for each song. I see the program as being a bit of history and then bringing it up to date with great contemporary stuff. We’ll start at the beginning of the 20th century with the IWW, a One Big Singing Union who liked to parody Salvation Army bands because they had good familiar tunes. And if the Salvation Army band tried to drown out the IWW singers with their brass bands, the Wobblies could just sing along. “The Preacher and the Slave” is a song written by Joe Hill in 1911. It was written as a parody of the song “In The Sweet Bye and Bye.”

1. Preacher and the Slave by Harry “Mac” McClintock – Harry McClintock was a singer associated with the IWW. He is the composer of the song Big Rock Candy Mountain, but here sings a song by Joe Hill, of whom he was a personal associate, one of very few the reclusive Joe Hill had. They, along with T-Bone Slim were the main composers of the IWW, International workers of the world. I think they had the best songs of any labor movement in America. This recording is taken from a remarkable one of a kind interview with McClintock, conducted by Sam Eskin in 1950. Click the above link to got Smithsonian Global Sound where you can buy the track, read the liner notes, etc.

Jesse James Feature Episode

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What with the release of the movie “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” we thought we’d get with the program and do a special 1/2 hour Down Home Radio episode featuring different versions and permutations of the song Jesse James. James is an early and pervasive figure in American folk and popular culture and there are many references to him in contemporary pop/popular music, but on todays show we concentrate on some old, great!!, and rather obscure versions. Vilified, sainted and shot in the back, Jesse James lives on.

Jesse James Feature Episode