Honky Tonk Roll-call

Found ourselves in Nashville for a long weekend again, both Friday and Saturday this time. Last time we were impressed by Heath Haynes on the Saturday night and they were pretty good again, if a little different atmosphere due to fewer fans packed into Layla’s Bluegrass Inn, and the distraction of Hallowe’en fancy dress. (Had to step out of the previous set, Brandon Giles was just toooo loud on keyboard and vocals for the small venue.)

Anyway, back to Heath Haynes Four-Ballers. Rich Gilbert excellent on guitar again, Aaron Oliva on the bass and the superb [fiddle] seen also with Dave Racine [skins] in Jesse Taylor’s band at the Jack Daniel’s Tennessee International BBQ Contest in Lynchburg, TN on the Saturday afternoon. Surreal – truly international with everything-but-the-beer-tent in the dry county that hosts Jack’s distillery.

Heath Haynes supplied Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues and an excellent version of Neil Young’s Helpless but no U2 or Blitzkrieg Bop this time. That same powerful version of G.L.O.R.I.A. segued onto The Stones Last Time and closed with Lust for Life.

Anyway on the Friday night we took in the late set in Robert’s Western World and were thoroughly entertained by Brazilbilly led eponymously by current club owner Jesse Lee Jones – more trad country mix, including some real vintage numbers, but quality musicians and entertainers to a man.

Working down from Legends Corner, 5th & Broadway, the whole block backs onto the Ryman Theatre erstwhile home of Grand Ole Opry and “mother church of country music” – worth a visit in itself, saw Joe Satriani there earlier in the year, and took the tour on this visit, where “Widespread Panic” were set up.

No.428 Legends Corner
No.422 Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge
No.420 Second Fiddle
No.418 Layla’s Bluegrass Inn
No.416 Robert’s Western World
No.412 The Stage

14 thoughts on “Honky Tonk Roll-call”

  1. Hey! enough with the hillbilly music.

    Where is the promised blog about Zeitgeist?

    I finally was able to see it when I visited my daughter and would love to know more of your thoughts and perhaps share mine.

    Also, got a great (I think) book for my birthday.

    “The Varieties of Scientific Experience” by Carl Sagan.

    I love the allusion to William James.

  2. also…

    I have a friend who would like to start a blog.

    He’s not very web savvy and is intimidated by his lack of knowledge.

    Is there a good place to start?

  3. Spooky, I’m re-reading James at the moment – not “Varieties of …” but Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth edited by A J Ayer. Full of good stuff. However didn’t blog much about him before, unlike … Also been re-reading Dr James H Austin … I blogged a great deal … search for Austin in the blog.

    Sagan is OK, not read a lot first-hand – find him a bit … ummm … “American”. Earnest without (say) Douglas Adams sense of humour. Be interested in what you think.

    Not sure I was going to write more about Zeitgeist the Movie, more about the cultural “conspiracy” meme – that I need to do.

    The easiest non-techie place to start with a blog is still “Blogger” – now owned by Google, so pretty safe. They host and publish and provide the blogging tools, all at no cost. If the friend eventually finds there are functions that blogger doesn’t provide – they’ll find the more sophisticated tools will all import “Blogger” content at any point in the future.

    (BTW – we may be coming to California over the Christmas holiday …. keep you posted.)

    And the music is not hillbilly – country or rock, progressive, alternative or traditional, it’s all blues based. Can’t beat it.

    Two announcements in new posts …

  4. BTW, added thought … anyone starting blogging I would recommend a tagger to organise different threads / subjects. (Last time I looked blogger didn’t have it’s own tagging capability.)

    I didn’t come across “del.ici.ous” until after I’d already got a thousand posts …. but it’s an excellent concept – to add delicious tags to each new post … the great thing is you can tag the tags, each tag is a category, and create any organisation of posts you like.

  5. Thanks for the information. I will pass it along.

    The Sagan book is actually a compilation of lectures he gave as part of the Gifford Lecture series on Natural Theology at The University of Glasgow in 1985. The hat tip to James is because James turned the transcripts of his Gifford lectures into The Varieties of Religious Experience.

    Gee, I didn’t know that. I should have read the intro!!

    Sagan apparently admired James’s definition of religion as a “feeling of being at home in the Universe”.

    Ann Druyan is the editor.

    It’s really lovely and uplifting. I grew up with the guy expounding on the billions and billions of stars, molecules and other star stuff in the universe. I don’t find him at all without humor.

    How’s about James? Is he similiarly earnest (being American and all)? I’ve always loved his writing. But then thought less of him when I found out he believed in spiritualism.

    I’ve been reading a guy named Robert M Young. http://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/

    He teaches at Columbia and is very interested in how Darwinian evolutionary thinking affects psychology and philosophy. The guy has been writing since 1960. Really good stuff.

    California at Christmas! It’s too bad we’re off the beaten path, but it’s well worth the effort to see our beautiful mountains in snow. Do you and Sylvia ski?

  6. BTW since you love the blues….

    What do you think of Tne Years After and my all time favorite guitarist, Alvin Lee?

    What ever happened to them?

  7. Alvin Lee – “Ten” Years After – he’s on the Woodstock video too. Someone I have seen and liked …. but lost touch with where he’s at.

    Robert Young – linked to several times before … have his human nature “NIBBS” page linked permanently in my blogroll for many years. Great source of news on new material in this evoutionary psychology (shhh, dirty word) area.

    Agree about Sagan’s “uplifting” style of earnestness – I too remember his astronomical TV programmes from way back … just a personal “style” thing that grates … maybe a British thing 😉 Sorry, not knocking the guys knowledge or beliefs, just owning up to a prejudice.

    James is a superstar in this business.

    Beleiving “in” spirituality is one thing, what you believe it “is”, is another.

  8. Hi Alice …. Alvin Lee ?

    Did you set me up for that …. another coincidence. Alvin is apparently still active, His recent 2004 album is called “In Tennessee”, inlcudes Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana, and the cover of the album is a painting of Honky Tonk Row on Broadway – the same 6 bars I mentioned in the post, with the Bell-South tower Nashville skyline in the background. Shall I say it – Spooky

    To find him play …. seems all his gigs have been in Europe in recent years.

  9. yeah, that’s spooky alright.

    Good for him! I love the guy and his music and at Woodstock he was so sexy!

    Even my 24 year old daughter thinks so.

    I saw him in Chicago in the 70’s and have a couple of his albums.

    I will definitely get his new one. He is a worthy musician.

    Spooky!

  10. ? is that you tellin me you were at Woodstock, like in person, in the flesh ?

    We have ski’ed before. Not sure my knees are up to it these days, but both the boys ski … Seen where you are at, at Mammoth Lakes … nothing fixed yet, but you never know.

  11. No, I was too young to go and living in Chicago, being in high school and living at home, wasn’t conducive to attending.

    But I was inspired and entranced, so the next summer, I ran away from home and went to the sequel in Toronto.

    CBC Strawberry Fields Mosport Archive

    Strawberry Fields Festival Poster

    I’m really not fond of those days. I wasn’t mature enough to be objective (that coupled with some pretty strong drugs and some pretty creepy people).

    I think a lot of it was bullshit and prevented some in my generation from becoming mature.

    Eventually I did, but not without some struggle.

  12. No nothing broken … just multiple consecutive comments from the same person triggered the spam filter, and I didn’t notice till this morning.

    Philip Kitcher does ring a bell too, but I will have to read those specifics. Thanks.

    The history of hippiedom is interesting …. well intentioned at some points but ultimately mis-guided and rail-roaded by narrow agendas. The “romantic” reaction to established order was right of course, just didn’t necessarily think through how “anarchic freedom” would fill the gap … before others jumped the bandwagon. Pirsig’s story is quite tangled-up with that learning experience. A false dawn.

  13. Oh, and it looks like there are some formatting bugs with this template … comments past 10 seem to slip a long way down the page …. Grrr.

    Ah, no the bug is caused by the long URL in the comment text …. fixed.

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