Too Late - An All Saints 2019 Mixtape (TOTR 370)

Art Neville 

December 17, 1937 - July 22, 2019

Dr. John aka Malcolm John Rebennack Jr. 

November 20, 1941 - June 6, 2019

Roger Kynard "Roky" Erickson 

July 15, 1947 - May 31, 2019

Peter Edward "Ginger" Baker 

August 19, 1939 - October 6, 2019

Robert C. Hunter

June 23, 1941 - September 23, 2019

Peter Tork aka Peter Halsten Thorkelson

February 13, 1942 - February 21, 2019

Ric Ocasek aka Richard Theodore Otcasek

March 23, 1944 - September 15, 2019

Neal Casal

November 2, 1968 - August 26, 2019

Leon Redbone aka Dickran Gobalian

August 26, 1949 – May 30, 2019

Rachel Held Evans 

June 8, 1981 – May 4, 2019

Mary Jane Oliver 

September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019

The Neville Brothers - Maori Chant

The Neville Brothers - Spirits of the World

Dr. John - Peace Brother Peace

Dr. John - Iko Iko

The Silent Comedy - All Saints Day

Hope and Social - All Our Ghosts

Roky Erickson - If You Have Ghosts 

Cream - Sunshine of Your Love

Jerry Garcia - The Wheel 

Cloud Cult - Dance for the Dead

The Monkees - Shades of Gray

The Cars - Just What I Needed 

Tanya Tucker - Bring My Flowers Now 

Anais Mitchell - Dyin Day

Conor Oberst - I Don’t Want To Die (In The Hospital)

Devandra Banhart - Memorial 

Neal Casal - Too Late

Grateful Dead - Ripple 

Jim James & Teddy Abrams with the Louisville Orchestra - Back To The End Of The World

Monsters of Folk - Dear God

The Liturgists featuring Rachel Held Evans - Saturday

Amy Ray & Justin Vernon - Let The Spirit

Neal Casal - Property of Jesus

Leon Redbone - If We Never Meet Again This Side of Heaven 

Warren Haynes & Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi & Devon Allman & Robert Randolph & Jimmy Hall & Sam Moore & Keb' Mo' & Brantley Gilbert & Dr. John & Pat Monahan & John Hiatt & Taj Mahal & Gregg Allman & Widespread Panic & Trace Adkins & Vince Gill & Martina McBride & Eric Church & Jackson Browne & Zac Brown & The Allman Brothers Band -Will The Circle Be Unbroken From a show that originally aired on Monday, November 4, 2019. The complete audio archive of this show is here:

https://soundcloud.com/teacherontheradio/totr-370-too-late

Tech’s Rendering of the Musical Ruthless: Ridiculous and Worth It

Opening the play on Halloween, with shows running through the Saturday of Homecoming weekend, Tennessee Tech’s Backdoor Playhouse unveils a spooky spoof, with director Mark Creter’s interpretation of Ruthless: The Stage Mother of All Musicals by Joel Paley and Marvin Laird. This madcap murderous musical mashup is sure to make most smile, if not make us a little bonkers in the process with all the plot twists and inside jokes.  

Many of the amazing plays that Creter has staged in his decades at the helm of Tech’s theatre program have relied on an over-the-top degree of artifice, producing the kind of plays where you know that the playwright is messing with the audience, the kind of plays where the dramatic art-form tests its boundaries and the fourth wall wobbles and finally falls, leaving the audience members asking for more or asking what just happened. 

Sometimes Creter experiments with drama, sometimes with comedy, and sometimes like now, with musical comedy. Ruthless fits right in Creter’s wonderfully weird wheelhouse, but in an entirely loony and light-hearted way. His musical director Mendy Richards, choreographer Megan Randolph, technical director Jeff Kean, stage manager James Alder, and the rest of the behind-the-scenes staff always deliver something strong, better than this cozy college town deserves. This show is a meditation on the idea of “talent” itself, but it helps that Creter’s cast overflows with talent.

A case in point of how crazy this play is and how great the cast are, this comes in the character of Lita Encore, played perfectly by Chelsea Holland  A theatre critic within the plot is not to be trusted, and Holland’s boisterous belting of the song “I Hate Musicals” makes its point clear. This play should not be taken too seriously; rather, it should not be taken seriously at all.

For all its stunning silliness, Ruthless offers wonderful commentary on the trickiness of talent and the snares of stardom, all behind the power of a predominantly female cast—even Playhouse regular Andrew Neal plays a female character. 

The delightful yet disturbing mother-daughter dynamics between an excellent Erin Sullens and campy Caitlin McMahan as Judy and Tina Denmark are the core of the story. Samia Anderson’s sassy supporting part ends up playing a crucial pivot on which the entire plot turns, from slow-burn bizarre to completely batty. 

There are so many twists and turns in Ruthless, and while we have tried to avoid spoilers here, even reading this review might elicit too much anticipation. Be warned: this is not a play where you need to suspend disbelief long enough to get looped in, but rather, this is a play where belief and disbelief should both be left in the car before crossing the threshold into the theatrical space. Ruthless is ruthless in how it renders expectations ridiculous. Go, laugh, and have a blast.

-this review has also been submitted to Cookeville's daily newspaper the Herald-Citizen.

Performances of Ruthless at the Backdoor Playhouse in the Jere Whitson Building at Tennessee Tech will begin on October 31 and continue November 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, and 9 at 8:00 p.m. ; with additional performances on Thursday, November 7 at 10:00 p.m. and a special matinee performance on November 9, at 2:00 p.m.; tickets are $15 general admission, $12 for senior citizens and $5 for all students; the box office opens at 7:15 and takes cash, checks and credit cards. 

For further information call 931-372-6595 or visit our homepage at www.tntech.edu/bdph

Writing About Your Relationship with American Music - An American Lit Assignment

How will you write about music? What do you need to say the songs that fill your earbuds and define your life?

I am asking you to write about music, because like writing poetry, writing about music for me has been a spiritual and social survival skill, and I want you to at least test this genre of prose for your personal life toolkit, making this more than just another assignment with a due date.

Surviving the strange emotions of love and adolescence with so many Beatles choruses carrying me through; putting myself to bed in elementary school with John Denver singing “Sunshine On My Shoulders” on the tiny personal turntable; watching and re-watching the movie American Graffiti with a special sentiment for the songs and especially for the DJ Wolfman Jack: performing Lennon and Jagger and Simon and McLean songs with my basement air-band The Rebellion; these and so many more primal memories remind me why popular music is not just the soundtrack of my mundane life, but the Holy Spirit choral lifeblood of a much more meaningful life.

What I want the would-be music critics in this class to get is permission to express how music has made and remade them as people, to place us inside the life stories that go with so many songs. While I am happy to entertain as much lyrical analysis as we had poetry analysis, I worry that if you only stay with the lyrics of your personal American songbook, we might miss on other aspects of how the music has infected our entire beings. 

For the deep-cuts, dedicated, and discerning music fans, writing about music, is not just like writing about literature. Good writing about music is a form of literature in itself that conveys an amazing depth of feelings, making music writing memorable on its own terms. Good writing about music possesses the power to turn others onto music that will also change their lives. 

There are long and winding stories that go with the songs so significantly, that for us as fans, the songs over time become inseparable from our stories associated with them. Perhaps this next blog will be an opportunity for you to weave your stories into our mental, emotional, and spiritual associations that go with particular songs. 

So in addition to the simple lyrics analysis, which remains welcome and comparable to the close reading we did with poems, allow this blog to be a testimony and a telling of your relationship with popular American music. Allow your imagination and passion to have fun with this, keeping in mind that the “professional” music writers invoked to inspire you felt led and called and even convicted to write about music. 

Perhaps you share some of that fandom passion on your own terms, or maybe just maybe, you can allow some of the creative passion from this section of the class to rub off on you and help you tell a story about music that might inspire your peers and your professor.  

Details -800 words absolute minimum;

must be about American music, could be about a song, an album, a concert, a scene;

your writing genre could be personal reflection essay/personal memoir about music;

as long as American music is featured prominently, this could be a first-person non-fiction narrative; Writing about gospel-blues, Gaye, Dylan, Dead, sixties music, etc of course is encouraged, but only if you have passion for those artists covered;

If you want to fall back on the lyrical analysis prompt, feel free to go for it Putting this out there to share with other instructors who might want to do a similar assignment.

Down In The Flood (TOTR 369)

Woody Guthrie – Pretty Boy Floyd

Dylan – Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues

Dylan – Tangled Up in Blue 

Flatt & Skruggs – Down in the Flood 

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Wanted Man 

Jeff Tweedy – Simple Twist of Fate 

Dylan – Hurricane

Dylan – Ballad of a Thin Man

Dylan – Maggie’s Farm

John Doe – Pressing On

Dylan – Isis

PJ Harvey - Highway ‘61 Revisited

Wyclef Jean - Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door

The Staple Singers - A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

Joan Baez - Forever Young (live)

Grateful Dead - It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (live)

The complete audio archive of this show is here: https://soundcloud.com/teacherontheradio/totr-369-down-in-the-flood

Before Us - for Kurt Eisen RIP (TOTR 368)

"Before Us - for Kurt Eisen RIP" aired on WTTU 88.5FM in Cookeville, TN on Monday, October 21, 2019.

Photo of Kurt Eisen's locker in the Tech Fit, shared with me by a friend.

Jackson Browne - For A Dancer

Warren Zevon - Keep Me in Your Heart

Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed

The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony

Bruce Springsteen - Dancing in the Dark

Sarah Jarosz - When Doves Cry

Valerie June - On My Way/Somebody To Love

Conor Oberst - Lenders in the Temple

Bob Dylan - I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine

Wilco - Capitol City

Wilco - My Darling

Wilco - Before Us

Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence

Grateful Dead - Brokedown Palace

Leonard Cohen - Waiting for the Miracle

Johnny Cash - In My Life

Tom Waits - Somewhere

Richard Thompson - Wall of Death

Bill Callahan - Lonesome Valley

Bruce Cockburn - It Won’t Be Long

Bruce Cockburn - Joy Will Find A Way (A Song About Dying)

Bruce Cockburn - Festival of Friends

audio archive is here:

https://soundcloud.com/teacherontheradio/totr-368-before-us-for-kurt-eisen-rip Poems read on the air:

For Kurt

3 September 2019

note: written in love

first by hand

in a Cookeville coffee place

I know that this is not all that 

there is

I know there is humor & hope too

next time I will write that poem

---------------------------

I wanted to write you something

sweet or profound

but nothing comes quickly

not to pen or tongue or typewriter

there’s nothing sweet or profound

about this painful diagnosis

this palpable distance

what a long way we are

from the parties at the Osburns 

on Maple in the aughts

or your once pilgrimage

to Pumpkin Hollow

we’ve both wandered & traveled far

but your journey 

these last years

seems bent toward a different distance

landing in a gap

between the worlds

between this life &

whatever heaven awaits

of course I pray 

for a sweetness sometime

even a reason something 

anything to explain the suffering now

but it’s hard to get the head

from here to there

when pondering the already

arbitrary awful of 

a disease meeting a body

a body begging God for 

a different outcome even

a different world for

a better reality than this bitter brew

even in this same broken world

in all its tender broken beauty

love is still a world of

global warming

gun massacres & 

maddening cancers

all the arbitrary suffering 

that is just not

supposed to happen

to people

like you

-----

Kurt, after a dream 

There you are 

we are at the door

of what must

be our work

you are stronger

laughing 

younger

smiling

our conversation

isn’t long

but I am 

surprised to 

see you

looking so good

but when

I wake

from the dream

it is 4am &

I am 

scared

because 

the only thought

that remains

after the dream

is that I have 

seen 

your 

resurrection body

I don’t want

to wonder when

or wait to 

get the news

that you are gone

but part of me

just has to believe

the promises of God

somehow

we are just holding

you at the banks

of a special river

waiting for the 

boat that only

now you must 

board

crossing over 

has come for you

as it will come

for all of us 

one day

and I have to 

believe that when 

you get on that boat

that something better 

and more beautiful

waits for you

on the other side

9/12/2019

AWS