Tag: lowell george

BGS 5+5: Dougie Poole

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Dougie Poole
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Latest Album: The Rainbow Wheel of Death

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Once I was playing at The Glove, a great old DIY venue in Brooklyn. It was a hot night in the summer and I was playing to a fairly empty room. I started a song called “Elbow” which is a country waltz that probably tops out at around 80bpm. And when I did, a group of four or five friends began to writhe and grind right in front of the stage. It was such a silly sight, these young sweaty kids grinding to a slow country waltz, that I caught the giggles and couldn’t get through the words of the song. For years after, if I happened to think of that night during another performance, I’d lose my place in the song or forget the words and start laughing spontaneously all over again.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I watch a lot of television. TV writers are masters of short form story arcs, constructing conflict and resolution and tension and release over the course of an episode arc. And in some cases, tying those small episode arcs into the arc of a larger season or series. To me it seems not dissimilar from writing a song that fits in the larger context of a record. I’m a huge, lifelong fan of The Sopranos, Seinfeld, Star Trek: The Next Generation — stuff that was primetime TV when I was growing up. I revisit them often.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

I like to have a weak drink or two before we perform. Something like a bitters soda or a digestif with enough of a kick to loosen me up, but not strong enough to make me sloppy. It’s not my healthiest habit, and they start to add up over a long tour. I’ve gotten some suspicious looks trying to order a Cynar or something at the wrong dive bar.

What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?

I’ve gotten great advice from lots of people, directly and indirectly, throughout my career. It’s hard to boil down into a bite-sized nugget, but I do remember when I was in my 20s seeing a commencement address that Patti Smith gave at an art school. I think it was Pratt. She said something to the effect of: build your name. Not in the sense of fame or branding or anything like that. But just to focus on honing your craft and doing good work and trying to treat other artists and other people with kindness and respect, and to let your name carry your code as an artist. To listen to your conscience and take care of your teeth. And that if you do this, success will define itself for you.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

This is a cool question because it’s not like: “Who would you love to talk to for an hour?” I love cooking and eating. And I love spending a whole day overeating and sitting around outside. Like a barbecue or something. So it’d have to be someone who also ate a lot too, so I didn’t feel self-conscious about eating way too much. Lowell George famously overate — maybe we’d have a nice time just sitting in silence and eat ribs together or whatever. If I were sitting across from a table from like Prince or something, I’d be too nervous to eat.

BGS 5+5: Blue Dogs

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Blue Dogs
Hometown: Florence, South Carolina
Latest Album: Big Dreamers
Rejected Band Names: Fuji Apparatus (rejected but tolerated)

Answers provided by Bobby Houck and Hank Futch Jr.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

I’ve always said if I could have dinner with anyone living or dead, it would be Lowell George of Little Feat. I imagine us having an eight-hour dinner with cocktails, red wine, and for some reason I think of him wanting some good Italian food, and it would go into the night around the table with guitars, cigarettes, and yadda yadda. — Bobby

I love to cook and would have loved to have Elvis Presley over for dinner and serve him my smoked dry rubbed baby back ribs, brisket baked beans, collard greens and slaw and for dessert, we’d go to the Sun Records Cafe for a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich. Elvis would likely order his with bacon. — Hank

What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?

The best advice that I received came from Poppa Futch. He would always say “Remember who you are” and “Take it to ‘em, son!” Meaning, you are a Futch and a Christian and when you are performing, give it all you have. Stand up in the saddle and lean forward. — Hank

Don’t be an asshole. Be nice to everyone, if you can help it, because word gets around. But also, from David Lowery (of Cracker, producer of our Letters from Round O cd): every band has one guy in there that drives and pushes things a little bit and is labeled as the asshole. Don’t beat yourself up about it. — Bobby

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

Around the time I met my wife, in 2006, the band had just completed about 10 years of full-time touring, writing, etc., and we were gearing it down. And I am pretty sure I had PTSD or something similar from those years. I really needed a mental and physical break. So in letting all that go, I really let my songwriting get away from me. I tried a couple of years later to write with some folks in Nashville, but it did not work well. And then I got married, and we started having children, and the idea I was harboring now was that I needed to write some things about these new experiences. But it just wasn’t happening. So within a few years, I had developed a full-blown writer’s block. But I kept thinking about it, and because I wasn’t writing, I was thinking about it even more, about how I wasn’t writing, and occasionally I would dream a song and let it slip away. So in a weird way, it became an obsession, but I wasn’t producing.

So finally around 2015, I made an appointment with Radney Foster, who was a mentor and with whom I’d had a successful and easy experience 10 years earlier. And I went in and said, “I’ve got to write a song about my wife or for my wife, I’ve somehow got to get some of my feelings about her and my life now into a song or she’s going to have to listen to all of these other songs about other girls for the rest of her life…and this will not be good.” And it was his weekly write with Jay Clementi, a wonderful human whose empathy and sweetness really helped to make it happen – and sure enough, the block started melting away bit by bit and we wrote “That’s How I Knew.” I was reminded that I could take thoughts and help shape them into pieces that would fit together as a song, and it was such a relief. I credit these two professionals who happen to be great Americans with helping me out of that hole. And the song made its way on our new record and I am so proud of what Sadler Vaden helped us do with it. — Bobby

I started writing a song three years ago about celebrating family. It went through many revisions over the three-year period and didn’t actually finish writing it until we were in the studio recording it. The song is called “Big Dreamers,” the title of our new record. — Hank

Which artist has influenced you the most…and how?

While I’ve been a huge fan of Ricky Skaggs since he played with JD Crowe & the New South, the artist that influenced me the most was my dad, Hank Futch, Sr. (aka Poppa Futch). My brother, Hal Futch, and I started playing bluegrass when we were around 12 years old and it was Poppa Futch that inspired us to play. Some of my earliest memories are of him playing bluegrass, gospel and classic country songs at parties with his buddy and boss Mag Greenthaler. The two of them could entertain a crowd like I still have never seen, telling stories that seemed unbelievable though we would learn later that most of the stories were true. He handed down so many great songs, wrote a few and taught us to harmonize. He would take us to Lavonia, Georgia, in the ’70s where we would watch all the great bluegrass pickers and bands such as Flatt & Scruggs, Doc and Merle Watson, JD Crowe & the New South, Jim & Jesse, The Lewis Family, etc. He loved to tell the story of coming home one day and hearing bluegrass music coming out of the basement only to walk down and see my brother and I, along with Will Morris on banjo, were jamming out “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” as fast as we could play it. Poppa passed away last year but my love of music undoubtedly came from him. — Hank

This is always a hard one to answer. I could go a lot of different directions. From the work ethic and band leadership of Ronnie Van Zant, to the cool and uniqueness of Lowell George or Dave Matthews, to the songwriting canon of Jackson Browne or James Taylor, to the picking and singing of Tony Rice. But I think perhaps the artist that I (and many others) have studied and learned from the most is the icon of the singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan. His writing process and intensity; his tendency and willingness to change things up; his devotion and dedication from an early age (hitchhiking to New York to meet Woody Guthrie and following his destiny to Greenwich Village) to the present (the never-ending tours and the albums which seem to come out annually or more). But the thing I glean most from him is the ingenious songcraft, which, more often than not, is marked by simple structures with remarkable lyrics and the perfectly unusual chord thrown in just to make sure you remember he’s trying to do it just a little differently than the expected. He set the bar high for everyone. I like to think I at least try to do something unique because of his example. So, my path as a singer-songwriter started with anyone like him who sat down with just a guitar and perhaps a harmonica, which is why I would also lump in the singer-songwriter genre as my most influential genre — from those named above and from Paul Simon, Richard Thompson, and Joni Mitchell to Steve Earle, Jay Farrar, and Ryan Adams. — Bobby

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

We’ve been lucky to play some great shows like opening in our hometown of Charleston for Widespread Panic at the Joe and Willie Nelson at the N. Charleston Coliseum. We backed up Bo Diddley in the late ’90s twice, serving as his band…now THAT was cool. And Wavefest ‘96 in Charleston always comes to mind, simply because of the lineup — headliner David Byrne, the only show that Son Volt and Wilco played together, plus Cracker, Cowboy Mouth, Ben Folds Five, Blue Mountain, and a bunch of others. We closed with a cover of Steely Dan’s “Bodhisattva” which, I must say, rocked the house. But perhaps the most memorable was one of the biggest crowds (25k+) we’ve ever faced, in April of ‘96 opening for Hootie in Columbia on the eve of their second album release. At that moment they were never bigger, and this was a free show on a Monday night. We were so fortunate to be asked, and of course we were scared shitless, but it was the single event that finally got us to take the leap and go for it full time ourselves as a band. So the excitement of that day was unforgettable. — Bobby

One of my favorite memories from being on stage may have to be the Blue Dogs 25th Anniversary when we had some of our favorite artists join us at the Charleston Music Hall. These artists include Hal and Poppa Futch, Hootie and the Blowfish, Edwin McCain, Radney Foster and many of our friends and local artists. Luckily, we continue to celebrate our Anniversary/Homecoming Show every year with different artists, so in a way some of my favorite memories may still be yet to come. — Hank

Photo Credit: Suz Film

WATCH: John Inghram, “Little Mountain Mama”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: John Inghram
Hometown: South Charleston, West Virginia
Song: “Little Mountain Mama”
Album: John Inghram
Release Date: May 13, 2022

In Their Words: “When I first started putting music together for this record I knew right away that I wanted to write a song for my wife Steph. Of course I love a nice, sappy ballad… (who doesn’t?!) But for this one I really wanted to go in a different direction. I wanted something that reflected how I (and so many others) see her. Upbeat and fun! The opening riff and groove for ‘Little Mountain Mama’ is undeniably a nod to the ‘Father of Rock n Roll’ Chuck Berry. His influence on the song doesn’t end there. In my opinion, Chuck is one of the most prolific, yet shockingly underrated, lyricists of all time. Just listen to ‘Promised Land’! I put together rapid fire lyrics that tell a story of our past, present, and an ideal future. Once I had the bones of the song built I decided to arrange it in a way that I thought Lowell George and Little Feat could have done it. I tried to make it a little more contemporary and progressive with somewhat of an atypical form. It should be noted that Steph wasn’t crazy about the fact that I included the ‘little bit of drama’ line. Ha! There’s never been a woman like my little mountain mama!” — John Inghram

Photo Credit: Sam Wiseman

BGS 5+5: Boo Ray

Posted on by Editor

Name: Boo Ray
Hometown: Western Mountains of North Carolina
Latest album: Sea of Lights
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): “During the few-years span that I just couldn’t seem to stay out of jail, the other incarcerated guys that I gambled with on Spades and Tonk called me ‘Boot-a-rang.’ I didn’t ever bother to correct ‘em. In grade school, my very first band was also called Rhythm & Booze; it was a 4 piece band and Marshall Tucker’s “Can’t You See” was a feature of our set.”

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Ahh that’s a cool question… Well, it might could be that Southern writers like Harry Crews, Ron Rash, and Mark Twain make me think it’s important to have a writing voice, and that there’s something powerful and magic about the just right combination of words used to tell the truth of our human experience.

I knew this guy everybody called Mr. Jack that ran a sawmill-–an old V-Twin Harley motor bolted to a 12″x12″ post frame and a great big 15-foot 2″ bandsaw blade that pitched and twisted so wildly when it ran that it just seemed impossible it could have ever made a straight cut. But it did cut 18-foot-long, perfectly straight slices off the huge logs he used to run through that mill. He’d cut some 1/4″ thin cedar for me to use as lining on chests. The way Mr. Jack cussed at and about his sawmill, the logs, the lumber and his equipment, expressed his passionate care, deep affection, forgiving humor and humble mastery of his industry. I suppose my affection for the way Mr. Jack carried on about his sawmill might be responsible for my cussin’.

My great buddy, artist James Willis, is constantly teaching me about perspective and how to use detail and lack of detail as creative storytelling devices. Sean Brock’s amazing passion, depth of knowledge, agrarian approach, his wood coal cooking and his completely inclusive use of information, style, technique, perspective and philosophy, have certainly influenced me.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

The point of the spear is compassion, inspiration and empowerment. I’m compelled to express to my fellow man that the troubles of life are not for nothing. The singer-songwriters that have moved me the most write songs that are part of the classic American songbook. So the purpose of my endeavor as a singer-songwriter is to land some songs, or a song, in the classic American songbook, whatever that is. I think that songbook includes songs by Lowell George, Leon Russell, John Hiatt and Fiona Apple. My favorite Grateful Dead record is the one that Lowell George produced, Shakedown Street. The word “Pop” ain’t necessarily blasphemy to me, unless it’s in front of the word “country”…

After writing the songs my mission is to perform the songs with my badass guitar-slingin’ band and build a dynamic, powerful and unique live sound around the character and nature of each of the songs. Live performance is more important to me than recording records, but I use the records as templates, stylistically, and to suggest possible arrangements. For me, the style itself demands that the records are exciting soundscapes, and experimental in the recording and engineering. If my records sound like someone else I’ve fallen short.

For me the singer-songwriter/guitar band-sound bar is set by acts like: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Little Feat, ZZ Top, Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives, any of John Hiatt’s bands (from The Goners and Little Village to his Trio), and Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit. So what’s my mission statement? I want to be Jerry Reed.

Boo Ray & Sean Brock

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I don’t spend enough time on/in the water lately. As a kid, I was at the river every week and in the woods all summer long. Sunrises and sunsets are important to me. I really tried to get up to my buddy Sean Minor’s for spring branding and spend some time roping, riding and working cattle this year, but had shows and sessions I couldn’t get out of. I like to do tractor work, eat homegrown tomatoes, negotiate the price of a late ’50s step-side GMC truck or dispute the shape of the taillights on a ’68 Chevelle while cracking pecans against each other, and get caught in a torrential downpour and soaked to the bone after doing some farm work.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Agreed, and I totally dig a supper club-type show. How about Sean Brock doing some kind of Low Country spread with Ossabaw pork sock-sausage, rice peas, Geechie Boy Grits with a fresh catch, and some kind summer vegetables, with Billy Gibbons giving his take on Hill Country Blues. Billy and Sean are both great historians, passionate technicians and intuitive as hell. That’d be the dream pairing.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

The artists I like definitely seem to have character-driven numbers in their repertoire: Tom Petty’s “Break Down” and “American Girl,” Eddie Rabbitt’s “I Love a Rainy Night,” and Don Williams “Tulsa Time,” written by Danny Flowers. Those kind of songs hold you up as a performer and don’t require you to emote and be so intimate, at least for three or four minutes at a time anyways. Sometimes I might jokingly introduce “Redneck Rock & Roll” as a song that I wrote first-person as Kenny Powers. But I certainly do keep a few of those songs in my set: “I Got the Jug,” “Johnny’s Tavern,” “Six Weeks in  Motel”, even “Sea of Lights” is that way now, most of the time. There’ve been a few times that singing “Sea of Lights” made me involuntarily weep and cry…

On the “you”/”me’ thing; I saw this Mary J. Blige performance once, she was singing this devastated lovesick number and my heart was just broken for her, you know? Then in the last chorus, nothing left but ashes and pain, she flips the script on the “you”/”me” switch and starts singing “bye bye” and waving as she left, and I realized she was singing my blues, and she was the one that was leaving. I was leveled. It was like a damned magic trick she’d just performed. I’ve tried variations of that writing device in my songs “Constantina,” “Six Weeks in a Motel,” and the “Hard to Tell” collab with Lilly Winwood all have a moment where they pivot or twist like that a little bit.

Photo of Boo Ray: Courtesy of Sideways Media
Photo of Boo Ray with Sean Brock: Price Harrison

LISTEN: Inara George, ‘Release Me’

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Inara George
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Song: “Release Me”
Album: Dearest Everybody
Release Date: January 19, 2018
Label: Release Me Records

In Their Words: “I wrote this song as a gift to my mother on her 70th birthday. I’d assumed that the song was too personal to put on my record. It’s a sort of love song to my father from my mother. But when I played it for my producer, Mike Andrews, he said we definitely had to record it. I’m very happy we did. I’m not sure I’ve ever shared such a personal song with the world. There’s something very liberating about it.” — Inara George

Photo credit: Alexa Nikol Curran