Cumberland Blues

from the LP Europe ’72, Warner Bros. Records, 1972



With all the crazy flooding happening down in Nashville, care of one Cumberland River, it just felt entirely apropos to post up this track---yes, the song tells the tale of a miner, but what Tennessee is experiencing right now can most assuredly be summed up as the “Cumberland blues”. It’s also fitting that The Dead is the only band I have posted 3 songs of on this blog, because underneath everything else you find in the Honeypot here, I am a Deadhead at heart, for life. Of course, the fucktarted wannabe terrorist in NYC is getting top billing on the news, even though 30 folks have actually died down south already, from the floods alone. Keep those Nashville residents & tornado survivors in the surrounding states amid your thoughts as you go to sleep in a nice dry bed tonight---indeed, your life could be worse.

City Lights

from the LP Teenage Head, Kama Sutra Records, 1971



Yet another example of an incredible band who, while managing to endear themselves to every music critic on Earth (the infamous Lester Bangs was actually present at these recording sessions for fuck’s sake), never managed to rise above cult status amongst the population at large, which is always a rotten shame both because the musicians should have gotten more notoriety, and, more importantly, because so many more people should be enjoying this music! The Groovies were always somewhat out of step with the prevailing trends, self-consciously so in fact, and it gave them the freedom to roam all over rock ‘n’ roll’s vast atlas; their debut album, released in the late ‘60s, was so un-psychedelic that you just know they had thoughtful grins on their faces. This LP, their third, is an easy pick for my favorite of theirs, and while the comparisons to Sticky Fingers are certainly warranted (hell, the incredible piano you hear on this track is care of producer Jim Dickinson, who also played the piano on “Wild Horses”), I find this album more genuine than the other, but not quite as good; that being said, Mick wishes he could sound as redneck as guitarist & vocalist Roy Loney does here!

Willin'

from the LP Little Feat, Warner Bros Records, 1971



By some accounts, most notably of band founder Lowell George himself, this is the song that got him kicked out of the Mothers of Invention, leading to the formation of Little Feat and everything which came after; Zappa, of course, always refuted this version and insisted that he was totally encouraging of George to record due to the high quality of the tracks he’d played for him---considering the drug references herein (Zappa was a notorious teetotaler, excepting for coffee & cigarettes) and the simplistic, country-based demeanor of the song, I’d take George’s version as closer to probable fact. Whatever the truth about Little Feat’s genesis may be, one thing is for certain: throngs of stoners and music lovers the world over are sure as hell happy that George and other former-Mothers Roy Estrada and Richie Hayward made the split, gracing us with some of the rootsiest, organic rock music ever put to wax! This first album of theirs rides a little heavy on the over-the-road trucking theme, but I suppose touring musicians had some idea of what that lifestyle was like, so, “…if you give me weed, whites & wine, and you show me a sign, I’ll be willin’, to keep movin’…” This song remains an absolute classic, covered by too many artists to name here, the next great step for country-rock following behind legends like Gram Parsons and the New Riders.

Mexico

from the LP Firefall, Atlantic Records, 1976



The gargantuan amount of high-octane blow that was floating around music studios and people’s noses in the US throughout the ‘70s had such a clear impact on popular music of that time; while the dance crowd bumped & hustled their asses off in discos, the sound of rock music took a noticeably “lighter” and, some might say, “pussy-fied” path---you know man, everybody just wanted to keep feeling GOOD!! Firefall triumphed at brewing a pastiche of that higher-side of Americana, the masses who had just endured a decade in Vietnam and didn’t want to think about anything except having a good time and dissociating from the scars. Something of a supergroup, as their ranks included former members of the Byrds, Spirit, and the Flying Burrito Brothers, these guys managed to out-Eagles the Eagles, in my estimation anyways, always sounding a little cooler and like they weren’t trying as hard…although, I’m sure they were…sniffffffff

I'll Get By

from the LP Crazy Horse, Reprise Records, 1971



“I get high, don’t you? As sure as the sky is blue…” Spirits have a tendency to haunt the careers & discographies of many well-known and loved rock stars: The Allmans, Skynyrd, post-Syd Floyd, and most definitely the mid-‘70s output of Neil Young---in his case, the phantom which troubled & consumed his soul was that of Danny Whitten. Danny was the guitarist for Crazy Horse, Neil’s backing band, who overdosed on heroin shortly after this, Crazy Horse’s first album without Neil along (not that Neil wasn’t involved, but the band wrote all the songs). This from-the-street love song was penned by Whitten, a sweet slice of countrified rock containing some arrestingly real and, in hindsight, harrowing lyrics; “…I’m gonna die, aren’t you? As sure as the sky is blue…”

Hot Burrito #2

from the LP The Gilded Palace of Sin, A & M Records, 1969



Creating a synthesis of country music with rock-n-roll must have seemed a fairly daunting task, given the two encampments generally negative feelings about one another previous to the late ‘60s; however, funny things happen when people all start smoking weed. Country music was all around the north-central Florida woods in which Gram Parsons grew up, and so was rock-n-roll to a lesser extent, but the bridge may very well have been marijuana---a plant which was always very near & dear to Mr. Parsons’ heart. After exiting from the Byrds, he got a bunch of guys together who supported the idea of doing the country-rock thing, not just for a song or two, but as their entire vibe…they became the Flying Burrito Brothers. Parsons was not long for this world, overdosing on morphine and tequila in the desert in 1973, but his hybridization of styles and cultures has proven to be one of the most influential legacies in modern music.

Lonesome L.A. Cowboy

from the LP The Adventures of Panama Red, CBS Records, 1973



This entry (and about half of these guy’s songs) could have served as my post for 4-20, but since some friends and I were actually seeing the New Riders in concert that night, I waited. NRPS spun out of the same drug-soaked surroundings as the Grateful Dead, and the band was initially launched as a vehicle for Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh & Mickey Hart to explore the more rustic and countrified vein of influence which took them in at that time; by the recording of this track and album however, they had coalesced into their own band, apart from the Dead but still very closely intertwined through concerts and, presumably, “business” (wink). Where the Dead had Robert Hunter and John Barlow penning lyrics which recalled timeless American tales and epic sagas, the Riders basically wrote about the lifestyles of themselves and their buddies---namely, running drugs and/or whiskey, consuming drugs and/or whiskey, growing drugs and/or manufacturing whiskey…oh, and being hurt by evil women, of course. Essentially, if you were into taking drugs in the 1970s than you have probably listened to a New Riders album; if you were also into dealing drugs in the 1970s, than you probably owned said album. This song tells the near-comical tale of a modern day cowboy, lost amidst the lights and libations in the city of angels, only instead of the traditional hooch and bottom lip stuffed full of chewing tobacco this cowboy is rolling spliffs and doing lines of blow…you know, updating the image for us. Only two of the original members still remain in the touring lineup, Dave Nelson on guitar and Buddy Cage on pedal steel; bassist Dave Torbert and drummer Spencer Dryden have both passed on, and John Dawson has major health issues which keep him sidelined, although he sends his blessings to the tour. And what a great show it was for 4-20, people smoking joints and even bongs openly in the bar, the band still sounds excellent, looking every bit their age & part as pied pipers to heads and dealers with forklifts everywhere!