Showing posts with label Johnny Cash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Johnny Cash. Show all posts
Mar 29, 2019
A Conversation With Tim Bluhm
by Kasey Anderson
It would be easy to characterize Tim Bluhm’s new solo album, Sorta Surviving, as a “departure” from the California Soul and jam-band-adjacent aesthetic of Bluhm’s work with Mother Hips, and I suppose that characterization would be accurate enough but, at this point in his career, Bluhm has woven together a wide enough variety of styles, and meandered down a wide enough variety of musical paths, that to try and pinpoint anything as a departure from Bluhm’s “signature sound” is reductive. Sorta Surviving differs from a Mother Hips record in that the band is different, the instrumentation is different, and the presentation is different, but it’s a record that anyone with an appreciation for what Bluhm has done -- and continues to do -- as a frontman and songwriter should be able to sink their teeth into.
Sorta Surviving was recorded at Cash Cabin, the legendary property where Johnny Cash recorded the American Recordings series that re-re-resurrected his career. Bluhm described Cash Cabin as, “more like a living room than a studio; full of Pendleton blankets, old rusty stoves, memorabilia,” while talking to me from his own home studio in Northern California.
“It was sort of coming full circle,” Bluhm said, describing the sessions, noting that Rick Rubin had signed Mother Hips to his label, American Recordings around the same time the first album in Cash’s American Recordings series was released. “I listened to that Cash American Recordings album so much, back then and getting ready to go into the studio for this record.”
For Bluhm, Cash Cabin was appealing beyond its history because it sits secluded in rural Tennessee, removed from the trappings and distractions that tend to worm their way into everyone’s lives, no matter what else is at hand. “I spend a lot of time in recording studios,” Bluhm said, “I watch what people do, see their behavior patterns, and the tendency in all of us is to get distracted by our phones, our responsibilities outside of the studio, all of that stuff. You start thinking about what time you have to go feed the parking meter, what you’re going to have for dinner when you get home, little day-to-day stuff like that and it can impact the vibe in the studio, it can impact the performances and the songs. It was important for me to get away from all of that.”
At Cash Cabin, Bluhm assembled an all-star band including Jesse Aycock (guitar, vocals), Jason Crosby (piano, violin, organ), and Nashville session legends Gene Chrisman (drums) and David Roe (bass), and handed the production reins to Widespread Panic’s Dave Schools. The result is an album that draws heavily on traditional country structures and arrangements and brings to the forefront another hallmark of some of Bluhm’s favorite Classic Country songs: humor.
Perhaps the album’s centerpiece, “Jimmy West and John Dunn the Bully” exemplifies Bluhm’s wry humor as it follows the schoolyard conflict between the two title characters, Jimmy West facing down the hulking Dunn in a battle to defend the honor (and prized belt buckle) of the song’s narrator. Those with political leanings could probably find easy allegory in the David and Goliath tale but Bluhm says the song, like everything on Sorta Surviving, is grounded in one
guiding principle: “forget genre, forget everything else, just tell a good story.”
It’s a simple enough formula, and it works. It’s the stories that will keep you coming back to Sorta Surviving, and to Tim Bluhm, in whatever incarnation he chooses to present himself and his songs next.
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Sorta Surviving is available today on Tim's site, Amazon, etc.
Mar 8, 2019
Feb 27, 2019
Feb 26, 2019
The Cash Collection
To celebrate Johnny Cash's birthday, here are a bunch of memes either stolen
from the interwebz or from our archives. Happy Birthday JC!
And if you have a lot of time on your hands, you can click this link
and see the entire Farce the Music Johnny Cash collection.
Feb 21, 2019
Feb 20, 2019
Feb 11, 2019
Feb 6, 2019
Johnny Cash Estate Approves Licensing of New Ass Cream
by Trailer - Originally posted on Country California, February 28, 2009
John Carter Cash, the son of the late Johnny, said Thursday that the estate had agreed to allow the country legend's likeness and creative property to be used in the branding and marketing of a new ass cream from Blairex Laboratories, the makers of Boudreaux's Butt Paste. While that topical ointment is for use on the asses of infants and children, the new product will be marketed more for adults with ass discomfort and anal itching.
"Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire Ass Cream" will begin production in June with expected shipment to Fred's Dollar Stores across America by the ass-itchingly hot month of August. "This is an exciting new application for the Johnny Cash name and we feel that it will reach an area that hasn't been reached before" smiled John Carter.
The television advertising campaign will include actual footage of Johnny and June performing "Ring of Fire" in a humorous spot where Johnny leaves the stage suddenly to use the product because his ass hurts. Computer animation will manipulate Johnny's mouth to say "Woo-wee! That's good ass cream!"
Some country music historians and Cash fans have criticized the move harshly, calling it gross commercialism and flagrant mismanagement of Cash's image and legacy. For his part, John Carter sees it as a strategic move to expand his late father's influence: "Not everybody's into country music, but everybody's ass gets itchy or painful, so this will allow people in all walks of life to experience the Man in Black."
News of "Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire Ass Cream" follows last month's release of an album of hip-hop remixes of Cash songs, which was also said by many to be an "ass" product.
Jan 30, 2019
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