Muddy Roots 2013, Part I & II - Folk, Blues, Punk, Roots, Trash, Love.
Muddy Roots 2013 Review, Part I: Thursday - All Upon a Foggy Night
I would like to thank whatever gods may be that I didn’t fall off a cliff in Tennessee. This doesn’t sound like something to crow about, but hey, it was getting dark. I was anxious. I had the lovely ShawnaBanana and the handsome Professor M. in my car. I hate getting lost. I especially despise being lost in front of other people. I’m a proud sonofabitch. But oh well. About 20 miles outside of the June Bug Ranch, we missed a turn. We’d been driving for eight hours. Instead of getting to Muddy Roots in abt a half hour…it took another hour and a half.
The sun went down.
The fog drifted up.
The roads curved.
Headlights drifted past shotgun shacks and the eye flashes of animals.
Fourth Street. That is what we missed. “GPS it!” was the general consensus. Using a smart phone an hour outside of Nashville didn’t smack of hubris, dear reader, but here is my advice to you while driving through Tennessee, have printed directions. If you ef up and miss a turn, backtrack. Trust no phone.
The first phone told us to go down a slightly mountainous road that ended due to construction.
The second phone took us into what looked like a national park. The road disappeared into a parking lot. Another fork of it ended in a boating dock. Dark woods abounded. There were no street lights. It’s not an awkward horror movie set up at all - getting out of your car with your headlights pointed towards a darkened park ranger’s office then walking around an oversized pickup so that your passengers can’t see you as you shamble to the only light available - a shadowy woman holding a candle in an open doorway while she whispers to two men.
No, they had no idea how to get to the June Bug Ranch, but they gave us directions to a gas station.
The gas station had at least heard of the June Bug, but had no idea how to get there. They could give us directions to a Dollar General that could probably give us directions the rest of the way. Except the Dollar General would be closed by the time we got there, so we should drive about a mile past the Dollar General to get to another gas station more in the general vicinity, so they could get us better directions.
On the way to the Dollar General, the phone GPS began to work and it took us on a white-knuckle adventure of driving curving, rolling, one-and-a-half lane roads while the fog thickened.
This whole drive, I am thinking to myself how last year I made this drive alone and partially in the dark and I didn’t have a damn problem so WHAT THE HELL? ::sigh::
We got there. We set up camp in the dark behind a monolithic wooden banjo propped up on a hill near the showers and the bar.
There had been grand plans to see the Goddamn Gallows and Calamity Cubes at a pre-party in Nashville, but we three were like FUCK THE CAR, NO MORE CAR. We stuck around the June Bug and got to see part of Husky Burnette’s set and all of Hellbound Glory - who, by the damn way - covered Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” which made me seven forms of sweet on them.
Muddy Roots 2013 Review, Part II: Sweat, Sun and Dirty Fun on Friday
OI! It was brow-dripping, swass-swinging, Seventh Circle hot on Friday at Muddy Roots. Somewhere out there, there's a picture of me skinning a cucumber for lunch stuffs ridiculously red-faced and sad-sackin.
Let me emphasize a few things here:
1. I hate the sun.
2. I am not an outdoors kinda girl.
3. Summer can suck it. It is the brownhole of all seasons.
4. When I think of camping, my perfect experience is a cabin in the woods with wi-fi and bonfires at night - not waking up sweating in a tent and cooking shit over a burner.
This is how amazing Muddy Roots is, people - it can get my prissy ass outside all day, every day for three days straight, slatherclogging my pores with sunscreen and tent/car sleeping.
Jason Galaz is the badass creator behind Muddy Roots. Officially, it is more than a three-day concert. Muddy Roots is a record label, a promotions giant and four worldwide music festivals. The first Muddy Roots Music Fest came about in 2010 because Galaz wanted to see all his favorite bands in one place. Dude basically took a whole bunch of insane, unknown, mega awesome sidestage bands and created a fest for them in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t matter if the fest made money, what mattered was that these blues, bluegrass, country, punk and roots musicians could meet up, meet fans and a community could grow.
2013 marks the fourth year of the Muddy Roots Music Fest in Cookeville, TN. It was my second. It’s a goddamn roots music wonderland of moonshine and mayhem - and if you’re willing to pass a bottle (of booze or water) or even give a nod and a smile - you’ll be making friends.
You drive into the June Bug, check your tickets at the bar, set up camp wherever you choose (no hook-ups though), then all that’s left is to check out the midway. The Main Stage is a huge wooden affair half surrounded by trees. Performers are shaded, but most audience members aren’t. There’s a cage and a stripper pole on each side of it - which hilariously get used to capture rogue dancing children, more often than not. As you walk away from the main stage, it’s a straight shot down vendor alley where you can get yourself everything from jalapeno cheddar hush puppies, big as your fist for a dollar to fried pickles and burgers and PBR. Merch booths and food are mixed betwixt three other tent-covered stages of varying sizes. All the music is centrally located, and for being so close together and easily walkable, there is very little sound-bleeding to interrupt one act from another.
Epic shit that happened Friday.
Filthy Still - 2:30 p.m.
Filthy Still is the kinda band that can sing about benders in Tijuana and dinosaurs with equal authority and vigor. Jesse Roderick sounds like a maniac carnie barker, all growls, shouts and intrigue, while Matt Olson beats the beautiful shit out of the banjo.
I like me some Filthy Still. A lot. An epic lot. Like fuck yes, I can stomp flail to this jar-drinking, sad-singing, occasionally nerdy punkass bluegrass. They came out of Providence, RI...which explains a lot. I mean, come on…Lovecraft town? Of course you are gonna have some gorgeous, Mad Max lookin’, road dog freaks fall outta that town.
Carolina Still - 3:30 p.m.
Half naked fiddle player. Quite obviously, that’s not the most important aspect of their set, but hey, if you wanted to get me a gaggle of them for my birthday, I’d keep ‘em. They could bedside table and bureau roost and fiddle me to sleep. --- And here is when I wish I was an artist because the idea of a darkened bedroom with crow-perched-fiddle-sandman would be an AWESOME woodblock print.
Carolina Still are a hella catchy, energetic barndance band. Be on the lookout for them. They’re worth it.
Ray Lawrence, Jr. - 4:30 p.m.
Ray Lawrence, Jr. is the King of Dick Jokes at Muddy Roots. Ok, ok, that’s maybe cutting him down. He’s more than that. “Dickens Cider” was the obnoxious standout that I might’ve actually liked more if it wasn’t so long, but outside of that, Lawrence impressed me as a soulful and dedicated writer with an old time voice. Saving Country Music interviewed him back in 2011 and Lawrence said,
“Music has saved my life more than once. I’ve always had my music to fall back on. Some people have to fall back on a regular job. Something goes wrong for me, my music is the thing that pulls me out. When I wrote “When You Lose Everything You Have”, I realized you can lose your house, your car, your clothes, everything you got possession-wise, but if you lose love, you lose everything.”
Brownbird Rudy Relic - 6 p.m.
Holy shit.
::pauses to reflect and make sure a heightened reaction is appropriate::
::nods to self::
::dances in room while listening to Brownbird on Reverbnation::
Yep. Holy shit. Ok, so if you catch Brownbird Rudy Relic’s jive online, it’s got some ragtime revivalist gusto…but sweet baby Moses, see him live. Only giving him four feet by five feet and a metal folding chair? Doesn’t matter. That black rimmed glasses man will get his retro fabulous ass standing on that chair, hopping it across the stage while singing and playing guitar. How do you hop a fucking chair across a stage? I have no idea. He did it. He’s got pre-war blues, Mexican dreamboat ballads and guitar-flipping theatrics down. And really, really, HOW DOES SOMEONE MAKE A KAZOO SOUND SOULFUL? HOW? Totally a likable guy on and off stage. I shoulda bought a shirt. I want to buy a shirt. In fact, hey, look, here is where you can buy a shirt.
…Ok. Now there was a pause in the action. Not because there wasn’t anything going on…more like there was still too much going on and I needed to damn well eat. I know at some point I had vegan hot dogs. I heard tidbits of Fifth on the Floor and Mikey Classic and His Lonesome Spur while in search of water and food.
Hooten Hallers - 8:30 p.m.
I LOVE THESE GUYS. You got Andy Rehm, an insanely high-voiced-crazy-bastard-falsetto drummer, and the throaty blues of John Randall on guitar. You want regret? You want bitterness? You want anger, hate, love and all the glory and holes between? You want all the mess of life to an ass shaking, sometimes slithering, slip it in beat? Hooten Hallers got you covered, baby. MROW.
They make me want to grind up on my good looking man. Damn. Yes. The Hooten Hallers sound like they should be played in a red light district whiskey shed with poor lighting and loose morals. Amen.
Bosom Buddies and the Dixie Dames Burlesque - 9:30
Cooch tent in the woods in Tennessee? I’m there. Only caught the last two acts, but there was some feather stripping, fishnet jiggling, glove-tossing gorgeousness going on. LADIES, SERIOUSLY! You are goddesses. That you can keep that level of finery going on in a dirt-kicking, hot, drippy campsite with less than ten hot showers and no proper place to change…hell yeah.
Joe Buck Yourself - 10 p.m.
Joe Buck looks like a hillbilly cryptkeeper. He has a drooping Mohawk and deep set eyes with skin as pale as the moon in a melodramatic poem. Dude’s hot. Not joking. He’s beautiful. ShawnaBanana agrees with me. In addition, his drug-train, motherfucker-strewn, muddy watered, grave-digging, proud Tennessean tunes are a driving force within the roots world. Just when you think you know what Joe Buck’s got in him, he pulls a “Bitter is the Day” on you. Fucker is surprising in the riffs and risks that he takes. He’s also a humble son of a gun who constantly thanked a jubilant crowd for their ardent support.
…Muddy Roots is special. Musicians are connected to fans. Many of the fans are musicians. The whole scene is built on a we’re-in-this-shit together attitude. Helpfulness, thankfulness and family are themes that ran a deep and sincere river all weekend.
Reverend Beat-man - 11:30 p.m.
I’m in love with Reverend Beat-man. I’d never heard of him until Muddy Roots released their line up and then, then…Jesus h. I mean, speaking of Jesus, the first song I ever hear of Beat-man’s is “Jesus Christ Twist” and it is a heavysick sound on an album called, I shit you not, Surreal Folk Blues Gospel Trash Vol. 1. I KNOW. My heart thumps harder and wetter thinking on it.
Beat-man does his one-man-band thing.
He’s the lead singer of The Monsters.
He’s the founder of Voodoo Rhythm Records.
He’s a disturbo magnifico maniac --- like if Hazel Motes of Wise Blood and a Swiss John Waters raised a psycho dance song kid. Fuck and yes, he had everyone hollering during his set. Only it wasn’t only Beat-man, he had two of The Monsters up there with him driving the crowd into a frenzy.
*
And that was it for me and my fella that night. I was spent. He was spent. I know. I know. Go ahead and yell. I didn’t get to see Those Poor Bastards at 1 a.m. I am an idiot. We were idiots. It’s true. But I have seen them before on multiple occasions (they are fucking awesome - see them live - Lonesome Wyatt is likely to show up with a fog machine and a giant cat statue…he’s an oddly lovely musician and writer). I was falling over tired. Maybe if I was a boozehound or had been slamming coffee I could’ve powered through…but as it was, my maw was yawning so wide I coulda been a sin eater for the world. Me and Professor M. hauled ourselves up the hills and nuzzed up to one another and it was a hella perfect moment with Wyatt cackling down on the midway and the crickets and night creatures wailing nearby.
*
Come back for more tomorrow. I'll have the rest of the weekend...from Dad Horse to Black Flag to Rachel Kate.
Geez louise, it was a fine frikkin time. I nearly cried three times, because apparently at 30, I am now a goddamn softy. Make too much of it and I'll give you a knuckle sandwich, but I'm just saying, there are some beautiful damn people that make and go to this fest.
But more on that tomorrow. Gots to get ready for workin' the library. Tonight we are hosting Holly Black.
Yes, be jealous. She is an amazing author and she's coming to my library for a reading and Q&A on her most recent book, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown.
Life is good.
I would like to thank whatever gods may be that I didn’t fall off a cliff in Tennessee. This doesn’t sound like something to crow about, but hey, it was getting dark. I was anxious. I had the lovely ShawnaBanana and the handsome Professor M. in my car. I hate getting lost. I especially despise being lost in front of other people. I’m a proud sonofabitch. But oh well. About 20 miles outside of the June Bug Ranch, we missed a turn. We’d been driving for eight hours. Instead of getting to Muddy Roots in abt a half hour…it took another hour and a half.
The sun went down.
The fog drifted up.
The roads curved.
Headlights drifted past shotgun shacks and the eye flashes of animals.
Fourth Street. That is what we missed. “GPS it!” was the general consensus. Using a smart phone an hour outside of Nashville didn’t smack of hubris, dear reader, but here is my advice to you while driving through Tennessee, have printed directions. If you ef up and miss a turn, backtrack. Trust no phone.
The first phone told us to go down a slightly mountainous road that ended due to construction.
The second phone took us into what looked like a national park. The road disappeared into a parking lot. Another fork of it ended in a boating dock. Dark woods abounded. There were no street lights. It’s not an awkward horror movie set up at all - getting out of your car with your headlights pointed towards a darkened park ranger’s office then walking around an oversized pickup so that your passengers can’t see you as you shamble to the only light available - a shadowy woman holding a candle in an open doorway while she whispers to two men.
No, they had no idea how to get to the June Bug Ranch, but they gave us directions to a gas station.
The gas station had at least heard of the June Bug, but had no idea how to get there. They could give us directions to a Dollar General that could probably give us directions the rest of the way. Except the Dollar General would be closed by the time we got there, so we should drive about a mile past the Dollar General to get to another gas station more in the general vicinity, so they could get us better directions.
On the way to the Dollar General, the phone GPS began to work and it took us on a white-knuckle adventure of driving curving, rolling, one-and-a-half lane roads while the fog thickened.
This whole drive, I am thinking to myself how last year I made this drive alone and partially in the dark and I didn’t have a damn problem so WHAT THE HELL? ::sigh::
We got there. We set up camp in the dark behind a monolithic wooden banjo propped up on a hill near the showers and the bar.
There had been grand plans to see the Goddamn Gallows and Calamity Cubes at a pre-party in Nashville, but we three were like FUCK THE CAR, NO MORE CAR. We stuck around the June Bug and got to see part of Husky Burnette’s set and all of Hellbound Glory - who, by the damn way - covered Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” which made me seven forms of sweet on them.
Muddy Roots 2013 Review, Part II: Sweat, Sun and Dirty Fun on Friday
OI! It was brow-dripping, swass-swinging, Seventh Circle hot on Friday at Muddy Roots. Somewhere out there, there's a picture of me skinning a cucumber for lunch stuffs ridiculously red-faced and sad-sackin.
Let me emphasize a few things here:
1. I hate the sun.
2. I am not an outdoors kinda girl.
3. Summer can suck it. It is the brownhole of all seasons.
4. When I think of camping, my perfect experience is a cabin in the woods with wi-fi and bonfires at night - not waking up sweating in a tent and cooking shit over a burner.
This is how amazing Muddy Roots is, people - it can get my prissy ass outside all day, every day for three days straight, slatherclogging my pores with sunscreen and tent/car sleeping.
Jason Galaz is the badass creator behind Muddy Roots. Officially, it is more than a three-day concert. Muddy Roots is a record label, a promotions giant and four worldwide music festivals. The first Muddy Roots Music Fest came about in 2010 because Galaz wanted to see all his favorite bands in one place. Dude basically took a whole bunch of insane, unknown, mega awesome sidestage bands and created a fest for them in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t matter if the fest made money, what mattered was that these blues, bluegrass, country, punk and roots musicians could meet up, meet fans and a community could grow.
2013 marks the fourth year of the Muddy Roots Music Fest in Cookeville, TN. It was my second. It’s a goddamn roots music wonderland of moonshine and mayhem - and if you’re willing to pass a bottle (of booze or water) or even give a nod and a smile - you’ll be making friends.
You drive into the June Bug, check your tickets at the bar, set up camp wherever you choose (no hook-ups though), then all that’s left is to check out the midway. The Main Stage is a huge wooden affair half surrounded by trees. Performers are shaded, but most audience members aren’t. There’s a cage and a stripper pole on each side of it - which hilariously get used to capture rogue dancing children, more often than not. As you walk away from the main stage, it’s a straight shot down vendor alley where you can get yourself everything from jalapeno cheddar hush puppies, big as your fist for a dollar to fried pickles and burgers and PBR. Merch booths and food are mixed betwixt three other tent-covered stages of varying sizes. All the music is centrally located, and for being so close together and easily walkable, there is very little sound-bleeding to interrupt one act from another.
Epic shit that happened Friday.
Filthy Still - 2:30 p.m.
Filthy Still is the kinda band that can sing about benders in Tijuana and dinosaurs with equal authority and vigor. Jesse Roderick sounds like a maniac carnie barker, all growls, shouts and intrigue, while Matt Olson beats the beautiful shit out of the banjo.
I like me some Filthy Still. A lot. An epic lot. Like fuck yes, I can stomp flail to this jar-drinking, sad-singing, occasionally nerdy punkass bluegrass. They came out of Providence, RI...which explains a lot. I mean, come on…Lovecraft town? Of course you are gonna have some gorgeous, Mad Max lookin’, road dog freaks fall outta that town.
Carolina Still - 3:30 p.m.
Half naked fiddle player. Quite obviously, that’s not the most important aspect of their set, but hey, if you wanted to get me a gaggle of them for my birthday, I’d keep ‘em. They could bedside table and bureau roost and fiddle me to sleep. --- And here is when I wish I was an artist because the idea of a darkened bedroom with crow-perched-fiddle-sandman would be an AWESOME woodblock print.
Carolina Still are a hella catchy, energetic barndance band. Be on the lookout for them. They’re worth it.
Ray Lawrence, Jr. - 4:30 p.m.
Ray Lawrence, Jr. is the King of Dick Jokes at Muddy Roots. Ok, ok, that’s maybe cutting him down. He’s more than that. “Dickens Cider” was the obnoxious standout that I might’ve actually liked more if it wasn’t so long, but outside of that, Lawrence impressed me as a soulful and dedicated writer with an old time voice. Saving Country Music interviewed him back in 2011 and Lawrence said,
“Music has saved my life more than once. I’ve always had my music to fall back on. Some people have to fall back on a regular job. Something goes wrong for me, my music is the thing that pulls me out. When I wrote “When You Lose Everything You Have”, I realized you can lose your house, your car, your clothes, everything you got possession-wise, but if you lose love, you lose everything.”
Brownbird Rudy Relic - 6 p.m.
Holy shit.
::pauses to reflect and make sure a heightened reaction is appropriate::
::nods to self::
::dances in room while listening to Brownbird on Reverbnation::
Yep. Holy shit. Ok, so if you catch Brownbird Rudy Relic’s jive online, it’s got some ragtime revivalist gusto…but sweet baby Moses, see him live. Only giving him four feet by five feet and a metal folding chair? Doesn’t matter. That black rimmed glasses man will get his retro fabulous ass standing on that chair, hopping it across the stage while singing and playing guitar. How do you hop a fucking chair across a stage? I have no idea. He did it. He’s got pre-war blues, Mexican dreamboat ballads and guitar-flipping theatrics down. And really, really, HOW DOES SOMEONE MAKE A KAZOO SOUND SOULFUL? HOW? Totally a likable guy on and off stage. I shoulda bought a shirt. I want to buy a shirt. In fact, hey, look, here is where you can buy a shirt.
…Ok. Now there was a pause in the action. Not because there wasn’t anything going on…more like there was still too much going on and I needed to damn well eat. I know at some point I had vegan hot dogs. I heard tidbits of Fifth on the Floor and Mikey Classic and His Lonesome Spur while in search of water and food.
Hooten Hallers - 8:30 p.m.
I LOVE THESE GUYS. You got Andy Rehm, an insanely high-voiced-crazy-bastard-falsetto drummer, and the throaty blues of John Randall on guitar. You want regret? You want bitterness? You want anger, hate, love and all the glory and holes between? You want all the mess of life to an ass shaking, sometimes slithering, slip it in beat? Hooten Hallers got you covered, baby. MROW.
They make me want to grind up on my good looking man. Damn. Yes. The Hooten Hallers sound like they should be played in a red light district whiskey shed with poor lighting and loose morals. Amen.
Bosom Buddies and the Dixie Dames Burlesque - 9:30
Cooch tent in the woods in Tennessee? I’m there. Only caught the last two acts, but there was some feather stripping, fishnet jiggling, glove-tossing gorgeousness going on. LADIES, SERIOUSLY! You are goddesses. That you can keep that level of finery going on in a dirt-kicking, hot, drippy campsite with less than ten hot showers and no proper place to change…hell yeah.
Joe Buck Yourself - 10 p.m.
Joe Buck looks like a hillbilly cryptkeeper. He has a drooping Mohawk and deep set eyes with skin as pale as the moon in a melodramatic poem. Dude’s hot. Not joking. He’s beautiful. ShawnaBanana agrees with me. In addition, his drug-train, motherfucker-strewn, muddy watered, grave-digging, proud Tennessean tunes are a driving force within the roots world. Just when you think you know what Joe Buck’s got in him, he pulls a “Bitter is the Day” on you. Fucker is surprising in the riffs and risks that he takes. He’s also a humble son of a gun who constantly thanked a jubilant crowd for their ardent support.
…Muddy Roots is special. Musicians are connected to fans. Many of the fans are musicians. The whole scene is built on a we’re-in-this-shit together attitude. Helpfulness, thankfulness and family are themes that ran a deep and sincere river all weekend.
Reverend Beat-man - 11:30 p.m.
I’m in love with Reverend Beat-man. I’d never heard of him until Muddy Roots released their line up and then, then…Jesus h. I mean, speaking of Jesus, the first song I ever hear of Beat-man’s is “Jesus Christ Twist” and it is a heavysick sound on an album called, I shit you not, Surreal Folk Blues Gospel Trash Vol. 1. I KNOW. My heart thumps harder and wetter thinking on it.
Beat-man does his one-man-band thing.
He’s the lead singer of The Monsters.
He’s the founder of Voodoo Rhythm Records.
He’s a disturbo magnifico maniac --- like if Hazel Motes of Wise Blood and a Swiss John Waters raised a psycho dance song kid. Fuck and yes, he had everyone hollering during his set. Only it wasn’t only Beat-man, he had two of The Monsters up there with him driving the crowd into a frenzy.
*
And that was it for me and my fella that night. I was spent. He was spent. I know. I know. Go ahead and yell. I didn’t get to see Those Poor Bastards at 1 a.m. I am an idiot. We were idiots. It’s true. But I have seen them before on multiple occasions (they are fucking awesome - see them live - Lonesome Wyatt is likely to show up with a fog machine and a giant cat statue…he’s an oddly lovely musician and writer). I was falling over tired. Maybe if I was a boozehound or had been slamming coffee I could’ve powered through…but as it was, my maw was yawning so wide I coulda been a sin eater for the world. Me and Professor M. hauled ourselves up the hills and nuzzed up to one another and it was a hella perfect moment with Wyatt cackling down on the midway and the crickets and night creatures wailing nearby.
*
Come back for more tomorrow. I'll have the rest of the weekend...from Dad Horse to Black Flag to Rachel Kate.
Geez louise, it was a fine frikkin time. I nearly cried three times, because apparently at 30, I am now a goddamn softy. Make too much of it and I'll give you a knuckle sandwich, but I'm just saying, there are some beautiful damn people that make and go to this fest.
But more on that tomorrow. Gots to get ready for workin' the library. Tonight we are hosting Holly Black.
Yes, be jealous. She is an amazing author and she's coming to my library for a reading and Q&A on her most recent book, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown.
Life is good.