In the last few weeks I’ve gotten a bunch of inquiries about a particular song on our playlist.
The song in question is “Little Boxes” by Malvina Reynolds. Most of the inquiries refer to it as the Ticky Tacky song. It can be heard here..
Showtime subscribers will recognize it as the theme song toWeeds.
Malvina Reynolds was a contemporary of folk legend Pete Seeger. Seeger actually made more of an impact with his own version of this song in the 60′s.
The song is a political satire about the suburbanization of America during the 1960′s. The term Little Boxes refers to Suburban Housing all looking the same and Ticky Tacky is a reference to the shoody materials that were allegedly being used to construct these houses.
If you hear a song in our store that you are curious about drop me a line @ tucker@smokendudesbbq.com. I’ll be glad to help you out.
While enjoying a meal in our dining room you may hear some familiar songs presented in new ways. In our quest to make our playlist fresh but also accessible we decided to include a series of Blues Tribute albums to well known artists.
Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Eric Clapton were all heavily influenced by the blues artists that came before them. In the 90s Blues players old and new got together to cover these Rock N Roll greats. The results are incredible and interesting.
Casual blues fans will recognize names like Bo Diddley and Buddy Guy who do wonders covering their friend Eric Clapton, but the true gems the unexpected ones. Magic Slim takes Led Zeppelin’s When The Levee Breaks back to its Delta roots; Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown takes the Ventilator Blues to heights the Sones never dreamed.
Younger players like Chris Thomas King, Eric Gales and Derek Trucks show up to put new spins on the classics we love.
What makes this set more interesting than your average tribute is that the performers involved have the skill and confidence to rework familiar songs in new ways. Just listen to what Gatemouth Brown does to “Rock n’ Roll.”
The albums are all available individually or as a box set and would make a great Christmas gift for the music fan on your list.
Willie Nelson is an American icon whose music, while rooted in country, also spans folk, gospel, jazz, pop and rock.
Born in Abbott, TX in 1933 and raised by his grandparents, Nelson caught the music bug early. He started playing guitar at age 6, wrote his first song at 7 and formed his first band at 9. In high school he began a career as a radio dj and began singing in honky-tonk bars.
In 1956 after a short stint in the Air Force and a year at Baylor University Willie moved to Vancouver, Washington with hopes to begin a real musical career. While his recording career did not explode at this time he did begin to hone his songwriting skills and in 1960 he moved to Nashville with a publishing contract with Pamper Music.
During the next few years Willie wrote some of the most enduring country songs including “Night Life”(for Ray Price), “Funny How Time Slips Away”(Billy Walker) and most famously “Crazy”(Patsy Cline). His orignal demo recordings of these songs can be found on “Crazy:The Demo Sessions”.
For much of the 60s and early 70s Nelson jumped from label to label recording albums that would eventually become classics but did not sell well at the time. In 1975 that all changed with “Red Headed Stranger“, a concept album which gave him his first #1 single as an artist – “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”(watch video) By the end of the 70 he had released several more platinum albums and was a household name.
The 80s brought with them a series of eclectic hits such as “On The Road Again” and “To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before”(a duet with Julio Iglesias). It was also during the 80s that he established the annual Farm Aid concert series to help raise money for family farmers that face hardships.
The 90s saw Willie in trouble with the IRS to the tune $16.7 million. An asset auction, lawsuit against his accountant and an album “The IRS Tapes” eventually helped him settle his debts.
His career since the lat 90s has been prolific to say the least – in some years he’s released as many as 4 albums.
Most recently he has been a collaborator recording “Two Men With The Blues” (watch video)- a jazz album with Wynton Marsalis and “Willie and the Wheel” – a bluegrass album with Asleep At The Wheel, not to mention the numerous duets he’s recorded for his and other artists’ albums.
Farm Aid 25 was announced this morning. It will take place 10/2/2010 at Miller Park in Milwaukee,WI. The lineup will include Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews and others to be announced later. Visit farmaid.org for more info.
There are currently 29 Willie Nelson songs on the Smoke’n Dudes playlist:
Darkness on the Face of the Earth I Never Cared For You(watch video) On The Road Again(watch video) Pistol Packin Mama Shotgun Willie Whiskey River Superman Plus the entirety of Two Men With The Blues and Willie And The Wheel.
In the film Crazy Heart Jeff Bridges plays hard drinking, hard living Bad Blake – a semi-legendary country singer who’s about 15 years past his prime and heyday. When he meets Jean, a young journalist played by Maggie Gyllenhaal he can’t help but reach for salvation and redemption, but he learns how tough life can actually get.
Both of the leads were Oscar nominated. Bridges won Best Actor.
Bridges does his own singing, as does Colin Farrell, and they are both surprisingly capable. The songs, which were mostly written by one combination of Stephen Bruton, T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham or another, sound as if they could have been country hits in the time of Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. They stay with you and you find yourself singing with them after only a listen or two.
The Smoke’n Dudes playlist includes 7 songs from the soundtrack:
Hold On You
Somebody Else Fallin & Flying
I Don’t Know
Once A Gambler
Gone, Gone, Gone
Brand New Angel
If you haven’t seen the film check it out on DVD or Blu-Ray. It’s available Tuesday.
Since the early 90s Guy Davis has been updating the traditional blues for a modern audience.
Though raised in New York City, Davis was frequently regaled with stories of Southern country life as a child, and over time became so enamored of the music of Blind Willie McTell, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, and others that he taught himself guitar. He learned his distinctive fingerpicking style from a 9-fingered guitarist he met on a train in Boston.
He has produced nine of the most acclaimed blues albums of this era since 1993 including Chocolate to the Bone and Butt Naked Free.
Guy works tirelessly doing classroom workshops and assembly programs across the country to bring music education (specifically the Blues) to Elementary, High School and College students. He also appears frequently on children’s programs such as Jack’s Big Music Show bringing the blues to young kids.
There are 13 Guy Davis tracks on the playlist at Smoke’n Dudes:
Ain’t No Bluesman Chocolate Man
Come on Sally Hitch a Ride
Good Liquor
Honeydew Melon Rag
Loneliest Road That I Know
Maggie Campbell Blues
Meet Me Where The River Turns
Po’ Boy, Great Long Ways From Home
Saturday Blues
Step It Up And Go
Sugarbelle Blue
Waiting on the Cards To Fall
Johnny Cash was one of the most imposing and influential figures in post-World War II country music. With his deep, resonant baritone and spare, percussive guitar, he had a basic, distinctive sound. Cash didn’t sound like Nashville, nor did he sound like honky tonk or rock & roll. He created his own subgenre, falling somewhere between folk, rock & roll, and country. He was one of country music’s biggest stars of the ’50s and ’60s, scoring well over 100 hit singles.
Cash was always making up his own songs as a child but didn’t start to take it seriously until he bought his first guitar while serving in the
Air Force in 1950. In 1955 he auditioned for Sam Phillips at Sun Records as a gospel singer, but was rejected. Shortly after he returned with a country repertoire and his career took off immediately.
He was a constant presence on the music charts all the way through to the mid ’70s. His popular peak came began in 1968 with the release of Live At Folsom Prison and ended in 1971 with the cancellation of “The Johnny Cash Show” which ran for three seasons on ABC. Years of drug abuse began to take its toll on the quality of his work and he saw a decline of chart appearances.
Throughout the eighties he was practically a non-entity, with his only notable work being collaborations with Waylon Jennings and Carl Perkins and the country supergroup The Highwaymen, which consisted of Cash, Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson.
In 1993 Johnny signed with American Records and began recording albums with Rick Rubin as producer. While never blockbusters this series of records, known as The American Recordings, revived his career and introduced him to a younger audience.
On May 15, 2003 his beloved wife, June Carter Cash died of complications following heart surgery. Four months later Johnny cash gave up his battle with diabetes. In 2005 his legacy was compounded by a multiple Oscar nominated biopic starring Jaoquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon.
Johnny Cash holds 11 spots on the Smoke’n Dudes playlist spanning his entire career:
Cry,Cry,Cry – w/Elvis Costello
Folsom Prison Blues
Get Rhythm
God’s Gonna Cut You Down
I Still Miss Someone
I Walk The Line
I Won’t Back Down
In My Life
Ring of Fire
Rusty Cage
Solitary Man
Plus he appears with the Highwaymen whose entire 3rd album “The Road Goes On Forever” is in the rotation.
The music that is played inside Smoke’n Dudes BBQ Co. earns us almost as many comments and compliments as the food does. We pride ourselves in this as it is a well thought out mix of blues, country, southern and classic rock that is intended to be interesting and accessible while completing the barbecue experience.
Since we frequently get asked about various songs and artists on our playlist (yes, the same music plays at both locations) we decided to try out a music spotlight feature.
Today we feature the great Skip James.
Nehemiah “Skip” James is among the earliest and most influential Delta bluesmen to record.
In 1931 he won a recording deal with Paramount Records. The 18 songs he recorded that year were released to poor reception initially, as the Depression was in full swing. James gave up on music at this point and disappeared for nearly 30 years completely unaware that his music was influencing generations of bluesmen from Robert Johnson, who reworked Skip’s “22-20 Blues” into his own 32-20 Blues” to Eric Clapton who recorded “I’m So Glad” on the first Cream album.
In 1964 the organizers of the Newport Folk Festival found Skip James in poor health in a hospital in Tunica, Mississippi and coaxed him back into the spotlight where he enjoyed a taste of the success that alluded him three decades earlier.
There are 4 Skip James songs on rotation at Smoke’n Dudes – “Careless Love” “Devil Got My Woman” “Hardtime Killing Floor Blues” and”Good Road Camp Blues” all taken from his later sessions in the 1960s. In addition we also play Chris Thomas King’s version of “Hard Time Killing Floor” which will be recognized by film buffs who’ve seen O Brother Where Art Thou
