When it comes to gathering podcast interviews from local songwriters, these things become like bubble gum trading cards: “Let’s see, I have a Keith Greeninger. A Sharon Allen. A Jay Howlett. But wait…I don’t have a Nancy Cassidy.”

Now I have a Nancy Cassidy. And in this interview, we get two hear about her TWO new CDs, “Song of Joy” and “Memphis”. Nancy’s a California native, and her ties with the land – she was raised on a dairy and spent many years as a river rafting guide – show in her music. Her KidSongs CDs have gone gold. Bruce Springsteen even recorded her song “Lizard Lips and Chicken Hips” for a Pediatric AIDS benefit CD, which sorta gives her more cred than almost anyone else who’s been on “Songs and Stories”. She’s also popular Americana songwriter. Nancy receives international airplay, though you’ve also likely heard her locally on KPIG radio.

She was working with songwriter/producer Keith Greeninger last year on “Memphis” when the illness of a close friend inspired her to write all the songs for “Song of Joy”. “Memphis” was put on hold, she finished the newer record, and then completed “Memphis” this Spring.

Nancy played a release show at our Corralitos Music Series last fall. It was full-band show featuring lots of local favorites who played on both records: Keith, Dayan Kai, Steve Uccello. Still, I wanted to hear more about this special CD. She and I got together around my kitchen table – as many of these podcasts go – a couple of months later to discuss both records, her songwriting process, and what it’s like to have one one record “play out” its newness as you’re waiting with another completed one in the wings.

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Everyone in my demographic – in other words, you’re at least as old as me – knows his work. He worked with tiny models and only one or two – if even that many – assistants. He posed, shot, and re-posed, and re-shot his models one frame of film at a time – standard film is 24 frames per second – bringing to life characters from Greek mythology, dinosaurs, even flying saucers – and all this decades before computers and CGI.

Those of you who grew up in the bay area might have caught his work on Channel 2′s “Creature Features” on Saturday Nights or the Sunday “Monster Mash” on Channel 36. Do any of these sequences take you back a bit?

• The sword-wielding skeleton from “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”
• The mutated giant octopus devouring the Golden Gate Bridge in “It Came from Beneath the Sea” *
• The creepy, snakey-haired Medusa in “Clash of the Titans”

Ray Haryhausen was originally inspired by Willis O’Brien’s work on “King King”, created his own animated movies at home**, then apprenticed under O’Brien on “Mighty Joe Young”. Beginning with “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms”, he started leading the effects on his own films. The process was marketed under several names including “Dynarama” and “Dynamation”, but it always meant the same thing: Harryhausen closed up in a small studio for several months, creating magic out of nothing but a film camera and small, complex models.

To learn more and get a chance to really appreciate the legacy Ray Harryhausen left behind, take a look at The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation, a trust he and a his wife created to help preserve his work, which includes the films and over 50,000 original armatured models, film negatives, and artwork. Meanwhile, this seems like a good night to re-watch “Jason and the Argonauts”.

* Fun trivia on this: Due to budgetary constraints, the octopus only had five arms – less to animate.
** I’m a lifelong special effects geek. I have my own reel of stop-motion animation I made when I was a kid. Will get that posted to YouTube sometime soon.

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Puppy season. It’s that time of year. Then again, if you regularly foster and find homes for wayward dogs, it’s *always* that time of year. Always too many dogs and not enough homes. Case in point: “Angelina”.

Hard to believe that just a few months ago, she was a stray in Turlock. When picked up by the Turlock shelter, her hair was so badly matted she had to be shaved. (She looked like a fuzzy black bear. Not exactly a fluffy pom, but quite cute.) Angelina was pickd up by Animal Friends Rescue Project of Pacific Grove.

We fostered her for two months. She was adopted last Friday by her new forever home, a very cool young couple in Scotts Valley who just bought their first home…with the intent of finally having a yard for a dog.

“Angie” was lucky, but many dogs aren’t. A few Google’d animal shelter stats stats: Nearly seven million dogs and cats enter shelters each year. Half are euthanized. Only 10% of intaked animals have been fixed by their owners.

How can you help? Two things, and they’re the only soapbox-type items you’ll ever see on my web site:

1) FIX YOUR DOG AND CAT. Don’t tell me your dog’s cute and should be bred. We have three dogs. They’re adorable. And they’re fixed. And don’t believe the myth that letting your pet have just one litter is better for their health. It’s just that. A myth.

2) Looking for a dog or cat? PLEASE DO NOT GO TO A BREEDER. Just don’t. Nearly four million cats and dogs are put down every year. Every pet you adopt reduces that number by one. It’s math simple enough for me to understand.

And if you must have a purebred – even though a mutt is generally healthier than a purebred – email me and let me know. We’ve been fostering through AFRP for over five years, and every dog we’ve adopted out has been either a purebred…or a very adorable mutt.

Need more convincing? Take a look at Angie’s photos above. I can guarantee she was much happier going to her new home than she was wandering the streets of Turlock as a stray.

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Click to hear the KPIG interview (time = 19:49)

I met songwriter Steve Kritzer several years back, either through Ginny Mitchell (at a winery gig I hosted) or the late Chuck McCabe. (I adore both Ginny and Chuck, but Chuck was a linchpin who seemingly connected everyone, so I’ll just say it was him.) Steve’s part of the BlahBlahWoofWoof artist collective, which means he’s good. It also means I get to occasionally rub elbows with some amazing talent.

A few years back, Steve and I found that we co-write well together. I veer towards “clever” writing, goofy inline rhymes, and anything to get a story across. Steve’s a master musician, great with a great sense of melody, and he has a much more sensitive side than me.

Click thumbnails for larger photos

When we first tried writing, I remember Steve saying, “I’d like to write songs that have fewer chords.” I said, “I can help”.

Our first collaboration was “On Saturday and Sunday”, a contrast against playing in a bar on Saturday night and leading music in church the next morning. Steve and I both have much firsthand knowledge of that. We’ve written a few songs since, including “She’s More Connected” which appears on my new “Starlite Drive-In Saturday Night” CD.

At the 4/20 house concert, we’ll share the songs we’ve written together, and mix it up with both solo sets and a “mini-in-the-round” where we’ll play together. Hope you can join us. The show starts at 5:00 pm. Suggested donation on this is $15.00. For directions and more details, call 408-686-0374.

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Hard to believe that just a little over ten years ago, Antsy McClain was “ready to call it quits”.

Antsy was out from Nashville for band rehearsals last weekend. We chatted over coffee, and he told the story about how their 1998 debut record “Doublewide and Dangerous” was just sitting, unreleased, in supplier warehouses. He was about done with it all. Then the late Laura Ellen Hopper called from KPIG Radio. She invited Antsy and the band to open for Robert Earl Keen at KPIG’s annual Humbug Hoedown. Laura Ellen also told him that songs like “It Ain’t Home ’til You Take the Wheels Off” and “Skinny Women Ain’t Hip” were popular on the station.

That news, and their opening slot for Keen, were the breaks they needed.

Antsy was soon retrieving product from his label and their distributors. “I bought thousands of CDs, VHS tapes of our EPK video – all the rage at the time, and I bought the rights and intellectual property issues to our website.” Antsy’s first independent release, “Way Cool World”, soon followed. He’s been an indie artist ever since.

Antsy plays nationwide, but he’s particularly fond of the west coast. That’s due in no small part “to the KPIG family…we do our largest shows in northern California”. He plays in Santa Cruz several times a year, including annual New Year’s Eve shows at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz and a regular appearance at the Santa Cruz County Fair.

The Mello Center show will be extra special, since he really is bringing a PBS film crew along. “We could have done it anywhere in the country”, Antsy said, “but I wanted to do it here with my friends”.

Songwriter/teacher Peter Berkow, who’s also a PBS producer, first heard of Antsy through his sound-man Dale Prince and Australian fingerstyle guitarist Tommy Emmanuel. Berkow’s now a pal of Antsy’s and pitched the idea of filming a Troubadours concert to PBS. The rest is history…or at least will be when the special airs.

For this concert, they’re building a special “trailer park set, full of ’60s and ’70s kitsch”. They’ve even designed the setslists so that folks who might be new to the band will immediately get the “Enjoy the ride” motif behind Antsy and his music. The first set features “Hangin’ With My Friends”, “Living the Dream”, and “Living in Alumimum”, while the second half includes funny fan favorites like “My Baby Whistles When She Walks” and “Everything’s a Dollar”.

Antsy wanted to remind everyone that this won’t be a “tight, sit on your hands thing”. Anyone who’s been to a Troubadors show knows it’s a big fun party. Lots of laughs, lots of loud shirts, and lots of “Flamingoheads” singing along. Be ready to have a good time. You’ve been warned.

Tickets
Tickets at on sale at unhitched.com – available for the concert or the concert AND the after party the next day.

Past Podcast Highlights
Want to hear from Antsy himself? He’s been a guest on my “Songs and Stories” podcast several times. Click here to listen:

• Episode #119 – “Living the Dream”
• Episode #101 – “Heroes (and Vinyl) Last Forever”
• Episodes #51 and #52 – “Antsy McClain of The Trailer Park Troubadours”
  

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There are two ways to setup this interview: 1) Why would a successful touring artist like Stevie Coyle, after spending decades on the road, suddenly say, “I’m done”? OR…2) “Why would it take a performing artist decades on the road to FINALLY say “I’m done?”

We’ll find out soon enough in this “Songs and Stories” field trip. In this return visit with the very funny and very talented fingerstyle guitar player Stevie Coyle – we first chatted back in Episode 14 – we learn about a recent epiphany he had on the return trip from an Oregon tour. Stevie has spent years as a traveling performer, first with the Royal Lichtenstein Circus, then with bay area favorites The Waybacks, and for the past six years as a solo performer. But he realized he was ready for a change. He’s now a friendly local merchant, running Mighty Fine Guitars in Lafayette, California.

A Sampling of Stevie’s “Mighty Fine Guitars”

The store is a perfect fit for Stevie, whose passion for fine instruments has found the perfect home. His high-end store shares a wall with his niece, Colleen McCormick, who runs Lamorinda Music. They’ve also created a performing space in the back of their complex, which is now a regular house concert-type series that allows Stevie to also feature performances from many of the luthiers and guitars that are showcased in the shop out front.

Note: This episode features clips of “Rue du Romie” and “Penny Wishes” from Stevie’s solo record, “Ten In One”. It also includes Stevie demo’ing guitars from luthiers Peter Rodman and Michael Dunn. Mighty Fine Guitars is at 85 Lafyette Circle in Lafayette, CA. You can call – and talk to Stevie himself at (925) 268-8226

The post Songs and Stories #124: Stevie Coyle’s “Mighty Fine Guitars” appeared first on Singer/Songwriter Michael Gaither.

Maverick Country is published in the UK. It’s online, but it’s also still very much a hardcopy magazine. They cover the gamut of all things country and Americana, from the big, big names, down to little indie folk like yours truly. Maverick Country generously reviewed my first CD, “Spotted Mule and Other Tales” back in 2006. They also had some very nice things to say about “Dogspeed” my second record.

Click for large-print review

The March issue of Maverick Country includes a review of the new release, “Starlite Drive-In Saturday Night”. They’ve called it “another fine slice-of-life set of songs that reflect small-town America in an astute way”. Can’t ask for a nicer summation than that.

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For example, his 1999-2000 work “Anatomical Demonstrations” was a dissection lecture and mixed-media exhibition (drawings and puppetry) that included a witty, self-mock-autopsy performed by Scott using tools that he created himself based on science circa the 1800s. “Anatomical Demonstrations” ran at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and at the Fringe Festival in Philadelphia PA. Scott’s exhibitions have been shown nationwide, and his accolades include a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation and a “Six Week Artist Residency” award from the Exploratorium Museum.

Scott lives in upstate New York these days, but his newest creation, “Picturesque Flora Wallceana: Botanical Ambulations in Greater Wallaceana, 1854-1857″ will soon be on display at the Cabrillo College Gallery. This new collection revisits his favorite themes of biology and history, as these two paintings below indicate:

Images from “Picturesque Flora Wallceana”

Scott calls this new installation “a fabricated 19th century science narrative of the tropical island of Wallaceana presented as an installation of images, text and artifacts.” Combining fiction and history, Scott’s invented landscape of Wallaceana is named after the “great 19th century naturalist and scientist, Alfred Russell Wallace”, the “lesser-known co-discoverer of the theory of evolution”.

Scott has temporarily transformed the Cabrillo Gallery into a Victorian-Gothic science museum. Although thematically the setting is a museum, the images slyly cover subject such as the war in Iraq, human moral corruption, and social-political battles. The specific mediums include drawings and illustrations, documentation and notes, specimens, and daguerreotype portraits.

In keeping with the motif, Scott’s created text panels written by the exhibition “curator,” Henry Walter Bates, to lend greater clarity to the purpose and importance of the installation.

This is a rare chance to see the work of a once-local, and now very well-known, nationwide artist. “Picturesque Flora Wallceana” runs February 15th to March 15th. Admission to the Cabrillo Gallery is free.

The post A Good Month For Art Part 2: “Picturesque Flora Wallceana” appeared first on Singer/Songwriter Michael Gaither.

Russell’s work is also very much tied into our local landscape. Santa Cruz and Big Sur are favorite subjects. His most recent paintings are a clever commentary on modern technology. For the month of February, however, you can get a look at his earlier work in “No Place Like Home”, a showcase of Russell and other local artists at the Santa Cruz Library.

Paintings by Russell Brutsche

This show includes the works “Beneath the Trestle” (middle photo in the samples above), which was used as part of the art layout for Russell’s last CD, “The Westbound”. “No Place Like Home” is a free exhibit at the library – you’ll find it on the second floor – and runs until March 30th

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I finished “Spotted Mule and Other Tales” nearly seven years ago. It was scary and exciting putting out my first collection of songs. And it was just an incredible rush getting response from folks and finding out songs like “Highway 17″ were really good enough to be on the radio. Odd thing is that you don’t really expect the music to come *back* to you. But sometimes that happens. Online, I sell through a retailer called CD Baby. It was started by musicians and is an incredibly easy spot to peddle your musical wares.

Sometimes inventory must be trimmed. I recently received an email from CD Baby saying that they have more than enough copies of “Spotted Mule…” By the end of the month, they’ll either “recycle” them (“snap, crackle, ouch!”) or ship them back to me at my expense (“sigh”).

“Spotted Mule and Other Tales” on CD Baby

I’d rather see these go to a good home instead of sent back to mine. If you don’t have a copy of the first CD, would like a spare, or are just smitten with those photos of Icing the Spotted Mule on the front and back of the CD, you can pick up one (or several) copies for only $4.99.

(I’ve also heard these CDs – this one’s in a hard, plastic jewel case – can double as ninja stars in a pinch, should the need arise.)

You can hear cuts from the entire CD, read quotes from DJs and customers, and if you like, order your reduced-price copy here on CD Baby. I’ll be keeping the price down at $4.99 until the end of February.

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