Have requests? Comments? Suggestions? Post them on the Paper and Pen page. To comment on the Pen and Paper page, go to that page (click on the Pen and Paper menu heading, below the picture of the studio at top), scroll down to the end of the Comments. You can, of course, also post relevant comments under any individual post.
NOTE: All content in this weblog, except where indicated, is entirely my own, and not that of WHRB or Harvard University. See the About page for more information. /CL
On April 1st, we finally embarked on our long-delayed Southwest Rail journey, for the whole month. You may have noticed that HAH for April has recycled hours from roughly a year ago—but they were picked at random, with different run times, so if you didn’t notice, that’s even better.
WATCH OUT! We’ll be back on May 2nd, but I’ve just been informed that HAH will be pre-empted by a classical-music Orgy® on Saturday, May 4. Oops! But I expect to be back with new Home-Brewed hours on the 11th, so never fear.
We took the Lakeshore Limited from Framingham to Chicago, and then the Southwest Chief from Chicago to Flagstaff, Arizona (which for some reason I keep calling ‘Falstaff’), arriving only some four hours late (local time). In a black Chevrolet Malibu with Washington tags (a rental, of course) we have visited in AZ the awesome Grand Canyon (where it snowed!), the gorgeous Sonoma, the interesting Cave Creek and Carefree (where we visited HAH listener Eric—Misa was called away on family business), and more recently Mesa, for a four-day fancom led by comedienne and Powerline Blog columnist Ammo Grrrll.
Then it was off to Utah (via a stay in Tuba City—which has nothing to do with the instrument) for the extraordinary geological visions of Zion and Bryce National Parks. It was quite apparent to me that we were dealing with Nature imitating Art, as for example, a clear Lion from Zion:
and in Bryce, a clear Meeting of Elder Statesmen:
We spent the day photographing Natural Monuments in the aptly-named Monument Valley, and tomorrow are off to take a ride Thursday on the famous Durango and Silverton narrow-gauge railway. Forecast is for rain, the first time in this trip, but we’re hoping that’s wrong. We’ll be returning from Grand Junction, Colorado at the end of the month, on the California Zephyr.
Well, we’re doing a lot of driving, but it’s still first and foremost a Rail trip, and I won’t let you forget it. As Cowboy Jack reminds us, ‘I’ve Got a Thing about Trains’:
I have been remiss in not headlining the BBU’s return to the Sheraton in Framingham. Not, unfortunately, for the long-lost Joe Val Bluegrass Festival—the last one was in February, 2020, when the CCP Virus alarms were just sounding. We were there, and attendance was very good, and everyone as far as I knew had a great time—despite a some elbow bumps instead of handshakes. But then the lockdowns started, and the Sheraton was sold. Last I heard, at the Thomas Point Beach Festival in 2021, the BBU had been unable to find a new venue.
They haven’t yet, but they have gotten what’s left of the Sheraton to agree to a weekend “non-festival,” called (awkwardly) ‘JamVal’. Here’s some of the announcement from back in December”:
JamVal: February 16th to 18th at the Sheraton in Framingham
We are so excited to be returning to the Sheraton Framingham Hotel in February 2024 for the first time in four years! Unfortunately, due to ongoing renovations at the Sheraton, there are not enough rooms available to have a successful festival, so instead, this year we are hosting a new event called JamVal and we hope to return for a full festival in 2025.
JamVal is a weekend-long bluegrass “non-festival” focused on jamming held over President’s Day Weekend (February 16th to 18th, 2024) at the Sheraton in Framingham. There will be dozens of workshops and jams hosted by loads of amazing musicians and teachers, and one big difference from usual festivals: no big stage show to distract from the picking!
Although we do not expect the rooms to sell out instantly, we do expect them to sell out, and you can only book a room at the Sheraton if you purchase a weekend pass first. To reserve either a PICKING or QUIET room at the Sheraton, you must first purchase a weekend pass on our Wild Apricot page. After you purchase a weekend pass, you will be sent a link to reserve either a PICKING or QUIET room.
JamVal is already shaping up to be an amazing weekend of jams, workshops, and much, much more. Please check out the JamVal FAQ page for various details about the weekend. For instance, we are looking forward to welcoming our very special “Guest Jammers”: Greg Cahill, Greg Blake, Michael Prewitt, and Dan Eubanks – better known by their collective band name, Special Consensus! Special Consensus will be at JamVal all weekend long to host jams, teach workshops, and even play a show on Saturday night at 7:30 pm.
On January 2nd, we got an update (use the links in the quote above):
As many of you know by now, JamVal is a weekend-long bluegrass “non-festival” focused on jamming held over President’s Day Weekend (February 16th to 18th, 2024) at the Sheraton in Framingham. Rooms have been selling at a brisk clip and we have some very important updates to share:
(1) Quiet (non-picking) rooms are still available on-site, but future reservations will be at the Fairfield Inn. The Fairfield Inn is in the same building as the Sheraton (in fact, it was part of the old Sheraton), and you won’t have to go outside to get all of the JamVal activities. Please note that no jamming is allowed in the Fairfield Inn guest rooms or common areas.
We do not expect that quiet rooms will sell out. We anticipate that quiet rooms – now at the Fairfield Inn – will be available at the discounted JamVal rate until January 31st. If you recently tried to reserve a quiet room and got a message that the rooms were sold out, please reply to this email and we can help you get a room at the Fairfield Inn.
(2) Picking rooms are limited and may sell out soon! All picking rooms are located within the Sheraton itself, and there are a limited number of rooms due to renovations. Although we can’t say exactly when picking rooms will fill up, we assume it will be before January 31st. If you are interested in getting a picking room, we recommend that you book it as soon as possible. . .
And just today, another update:
JamVal is a weekend-long bluegrass “non-festival” focused on jamming held over President’s Day Weekend (February 16th to 18th) at the Sheraton in Framingham. Our discounted room blocks will be expiring at the end of the day on Wednesday, January 31st. If you want to pay the lowest rate for a room and avoid additional fees, you must book your room by Wednesday at the latest. Even if you’re not 100% sure that you’ll be able to join us for JamVal, you could still reserve a room at this discounted rate because you can always cancel it up to 48 hours in advance.
So forewarned, however belatedly, is fore-armed: hurry up if you want to get the discounted rate!
They said it all. Glad to hear old friend of Boston bluegrass (and of Hillbilly at Harvard), Greg Cahill and band Special Consensus will be at the “non-festival.” I reckon it’ll be plenty festive!
That’s the terrific singer and guitarist Greg Blake in the band, too! /CL
Last week (6Jan24) the planned ‘Home-Brewed’ HAH ran OK for listeners to the Internet Stream, but not for listeners to the local (Boston area) radio broadcast. Instead they heard four hours (surprisingly) of old ‘Generic Hours’ I recorded some 10-12 years ago. Don’t ask me how that worked.
I thought of running some earlier ‘Home-Brewed’ hours this week, but couldn’t get onto the WHRB server remotely, so today (13Jan24) the plan is to re-run last week’s show. Apologies to the Internet listeners, but the music was fine, and my inane comments were no worse than usual. And the show will be new to all the the broadcast listeners.
More so than I remembered! And you can relive some of that fun this Saturday (the 16th) and next (the 23rd) as we broadcast the Extravaganza in two parts. As you may remember, Hillbilly at Harvard from the late ’80s on was a four-hour program, so as we’re restricted these days to just two, I had to break it into two parts—so make sure you’ve got 9-11 AM on both Saturdays reserved for HAH.
What kind of fun? There was a party in the lobby, and guests in the studio (which was then in the basement of Memorial Hall, under Sanders Theater). Fellow DJs George Houenstein (WZBC), Ed the Detective Muller, and Andi B, from WCAV in Brockton; musicians John Lincoln Wright and Richie Brown; friends and colleagues Ken Irwin, Grace Furnari, and WHRB’s own David Elliott; all took turns on the mic, before a gentle hubbub audible when the mic was on. Highlights included:
• The full Rudolph Cycle, as it stood in 1993.
• Rare records from Ed the Detective’s vast collection.
• The Hillbilly Christmas Chorale, live at the end of the show, led as usual by John Lincoln Wright.
• The first (and only?) performance by the HCC of ‘The Twelve Days of Country Christmas’.
• Ken Irwin with a (then) new recording featuring Alan Jackson and Rounder’s Alison Krauss:
And of course, “Four hours of the very best (and the very worst) of Country Christmas Music!”
Remember: 9-11 AM Saturday the 16th and Saturday the 23rd: Travel back in time to December 18th, 1993 for the HAH Christmas Extravaganza!
ERRATUM: Yes, there is one. You may notice in the Announcements accompanying the show, that I identify the date in 1993 as December 17th. Well, after recording them, I noticed the DJ on the tape (me) said “December 18th.” This puzzled me, as the guy who recorded the show (also me) had written “17Dec93” on the DAT insert. Which was correct? A quick Internet search for a 1993 calendar proved me right—and wrong: Saturday in December was indeed the 18th. /CL
We’re driving to Virginia with our Escape trailer, to have Thanksgiving with daughter Sarah and family. It will be our first visit to their new house—which they’ve been building, all by themselves, for the past five years—with them in it, as they finally moved into it this fall.
So on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, November 25th, I’m scheduling a replay of an Archival HAH, featuring a short live set with John Lincoln Wright and his ‘Acoustic Pals‘. This show is from November 7, 1992. For more on this show, see here:
It’s been a couple of years since we played those Archives, so even if you heard them before, I think you’ll enjoy revisiting Hillbilly at Harvard in the old days. Tune in!
Late getting this notice out—it’s tomorrow, Saturday, November 18th, but still time to get up to Newburyport for Belleville Roots.
Just follow the links to learn more about the players and hear some tunes. Ken knows his bands, and you can tell these guys learned well from the great Doyle Lawson. Here’s the notice:
Belleville Roots is excited to announce that IBMA’s 2023 New Artist of the Year and Vocal Group of the Year, Authentic Unlimited, will be coming to perform in Newburyport on Saturday, November 18th.
Authentic Unlimited consists of three former members of Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, Jerry Cole, Eli Johnston and Stephen Burwell as well as two time mandolin player of the year, Jesse Brock and John Meador, arguably the finest new singer in bluegrass.
I have been remiss in attending to this blog, but aside from recording and editing a couple of hours each week, I’ve been more or less out of the Hillbilly loop. I debate whether to get back to the WHRB studio, but every time I decide to, my inveterate laziness obtrudes to ask, “Is it worth tying up the better part of Saturday, getting up at 6 or so, driving in to Cambridge, setting up and running the show, packing up while grabbing lunch, and driving home, trying not to fall asleep on the road (in these geezerish years I usually nap after lunch)?” So far my ambition relents: “It’s a lot easier to fit in some recording and editing during the week at home, and the commute is a lot better!”
The last few months have been somewhat eventful, if not always welcome. Dr Janie spent much time programming a week’s vacation in (or near) the region west of Scranton and east of Erie known as the Pennsylvania Wilds. Saturday, July 1st we hitched up the Escape trailer and hit the road. It was the first day of what most of America decided was a four-day ‘Fourth of July’ holiday weekend (the 4th, Independence Day, was on a Tuesday), and the Mass Pike was jammed full, so we headed out old Route 20 towards Sturbridge. Rt. 20 is commercial and stoplight city, but long about Charlton we finally got some open road, when the engine of my green Expedition started chugging and losing power, and the symbol of a wrench appeared on the Expy’s modest little ‘information’ display. Never saw that before, I thought. Fortunately, I spotted an empty driveway by a green building, and pulled in, leaving a trail of pink transmission fluid.
Here we are, off the road in Charlton, fortunately only about 30 miles from home.
Turns out one of the connections to the transmission-cooler radiator had broken loose. We spent the better part of a long, hot summer day in the vanishing shade of the green building, trying to arrange for someone to tow both the Expy and the Escape. That’s a tale as long and tedious as that afternoon, but eventually we did get the Expy to the shop (which wouldn’t even open till Thursday) and the Escape back home. And we cancelled the trip.
We developed plans for another trip, though, a long-delayed journey by rail to the Great Southwest. We would take the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, and the California Zephyr to Grand Junction, Colorado. Then we would rent a car and make our way down to Arizona, via tourist attractions like the Durango and Silverton RR, Mesa Verde, etc., ending up with two nights at the Lodge at the Grand Canyon, and then home on the Southwest Chief. This was for October. We were finally going to use up the thousands of Amtrak Rewards Points we had accumulated when we boycotted Amtrak because of their mask requirements.
But in August I developed something that I called ‘Brain Squeezes’, feeling for a second as if I might pass out, but not actually doing it. Two weeks of wearing a heart monitor revealed a ‘Sick Sinus Syndrome’, which has nothing to do with the cavities in your head but with the Sinus Node in your heart that makes the atrium pump to the ventricle. “You’re getting a Pacemaker,” announced the cardiologist. So on the next day, September 1st, I did. The procedure was no fun at all, but not as bad as when I had my thyroid excised, and did refamiliarize me with the joys of hospital food.
The Pacemaker solved the Brain-Squeeze problem, but left me with new restrictions on my activities for three months: no lifting more than 10 pounds with my left arm, for example, and no train rides. Oops! There went that trip, and poor Dr Janie had to work at cancelling a whole ‘nother bunch of reservations. I did get all the Amtrak points back, though. And now we’re planning that trip again—in April!
One bright spot in an otherwise frustrating four months was a visit from a pair of HAH listeners, Eric and Misa from Phoenix, Arizona. Eric had been emailing for a couple of years, with the idea of getting together on one of his annual visits to Boston, and I put him off, not being in the studio, and not wanting to invite random country fans home. But I relented, and am mighty glad I did, as they turned out to be two of the most amiable and charming folks you could ever meet. We fed them Dr Janie’s home-made spaghetti sauce, and talked about meeting in Phoenix next April.
Eric and Misa went off on another trip to Japan, and thanks to the Internet (and WHRB’s iPhone App) took HAH with them. Here’s a photo of them listening to HAH in Tokyo—of course it was 10 PM, not AM. How much farther flung can you get?
Well, Hank Snow got ‘Everywhere’ (these days attributed to Johnny Cash, but it was Hank’s song—which he stole from Australia, and changed the names). /CL
Too preoccupied to post here, it seems, but a few tidbits over the last couple of months (click on photos to enlarge):
We decided on a name for our Escape 21 molded-fiberglass travel trailer, a 2019 model that we had to travel to Kentucky to get in April 2022 (see the photo HERE). Our previous 17-foot Casita trailer I called ‘Close By’ (as I recounted HERE), after the Bill Monroe song, but we never got ‘round to printing the name on it. We named our new-to-us trailer after one of my favorite gospel songs, ‘Farther Along’, and this time we had a decal printed and the name affixed. I like the name because it can be taken in multiple ways, in trailering and life, and it fits in my generally empirical philosophy, which is one of puzzlement: “Farther along, we’ll understand why.”
Vireo
Reading and Northern RR at Jim Thorpe
In early May we headed south to Virginia, to spend some time with daughter Sarah and family. I had been hoping to help them move into the house they’ve been building, but they’ve more to do yet. In the meantime we participated in some of their Naturalist activities, paddled behind the beaver dam in Jones Creek, took pictures of the Vireos in the back yard, and generally hung out. On the way down we stopped at Hickory Run State Park in east-central PA, admired the famous Boulder Field, and rode on the Lehigh Gorge Scenic train on the Reading and Northern out of the quaint tourist town now called Jim Thorpe.
Then later in May it was up to New Hampshire for the ‘Spring Fling’ Fiberglass Egg gathering at the Chocorua Camping Village, for owners and devotees of molded-fiberglass campers. These events feature potluck dinners, trailer talk, and this one had a Slinky Stinky Throw, to see who could toss a camper sewer hose farthest. My strained back muscles did not allow me to participate. The fellow here had good form.
June was the 50th Anniversary month for Doctor Janie and me, which we celebrated with a family camp gathering at the Sun Resort Campground in East Falmouth, on Cape Cod. Unfortunately, Number One Son Andy and his wife Mayten, who live in Peru, were unable to come, but still we had 10 grandkids and six adults, our three campers (and a cabin), with beaches, bike trails, and ‘resort’ activities like miniature golf and peddle boats. We had plenty of sunshine between rainy spells, and all told, plenty of incentive to go ‘Farther Along’.
Ready for the rail trail between Falmouth and Woods Hole. That’s me in the green helmet!
Speaking of which, there are many recordings of that song, but this is a favorite of mine, from Ricky Wasson:
PS This week I didn’t get any new hours recorded, but I’m re-running an Archival show from 1998, featuring The Freight Hoppers live! See my post from the first time I ran this Archive HERE. /CL
—And a May notice: HAH will not air Saturday, 13May23, making room for an Orgy®.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, but I’ve been getting occasional queries from listeners, like “When are you going back live?” I don’t really have an answer. Hard to believe it’s been over two and a half years since Harvard, like most of the colleges and universities in the country, responded to the virus panic by closing down, which kicked me out of WHRB. My last live show was August 22, 2020. I loaded up the Green Expy (my 2013 Ford Expedition XL) with the wine boxes of CDs I had on my library cart and brought them home.
For a year or so I kept HAH going with Archival shows I copied from reel-to-reel (which, astonishingly, sounded pretty good) and Digital-Audio tapes, all recorded since the 1980s on consumer FM receivers at home. Editing these was a fair amount of work, especially when HAH time was reduced by the undergraduates from four to three and then to two hours, which meant more editing. At some point I was offered entrance to the WHRB studios, but only wearing a mask, which I refused, knowing (as has been amply demonstrated) that masking was perfectly useless and an affront to common sense. So indeed were all of the lockdown restrictions and mandates, but I’ll save the diatribe that’s bubbling up for another time. Suffice it to say that I need to be free of such strictures before venturing back on campus—and I’ve also got to get a parking permit.
So about a year ago I began to record new Hillbilly Home Recording (HHR) hours, ‘Home-Brewed for Your Tasty Listening Pleasure’. I got a Genesis dual CD-player, designed for club DJs with a Cue function; a Sennheiser microphone; and an Allen-Heath mixer. With this modest equipment, and the CDs from my cart and the shelves of ‘to be reviewed’ CDs that have accumulated over the years, I’ve been able to record hours to my little (11.6”) 2015 Macbook Air. Doing two hours a week takes some time pre-programming and editing, but is still more flexible than giving up much of Saturday driving in to Cambridge and doing live air. So with the two-hour limit, I have to wonder: will it ever make sense to go back live?
But there is the large HAH library at WHRB, both LPs and CDs, which I will need, and which I assume the undergraduates are now using for their Hillbilly Jamboree shows that now follow HAH. So I will need to visit, if not return this summer. We shall see.
I should add that I’m grateful to the continually-changing staff and management of WHRB for keeping Hillbilly at Harvard on the air. They put up with my kvetching when things don’t go right, but they generally do, and I appreciate their diligence. I think they appreciate that HAH has some institutional value for its long history on Saturday mornings, and for its many regular listeners, some tuning in to WHRB for decades.
As for posting, I keep thinking the lost HAH ‘relatives’ I should be writing about: Cousin Dave Schmalz, who hosted HAH with Old Sinc for a decade; Cousin Mike Eisenstadt, who hosted Saturday Morning Jamboree with me in the early ‘60s; Cousin Flo Murdock, talent booker at Johnny D’s and frequent guest. All friends, colleagues—what can I say? Time flies, the urgency diminishes, wait a day, got to get the trailer ready for a road trip, got to read to the grandkids, sharpen my lawn-mower blade, pay the credit-card bills, contemplate other writing projects. . .
Right about now I need a song about. . . Time. How about this one from Kathy Kallick?
I like the timeless, old-timey feel of this song. /CL
It’s been a bit of rough week, what with a touch of the CCP Virus on top of dental surgery (preparation for a couple of implants, which has left me with a sore mouth and jaw for a week). And today it’s pouring rain, making a racket in the downspout outside the window of my home studio. But I’ll make up time, not by pouring on the coal but by going back and getting a substitute engine.
Some of you will recall last August 20th, when the Hillbilly broadcast was suddenly interrupted at 9:35 AM by dead air—a malfunction at One Financial Center had taken our transmitter off the air. Turns out the Internet stream continued apace, so stream listeners were able to hear the whole show, but the local FM listeners were left “alone and forsaken” (to quote Hank Williams).
So I’ll re-run that two-hour home-brewed show, which will be mostly new to many of you, and maybe even to Internet listeners who had better things to do on a sunny August Saturday.
And of course you got the reference to ‘The Wreck of Old 97′, and the ironic reference to ’38’, which wrecked just six months before the more celebrated 97, on the same road, near Lynchburg.
Hillbilly at Harvard 