Category: Sounds

John Gage: ‘I’m a young man now grown older….’

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How does it happen? Another year slips by. We might not even notice if mirrors (bad inventions) did not lie.

Some of us ignore the mounting birthdays, others do more than take it in stride. They celebrate each new candle exuberantly; the “Blues Twins” are among these.  In fact, Becky Yelderman and Charlotte Wilke take pleasure in planning their own party, the way they want it.

But the party is never just about them; it’s always about raising money to help someone else. This year is no different.

Will Owen Gage and John Gage

Slated to get underway at 8 p.m. on Saturday, January 29, at The Cove, The Sixth Annual Blues Twins Birthday Bash will serve as a benefit to help defray the recent heart-related medical expenses of a musician, John Gage. Featured musicians will be The Lavens, After Midnight Blues Band and Gage’s son, Will Owen Gage.

While the blazing blues guitar player Will, who did not get his own guitar until he was four, is well-known here, John is not. That’s because his folk-singing father is based in Louisville.

Although a regular on festival stages, John Gage is known for his willingness to play “anyplace where there might be a potential audience wanting to sing along.” With his flat-picking guitar-style, he draws on traditions of ancient balladeers and poets. Interesting the next generation in music is of great importance to him:

John has extensive experience planning collaboratively with classroom teachers for arts education programs and participating in curriculum planning. In addition, he conducts interactive workshops and motivational speeches throughout the southeast region in an effort to help educators and parents understand how personal involvement with music and other performing arts contribute to improved academic learning and overall personal well-being.

John is a repeat emcee at major festivals through Kentucky and hosts a regular radio show reminiscent of old-time radio programs, Kentucky Homefront, on WFPK. The “front-porch” broadcasts are meant to serve as:

a gathering place for friends and where strangers become friends; a place for sharing and creating traditions.

Which sounds a lot like The Cove. Will Owens Gage and the younger generation of The Lavens have grown up together right in front of us on The Cove’s stage. Drummer Karl Yelderman and bass player Daryl Chadick of the After Midnight Blues Band used to back up some of Will’s earlier bands and have played with him as a trio known as The Burning Sensations.

When Will was in high school and would sometimes sit in with After Midnight, his cellphone rang at the precise time the gig was supposed to end. Never eager to stop, the band would play on. Will would put the phone down on the stage so his mom could hear and not worry he was out late without a good reason.

While the name of Will’s father is not a household one here, he’s automatically part of the extended musical family fostered on the stage of The Cove through the years. And this family member needs your help. So plan to support The Blues Twins Birthday Bash and Benefit for John Gage on the 29th. A $5 donation at the door gets you in for an evening of great music in a place where there are no strangers once you walk through the door.

How brief is a lifetime
How restless is late
How bright is the sunshine
How long is the wait

excerpt from “How” by John Gage

Seduced away from intellectual pursuits by the sounds of the squeezebox….

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Last year during the Texas State Book Fair in Austin, my daughter and I left the Paramount Theatre inspired by the words of Margaret Atwood.  As much as I love hearing great authors muse on their writings and on the art of writing itself, this year I felt conflicted.  Why would someone have scheduled the Book Fair on the same weekend as the International Accordion Festival?

I’m weak.  The squeezebox won.

Funding woes put a little bit of a squeeze on the Accordion Festival’s schedule this year – one stage instead of two, not as many groups from distant lands, not as many good food booths – but, hey, it’s admission-free and almost in my backyard.  Missed some of the performances, but enjoyed Copper Box, Orgullo Vallenato and Debra Peters and the Love Saints.  And then there was the hometown band that blew everyone away with a sound like Brave Combo on speed – Piñata Protest.

The Columbian rhythms of Houston-based Orgullo Vellenato kept Terry Ybanez and Jeannette MacDougall on their feet.
Pinata Protest makes Brave Combo sound “asleep at the wheel.”
Copper Box – “Like a Texas Tornado that went through New Orleans and landed in Wisconsin”
The 10th Annual International Accordion Festival took over the stage of the Arneson River Theatre October 15-17.

Only hope the festival can grow back to two stages next year and does not conflict with the Texas State Book Fair.

Note Added on October 25:  The “Arty Semite” blogs about Socalled’s set, which I unfortunately missed.

Please put this song on Tony’s pony, and make it ride away.

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Blame this post on the cowgirl, the one serving as my “gravatar.”  She was the first one I stumbled across with part of “San Antonio Song.”  Then some postcards in the Anglo Life Series began dishing out portions of the lyrics piecemeal.

Santoniobsessed (apologies for the poor portmanteau), I had to track down the music. Maybe this is the theme song San Antonio needs, I thought. Maybe this could be the After Midnight Blues Band’s greatest hit, I speculated.

Finally found the sheet music written by Tin Pan Alley pioneers, Harry Williams and Egbert Van Alstyne, and published in 1907 by Jerome H. Remick & Co.  The pair collaborated on song upon song, many of which endured into the ‘50s and ‘60s to torture young children forced to sit through the Lawrence Welk Show with their parents and grandparents.  The songwriters’ sheet music for In The Shade of The Old Apple Tree sold more than 700,000 copies, a record sales level at that time.

Came across this Petula Clark version from Vote for Huggett:

Prepped by Petula, I’ll now punish you with the lyrics of “San Antonio Song.”  Remember, this was a huge hit, not just here, but throughout the country, as seen on postcards (too prehistoric for “as seen on t.v.”).

San Antonio Song

Just as the moon was peeping o’er the hill, after the work was through, there sat a cowboy and his partner Bill.  Cowboy was feeling blue.  Bill says “Come down pal, down into town pal, big time for me and you.  Don’t mind your old gal.  You know its ‘cold’ pal, if what you say is true.  Where is she now” Bill cried, and his partner just replied: [Chorus}  San An-to-ni An-to-ni-o. She hopped up on a pony, and ran away with Tony. If you see her, just let me know and I’ll meet you In San An-to-ni-o. You know that pony that she rode away, that horse belongs to me.  So do the trinkets that she stow’d away.  I was the big mark E.  I won’t resent it.  I might have spent it plunging with Faro Jack.  If she’s not happy there with her chappie, tell her I’ll take her back.  No tender foot like him could love her like her boy Jim.

If the lyrics did not convince you to fail to launch a movement for the song’s revival, listening to it surely will.  “The Denver Nightingale,” Billy Murray recorded “San Antonio” for Edison the same year the sheet music was written, and the library of the University of California at Santa Barbara has preserved it for us, “San Antonio Song.” Don’t think After Midnight will be rushing to add “San Antonio” to its set list, but, according to Red Hot Jazz, Murray was one of America’s best-selling recording artists during the phonograph era:

Around the turn of the century, Murray joined the Al G. Field minstrels as a blackface singer and dancer. When the troupe traveled East to New York City in 1903, Murray…  freelanced for any record company that was willing to pay for his services, and soon became one of the most popular singers in the mid-naught years…. Until microphones were used for electrical recording in the 1920s, recordings had to be done acoustically by the use of a horn. Murray was a master at the acoustic process because certain qualifications were required in order to achieve acceptable results. Soft sounds didn’t reproduce very well, so one had to have a clear, strong voice to achieve acceptable volume during playback. Murray had powerful lungs, excellent intonation, the ability to sing at a rapid-fire speed without taking a breath, and delivered his songs with a distinctive style that’s easy to understand and recognize. In the 1920s, new styles were coming into vogue. Microphones were beginning to replace the early acoustic horns, and the soft whispering style of singing, known as “crooning,” became a favorite. Murray was more used to singing in a full voice instead of toning it down. His popularity waned….

Maybe I’ll just stick to preserving the postcard images and the cover art by one of the prolific Starmer brothers.

“Cowboy Blues: She broke my heart…and I miss her rabbit stew.” This collage uses the Starmer-designed cover of “San Antonio Song,” original sheet music by Harry Williams and Egbert VanAlstyne copyrighted in 1907. Part of the chorus serves as a backdrop for the “gal” who got away, pictured here as a huntress.
Postcards from San Antonio ~ No 20, “And ran away with Tony.” This postcard is part of an “Anglo Life Series” of postcards dating from 1909 and relating to the lyrics from “San Antonio Song.”
One of the Starmer brothers designed the cover for “That Slippery Slide Trombone” by Williams and Van Alstyne, with lyrics sliding down the slippery slope of sexual innuendos.
Chorus of “The San Antonio Song” written by the Tin Pan Alley pioneer team of Harry Williams and Egbert Van Alstyne in 1907: “San An-to ni An-to-ni-o. She hopped up on a pony and ran away with Tony.”
Postcards from San Antonio ~ No 12, “They Rode off into the Sunset.” Couple on horseback at sunset combined with San Antonio cowgirl postcard and song lyrics: “San Antoni Antonio. She hopped upon a pony and ran away with Tony; If you see her just let me know, and I’ll meet you in San Antonio.”

I’d conclude the music was from some earlier more naive time, still pure enough for replication 50 years later on Lawrence Welk, who “fired Champagne Lady Alice Lon for ‘showing too much knee’ on camera,” but….

Wait.  What did Jim mean when he was talking about spending his money “plunging” with Faro Jack?  Was that a card game or would that be a trick?

Times were not as naive as I tend to think.  “That Slippery Trombone Song” written by the Williams and Van Alstyne team in 1912 was about as subtle as an old blues song peppered with jam and jelly:

That Slippery Trombone Song

Down, down, down in an old Rathskeller, where the strains of ragtime fill the cellar, there’s a musical man.  Are you listening? Grandstand trombone “feller,” weepy, creepy, music mellow, from his old trombone would slide, and Lucy would shout as she hustled about just to get up by his side.  Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, slide me a ragtime slide. [Chorus] Honey, honey, hear that tone on that slippery slide trombone; Um Ain’t it beautiful!  Um Tu-ti-frui-ti-ful!  Honey, don’t blow “Home Sweet Home.”  Stephen, don’t you ever waste a breath to telephone.  Slide, slide, when I glide, glide, glide, to the music of your slide trombone. [Verse 2] Up, up, up from an old Rathskeller, why, they both slipped right up from the cellar, on a slippery night.  Are you listening? She and that young “feller,” they went out to slip the preacher, but she slipped upon a stone.  She fell with a sprawl; he accompanied his “doll” on his slipp’ry slide trombone. Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, all that she did was moan.

P.S.  Oh, oh, oh no.  Please, please don’t fail to bail Gayle out of jail!