The venerable supergroup the Texas Tornadoes plays what may be their best song, ‘Who Were You Thinking Of?’, introduced by the honorable Kinky Friedman:

This is the rockingest version of Danny Boy you’re ever likely to hear. Richard Thompson and his band turn it into a zydeco rave up:

Reviewer Joe Ross wrote some nice things about our most recent record. The complete review follows after the jump. Thanks, Joe.

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Many thanks to the Spares and Schuba’s for having us last night. For those of you scoring at home, here was the set, to the best of my recollection. We’re starting to work more material from the next record into the set. Ryan sang “Short Life of Trouble”, Scott sang “Little Sadie”, and I sang “California”.

• Draggin’ the Bow
• Train #45
• California
• Hard Times
• Where You Been
• Black Eyed Suzie
• Spoonful
• High on a Mountain
• Little Sadie
• Short Life of Trouble
• Sir Lucas/ the Musical Priest/ Whiskey Before Breakfast
• South Australia
• Columbus Stockade
• Orange Blossom Special

The site Juneberry78s.com has created a great old-time country listening room with over 75 old 78 rpm records available in MP3 form. There are some terrific recordings there by folks like Riley Puckett, Dick Justics, Frank Hutchison, the Skillet lickers, and many more.

http://www.juneberry78s.com/sounds/ListenToOTCountry.php

Back in the mid-to-late 90’s I played with a jug band called the Cornlikkers. Comprised entirely of profoundly overeducated graduate students at the University of Illinois, we kicked around East Central Illinois for a few years before graduation and attrition did us in. We had the distinction of having a classically trained juggist who could sight read as well as downstate Illinois’ finest yodeler, Ryan Jerving.

Our recorded output is pretty meager. We cut the Phil Ochs tune ‘Hazard Kentucky’ for an unreleased tribute album, and then we cut some demos in the loft apartment Ed Burch and Jay Bennett shared on Reo Speedwagon way in Champaign.

This mp3 is a cassette transfer, so the audio quality isn’t great. I cleaned it up as much as I could, but the high end has long since disappeared as so much ferrous oxide in a cheap car stereo. The tune is the old jug band standard, ‘Tear it Down (Bedslats and All)’ (Bedslats is sometimes spelled ‘Bed Slats’). It’s me on the lead vocal, with Ryan Jerving and Chris Scales doing the nice high harmonies.

tangleweed.org/blog/uploads/The_Cornlikkers_-_Tear_it_Down.mp3

The lineup for the recording is:

1. Riley Broach, bass
2. Ryan Jerving, baritone ukulele and vocals
3. Kenneth Rainey, mandolin and vocals
4. Jim Randall, jug
5. Chris Scales, acoustic guitar and vocals
6. Bill Whitmer, banjo ukulele

The tracks were recorded onto an ADAT, and then mixed to cassette using a little Mackie board. Ed Burch engineered the recordings, and Bill Whitmer and I did the mix.

There’s not a lot of good Slim Gaillard footage out there, so this clip of him playing in Hollywood in 1946 is a treat. Slim developed his own flavor of jive he called ‘vout’, which is very much in evidence in the clip. The multitalented Scatman Crothers is on drums.

This is far and away Soul Asylum’s best topical song: P-9, named for the union that took on Hormel in a devastating strike. The battle is documented in Barbara Kopple’s fine film American Dream.

Here’s a Minnesota Public Radio piece on the strike, twenty years later.