I laid down some guitar, mandolin, and lap steel tracks for a record by my friend Tom Winters’ band, Consortium. The record, Potomac and Shenandoah, got a nice review in the most recent issue of Illinois Entertainer. My meager contributions got a little shout out in the review. See below.

Descriptive lyrics by singer Tom Winters draw listeners into Consortium’s ambitious concept album, Potomac And Shenandoah, while the band plays tuneful Americana music. Winters’ stories range from the Civil War atrocities of “Harper’s Ferry” to the simple life of a modern couple in “By The Light – Part II.” Kip Rainey excels throughout on guitar, lap steel, and mandolin.
– Terrence Flamm

For more about Consortium, visit their myspace page.

There’s a little more about the record in this previous post.

Frank Blevins led a trio or North Carolinians through some of the most striking performances of old time country music ever put to record. Blevins plays and since with a world-weary intesity made all the more remarkable by his youth. He was sixteen years old when this recording was made.

There are some excellent examples of Frank Blevins’ work on the fine Old Hat compilation Music from the Lost Provinces.

Recorded in Atlanta, November 1927 for the Columbia label. Do you care what the original catalog number was? I thought not.

Tangleweed plays a variant of this tune, ‘Great Big Taters’.

Sally Ann (MP3)

Courtesy of Archive.org

We had a great time in Evanston last night sharing a bill with Chris Jones and the Night Drivers. We were especially pleased to meed banjoist Ned Luberecki. We’re fond of playing a hip banjo instrumental called ‘Emergency Pulloff’. Ned wrote it.

Many thanks to everyone who came out, as well as to Mike and Chip for putting together the excellent Bluegrass Legends concert series.

I’ve recently picked up a copy of the complete poems of Carl Sandburg. It’s beautiful stuff, eloquent and compassionate. Aside from his epic multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln, he’s probably best remembered for this poem.

The work is read by Roy Trumbull.

Chicago (MP3)

Courtesy of Archive.org

Noel Boggs was one of the finest steel guitarists of his era. He put in time with many of the major Western Swing bands of the 1940s, playing with such luminaries as Bob Wills, Hank Penny, Tommy Duncan, and Spade Cooley. Boggs was an Oklahoman by birth, and a great admirer of fellow Oklahoman Charlie Christian. One can hear the influence of Christian and other jazz greats in Boggs’ playing. His solo lines are fluid, his note choice often surprisingly sophistacated.

This clip comes from a Jimmy Wakely short, circa 1954.

Our host, spry.com, has had difficulty keeping our site online recently. If you’re reading this, it’s probably working. However, the server has been serving blank pages on about one of every three requests. If we are unable to get the level of service we need from spry, we’ll move the site to another hosting provider.

Thanks for your patience.

Here’s another dose of teenage music.

My miserable childhood in Central Ohio was made more tolerable by the friendship of likeminded and very talented musicians. We all went to Columbus’ performing arts high school, Fort Hayes. Although the curriculum there primarily revolved around insufferable whitebread jazz, we soon discovered a shared interest in American indie rock: The Replacements, the Descendents, The Meat Puppets, Black Flag, and Columbus’ own Royal Crescent Mob.

These recordings began with a 4-track tape recorder in a warehouse on the north side of Columbus, a few presidential administrations ago. We recently took them to Mike Hagler to clean them up and add some new overdubs. For more info, see my earlier post on the subject.

Our work could be divided rather neatly using the following taxonomy:

1. songs about bands that were more successful than us and, therefore, we hated;
2. songs about girls that did not like us;
3. songs about being broke and miserable;
4. songs about revenge.

In all we finished enough tracks for a six-song EP. The results, considering the humble beginnings of the tracks, sound surprisingly good. See below for a sample track, which utlizes lyrical themes from items three and four in the aforementioned taxonomy. This is quite possibly the stupidest song ever to name-check a major 20th century American avant-garde composer.

The personnel for the track:

• Joe ‘Jose’ Nelson: drums and percussion
• Kenneth Kip’ Rainey: Guitar and vocals
• Robert ‘Rob’ Wuebker: Bass

Thunderwear: (I’ll Be Your) Janitor (MP3)

More music from the archive… The Hoosier Hotshots were a virtuoso hokum band who rose to fame on Chicago’s WLS National Barn Dance. Most of their material was comprised of likeable novelty tunes, but every once in a while they’d show what they could do with more serious material. This is my favorite Hotshots track ever, and, to the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t ever been reissued on CD. It’s a rock solid performance of the early jazz standard Limehouse Blues.

Hoosier Hotshots: Limehouse Blues (MP3)

Previous Hoosier Hotshots posts in this blog:

Hoosier Hotshots listening room
The Hoosier Hotshots playing Virginia Blues
The Hoosier Hotshots