I had a busy day today, meeting with staffers for Representatives and Senators, advocating on behalf of the Internet Radio Fairness Act and its Senate equivalent. The staffers I met with were all hip to the issue. They’re generally under 30, and are users of sites like Pandora.com, live365.com, and similar online music sources. We found a receptive audience wherever we went, irrespective of party affiliation.

I also did a briefing in the House Judiciary Committee room, for staffers of Representatives on the Committee. Again, they were a young audience, and many were already well-informed on the issue.

I also met briefly with staff from Senator Harkin’s office and Senator Kerry’s office. They were receptive and will likely come down on the right side of this issue.

Please visit savenetradio.org for more information on what you can do to help preserve music diversity on the internet.

Here are a couple previous posts on the subject:

Save internet radio: update from Washington
To Washington to try to save internet radio

I sat on a panel for a briefing in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee room this afternoon. The audience were Senate staffers. There were other interesting folks on the panel. Nate from the Decemberists sat on my left (in an interesting twist of fate, our bassist Paul Wargaski was Nate’s bass tech at the Pitchfork festival last summer). Other panelists included a gent named Nadir from Detroit, Halina from the Mother Jones Band, and a nice guy from Oklahoma City whose name eludes me at the moment.

The panelists all talked about how internet radio has empowered artists to reach new listeners. I emphasized how internet radio has been an especially important tool for independent artists, as it removes many of the obstacles we face in getting our music out to the widest possible audience.

For more information, please visit savenetradio.org.

I’m flying to Washington, D.C., tomorrow to help the good folks from savenetradio.org try to achieve passage of the Internet Radio Fairness act. If you haven’t already, please contact your senators and congressperson, and urge them to support this import piece of legislation.

SaveNetRadio.org has tools that you can use to send a message to your representatives.

We got a very kind review from the Dutch-language Moors Magazine (moorsmagazine.com). Being the hopeless monoglot I am, I ran the review through the babelfish translation engine. Apparently, we are delicious. You can read the full review on the Moors Magazine site.

Here’s an article I wrote on the legendary western swing steel guitarist Earl ‘Joaquin’ Murphey, who played with Spade Cooley, Tex Williams, the Plainsmen, and other West Coast acts in the 1940s and 1950s. To merely call him the best steel guitarist of his era is to do his work a disservice. He is arguably the greatest soloist country music has ever produced.

Murphey seldom granted interviews. Why he chose to speak with me I don’t know, but I’m grateful he did. I was also fortunate to interview some other significant players for this article, such as Speedy West, Herb Remington, Paul Westmoreland, and Ernie Ball. Yes, that Ernie Ball. Ernie Ball worked as a steel guitarist in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, and his father was Joaquim Murphey’s first steel guitar teacher.

It’s hard for me to look at the old JCM articles without a bit of real sadness. It was once among the finest music magazines I’ve ever seen, admirable in both its breadth and depth, and always a good read. It all fell apart in 2002, though, when editor Chris Dickinson and researcher Ronnie Pugh were dismissed in an ugly Stalinist purge. They deserved better.

So, because it doesn’t seem to be available elsewhere on the internets, and because they have the internet on computers now, here is my article on Earl ‘Joaquin’ Murphey in PDF format:

Download article (PDF)

By the way, please note the spelling of Murphey’s surname. It’s often (incorrectly) spelled Murphy.

We got a nice mention in the Lawrence Journal World’s Wakarusa summary, courtesy of festival organizer Brett Mosiman:

Mosiman says part of Wakarusa’s appeal is turning on veteran festivalgoers to new music.

“The fun part for me is some of the Campground Stage bands like Tangleweed or Dirtfoot that nobody had ever heard of. We bring them in and a few 100 people stumble into it, then write a (Web site) thread like, ‘That melted my face.’ I’ve always thought that’s what Wakarusa was about, more than headliners,” he says.

You can read the whole article on the Lawrence Journal World’s site.

Many thanks to Brett and all the good folks at the festival for having us. We had a great time.

Here’s an article I wrote on legendary Western Swing musician and arranger Larry ‘Pedro’ DePaul for the Journal of Country Music back in 1999. He was the architect behind the sound of the great Spade Cooley and Tex Williams bands of the 1940s.

At the time I wrote this, the JCM was among the most consistently interesting and well-written music magazines I had ever seen. It was edited by Chris Dickinson, a former (and now current) Chicagoan, and run out of the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. Input from distinguished researchers at the Hall of Fame, such as Ronnie Pugh and Bob Pinson, kept the standards high. A few years later, they underwent a Stalinist purge that sent Dickinson and Ronnie Pugh packing. Bob Pinson quickly resigned in protest over the appalling treatment his colleagues received. Since then, the magazine has been a vapid rag.

And now, because I couldn’t find it anywhere else on the interwebs, I present my article on Larry ‘Pedro’ DePaul:.

Download article (PDF)

By the way, knucklehead that I am, I mistranscribed DePaul’s wife’s name in the article. It’s Evelyn, not Beverly. My apologies.