Answer songs have a long, mostly inglorious history. There are some great answer songs, such as Kitty Wells’ ‘It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels’, (an answer to Hank Thompson’s ‘Wild Side of Life’, and a rare case where both the original and the answer are of exceptional quality), but most are dreadful and veer dangerously close to song-poem dreck.

My friend Ryan Jerving once said that the key to a successful answer song is to willfully misunderstand the original. Ryan has the distinction of being the only person in history to write an answer song to Freakwater, the Kennett Brothers’ ‘One Big Union’, answering the Freakwater tune of the same name.

I was very pleased to see WFMU’s Beware of the Blog post this beautiful answer song today: Rainbo’s John, You Went Too Far This Time (MP3). In it, a teenage fan expresses outrage at John Lennon’s ‘Two Virgins’ record sleeve, featuring the former Beatle wearing nothing but Yoko Ono.

Rainbo, not to be confused with pint-size metal maven Ronnie James Dio’s ‘Rainbow’, is a very young Sissy Spacek, and she gives an appealing performance here. The production values are higher than your average answer song, and it’s a well-written tune (if you can get past the cringe-worthy lyrics). The switch to 6/8 for the chorus is a nice touch. Ed Burch first played this tune for me a couple years ago, and I’m glad to be able to snag it in MP3 form.

John, You Went Too Far This Time (MP3)
Courtesy of WFMU’s most excellent Beware of the Blog

Today’s post is more reposty goodness for the holiday season. Enjoy

Here’s another song from the Kennett Brothers’ long out of print and now ridiculously pricey Xmas CD, Santa is Real. This time, it’s the Kennett’s performance of the Marty Robbins tune, ‘One of You in Every Size‘. The lineup as best I remember:
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This is a repost of a post I wrote last year. Enjoy, while I take the rest of the day off.

Santa is Real, the Christmas record my old band the Kennett Brothers put together, is long out-of-print, and, thanks to the efforts of obsessive Wilco completists, prohibitively expensive on the second-hand market. In the spirit of the season, I’m posting an MP3 of one of the tracks, our cover of the Louvin Brothers song ‘A Shutin at Christmas‘.
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I stumbled across this earlier this week when I had my MP3 player set to random — a Kennett Brothers recording of ‘Easy to Love‘ I had completely forgotten about. The song was written by Edith Frost, a Chicagoan who now lives in the San Francisco area. Edith recorded it on her very fine Wonder Wonder record.

She described the Kennett’s version as such on her Twitter page:

Listening to Edward Burch covering “Easy To Love”. It’s very surreal, like I just unearthed an early version with the vocals at half-speed.

The track comes from a batch of seven songs we recorded in June, 2002, as a wedding present for Edward’s cousin, released on a run of a dozen CD-Rs. All the songs were recorded and mixed pretty hastily, so I’m pleasantly surprised at how decent they sound.

The personnel for the recording:

• Edward Burch: acoustic guitar and vocals
• Andy Leach: steel guitar and backing vocals
• Kenneth Rainey: bass and backing vocals

The sessions were done in my basement using a fairly limited number of mics. The acoustic guitar and vocals were all done with a Rode NT1, the bass with a Beta 52, and the steel guitar with an SM 57.

I tried something different with the bass to get a more unusual tone. I attached a contact transducer to the body of an old Danelectro bass, and ran the signal through my acoustic guitar preamp. I blended that signal with the output of an old National valve bass amp.

The mix is mine, and was done ‘in the box’ using Cool Edit Pro on a crappy Windows machine that has since been relegated to the scrapheap.

Easy to Love (MP3)

Previous Kennett Brothers posts:
The Kennett Brothers play music for Norwegian Fishing Shows
Merry Christmas from the Kennett Brothers, part II
Merry Christmas from the Kennett Brothers
Atom Tan, as performed by the Kennett Brothers

It’s Labor Day weekend, so here’s a repost of one of my favorite labor songs, penned by my old Kennett Brothers bandmate Ryan Jerving. The song is ‘Surplus Labor’, and describes one of the fundamental principles of a market-based economy. Infotaining.

Surplus Labor (MP3)

The personnel, as best I can remember it:

1. Ed Burch: acoustic guitar, vocals
2. Ryan Jerving: electric guitar, vocals
3. Kenneth P.W. Rainey: mandolin, dobro, and bass
4. Sean Fogarty: drums

About ten years ago, my band the Kennett Brothers was asked to provide soundtrack music for a Norwegian fishing show. Always keen to break into the Scandanavian market, we holed up in the Champaign loft that Ed Burch shared with Jay Bennett, and spent a day recording a soundtrack.

Everyone contributed material to the sessions. This song, dubbed ‘Hank’s Fishin’ Song’, was what I used to use to warm up on steel guitar. We recorded several different versions of this tune over the course of the day. One was a slow waltz that featured Ryan Jerving’s excellent yodeling. Tangleweed adapted that waltz version on our last record as ‘Last Call Waltz’. This version was the first, done as a straightforward stomp, called ‘Hank’s Fishin’ Song’.

The personnel:

• Edward Burch: acoustic guitar
• Ryan Jerving: baritone ukulele and electric guitar
• David Wesley: bass
• Kenneth Rainey: pedal steel guitar and drums

Hank’s Fishin’ Song (MP3)

Edward Burch engineered the original recordings. The mix is mine, done “in the box” with CoolEdit Pro about five years ago.

Here’s another song from the Kennett Brothers’ long out of print and now ridiculously pricey Xmas CD, Santa is Real. This time, it’s the Kennett’s performance of the Marty Robbins tune, ‘One of You in Every Size‘. The lineup as best I remember:
(more…)

Santa is Real, the Christmas record my old band the Kennett Brothers put together, is long out-of-print, and, thanks to the efforts of obsessive Wilco completists, prohibitively expensive on the second-hand market. In the spirit of the season, I’m posting an MP3 of one of the tracks, our cover of the Louvin Brothers song ‘A Shutin at Christmas‘.
(more…)