Interview with Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir: Bob Keelaghan | Sound Authors Radio
December 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment
[Music]
Dr. Kent: That was a song by the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir called Dumb It Down from their new album and I am excited to have one of the members on the show today. His name is Bob Keelaghan. Welcome to the show.
Bob Keelaghan: Well, thanks for having me, I’m much obliged.
Dr. Kent: I came across this music while surfing CDbaby and what a fascinating sound. Its half old time music, half Tom Waits. Where did you come upon this sound?
Bob Keelaghan: Well I don’t know I guess its sort of like for me personally its I grew up in a household where there was rock and roll from my brothers and sister and folk music from my parents and in my fathers case Irish music. So I had a mind towards both worlds. My initial first love was rock. When you’re a kid you listen to like your Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and stuff and as you start getting more mature as a person and musician you want to find out where that comes from. Also I had teenage exposure to Stevie Ray Vaughn.
For me it took going back further and further to find those sources and it just kind of led me back to early delta blues and also country music. So it’s kind of like a convergence of going back to the source but also have a knack. I guess it’s a contemporary perspective from rock and roll and some weird stuff like Tom Waits, ### and other innovators. Judd Palmer who is the other name, musical guy in a band, he had more of a love for John Lee Hooker when he was a teenager as well. And I think some of that early blues sort of led him back too, like those same sort of sources. And that’s what I’ve started going for you know?
Dr. Kent: Do you check out the early records from the 20s? some of the style that you all sing in is very reminiscent of that early rough blues straight off of the streets; kind of yell as loud as you can so people on the streets stop by and give you some money kind of blues.
Bob Keelaghan: Yeah definitely; like myself I’m a big fan of people like Skip James, River Davis, Booker White all of those people like that and I know Judd was a big Howard Wolff fan as well and Howard Wolff got his talent from people like Charlie Patton. When I sort of deeply got into this music is was just the idea that like listening to those old recordings from the late 20s or early 30s, you get by all that scratchiness on it and you realize that everybody can sing, everyone can play, there’s no faking it.
If you play the house party somewhere in the southern united states in the 1930s or if you’re playing a house party anywhere with that kind of music in that era, you don’t have an amplifier to rely on. You’ve just got your instrument and your voice and you had to be heard, whereas nowadays if you’re making a record you can rely on the studio. You can rely on an amplifier to get your noise across. But paying attention to the way they did things back then its a lot more pure, a lot more direct I guess.
Dr. Kent: That’s what’s so fascinating about coming across your record; it was really a surprise to find a band that’s really getting out there. There are a few out there, there’s a few bands that can really play street music. For example, what’s their name from oh I can’t remember. A live show from you guys must be the way to see you and I read that you were just in the UK.
Bob Keelaghan: Yeah, we just did a five week tour of the UK and Ireland.
Dr. Kent: How were you received?
Bob Keelaghan: Oh tremendously, it went way better than we ever could have expected. We did a bunch of festivals and club shows and there wasn’t a dog in the bunch. So it was pretty tremendous.
Dr. Kent: And it’s neat. Once you search out fans of this kind of music they’re pretty die hard and what fascinates me is I’m a huge fan of Captain Beefheart and the weird Tom Waites stuff. This is so much there but at the same time its really not. This is really true ethnic music. Did you write all these tunes? Are some of them public domain? What’s the story on that?
Bob Keelaghan: This is our third CD and on each of those we’ve got a mix of originals and covers. I don’t think we’ve ever gone more than about three covers per CD. On the new one our covers are kind of straight up. I mean the Funhouse Song and ### Express and there’s also a Balfo Brothers Song called Vows to Balfa and its just kind of wherever our listening takes us. At certain times we look for inspiration in what you do and sometimes it goes back to dredging up an old song and just reworking it. Its either I’m sitting around by myself or Judd is sitting around by himself and we’ll be playing the guitar or banjo and something will come out. You know, one of these songs will come out and we just bring it to the other guys.
Dr. Kent: How did you go about writing a song in this style? What are these songs about? Are they ramps? Are they personal? Do you write love songs? Do they just come out by the sound? How do you do it?
Bob Keelaghan: Its probably all of that comes into it. I think it depends on what we’re going through at the time I guess. Like our last CD Fighting in Onions, I think there was a lot of despair on that one probably just because various personal circumstances going on. So it was the sort of thing where after we recorded it I realized there was a fair bit of bleakness in it. The new one, I think it’s more uplifting. There’s some of it is kind of funny when you see reviews coming back on things.
The new one I think there is both just kind of philosophical thoughts about the world like in Judd’s case there’s song like 10,000 which is his ode to nature in 10,000 years. Or Go Back Home, which is the idea of just going back home after a long time and seeing how much has changed and maybe how you don’t fit in. For my part, I’m probably a bit more of a ranter but I guess maybe I kind of rant in a vague way. I think for me it’s just like what’s on my mind, whatever I’ve got to get out. Maybe it’s either a mourning death or there a bee in my bonnet I’ve got to get out and that makes me feel better.
Dr. Kent: What’s the next step for the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir?
Bob Keelaghan: We’ve got to do some shows over the side of the Atlantic, depending on when it fits into our schedule respectively. We don’t know; there’s talk of going back to the UK for more shows. I think also with this new CD I think we’re sort of pushing some of the boundaries of sound. I think we’re at the point now where we’ve got to throw out a few more curve balls. So we’re going to start writing again and see where that takes us. We’re not the sort of guys that plan ahead too much; circumstances come up and we go with it. Wherever the road takes us.
Dr. Kent: The last question I’ve got for you and then I’ll play the track you were just talking about Go Back Home. One question about the title of your band. Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir. Now did mountain gospel come first and you said well we got to say we’re agnostic or how did that come out?
Bob Keelaghan: There are a number of stories about how it came about. Several of the bands I think actually were playing in a gospel choir beforehand. It was a weird gospel choir; it dealt with spiritual issues like it was a weird thing they got tied up in. When that band split the other members of that choir obtained legal rights to the name. It split because I think Judd and Vlad were in that band and they wanted to go in a heavier direction and basically because of the legal issues is where the agnostic came out of as well. They were sort of tied more to the idea of a heavier agnostic sound as opposed to like a new age spiritualist sound.
Dr. Kent: Well I love the title; also 10,000. There’s a picture of a $10,000 bill. Explain that quickly and then we’ll go.
Bob Keelaghan: I was in a Chinese grocery store and I saw a package of banknotes and things that Chinese Buddhists burn at certain festivals to enrich their ancestors in the afterlife. I was looking at that and we have this song called 10,000 years and it turned out also to be the budget record. The bill was in the denomination 10,000 and I thought this is a great coincidence and it would look really good as a cover. So we went with that and within that we play music that’s based on ### and this is our way of saying thanks.
Dr. Kent: Well it’s been a real honor speaking with Bob Keelaghan with Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir. Here is a tune called Go Back Home. You wrote this tune?
Bob Keelaghan: Judd wrote that one.
Dr. Kent: It’s been an honor and I’ll continue to check out everything you do.
Bob Keelaghan: Well thank you very much; it’s an honor on our part too, thanks.
Dr. Kent: Here’s Go Back Home from the latest album 10,000.
[Music]
Dr. Kent: That was a song from the album 10,000 by the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir. We’ll see you next week. This has been another great show and my name is Dr. Kent and this is Sound Authors. Have a safe week.
Interview with Andrew Calhoun | Sound Authors Radio
December 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment
[Music]
Dr. Kent: Welcome to the show Andrew Calhoun who is on the line.
Andrew Calhoun: Yes, it is I.
Dr. Kent: Well that’s a beautiful song; Jaybird and Sparrow from the album Bound To Go by Waterbug Records. Now this is interesting. This is a bunch of spirituals and shout songs. I love these old records that you got some of these from. Tell us about where you found these songs.
Andrew Calhoun: A lot of them are in old books that are out of print. Jaybird and Sparrow was in a collection by Thomas Kelley who was a chemistry professor at the University in Nashville and he did a collection of these. His parents had been born slaves. He was born in 1870 so he was able to collect a lot of music from the European white collectors who were unable to get to and especially a song like that, that has some sort of the social attitudes about fairness of labor practice. His book was called Negro Folk Rhymes and it came out in 1922 and there’s a number of good books. There’s also some early recordings from people like Don Lomax but actually more songs in this project were from old books so I just go through and find some words you like.
Dr. Kent: What inspired you to do this collection of 35 spirituals and folk songs? After doing several albums of your own music and things like that?
Andrew Calhoun: I’ve always liked the spirituals and this project is really in memory of my mother and was attributed by her passing. My whole family gathered and it was sort of spontaneous but we ended up singing for several hours and one of the songs we sang was All Gods Children Got Shoes. Kind of when I get to heaven I’m going to put on my shoes and walk all over God’s Heaven. Those were songs she’d sung to us as kids and the song really struck me at that moment.
Because my mother hadn’t been able to walk for more than a year and I wanted to find out more about the people who gave us such a great song to help you through an experience like that. So after a few months of collecting spirituals I saw a connection to African religion and I started reading up on that and what I found was a lot. A lot survived the trip and kind of descents of ancestor connections and so forth that came from African religion.
Dr. Kent: You do also tend to your albums have kind of schematic, thematic elements. For example, Telfur’s Cows is a ballad of Scotland and Shadow of a Wing. You tie it together on your website with a description of your spirituality and things like that. How do you go about sitting down saying okay I need to do this album?
Andrew Calhoun: That’s a good question. I find that when I’m doing a creative project that things happen and I kind of let them change under my hand and maybe my original conception will shift and change a little bit. This project changed when I found Kelley’s collection of songs because I just didn’t even know they existed, some of those African American folk songs. But they were written out of our history so I’m trying to revive some of those.
Sometimes I don’t know, you have one idea and then it kind of changes according to the material you’re working with. The Scottish Ballads were a long time love of mine and I just translated them so Americans could follow the story better. I translated them to American dialogue so they’re easier to follow.
Dr. Kent: You’ve been doing this for a few decades, this folk singing. How have things changed for you?
Andrew Calhoun: They haven’t changed that much you know. The more the technology changes the more its still a struggle for me to make music. With all the downloads now or whatever it is, the price of gas, the cost of touring, so pretty much if you’re going to be a folk singer, if you work real hard you can get by but that’s about it. As far as it changing, when I was young there was more of an urban sort of folk singing that was connected to maybe anti-war politics and that urban edge to it.
So there would be clubs in the city where you’d play and it was kind of a community around that and its kind of changed to where I play a lot of house concerts in living rooms and there’s the concert series at the Unitarian Church but the club scene isn’t what it was and that may be true in other forms of music as people don’t go out to hear live music much but house concerts are wonderful. They’re real simple to put on and always very rewarding.
Dr. Kent: You have a quote from Dave Carter on your website and he’s I believe you’re talking about Dave Carter from Tracy Grammer and Dave Carter?
Andrew Calhoun: Correct, yes.
Dr. Kent: We lost him a couple of years ago and it seems like he said there’s no better songwriter alive than you. Did you have a relationship with him?
Andrew Calhoun: We were really good friends. I moved from Chicago out to Portland Oregon in 1999 and I played my first gig in Portland with Dave and Tracy who were writers around there and he helped introduce me to Portland and sent me a lot of songwriting students. He was certainly the best songwriter I ever met and very encouraging to me. Yeah, he passed away in July 2002 leaving four Dave and Tracy albums behind. I was very fortunate to get to know him; I never met anybody like him.
Dr. Kent: I saw him and Tracy Grammer about a year before he died and they were incredible, they had great energy together. Folk singing is so much about the live concert and talking about your songs and engaging the audience. Is that why you’re onstage?
Andrew Calhoun: I love performing and its funny, people ask you about your albums but to me it’s always about the next show and its what can happen in a room with people. Sometimes you just see people relax and let go their tensions and see their faces open up and shine. It’s just the greatest reward and every audience is different. I read Chuck Barry’s book and he said at the end of it, “Audiences are different than they were in the 50s. Every audience is different, it’s different every night and that’s why it’s so much fun.” The audiences as much of the show as the person onstage.
Dr. Kent: Folk audiences are one of the last remaining audiences that you can really interact with.
Andrew Calhoun: Well yes, especially in a small setting. A house concert you don’t even use a PA and people can talk back to you. I saw an English singer recently named Pete Morgan and the audience just kept answering back and forth, it was really like a living room show and people talked back. I like that interaction, its one of the great things about spirituals. They’re designed for dissertation. By the end of the first verse you know the response line and people can jump right in.
Dr. Kent: That’s an interesting thing. A lot of us have grown up with a lot of spirituals. For example you’ve got a song on there well, I won’t go there, but a lot of us grew up with a lot of these spirituals and you’re doing different versions of them that are from some older books or a different recording. Michael Haul The Boat Ashore, things like that. How much fun is it for you to see people’s reactions and say oh, I’ve never heard that version?
Andrew Calhoun: That song in particular got radio play because people are sort of familiar with the other one. Yeah it’s nice. The folk songs in sort of their natural sphere they’re always changing and there’s many versions of them. I mean that’s why they’re folk songs but they’re passed along the way jokes are now, you never hear quite the same version. So its very improvisational, a live kind of a form and when you hear different versions of a song, you get a sense of that. I never knew the story of Michael Rode the Boat Ashore, its kind of a folksy hymn along with Kumbayah, which is another song people don’t understand.
Both came from the Sea Islands. Kumbayah means come by here my Lord, it’s a prayer and people say its not enough to get together and sing Kumbayah, they’re kind of putting down some people; it’s their prayer. Well it’s like saying it’s not enough to say The Lords Prayer, sometimes that’s all you can do. Sometimes that’s exactly what you need to do. Michael Haul the Boat Ashore was rowing song from the Sea Islands and directed to the Archangel Michael. They would sing it when the tide was against them so it was kind of a work song and a religious song. I didn’t know any of this stuff when I started researching it. Light bulbs kept going on and I said what is with this song; then I knew.
There’s so much history around it. When I did the Scottish ballads it was kind of just about the songs for me but this project really drew me into it. I’m just finishing a book on the civil war and understand the African American story in America and also in my genre of folk music which has become largely a white genre and I’m trying to understand the reasons for that. I’ve kind of gotten some clues but it’s nice to be on this project and have an integrated group that’s working together and it’s been really, really fun.
Dr. Kent: I know the song No More Cane on the Brazes; I know that song from my own work and I’m fascinated by that one because the cane workers down in Texas, what they said the average life span of those guys was something like six years once they started working in the cane fields.
Andrew Calhoun: Yeah, people know that song but the story of that song; people need to know the convict leasing that went on after slavery really, I mean they kept slavery going in the prison system and to some degree they’ve kept on running the prison system for profit and that’s something that I didn’t want this project not to address. I wanted to talk about the fact that these problems are not in the past. They are still with us and also the way for people to endure slavery overcame them with this kind of spiritual sensibility.
It’s really a remarkable thing and I think of them as teachers. People don’t like to look back at slavery and it’s shameful and shame on both sides but the goal of the story is the grace with which those people endured their experience. They were just amazing individuals. I also wanted to get more of a sense of the individuals behind the songs on this record because people know a few spirituals but it almost has become a generic sense of Negro spiritual instead of well some artistry; it wasn’t people made this up you know. So I’m trying to connect the story to the song and that song No More Cane on the Brazes is a heck of a song. I mean it’s like a movie or a book; it captures a lot of what people went through on those work farms.
Dr. Kent: It’s been a real honor speaking with Andrew Calhoun about his music and his latest album Bound to Go. Thank you so much for being on the show. I’m going to play a little bit of Roll Jordan Roll off that album before we run out of time.
Andrew Calhoun: Great, thank you very much.
[Music]
Dr. Kent: That was a little bit of Roll Jordan Roll by Andrew Calhoun, a beautiful tune. It was an honor speaking with him and all the guests on the show today and we’ll see you next week.
Interview with Dale Ann Bradley | Sound Authors Radio
November 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. My next guest is on the show is going to be Dale Ann Bradley an incredible songwriter and singer from down in Kentucky. I’m going to play a song of hers until we can get her on the line. This song is from her latest album and the song is called Rita Mae, it’s the title track, the lead track on that album. Hold on one second and let me play that song.
Dale Ann Bradley: Oh hello and thank you for the invitation. I’m thrilled to talk with you.
Blind Boys of Alabama | Gospel Music
October 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment
It was a great honor to speak to Jimmy Carter of the Blind Boys of Alabama, and his 7 decade career in the music industry. More information about the Blind Boys of Alabama from Wikipedia:
The Blind Boys of Alabama are a gospel group from Alabama that first formed at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in 1939. The three main vocalists of the group and their drummer/percussionist are all blind. As of 2008, they continue to tour nationally and internationally, led by the soulful Jimmy Lee Carter singing lead vocals. Mr. Carter is one of the original members from the Alabama Institute for Negro Blind and the Happyland Jubilee Singers (the precursor to the Blind Boys of Alabama). In 2006, Clarence Fountain, the group’s former long-time lead vocalist and founding member limited his touring for health reasons. A third founding member, George Scott, died on March 9, 2005 at the age of 75. Releases by the group in recent years have been favorites at the Grammy Awards—they won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album every year between 2002 to 2005. The Blind Boys of Alabama were inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2007. Their rendition of Tom Waits‘ “Way Down in the Hole” was used as the theme song of the HBO series The Wire in its first season. Their cover of Ben Harper’s “I Shall Not Walk Alone” was featured in the first season of ABC’s Lost, in the episode “Confidence Man”.
Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir | Songs
October 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment
About the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir: Rare is the band that can captivate both punk rock kids and folk music fans. Rare still is a band that can do this by playing a ferocious combination of traditional blues, Appalachian folk, and ragged gospel. But The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir does just that.Formed from the ashes of several wildly divergent Calgary bands, the Agnostics began creating their strange brew just three years ago. FeaturingJudd Palmer on vocals, banjo, and harmonica and Vladimir Sobolewskion stand-up bass (both of whom were members of the now defunct Great Uncle Bull), guitarist/vocalist Bob Keelaghan (formerly of the Puritans), and drummer Jay Woolley (note that Woolley departed in 2007 and was replaced by Peter Balkwill), the group claims they were “founded in an effort to forge a kind of gospel for the unbeliever.” To judge by their performances, they have succeeded and then some.The intimacy and power of their live show leaves usually noisy clubs rapt with attention. Between Palmer’s unholy harmonica playing and the from-the-pit-of-his-stomach vocal delivery, and Keelaghan’s dizzying guitar work, the band commands their audience’s attention with ease. The songs sound as though they have been squeezed through the ages, from the deep South by way of Chicago blues, and there are no gimmicks or artifice to get in the way. The Agnostics have remained untouched by the trend in roots music traditionalism, as it seems everybody else is simply finding places the Agnostics have already been. Instead, the band remains focused squarely on celebrating the various styles they have forged into one uncompromising sound.The Agnostics’ power is accompanied with an obvious respect for the styles the quartet explores in their music. While their sets are good natured and punctuated with humour, there is no kitsch about what they do. The honesty comes out in their original music, which could only sound more authentic if it were accompanied by the pops and crackles of old vinyl. While modern recording technology hardly affords the luxury of such character, this band has gone for the next best thing, opting for a recording [St. Hubert] that features entirely live performances, straight off the floor with no studio gimmickry or technology to help them out. It is yet another extension of the band’s ethic, and the music suffers nothing from this simple approach.All the members of the Agnostics have lengthy resumes, and numerous creative endeavours: Palmer, for instance, writes children’s books, and is a puppeteer. So when the band does perform, their pure enjoyment of playing together colours the entire affair. It is an infectiuous feeling, and perhaps explains why the Agnostics appeal to so many damn people.- Derek MacEwan, from the 2003 Calgary Folk Music Festival Guide.


























