By Don Jacobson

We’re getting to know the inscrutable Bob Dylan a little better each week as his Theme Time Radio Hour continues through its first month on XM Satellite Radio. Not that he gives us any heart-to-heart, Oprah-style public soul-searching, and that’s probably a good thing, all told. I’m really past the point of caring about that anyway – whatever I may discover now about how he thinks isn’t going to change my life like it may have 30 years ago. In fact, it could probably only lower him in my estimation, and God knows I need to hang on to whatever tattered bits of idealism I have left from my so-called youth.
Instead, Bob continues to let us know him through poetry and music. That’s how it should be. After theme shows about the weather, mothers, drinking and now baseball, I’m really beginning to think Dylan is just a regular ol’ guy at heart. Mom? Booze? Baseball? Hell, sounds like my life. After listening to his shows, I’m becoming convinced that Dylan’s godlike aura came about largely because of his refusal to deal with the voracious publicity machine rather than from any kind of mystical superiority. (See? That’s just the kind of thing I didn’t need to know, dammit! I want to worship my heroes, not go bowling with them!)
However, I’m finding my attempts at describing Dylan’s radio shtick to be insufficient. Nothing I can say can quite capture it. So I’m going to just give up and let those of you who are too cheap to go out and get XM Radio for yourselves to read a transcript of his baseball theme show in late May.

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Posted on May 31, 2006

By Don Jacobson

Whenever I see four guys on stage wearing suits, I can’t help thinking about the Fab Four, with their ultratight action slacks and their skinny ties. And of course the Beatle boots. Funny how rock bands went so quickly from wearing suits to representing everything that was not about suits.
Of course, in country music suits and boots meant something different in the 1960s. It meant the Nashville/Opry thing where dressing up was a statement that you were a real American and certainly not a hippie. It also meant you were upwardly mobile and striving for the mainstream status that that type of sucky corporate country music unfortunately now enjoys – although even there, the suits were jettisoned sometime in the 80s in favor of carefully chosen, faux-cowboy big hats and scrupulously white muscle T’s.
So what to make of a suit-wearing country band nowadays? In the case of Raleigh, North Carolina’s Chatham County Line, the nice threads and ties seem to be the visual manifestation of the band’s utter seriousness about traditional bluegrass music. That seriousness, expressed in throwback virtuoso musicianship on the fiddle, mandolin, banjo, upright bass, and pedal steel, is not-too-subtly mixed with an alt-country acoustic rock streak, a la the Byrds of the Sweetheart of the Rodeo days.

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Posted on May 17, 2006

By Don Jacobson

Cue the thunder and the sound of rain splashing on concrete. A husky-voiced, female announcer says:
“It’s nighttime in the big city. Rain is falling. Fog rolls in from the waterfront. A night shift nurse smokes the last cigarette in her pack. It’s Theme Time Radio Hour, with your host Bob Dylan.”
Then comes that irreplaceable, raspy, moody voice: “It’s time for Theme Time Radio Hour – dreams, schemes and themes.”
And Bob is on the air.

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Posted on May 4, 2006

By Don Jacobson

When I think of the very first wave of early 1980s alternative rock groups – the first inkling that there was something beyond the Bon Jovi/Pat Benatar/Van Halen axis of radio evil – I think, of course, of the Replacements. To me, they were the eye-openers, blasting out of the Twin Cities with something akin to a righteous fury, totally rejecting the stranglehold corporations had put on the music industry.
But now that I think of it, right behind them out of Boston came the Del Fuegos. I bought and loved their Boston, Mass. album on Slash Records, which I think made me realize that alt-rock was bigger than just one group: It was a movement. Brothers Dan and Warren Zanes of the Fuegos (as well as their big admirer Tom Petty) quickly did for alt-rock’s interpretation of garage roots music what the Replacements for its take on punk – redefined it for decades to come.
Still, until I picked up a copy of Warren Zanes’ new solo album, People That I’m Wrong For, on Dualtone Records, I hadn’t thought about them for many years. They and the Replacements both set the pattern for that first splash of great alt-rock bands by blazing to glory around 1984 or so, then signing with major labels, earning snide catcalls of “sellout,” becoming commercial flops and shortly thereafter petering out as spent forces.

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Posted on May 1, 2006

By Don Jacobson

The Internet is the best thing that ever happened to alt-country. That’s because it’s a terrific way to listen to all those (mostly non-commercial) radio stations nationwide and overseas that have a little or a lot of programming devoted to alt-country, honky tonk, country rock, rockabilly, blues, Cajun, zydeco and roots music in general.
Listed below is a day-by-day, hour-by-hour guide to the over-the-air stations I’ve found that have such programming on high-speed internet simulcasts.
Plus, if you listen to these stations, you’ll get to hear who’s playing gigs in towns you’ll never go to . . . as well as traffic on the I-5.
(All times Central. Show descriptions provided from station websites. Last updated: 5/21/2014)

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Posted on April 17, 2006

By The Beachwood Country Affairs Desk

– Wanna know what’s on Neko Case‘s answering machine? Steve Forstgener has the scoop in his Illinois Entertainer cover story this month. It doesn’t look like much in print, but imagine it in Neko’s voice:
“Hey, this is Neko. I am not around. I’m not answering the phone, and I’m not calling anybody back because I can’t. Because I’m working. So if you leave a message, I probably won’t call you back for a month. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you, I’m just not picking up the phone. Thank you for understanding.”

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Posted on March 6, 2006

– Some dude named Bucky Covington covered Garth Brooks‘s Thunder Rolls on American Idol last night, proving that songs by professional hacks that don’t seem like they can be any worse actually can be in the hands of amateur hacks. (Saving grace: “I don’t see Bucky as the star attraction,” said Simon Cowell, “I see him as the supporting act.”) . . .

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Posted on March 2, 2006