Friday, December 3, 2021

My Thanksgiving 2021 Playlist

My family gets together for Thanksgiving every year with a huge crowd (26 adults and kids this year!) so I like to put together a playlist to keep the cleanup crew moving. I throw in a couple of oldies along with my favorite new songs, some slow ones and lots of rockers. Here's my playlist for this year.

Spotify link

We kicked it off with Layla, the classic from Derek and the Dominos, with Eric Clapton and Duane Allman on guitars. Can you believe that I’ve been doing this for over 10 years and haven’t included this one yet? 

Then I went to the husband and wife duo of Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Blount, called The War and Treaty for Are You Ready to Love Me? Last year I included their 5 More Minutes.

Next is Las Vegas’s The Killers’ Quiet Town, a very Bruce-like song about the effect of opioids on a small town:

When we first heard opioid stories

They were always in whispering tones

Now banners of sorrow mark the front steps of childhood homes

Parents wept through daddy's girl eulogies

And merit badge milestones with their daughters and sons

Laying there lifeless in their suits and gowns

Somebody's been keepin' secrets

In this quiet town

Allison Russell is my singer of the year and Persephone is my song of the year. Russell was part of Our Native Daughters, four Black women led by Rhiannon Giddens (I included their Moon Meets the Sun last year) as well as the duo Birds of Chicago with her husband J.T. Nero. Outside Child (nominated for a Best Americana Album Grammy) is her first solo album. Russell’s back story is compelling (see this NPR story). The album celebrates her survival from a decade of abuse at the hands of a stepfather as well as the survival of enslaved people (she wrote Quasheba about her enslaved foremother for the Our Native Daughters album). More of Allison Russell later.


Brandi Carlile capped a busy few years with another Grammy-nominated song, Right On Time. (Record and Song of the year, Best Pop Solo Performance). For you Brandi fans definitely listen to her new memoir, Broken Horses. It’s like she’s in the room telling you her stories and then, at the end of each chapter, she picks up a guitar or walks over to the piano and plays you the songs she mentioned.

We kicked off last year’s set with Letter To You from Bruce Springsteen’s album of the same name. Here’s another great one from that album, Power of Prayer:

Last call, the bouncer shuts the door

This magic moment drifts across the floor

As Ben E. King's voice fills the air

Baby, that's the power of prayer

Next is one of my favorite Maren Morris songs, My Church. I wanted to include this last year but we already had all of her stuff with Highwomen as well as her BLM-supporting song, Better Than We Found It (which just got nominated this year for Best Country Song).

When Hank brings the sermon

And Cash leads the choir

It gets my cold cold heart burning

Hotter than a ring of fire

When this wonderful world gets heavy

And I need to find my escape

I just keep the wheels rolling, radio scrolling

'Til my sins wash away

Then, just ‘cause there’s never enough Chicks, here’s Tonight’s The Heartaches On Me from back in their classic, pre-cancellation phase. Natalie Maines’ vocal rocks!

Jason Isbell promised he would record an album of Georgia music if Biden won the state. The result, Georgia Blue, came out a few weeks ago, with all proceeds going to Black Voters Matter, Fair Fight, and Georgia STAND-UP. I picked his rendition of Otis Redding’s I’ve Been Loving You Too Long. Nobody is going to top Otis’s version, with Booker T, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and the Memphis Horns but Isbell gives it a good shot.

So, we need a little Otis. I first heard That’s How Strong My Love Is on Out of Our Heads, the Rolling Stones’ 4th album, in 1965, my introduction to Otis.

Right before the Otis song on that album is The Last Time. My wife Leslie and I saw the Stones two weeks ago in Austin, at their last big show of what may be their last tour. No, they didn’t play The Last Time!

Switching back to some new songs, the Black Pumas are one of Austin’s hottest bands. We were privileged to hear lead singer Eric Burton do a solo on Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, just him and his guitar, at Austin City Limits Festival this year.

To wrap up the new songs, here’s Allison Russell’s Grammy-nominated Nightflyer (Best American Roots Performance and Song):


Yeah, I'm a midnight rider

Stone bonafide night flyer

I'm an angel of the morning too

Promise that the dawn will bring you, you

Now, a bunch of fun oldies. Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl is a classic.

Written and sung by band leader Willy Braun, Wicked Twisted Road is one of my favorite Reckless Kelly songs. Braun and brothers and cousins moved to Central Texas from Idaho in the 90s and have been local favorites ever since.

 

My first love was an angry painful song

I wanted one so bad I went and did everything wrong

A lesson in reality would come before too long

Yeah, my first love was an angry painful song

My first love was a wicked twisted road

I hit the million mile mark at seventeen years old

I never saw the rainbow, much less a pot of gold

Yeah, my first love was a wicked twisted road

 

Next, a really fun song from the Sir Douglas Quintet, going back all the way to 1969, Nuevo Laredo. Sir Douglas is Doug Sahm from San Antonio and that’s his buddy, the incomparable Augie Meyers, on the Vox organ.

 

In a little border town

Way down there in Nuevo Laredo Mexico

Spied a seƱorita there

Wind blows through her long black hair

As I cut a trail on the way to Boys Town

 

Smoke and drink the night away

In a dimly lit cafe

Long hairs were a novelty to the people that were on the scene

We picked the blues 'til early dawn

Everybody sang along

We had such a ball in Nuevo Laredo

 

I included Jerry Jeff Walker’s Mr. Bojangles on last year's set, to honor a great songwriter on his passing, but Jerry Jeff was also an incredible interpreter of others’ songs. Here’s his version of Michael Burton’s Night Rider’s Lament.

 

She asked me

Why does he ride for his money

Why does he rope for short pay

He ain't gettin' nowhere

And he's losin' his share

He must've gone crazy out there

 

Then they've never seen the Northern Lights

They've never seen a hawk on the wing

They've never seen the spring hit the Great Divide

Lord they've never heard ole' camp cookie sing

 

Sticking with Texas singer/songwriters, here’s Robert Earl Keen’s Jesse With The Long Hair, one of my favorite REK songs. A whole Western movie in a 4-minute song!

Next, to honor the 50th anniversary of Duane Allman’s passing, the Allman Brothers Band’s Blue Sky. This is one of the last recordings Duane played on. Rowland Archer and I saw the band play this great Dickey Betts song, which hadn’t come out on record yet, on August 15, 1971, at the Academy of Music in NYC. Duane died two months later. The interplay between Duane and Dickey's guitars gets me every time I hear the song, even 50 years later. Wikipedia's Blue Sky page breaks it down: Allman's solo beginning 1:07, Betts joining in a shared melody line at 2:28, followed by Betts's solo at 2:37.

This past Tuesday Leslie and I saw Duane Betts, Dickey’s son, play this as part of the Allman Betts Band, which he formed with Gregg Allman’s son Devon and original bassist Berry Oakley’s son Berry Duane Oakley.

George Frayne, leader of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airman, passed this year. He was one of the first guys to do hippies playing country, with Seeds and Stems (Again) the classic from their first album, 1971’s Lost in the Ozone.

And we’re going to finish with the Storyteller, Tom T. Hall, who also passed away this year. Here’s one of my favorites, Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine.