I made a Christmas present today. Can’t be talked about. You never know who reads this stuff. And another present arrived. Ssssh, don’t tell anyone.
Christmas? I am in no way prepared for the Christmas season. I never really am. But it doesn’t seem like that time of the year should be sneaking up on us. It never really should. But all of this happens every year.
If I wrote about that today, what would I do in the next six weeks? I should get back to grading, anyway.
I started the week with 148 items to grade, and I’ll finish those up tonight. It’ll be a fury. Or a flurry. It’ll probably be fuzzy.
Let’s return to the Re-Listening project. In the car, I am playing all of my old CDs in the order of their acquisition. And I’m writing about them here, occasionally, to pad out days like today. These aren’t music reviews, because who needs that. But they are sometimes a good excuse to dredge up a memory or two. They’re always an excuse to put some good music here.
And this good music is from Will Hoge. He’s from Nashville, and he fits the overlapping areas of Americana and country these days, but his debut was pure blue bar rock ‘n’ roll. He had a band that almost made it, then toured the South as a solo act with a supporting band. Dan Baird stood there and played guitar next to him, so it was basically a coronation. Carousel came out in 2001, and this song broke speakers all over alt rock stations.
I loved it immediately, it was the frenetic pace, the driving rhythm section, the desperate way he was screaming out the lyrics. Hey, it was 2001, but it was five or six years before I picked up this record.
It’s a debut album, which is great, but also limited. He was still growing into his craft. And I’ve yet to see him live, but it looks like a good time.
Here’s the title track.
Somehow, this was one of those CD mixes, one with a provenance I’ve forgotten. But whoever made this did me a real solid, or maybe I knew what I was doing, because there are five live Will Hoge tracks tacked onto the back, including this phenomenal Bill Withers cover.
He’s got a peppy little version of “Mess Around” that apparently no one has ever uploaded to the web. I’m not saying this version of the song being online would solve the web’s problems, but we can’t disprove it, either.
And there’s a sweaty bar version of one of the other key songs from this record, one I didn’t share earlier because I wanted to put it right here, in a live version worth hearing, in all of its clangy, brassy, Telecaster glory.
Since then Will Hoge has put out 13 more records, and I’m going to introduce his music to a relative soon, because some things just need to be passed down.
One day I’ll even get to see him play. He is doing some touring right now, just not close by. (Update: Turns out he was here about three weeks ago, and I had no idea. Come back, Will!)
The next time we return to the Re-Listening Project, we’ll go all the way back to 1992. This was a CD I picked up to finally replace an old cassette and I guarantee you that every time I’ve listened to it, I’ve wondered why I waited so long to do that. It’s going to be a great listen.
