If Justified knew what was good for them, they'd use Justin Towne Earle's "Mama Said" as an ending montage of Boyd Crowder doing stuff.  Anything, really.  Drinking bourbon, unbuttoning his shirt (seriously, he needs to stop buttoning that top button, it's driving me nuts), driving his truck, turning around, showering in slow motion . . . it's sort of all-purpose.  It's got a fitting melody, perfect lyrics and the exact right melody for a story that takes place in backwoods Kentucky. And the way he says, "I used to drink, boys, I used to cuss," sounds exactly like something Boyd Crowder would say and exactly how he'd say it.  He'd even do that little thing where he nods his head just slightly to the side, closes his eyes and smiles just a little.  God, I love it when he does that.



Of course, if Justified knew what was good for them, they would have reduced Raylan to almost nothing and put the focus on the crime families of Harlan, because the Bennett clan, Dickie Crow (such a great name that I wish I'd thought of it) and the Crowders are a hell of a lot more interesting than him and stupid boring Winonia could ever dream of being.

Justin Townes Earle at Foothills

For the last few weeks I've been obsessed with Justin Townes Earle's "Harlem River Blues," which is about as close to a come-to-Jesus moment as I've ever had with a song.  Not because of the lyrics, which are ultimately about suicide, but just in that it's so exubrant and whole and uplifting and spiritually fulfulling that I tremble whenever I hear it.  I want to put it on a mix tape and send it to Walton Goggins and tell him I think of Boyd Crowder whenever I hear it in hopes that he likes to too.  I have become a disciple of JTE.



. . . . despite the fact that he looks like an Irvine Welsh character



So he was performing at Foothills last night and for twenty bucks, I had to go. Thor went too, and we both sat in revered silence while he played.  I'm still new to his music, so I didn't know most of his songs, and although he played "Harlem River Blues" and my heart palpatated and I actually trembled, I was sad that he didn't play "Can't Hardly Wait," as he's been known to do.

But he officially won my heart when some drunk guy yelled "Play John Prine!" and he yelled back "Don't tell me what to do!"  I want to marry him. 

Also, I got Harlem River Blues on vinyl, and he signed it.  It's the only signed record in my collection.

Record Party!

My friend/Odd Couples stage manager Thor came over last night for an oft-delayed record party.  Holding a record party is simple, you just get some records and play them and maybe have some food and talk about whatever comes to mind. We talked about our high school music teacher Mrs. Sobieski, apartment hunting, tattoos we'll never get but like to joke about, really, just random stuff.

One of the really cool things about record parties is that because the record sleeves are so BIG, you notice the names of the musicians who played on them and can draw neat parallels between the session musicians.  For instance, last night I noticed that Rick Marotta played drums on both Steely Dan's The Royal Scam and Warren Zevon's Excitable Boy.  Neat, huh?  And sure, you can look that up on the internet, but without it right in front of you, would you?

We got through Katy Lied, The Queen is Dead, Rockabilly Classics and the first disc of Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King.  We chatted.  We drank pink lemonade.

And then Thor put on Justin Towne Earle's Midnight at the Movies and the game changed.

When I was finishing the first season Justified, starting the currently in-between-titled novel I'm writing now (not for NaNoWriMo) and planning for my two-week trip to Oklahoma, I became very interested in Kentucky.  I rented Harlan County USA and watched it the instant it came in the mail.  What really struck me about it was all the singing.  They were out on the picketline, singing union songs from the early part of the century.  One woman wrote a song to teach everyone.  Not in a "I'm going to go to Nashville and record an album" kind of song, but a song to say what she was thinking.  Song, in this culture, was a means of communication.  It was raw and unacompanied and sung to get a message across.

And that's what I heard when I heard Justin Towne Earle.  It was music in it's pure, raw form, and it was heartbreaking and sad and lovely and wonderful.  I wanted to cry.  I wanted to put it on a mix CD and mail it to Walton Goggins.  I wanted to listen to that album all night long.  He covered "Can't Hardly Wait," which automatically endears him to me because I love The Replacements.



That's the magic of a record party.  Your friends bring some stuff you don't know, you play some stuff they don't know.  Thor got his first real taste of Warren Zevon.  I discovered Justin Townes Earle.  And at the end of the evening when we said goodnight, I realized how such a quiet little evening had reintroduced me to two friends--not just Thor, but the power and the core of music itself.