My Americana Fest 2025!

It was a blast. I took a few minutes this morning to slap together a single image summary of my travels in my home town this year:

I cannot recommend this experience any higher. This is, I think, my fourth year of spending nearly a week (5 days and nights) exploring known and unknown venues in my hometown of Nashville, TN, and what do you know? I was better at maintaining notes on where I went and who I saw. 

A few of the names of solo performers and groups are those I saw only a song or two because of scheduling, or perhaps I was not taken enough by their presence to hang around when there were so many other talents abounding about, but I think I did a pretty good week of turning my C note and a quarter into a big bucket of memories and experiencing live new music to add to my Spotify. 

Yeah, I'm still on Spotify. Why? I actually LOVE the algorithm that brings me new music attuned to my listening habits. Which are considerable. I love that my own work with The Last Frontier Band is there (ancient history, but fun), as well as my solo instrumental offering from a decade or more ago. I also like the playlist feature with its access to pretty much anything:  One thing I like to do is create lists containing every cover of a song I can find. There's a folder of these at my account, free to check out at will.

Just google any of the names or venues above to learn more, which, friends and neighbors, I did in abundance this past week. It's now Sunday, the day after, and I'm a happy puppy, listening to one of my new found faves, the Aussie artist Falls.

This won't be long, but quick takeaways:

In the new to me category, from Tuesday to Saturday, I was completely taken by:

• Sister Sadie
• Fancy Hagood
• The Carlile Family Band
• Lisa LeBlanc
• Macon Music Review
• Jackson and the Janks
• Cat Clyde
• John Cragie
• Bek Brooks
• Vanessa Jade
• Jordy Lane
• Falls

In my already-known and can't get enough online or off category, 

• Amanda Shires
• Brandi Carlile
• Kathy Matea
• Suzy Boggus
• Sista Strings
• JesseWelles

And, almost without exception, everyone I heard and saw. I walked, in totale, maybe 4 miles those 5 days, not of course to mention my daily strolls with Lemon, my canine girlfriend. Here's a pic of her:

Lemon dawg

I had very few regrets. I'm glad I added everything I would have liked to see into my "My Schedule" portion of the AmericanaFest app, so I could pick and choose on the fly. In a festival like this, spread out all over the city (and beyond), one is at any given time missing more than one is seeing, but that's just an embarassment of riches. I'm happy to have had so many great conversations with so many good people in so many venues, some of them new to me. I smile to myself, and will for a good while, when I think back on the musical highs I experienced all week. 

I regret missing Amanda Shires (again :) at Musicians' Corner in Centennial Park, which I left early to get to Basement East for Craig Finn. He was good, but Amanda is, well, Amanda; and she slayed at Exit/In on Thursday night. I'm on pins and needles for her new album drop the 26th of this month. I regret leaving The 5Spot Aussie BBQ to hit one of my favorite places, Joelton Hardware, for their two stage venue, their first venture into AF. There weren't many attendees there and though the performers I saw there were good, there is no one on my "newly found" list above from that venture, and everyone I saw at The 5Spot made that list.

I told ya it wouldn't be long. Did you have your own AF2025 experience? Comment here if'n you did. 

But before I sign off, I want to mention you can watch some of the best of the best shows archived at the NPR Music Channel on YouTube. I did not make the Americana Day Stage from WMOT at all, partly because I watched a couple performances at YouTube and loved the groups but didn't think I wanted to sit in what looks like a church auditorium (why? it was formerly a church auditorium) in a folding chair all day, row by row filled by fans. I'll watch each and every one online.

I loved the awards show, even though it came across like the stage manager called in sick, with all the dead moments in transitions, and John C. Reilly died multiple deaths onstage as host. I think he's a good actor, but his hosting skills can only improve if he watches the thing, though I don't otherwise know why he'd want to live through it again. I had seen Jesse Wells the night before and he always seems to get a tear or three from me. The awards show, and his eloquent and simple acceptance speech for winning the new "Free Speech in Music" award from the Americana Music Association was no exception. He closed with the stirring comment, "Life's too short not to always say exactly what you think, all the time." You go, Jesse. You go.

Thank you to the Americana Music Association and to the whole AmericanaFest staff and volunteers for making my week, hell, making my year, at least in music!

Kinda Day, revisited :)

 Well okay then.

It's nearly Christmas, and I am a happy old dad with both of our children in my city of birth for a few days. Miranda, of course, lives in Brentwood and is blowing away her career in social work at her highly responsible position at the Sexual Assault Center in Nashville. Anytime we can get together and I can get a hug and look her in her beautiful eyes is a good time, but it's especially so when I can look over and up at her "little" brother, Colin. He's sleeping this morning in our guest room beneath my artist's studio here on the 2nd floor. It's only been a few days, but we are enjoying every moment we have with him. 

I'll get up before dawn's crack on Friday to get him out to the airport and on the way back to his life and home in Missoula, Montana, where he's 

1. going to school at the U of Montana, 
2. majoring in sound design and engineering,
3. working one part-time job at a food cart and 
4. starting another when he returns home, as production engineer for the college radio station, KBGA 89.9,
5. Producing and deejaying his own weekly show at Missoula Community Radio 101.5,
6. working with Daisy Chain Presents, a small group in a founder's position to bring a constant stream of live bands into Missoula venues,
7. playing music with other extraordinarily talented friends in 3 1/2 bands,
8. and producing music independently, writing and playing on bass and electric guitars

Here in Nashville, he's thoughtfully balancing his time with us with a slew of friends, some of whom are passing through our fair town enroute to other places these holiday weeks, side-tracking through here especially just to see him. Missoula is a long way away. He's visiting old and new Nashville haunts with these old friends and with new ones he's meeting. 

Anyway, I just wanted to pop in to share something kinda special. It's one of my songs we jammed on together in our living room a couple days ago. Present were Matt Mellon (yes, of Magic Metal Designs fame), my dear son-in-law Tim Buell (yes, of "You're Good, Get Better" podcast fame), the famous Colin Merrick, and moi, obscure songwriter, sometime blogger, and rogue painterly artist. 

Matt is an artful songwriter himself, and I am sad we didn't record some of his songs we did together. In fact, the only song we recorded, thanks to Tim's suggestion we do so and to Colin's iPhone on the coffee table, was one of mine. If you've listened to my "Songs for Alaska" album, long available on streaming platforms, you've heard it. I really liked this version, thanks in part to Matt's work on my acoustic/electric bass, Colin's on my SG Standard electric guitar, and to Tim's masterful drumming on his very cool Toca Percussion Kickboxx Suitcase Drum Set (thanks, Sweetwater!).

It's a one-take kinda thing, but boy-o-boy was it fun. It's a happy song and I'm proud of it, and of my dear dear friends and family. Matt's soliloquy at the beginning and our chatter added some real color to it. I totally agree with Matt's assessment at the very end. Thanks to my compadres for a fun-ass day at Chez Merrique. Listen to...

a weird pano

Kinda Day, by li'l ol' me

Everyone have a wonderful end of 2024 and stay well, safe, and sane in the upcoming dumpster fire year. Keep your head down, your heart up, and your creativity cookin'. 

There and Time, Recorded 2020

In the course of doing a little YouTube management this morning I came across this little ditty I wrote several years ago while visiting my dear Godbrother, James Morrison. At the time he and his (also dear) family were living in a cozy little house on North June Street in Hollywood, just 3 miles, as the California Crow flies, from the famed HOLLYWOOD sign. I was in running form then. I will admit that running is something I miss from my life prior scheduliberation.

On a morning run that included Beverly Boulevard, probably something like this,

I started by humming the melody that generated the first line and the song took off. It was one of those that I finished in one day and it never took any later revision because I was satisfied with its gestalt. My current assessment of the performance/recording is that boy oh boy do I have some serious looks on my face, and...it's a pretty good song. I also like my rhythm patterns and yes, it's a pretty darned good song, despite the fairly common misinformation about the Einstein quote.

Please pardon the sleepwear. I was pretty much confined to the home for much of the pandemic and this video was a trial for a series that never came to be. I have to laugh at the Covid Beard in my profile pic at the time. Checkout Jimmy's website, linked above, and enjoy...

and just for good measure, here is an archived pic of him and me with our band behind us. JK, it wasn't really "our band," but the cast of the Western spectacular, "Diamond Studs" from the Alaska Repertory Theatre's season in I think '78. We're ancient history!

Peace out. Stay Safe and Well.

New Single

 

Hello, y'all. I'm off into another school quarter, and, yes, off on another little "share out things I made" project. This one involves posting songs I have written and recorded over the years, specifically those written for the dear love of my life, Lee Ann. I'm going to release a new A side/B side set at characteristically irregular intervals, on Bandcamp, and thereby make them available for a listen. I'm not interested in making the big buck here, of course. Those who know me have heard me quote my dear long-departed daddy, who used to quip, "Ain't no pockets in them shrouds." I'm not looking to experience that fact anytime soon: I am staying in, teaching from home, walking my dog, and maybe, but rarely, hitting the grocery store at opening hour, double-masked. I think come next Christmas I will share the many "12 poems of Christmas" collections I wrote for her as well. But that's another time and another project. 

I hope you enjoy single number 1 of "Lee Ann Songs."

driving and crying

Good day, and on hopes you and yours are faring well in these strange days.

I don't often share others' things at scottmerrickdotnet, but, well, I am sharing this. My talented son has released a new single and you should have that experience. He's got so much more on the way that I hope you will be following him. Filmed, edited, recorded, mixed, and performed by 

Colin Merrick, here:

Remarkably and more...

Just listened to this little piece I put together last Lee Ann's birthday. The refrain is the title of her mythological memoir, which she will likely never write, and the tattoo she will likely never write.
Kinda fun, created on my iPhone on a dog walk and recorded at our breakfast island on my laptop with Audacity on a vintage nylon string Framus guitar. I particularly like the improvised break, recorded with no real planning in one take. I think it's kind of Willie Nelson-ish. Okay then. Stay tuned after for a handful of Colin's demo recordings.



and happy holidays: