Throwback Thursday: Kandia Crazy Horse x Sheila E. x D.A. Pennebaker @ Yale University | Repose en paix Butch Trucks
I am still recovering from the sonic & social whirl of this past week in Connecticut where we were engaged in mounting the #DavidBowie & #Prince memorial conference “Blackstar Rising & The Purple Reign,” organized by my dear friend & Yale University scholar Dr. Daphne A. Brooks. A good deal to reflect upon from all I heard from my former rockcrit colleagues including Ann Powers of NPR Music & Michaelangelo Matos & Greil Marcus, as well as those of the Academy such as Tavia Nyong’o of Yale & Eric Lott of CUNY Graduate Center. I do appreciate the wide audience that my session with Sherae Rimpsey & Alan Light — Everybody Still Wants To Fly — garnered due to our being the lead-in to Solange Knowles’ keynote address. My take on Prince as Mystery Cult via the prism of what Harold Bloom has denunciated as “California Orphism” was interesting to some folks (smile). And my Texan bandmate KAR / Kimberly Robison kindly traveled up from the Hamilton Grange to support me in my presentation & also did some vital research at Yale on Emily West aka the Yellow Rose of Texas for an upcoming project we wish to mount – stay tuned!
I was also very sad to learn upon my arrival in New Haven that Allman Brothers Band drummer Butch Trucks was gone to Glory. A lot of flashing on my time spent on-and-off the Road that goes on Forever with the Allmans is surfacing & I am doing a lot of listening to my favorites among their compositions — particularly one of my 3 most treasured songs: “In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed.” So, more to come after a spell on what transpired last week…yet here’s two precious souvenirs of my time spent in New Haven — meeting one of the scions of the great Escovedo family of American music that has had a profound influence on me since I initially grew up in a colony of Aztlan, a Chicano barrio in Chocolate City; I am very much a follower as a singer-songwriter of Sheila E. & her uncle Alejandro Escovedo…& as a past film school graduate and lover of concert cinema, I have also been influenced by D.A. Pennebaker who made my beloved Monterey Pop. An honor all ’round to briefly share space with them…A’ho*
( Sheila E. & Kandia Crazy Horse of Cactus Rose @ Yale University last Friday night, New Haven, Connecticut )
( Kandia Crazy Horse of Cactus Rose & legendary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker @ Yale, after screening of his 1973 David Bowie documentary “Ziggy Stardust” )
Black History Month 2017: Drum & Spear – from DC to Dar-es-Salaam
Kicking off #BlackHistoryMonth with this remembrance of Drum & Spear bookstore+press, co-founded & run by my parents in Washington, DC (with an outpost in Tanzania) along with their dear #SNCC veteran / Civil Rights Movement friends of Afro-American Resources, Inc. — including our cited neighbors of Adams-Morgan & Mt. Pleasant, writer/journalist Uncle Charlie (Cobb) & my girlhood idol in black boho Judy Richardson. This article below by a Maryland scholar interested in activist entrepreneurial projects of the Long Sixties traces their beginnings in that august revolutionary year of 1968. From DC to Dar-es-Salaam, they did great thangs that have continued to have a big influence on me as I navigate creative & activist spaces; I am very proud of their achievements — especially with my dear mother now gone to the Spirit World. Someday, I shall still replicate what I grew up dreaming about Drum & Spear as a creative entrepreneur in my own right…
Yours In Struggle, K* #DaughterOfTheDream #BlackPower50
READ: DRUM & SPEAR vanguard black bookstore & press of the 1960s-70s
A shoutout from California Coastopia from one of the Drum & Spear Circle, Daphne Muse (via my twin sister’s Facebook): So proud to have served as a manager of Drum and Spear and serve an incredible community of people throughout DC, across the country and around the world. I worked with an intellectually fierce group of people including Charlie Cobb, Courtland Cox, Juadine Henderson, Jennifer Lawson, Judy Richardson, Ralph Featherstone, Joe Gross, Freddie Biddle, Don Brown, Williard Taylor. Anne Holloway, Marvin Holloway and Mimi Shaw Hayes were the driving forces behind the parent company AAR and Drum and Spear Press. All, so committed to LIBERATION.
Kandia Crazy Horse x Prince x Stevie Nicks @ BlackStar Rising & the Purple Reign 1/26
Dearly Beloved, I hope you shall join us this week @ Yale University in New Haven for the Prince – David Bowie conference: BlackStar Rising & The Purple Reign
In the lead-in to the Solange (Knowles) keynote address, I shall be holding forth on Mystical Prince, the Afro-Native spirit of his jazz belle mother Mattie & his Muses including my key sonic foremother Stevie Nicks (of course, Stevie & Prince collaborated on “Stand Back” & among other thangs, Prince clearly derived some of his famous style from Stevie’s bespoke sartorial aesthetic). Rather than due to Prince’s most adored blackface-wearing, jazz fusioneer heroine Joni Mitchell (who transformed from Saskatoon prairie flower trilling songbird into a black pimp who punked the Asylum gang royalty of LA with her own alter-ego Art Nouveau), I am a latter-day Lady of the Canyon because of my heroine Stevie Nicks — & a select elite of cult favorite canyon muses including Wendy Waldman, Essra Mohawk, Claudia Lennear & Judee Sill; they are all collectively the Muses behind songs of mine such as “Quartz Hill,” “Cowgirls,””Songcatcher,” & “Rare Bird” (& yes, my sophomore album was titled Canyons). As a sonic & spiritual acolyte-turned-Adept of Queen California’s Electric Eden (who possesses the Source Family lineage name Songbird Aquarian), I am looking forward to being purified anew in the purple-hued waters of Lake Minnetonka.
A-ho*
Kandia Crazy Horse x Prince x David Bowie @ BlackStar Rising & The Purple Reign
Hope y’all enjoyed the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday; I spent mine meditating on the post-60s emanations of The Dream — as well as its limits as manifest in the oeuvres of Black Atlantic & Heartland rockstars David Bowie & Prince. I am finally at liberty to invite y’all to join us in New Haven @ the end of the month for the “Blackstar Rising & The Purple Reign” rock conference. Courtesy of an invite from my longtime dear friend of the Black Rock scene, former Princeton professor turned Yale scholar Dr. Daphne Brooks, I shall be presenting on Prince & activism @ Yale University; my evening program on 25 January also features Solange (Knowles) as keynote speaker & former SPIN magazine editor Alan Light.
The program also includes Sheila E., Kimbra, Questlove & others + a closing concert by TV On The Radio. More info & registration instructions linked: KANDIA CRAZY HORSE presentation @ YALE UNIVERSITY for Blackstar Rising & The Purple Reign 1/25
Looking forward to my rebirth in the purifying waters of Lake Minnetonka: HARTFORD COURANT on BLACKSTAR RISING & THE PURPLE REIGN
Remembering my favorite singer & biggest influence: Gene Clark
Gene Clark, a Native son of Tipton, Missouri, was a brilliant singer/songwriter/folkie who attained global fame for a spell in the 1960s as a member of The Byrds. Then, after quitting the band at the height of their acclaim — leaving them with the amazing “Eight Miles High — Gene embarked on a long & often turbulent solo career until his untimely death right after I moved UpSouth. Thus I never got to see him live, much to my regret. Yet each & ev’ry day I flash on him & his Creation, usually keeping a lot of his collaboration with my favorite banjoist, Doug Dillard (also now gone to Glory), in heavy rotation. One of my most beloved of Gene’s songs he cut with The Gosdin Brothers backing him – “So You Say You Lost Your Baby;” I also spin his masterpiece No Other a great deal. “One In A Hundred” and “Life’s Greatest Fool” are other key tunes of his for me. Someday, I will feel brave enough to share my ode to him, which I composed out of my time dwelling in the Ozarks in Missouri, called “Tipton Bramble.”
Today’s Gene Clark’s bornday, so re-sharing the column I wrote on him a couple years back which foregrounded his Native American heritage (which many don’t know about) & also featured an interview with my Cosmic California musician/surfer friend Brent Rademaker of Beachwood Sparks & now GospelBeach: THIS BYRD DONE FLOWN AGAIN by KANDIA CRAZY HORSE
( GENE CLARK, POST-FLYTE )
Also found out last night that rare country-rock specialist label Sierra Records has issued Gene Clark – The Lost Studio Sessions 1964-1982 > So will get that in my #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth rotation fo’sho’! – A’ho*
(Dillard & Clark)
Martin Stone of Mighty Baby RIP – A master of Anglo-Americana
Sho’nuff, I got post-Election 2016 Blues & been nursing ’em by spinning a lot of fitting tunes by my hero / influence as an artist-activist, Gil Scott-Heron — including “Winter In America” & “B-Movie.” Feeling even more wintry this grey November day in New York City for just found out that musician & bookseller #MartinStone has walked on. Regret that have not had the resources to cover a favorite song by one of his former bands, my beloved #MightyBaby, as long planned; but still hope to do so one day. Like the great Ian Matthews of Fairport Convention/Matthews Southern Comfort (who I briefly met once when he got me into his tour of Gene Clark’s No Other that came to the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn) & my new friend/fellow sister country singer who used to dwell in the Ozarks, Jan Bell of the Maybelles / Brooklyn Americana Festival, who hails from Yorkshire, Stone was one of a select elite of master musicians that interpreted Anglo-Americana, perhaps the most interesting & exciting moment of the original British Invasion of the 1960s/early ’70s.
I have fortunately been invited by Jan to perform at the Jalopy Theater benefit concert for Standing Rock that she has organized, on 25 November @ 9pm in Brooklyn. Tix available here: KANDIA CRAZY HORSE x CACTUS ROSE singing in support of the STANDING ROCK water protectors camps
Here’s my beloved “Virgin Spring,” lachrymose, gossamer beauty befitting the vibes today in America. Mighty Baby was the UK’s answer to the Grateful Dead — a band I followed for aeons — & it’s interesting that they made their transition to this sound roughly around the same time that Jerry & ‘nem were trying to remold themselves in the manner of then-emerging Crosby Stills & Nash (& sometimes Young), as you hear on my favorite Dead LP, Workingman’s Dead >>>>>>>—–))—>
Sending you love o’er the Big Water in Fair Albion (despite #Brexit & #BritsSoWhite), to my brotha Mark Pringle, co-head of London’s Rocksbackpages.com which archives my early music journalism – Thankye, Mark, kindly for what correspondence did get to have with Martin Stone – A’ho*
Chelsea Girls: Kandia Crazy Horse x Carrie Mae Weems x Claudia Lennear in NYC
Here’s a photo shot by one of the Jack Shainman Gallery’s gallerinas from yesterday: visual artist Carrie Mae Weems & (me) sonic artist Kandia Crazy Horse @ their space on W. 20th Street in Chelsea, for the opening of her new exhibits (see description below). Carrie & I used to share workspace way back many moons ago when I attended Hampshire College & she was teaching there. Nice to see how far our respective Creation has come & find now in her a fellow fan of my Afrohippie & bluegrass singer-songwriter heroine/inspiration Claudia Lennear — two vintage yet manipulated images, “Blue Notes,” of Claudia are featured in the show.
Via Jack Shainman Gallery PR: “Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to announce Carrie Mae Weems’ first solo exhibition in New York City since the historic retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2014. Her influential career continues to address the rifts caused by race, class, and gender via imagery and text that is both sharply direct and beautifully poetic. This two-part exhibition highlights her recent investigations into performance, entertainment, and history.
Blue Notes (2014) and An Essay on Equivalents, See… (2011-2015) highlight figures on the periphery, bringing them front and center. The photographic series are paired with the enigmatic video installation Lincoln, Lonnie, and Me (2012), originally commissioned by the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA. The work rests on a 19th century optical trick, “Pepper’s ghost,” in which a strategically lit pane of glass reflects people and objects as dematerialized versions on stage. Weems employs this phantasmagoria to examine her own relationship to history and two individuals in particular: the 16th president of the United States and artist/activist Lonnie Graham, her sometime collaborator. Here history becomes theater, a succession of ghostly projections that draw us in to the strange ways in which representation seduces and manipulates, and how some are left out of history altogether, their apparitions left to haunt the expanses of Western culture.
The theme of performance continues with Scenes & Take (2016). Weems dons her black-robed muse persona—recognizable from the now iconic Roaming and Museums series—to stand before empty stage sets, documenting these encounters with vivid color photographs. The contemplative pose of the artist raises issues of who gets to be shown on screen; what do the fictional characters in television, theater, cinema, and visual art say about the cultural climate in which they are created, and how do these representations shift across time?
All the Boys (2016) responds to the recent killings of young African American men and suggests a darker reality of identity construction. Portraits of black men in hooded sweatshirts are matched with text panels. The written descriptions evoke police reports, underscoring how a demographic is all-too-often targeted and presumed guilty by a system plagued with prejudice. […]”
(Shot of “Blue Note – Claudia Lennear” by Kandia Crazy Horse – Originally from an early 1970s Playboy feature on the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter)
Claudia Lennear had famous affairs with Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, when she toured with them in 1969 as an Ikette (part of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue), & later with David Bowie during his LA burnout/Sigma Sound Soul phase in Philly – the resulting songs “Brown Sugar,” Claudia’s response “Not At All,” & Bowie’s “Lady Grinning Soul.” I am personally far more interested in her singing with my most beloved Master of Space & Time Leon Russell (as part of the Shelter People) & Claudia Lennear’s attempt to have a bluegrass trio in the early ’70s with her fellow Mad Dogs & Englishmen Tour veteran singers Donna Washburn (once a member of my most beloved/influence Dillard & Clark) & Donna Weiss (later a songwriter of some note; she had songs covered by, among others, another Mad Dogs star & my heroine/influence as a Native Americana artist, Rita Coolidge – I just recently filed an essay about Ms. Coolidge & this lore, which will be published next year in a tome on Women Of Country). A friend & Southern sonic forebear of mine, the late Memphis pianist/producer icon Jim Dickinson (aka James Luther Dickinson of “Dixie-Fried” & “White Horses”+ producing Big Star’s Third fame) promised to give me a photo of their bluegrass trio, as he was tied to the project, but then he walked on. Still hope to see the images someday! Of course, Claudia is active again, post- Twenty Feet From Stardom rediscovery, and leading two bands — one bluegrass — today in Los Angeles & recording an album David Bowie had sought her out to collaborate on before his passing. Looking forward to catching ’em live whenever I next make it to the Coast. I always do enjoy spending time in LA, amongst the newer Laurel Canyon & Topanga Canyon rock ‘n roll hippie glitterati — although most of them are East Side gentrifiers, particularly in Echo Park & Downtown (with satellites in Eagle Rock & Mt. Washington & out in the environs of Joshua Tree & Bolinas & Nevada City); this is why I always keep dear Odetta (who my late Virginian Native American mother Anne Marie wished for me to model & pick guitar in her image) & Claudia Lennear as my history-making twang foremamas & legendary Ladies of the Canyon.
I still plan to do a major project around the sound+vision of Claudia Lennear, Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge & their mutual benefactors, Delaney and Bonnie (& their fabulous Friends) during 2017 – Stay tuned!
(Two #BlackRockCoalition & #AfroPunk veteran chroniclers & rock-n-rollers outside Jack Shainman Gallery, Chelsea: #KandiaCrazyHorse #NativeAmericana #CosmicCountry #singersongwriter & #RobFields #BoldAsLove #blogger & festival founder – #FollowMe on #Instagram: @kandiacrazyhorse)
(LADY OF (HUDSON) CANYON: After Carrie’s opening, upon The Highline in Chelsea, by a fan – More NYC shows upcoming! #LadiesOfTheCanyon)
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