Kevin Bowe and the Okemah Prophets

08.31.07

Holy schnikes I can't believe it's been like a year since I ranted. Too busy working. How can you say what's on your mind when there's nothing but empty parking spaces and vacancy signs up there? The thing keeping me busiest is Alison Scott. Go to www.alisonscott.com or www.myspace.com/aliscottmusic and you'll see why. She's it. The one. I love playing and recording her songs more than any other young artist I've ever worked with. Imagine Carole King with a little Laura Nyro tossed in there and add some volume. She writes and sings like nothing I've heard. I can't believe we got Peter Anderson on drums and Steve Price on bass, google 'em and weep. Really cool rhythm section and both gifted engineer/producers in their own right which will make for some interesting sessions coming up I bet. Assuming we don't start puttin' the hurt on each other.

Alison's album is great, buy it or steal it now or look foolish in the near future, I'd jump in front of a train for these songs.

Beyond that.... I have the feeling something else cool is coming down the pike in the fall here but I'm not sure. You'll know when I know.

Oh and I just started recording stuff for my own next album. Don't hold your breath.

09.15.06

"Open Season" opens on Sept 29 and the soundtrack album will already be out by then on Lost Highway. It's mostly a Westerberg record and mostly recorded in my basement. I think my favorite song is "Better Than This", no one does that '70's pop radio thing better than him in my not so humble opinion. If any of you are considering seeing me play live again (you know, giving me another chance...) then you should do it if only because my new trio is so strangely cool. It's still Andy Dee on lap steel and other things but the third wheel on our love tricycle is John Ely, a pedal steel guy/lap/dobro guy who spent 10 years on the road with Asleep At The Wheel. He's amazing and the weird shit that he and Andy have going on behind me and my 12 string is something you may want to hear. Lots of new songs and when I say "new" I mean songs I wrote 10 years ago for someone else and never learned how to play. Definitely planning on starting a record with this band soon.

Nov. 16 I'll be sitting in with Alison Scott for her CD release party at the Varsity Theater, the Prophets will open the night. Tommy Barbarella (Prince), Billy Thommes (Jonny Lang, Soul Asylum) and others will be in Ali's band as well. We're just finishing up her debut album "Wish On The Moon" and all I can say is that she's the single most talented new artist I've worked with since young Mr. Lang. When she sits at the piano and sings her songs she will nail you to the floor- it's amazing. Come to the show or two years from now you'll have to lie and say you saw her before she got huge and sold out.

07.22.06

Since the year is about half dead I thought I'd poll my internal jury and see how my new year's resolutions are doing..... the list was long and overly ambitious as usual but I think I'm about halfway there. I bought a 12 string Guild Jumbo and have been doing solo gigs with it, opening for Etta James at O'Shaunessy was really cool. I actually memorized my lyrics and didn't use any cheat sheets, a personal first. Put together kind of a new Okemah Prophets trio with Andy Dee on lap steel, etc. and John Ely on pedal steel. It's a very different sound and we have some gigs coming up. Making plans for a new OP album right now, although that will take a while. Upgraded my studio (which now has a name, 'Okemah' surprise surprise...) to Pro Tools HD3 which is like the pure rock cocaine of audio recording if you're a geek like me. Now I'm in a 2 week class, M-F, 9-5 to actually get certified as a Pro Tools operator/instructor even though the day I teach that shit is not soon in coming. Just want to be as good at it as some of the people I work with; the class is literally killing me but I'm halfway there. But far and away my favorite musical thing about this year was recording PW + His Only Friends in my studio. I hesitate to use the word "produce" because you don't produce this guy, you press record, duck and pray. He knows exactly what he's doing even when he doesn't. I learned more about how to get rock on tape in 2 weeks than I can tell you, even though I still can't explain how he does it. The songs are in an upcoming Sony film and album soundtrack called "Open Season". We got a cellist, Michelle Kinney (who I was in a band with in the '80's) on a couple of things. One song was a piano/vocal ballad that Paul cut live on the grand up in the living room and at the end of the take, Spike and I were almost in tears. Really, Spike was closer to blubber city than me though.

The other projects are come and go.... Allison Scott is amazing, I've been cutting her album at Terrarium (Jason and Dustin rule) and at my place. It's about 2/3 done and I think it will be the coolest record I've ever been involved with. The Tony Sims demos are done and we're whoring him out to labels right now, I'll try to get one of his songs up on the site. He's the real deal, that's all I can say. His version of "Long Cool Woman" by the Hollies will rock you so hard your mom will dance. Jo Shaw Taylor is a work in progress, I'm more of a spectator on that one for now. So let's see how the rest of the year pans out, so far so good for the most part.

02.06.06

I don't really have much to rant about and that makes me extra rantful. Or maybe I just felt a sense of obligation because I haven't ranted in 6 months. Anyway, I realized that the reason I haven't ranted is that I had an incredible music business experience in '05..... I didn't experience one single moment of rejection. Anyone in this business will tell you, even the top dudes, that rejection is a huge part of it. You literally have to learn to eat it, love it, live on it for a long time until you end up getting anywhere, IF you end up getting anywhere; I never even got to quit my day job until I was in my early 30s. But I was able to avoid dealing with anything having to do with major labels (the main source of rejection, they kind of manufacture it there, they even get pissed if you download it for free) for the entire year. The Paul Westerberg and His Only Friends Tour was more of an indie thing and the fact that I got the gig at all was a shocker. Then after I got back it was all producing indie albums and a lot of music for ESPN, then scoring a DVD for Georges V Records/Playboy, then a couple of jingles, none of which involved rejection. I turned in the music, they said "thank you, here's your money pal" and that was it.

But this year is going to be different! I'm going to go out there and get demolished again! I love it, I miss it and I deserve it dammit! Actually I fear and loathe it but I have to get out there anyway because I have four artists I'm working with and some of them are now reaching the point where they're ready to be pimped out to the major labels, with all the ensuing drama and majesty. Even pageantry, whatever that means. So this year, the year of the dog, or in my case probably the year of the bitch- will be very different. Into the valley of death ride the 600. I can't hardly wait.

08.07.05

Gentle readers,

A member of the IWW in Colorado just emailed me this true story. Those of you familiar with the song "Blackie Ford's Revenge" off the Revelators CD might find it freaky especially because I thought I made this guy up in my head. But I'm not making this story up, OR the guy's name who wrote it. After reading this, you really should trot on down to the record store and buy the new Aimee Mann, Kaiser Chiefs, Beck and Caesars albums.

It was a blistering hot day in August of 1913. Dust rose in lazy, steady swirls from a barren field near the Northern California town of Wheatland where some 2,000 hop pickers had gathered tightly around a makeshift platform to hear radical organizers from the Industrial Workers of the World urge them to strike.

Within minutes, they and the IWW organizers -- Wobblies, they were called -- would be plunged helter-skelter into what soon became known as the Wheatland Riot. It was a key event in the long struggle to bring economic justice to the nation's badly oppressed farmworkers that led finally to creation of the United Farm Workers union under Cesar Chavez in the 1960s.

The strike the Wobbly organizers and hop pickers were debating would be a bold, dangerous act, but it seemed the only way to better their truly abominable conditions on the Durst Ranch, California's largest single employer of agricultural workers.

The workers were crowded together in a treeless, sun-baked camp a mile from the hop fields. They slept, many without even blankets, in the open or in ragged tents rented to them. There were only nine shallow, doorless privies. Garbage was tossed into nearby irrigation ditches. The wells that supplied their drinking water were contaminated.

They and their children went off at 4 a.m. to the fields where temperatures soared to more than 100 degrees by noon and heat prostration was common. There were no toilets there, and nothing to drink except a sour concoction of water and acetic acid sold them for five cents a glass. Pay varied according to how much they picked, but none ever made more than $1.90 for the 12-hour workday. And 10 cents of every $1 was held back as a "bonus," to be paid only if the worker lasted the entire harvest season -- or was allowed to.

Up on the platform, Wobbly Richard (Blackie) Ford was raising the strike call once again when the dozen members of a sheriff's posse, hastily summoned from nearby Marysville by the ranch owner and his attorney, who also happened to be the local district attorney, bounded from their cars. They rushed toward the platform, intent on arresting Ford and other IWW leaders for trespassing.

A deputy sheriff grabbed at Ford, a platform railing collapsed and the crowd surged forward. On the edge of the crowd, a deputy fired a shotgun blast into the air -- "to sober the mob," he later asserted. Suddenly, there were more gunshots -- "a hideous racket," as one eyewitness described it, "that sounded as if someone had thrown a box of cartridges into the fire."

As panic-stricken workers and deputies flayed about in confusion, a young man dashed from a tent, clubbed several deputies, seized a gun and began firing. Deputies returned the fire.

The shooting lasted 30 seconds, maybe a minute. When it stopped, four people were dead - the young worker, the district attorney, a deputy sheriff and a boy who had been passing by the edge of the crowd, carrying a bucket of water. Although there had been no rioting until that "sobering" shot was fired by a deputy, authorities blamed it all on the IWW, arresting hundreds of Wobblies throughout the West for allegedly being involved in the riot and other "subversive" activites.

Blackie Ford was a special target. He had been unarmed during the riot and had in fact counseled non-violence, but a coroner's jury demanded his arrest on grounds that the district attorney's death had come from a "gunshot wound inflicted by a gun in the hands of rioters incited to murderous anger by IWW leaders and agitators."

Ford and another IWW leader, Herman Suhr, who hadn't even been present at the riot, eventually were arrested. Authorities admitted that Ford and Suhr had not taken any part in the violence, but argued they were guilty through being members of an organization that had sent men to Wheatland to provoke workers into dangerous and, ultimately, fatal, action. They were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The trial was highly publicized throughout the country, as were attempts afterward to free Ford and Suhr, who quickly became labor martyrs. But the riot and its aftermath also drew public attention to issues far broader.

For the first time, the severe plight of farm workers was exposed to general view, through newspaper reports and government probes that led to passage of more than three dozen state laws to improve the conditions of working people. They included an act creating a commission which investigated farms statewide and, finding conditions generally not much better than those on the Durst Ranch, began enforcing regulations that set strict standards for sanitation and living accommodations.

It's true enough that the reforms were largely temporary, but they eventually led to the legal protections that have enabled farmworkers to finally form a strong union to fight effectively on their own for lasting improvements in their working and living conditions.

That and anything else that has been done, or will be done, by and for those vital workers who harvest our food must draw inspiration from the foundation laid down on a hot, dusty, terror-filled August afternoon in 1913.

Copyright © Dick Meister

http://www.dickmeister.com

05.29.05
These are a few of my favorite things..... 89.3 “The Current”- because I would rather hear a song I don’t like for the first time than a song I used to like til I heard it a million times. best radio station on earth.

Chuck Prophet’s new album

Beck’s new album

being home after a 2 month tour.

The New York Dolls show at Irving Plaza last month.

Louisville KY. trust me, go there, it’s nice.

the sun. haven’t seen it, but i’ve heard good things.

01.22.05
These are a few of my favorite things from ’04..... Aimee Mann- one of the best living songwriters period, buy her latest “Lost In Space”- every single song is fantastic. What’s the last record you bought that you can say that about? Outside of the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang soundtrack, I mean.

Paul Henry- Paul works at Guitar Center in Edina MN and he is living proof that if you look long and hard enough you can still find a beating heart in corporate America. You should go buy lots of stuff from him; I do all the time.

Apple Inc.- More proof about that beating heart thing. I love my Mac almost as much as I love my dog. Every day it extends its hand to me saying “come play with me”, so I do.

Macy Gray- I hate it when people say “Oh I don’t like her voice”, that’s like when people say that about Dylan- you can tell they’re not really listening. Macy Gray is the saviour of soul music, putting the r & the b back into r & b. She’s busy right now picking little pieces of Beyonce out from between her teeth. And her second album is almost as good as the first one, contrary to popular belief.

Satellite Radio- finally... radio for people who may have actually graduated from high school. Radio that actually teaches you new things instead of sucking your life force out and making you buy zit cream that doesn’t even work.

Jim Boquist- playing guitar in Paul Westerberg’s band makes you feel like a kid in a candy store but one of the most unexpected jolly ranchers is Jim Boquist on bass. A cosmic philosopher, a 4 string vacquero, a true compadre, my bookend on stage left.

My new drum room- I have new soundproof drum room. I will never leave the house again. Thank you and good night.