8 minute read
Out East Soundtrack Featuring The Ornaments
Out East Soundtrack The Ornaments
It's the most wonderful time of the year, which means our favorite purveyors of holiday cheer, The Ornaments, return for their traditional December residency perfoming the Vince Guaraldi Trio's A Charlie Brown Christmas. This year, Jen Gunderman, James Haggerty, and Martin Lynds — known to kids of all ages as The Ornaments — bring the tradition full circle, as it were. 'Twas a Christmas long, long ago when they first played the holiday classic at the original incarnation of The Family Wash. As word spread, the audiences increased and they added more shows.
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After a run at version two of The Family Wash, The Ornaments took their show to 3rd & Lindsley in order to accomodate the larger audiences. Then, due to the pandemic, last year's show was held virtually from the Instrumenthead Live studios.
This year, they'll be back home for the holidays at The Wash at Eastside Bowl beginning on December 17.
In the meantime, Jen (JG), Hags (JH), and Marty (ML) were kind enough to share some of their holiday favorites with us for this round of the "Out East Soundtrack."
Curated by Andrew Leahey & Jay Dmuchowski
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The first time I heard this, when the audience/choir joined in singing and Burke started preaching, I burst into tears; it was so beautiful and unexpected. (JG)
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Jon Byrd (2017)
This song about a song has become one of my very favorite Christmas songs and just songs period. You can really identify with it as a road musician, but I think it applies to anyone around the holidays who can appreciate—and has the good fortune—to be able to slow down for a minute, turn it all off, and try to remember what really matters. (ML)
NRBQ (1985) 6
Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 (1968)
One day while rummaging at the Salvation Army store on Nolensville Road I was lucky enough to score this record, Something Festive, an A&M Christmas compilation in association with BF Goodrich with this song on it. I like to imagine the sessions in sunny L.A. and maybe cruising up the Pacific Coast Highway in a snappy top-down convertible with this as the soundtrack. (JH)
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“I Hate Christmas” Oscar the Grouch (1975)
Things I remember from childhood Christmases in the 1970s: Rankin/Bass TV specials (and A Charlie Brown Christmas, of course), Christmas Eve church service candles dripping wax, silver tinsel on the tree, pineapple/ walnut cream cheese balls, and vinyl Christmas albums by Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, and Sesame Street. This song used to send my brother and me into fits of glee, even though it was years before I got the subversive “I’ll tell him where to leave his toys” lyric. (JG)
This track gives me the holiday warm and fuzzies every time. It conjures a lovely memory. In the late 90s, Joe, Marc’s Brother would do a Christmas show at 12th & Porter to benefit Toys for Tots. With the angels suspended on either side of the stage. We would do at least an hour of Christmas songs. Lots of guests and singalongs. It was probably ’97 or ’98 when we asked Joey Spampinato to join us for this one. I remember rehearsing with him in our basement. Joe thought he had the chords right. Joey showed him “how Al does it.” He picked up my P bass, and I grabbed a tambourine and some BGVs. At the gig, he brought his Danelectro. I played it for a minute and noticed a silver sharpie inscription on the back: “To my favorite bass player.” The signature was Paul McCartney. Merry Christmas, indeed! (JH)
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Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn (1960)
I love how these songs from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite” were turned on their head and taken way uptown by Ellington and arranger Billy Strayhorn, and especially this track. I always imagine that these sugar-plum fairies broke into the liquor cabinet before the holiday party. (ML)
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Bing Crosby (1942)
There’s a reason this song won an Academy Award, was featured in two films, (including one called White Christmas), and is the biggest selling single worldwide of all time. Nostalgia for an idealized Christmas past at its best, with a special connection to service members and others who can’t be home for the holidays. (JG)
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Lou Rawls (1967)
The vocal on this track kills me. To me it sounds like nighttime twinkly lights and hot toddies. The band swings like mad. I have happy memories of this song as a kid growing up in NY. It reminds me of snowy Manhattan and diner jukeboxes. His ad lib ho ho ho’s always make me smile. (JH)
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Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings (2015)
You always hear that there aren’t any good Hanukkah songs, but I’m here to present Exhibit A. I love the School House Rock groove of this version that also reminds me of Archie Bell & the Drells’ “Tighten Up,” plus you learn a little something about Hanukkah. If this had been recorded in the 70s, kids everywhere would have been watching it in dark classrooms on “The Electric Company” on a wheeled-in TV while their teacher was nursing a hangover from the teachers’ holiday party. (ML)
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Vince Guaraldi Trio (1965)
While “Linus and Lucy” is the most recognizable song from A Charlie Brown Christmas, and “Christmastime Is Here” is the most beautifully poignant, we agree that “Skating” captures the joy of the season like no other. (The Ornaments)
I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?
These are the most polarized times in America any of us have ever known; for that matter, our parents’ and grandparents’ ever knew. Our country has not been this divided since the Civil War. So, what’s the principal reason for the decline and fall of the United States? (And yes, we are declining and falling.) Ask a Republican and they’ll say it’s the Democrats’ fault. And vice versa. And not only do both sides sit at loggerheads, neither side can understand how in the hell the other side can possibly feel the way they do.
There are many reasons, and — and as always happens — the biggest reasons get glossed over. Who is to blame for all this mess our country has become?
Let’s start with Walmart. And Amazon. That’s what’s wrong with America.
Throw in Home Depot, Target, Kroger, Office Max, AutoZone, Staples, Walgreens, CVS, corporate farming, Lowe’s, Cracker Barrel, McDonald’s, Burger King, Sonic, Mapco, Waffle House, Logan’s Roadhouse, Appleby’s, and the whole darn digital revolution. I could go on and on.
While traveling to gigs, if I have time, I’ll get off the interstate and take a twolanes highway in a quest to see the real America. I always see the same thing — ghost towns. Get out of the city just a little way and you’ll find it everywhere: main streets with boarded up buildings; town squares with nothing there, signs in windows saying, “For Rent, call blah blah.” Much of flyover America looks like a faded eastern-bloc country. There are literally hundreds of thousands of square miles in the USA where there’s simply nothing there. Nothing but poverty and decay. And it’s not because somebody in the big city has an abortion, and it’s not because somebody else is carrying an AK-47.
It’s because the backbone of the middle class has always been merchants. In the small town where I grew up, there were three drugstores at the intersection of Main and Center Streets: Pate’s Drugs, Parrish Drugs, and Robard’s Drugs. The rest of our bustling downtown could serve your needs to a wide extent. If you wanted a pair of Levi’s, you went to the Stag Shop. If you wanted a Sunday suit, you went to Baker & Hickman, or His Corner. If you needed office supplies, you went to Howard Happy’s. If you needed guitar strings, you went to Don’s House of Music. There was Watson’s if you wanted a department store. (Not the Watson’s of today.) If you needed hardware, you went to Purdy’s. If you wanted a newspaper, you picked up a copy of The Messenger, our locally owned and operated newspaper. If you wanted to request “Joy to the World” or “Song Sung Blue”, you called up WTTL, our locally owned and operated radio station. If you wanted to buy a new record, you could go wither to Watson’s or the Sound Shack; if you wanted a burger, you went to Ferrell’s. Yes, there was a Ben Franklin’s and a Western Auto, but those were the only two chain stores downtown that I remember.
There are no longer those three drugstores downtown; there’s a CVS at the interstate exit seven miles away. There’s no longer a Purdy’s, but there is a Home Depot twenty miles away. There’s no Baker & Hickman or His Corner or Stag Shop, or Howard Happy’s, and not even a grocery store, but there is a Walmart at the exit. There’s no more Sound Shack. WTTL is a corporate-owned toady spewing talk radio sewage 24 hours a day — and the second reason America is going to hell in a bowling ball bag is that very talk radio culture: the constant demonizing of liberals when there is not a single advancement in human history that didn’t get its start as a liberal idea.
But hasn’t the digital revolution afforded independent merchants to make a middle-class living? Well, it’s helped, but then again, those people are the Davids and Amazon is a nuclear-megaton Goliath. Every chain is online while you’re selling custom-made booty socks on your humble dot com, and their lawyers can beat up yours.
People are pissed. Their lives have gone. They’re ability to rise in the world — the American Dream — is almost gone. People in the countryside are blaming the loss of family values for their devastated lifestyle, and people in the cities blame conservatives, but not true conservatism. What’s considered conservatism now is nothing Barry Goldwater nor William F. Buckley would recognize.
Oh, and music is free now. I had to throw that in. Now go online and buy some custom-made booty socks from some hippie in McMinnville. That’s the best thing you can do.t
EAST OF NOR MAL
by Tommy Womack
Tommy Womack is a musician & author, and a regular contributor to The East Nashvillian.
His new album, I Thought I Was Fine, will be released October 15.
"I BELEAF IN YOU”
