Archive Review: Well-Matched – The Best of Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia (2006)

Lost amidst the mythos that continues to build around the Grateful Dead is a simple, undeniable fact – Jerry Garcia was a hell of a guitarist. Prone towards leading the Dead into extended onstage instrumental free-for-alls that would often redefine the sound of the song being played, Garcia is best remembered as the grandfather of the mid-‘90s “jam band” movement. However, Garcia was also a curious and intelligent guitarist, with an insatiable thirst for knowledge and the ability to assimilate and master any musical style thrown his way, from rock and blues to bluegrass and jazz.

Well-Matched – The Best of Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia

Nowhere are Garcia’s talents as a musician and his drive to play on greater display than with Well-Matched - The Best of Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia. When not on the road with his day job – pushing the Grateful Dead towards rock mythology with constant touring and live performances so damn enchanting that fans still talk about them today – for several years, Garcia would climb onstage with a smoking club band led by jazz pianist Merl Saunders. Saunders was a veteran of the West Coast jazz and blues circuit, playing with cats like Lionel Hampton, Miles Davis and Taj Mahal. Now you would think that after playing for months at a time on the road with the Dead that Jerry would want to kick back at home and forget the guitar for a while. But Garcia seemed to cherish working in a live environment with challenging musicians, and thus a friendship was forged with the equally talented Saunders.

Well-Matched draws its performances from the lone live album the unnamed Saunders/Garcia band released along with a number of Saunders’ studio albums where he and Garcia and a hand-picked coterie of musicians would recreate the chemistry of those live jams. Constant throughout these sessions were little-known but talented bassist John Kahn and drummer Bill Vitt, along with folks like David Grisman, Vassar Clements, Tom Fogerty, and even the Tower of Power horns. Make no mistake, though, ‘cause this is definitely the Merl and Jerry show, the two powerful musicians riffing off one another, creating an exciting fusion of jazz, blues, rock, and R&B that is breath-taking in its ambition and amazing in its execution.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Saunders, Garcia and pals were playing for the fun of it, and it shows in the loose, energetic performances provided tunes like the Doc Pomus chestnut “Lonely Avenue” or on their imaginative reading of Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street.” The Saunders’ original, “Merl’s Tune,” is an impressive instrumental work-out that showcases the player’s abilities while the Motown classic “I Second That Emotion” enjoys a loping groove and Garcia’s lofty vocals. A fine rendition of J.J. Cale’s “After Midnight” with guitarist Tom Fogerty of CCR is matched by an inspired, soulful cover of Jimmy Cliff’s reggae classic “The Harder They Come.” Well-Matched - The Best of Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia shows the skills of both of these wonderful musicians in a different light, and should be a “must have” disc for any Grateful Dead fan, if only so they can fully appreciate Jerry Garcia’s range and incredible diversity. (Fantasy Records, released May 23rd, 2006)

Archive Review: Dave Cousins’ The Boy In The Sailor Suit (2007)

It’s been 35 years since Dave Cousins, singer and primary songwriter for British folk-rock legends the Strawbs, recorded a solo album. It’s not that he lacked anything to say – his band has released a dozen albums during that time. No, The Boy In the Sailor Suit is the father Cousins never knew, smiling down at him from a photograph, the album itself a reflection on the past and the fleeting nature of relationships. 

“The Smile You Left Behind” is a memoir of his parent’s courtship, a gentle musical background framing Cousins’ creaky vocals. “Skip To My Lou,” based on the familiar childhood song, is a tale of love lost, haunted by Ian Cutler’s enchanted fiddling and guitarist Miller Anderson’s imaginative leads. Cousins’ intricate wordplay is on display throughout, the album offering a balance of acoustic folk and electric rock, an appropriate soundtrack for this lyrical celebration of life and love. (Witchwood Records UK, released 2007)

Review originally published by Harp magazine...

Archive Review: Billy Joe Shaver’s Greatest Hits (2007)

Many of country music’s greatest talents have considered him their favorite tunesmith, and his songs have been recorded by everybody from Bobby Bare and Kris Kristofferson to Elvis Presley. Chance are that you’re probably familiar with Billy Joe Shaver’s songs, even if you have no idea of who the man is himself. Suffice it to say that what makes Shaver a great songwriter is that, for good or for bad, he puts a large part of himself into each of his autobiographical songs. As such, listening to Billy Joe Shaver’s Greatest Hits is like opening a book and looking at a cracked and faded old portrait of the artist.

Shaver is a Texas storyteller in the vein of Guy Clark or Townes Van Zandt. He’s grizzled and gruff, humbled by too many miles and sobered by too much alcohol, and he pours his life into every song. Greatest Hits includes some of Shaver’s best known material, like “Georgia On A Fast Train” and “Old Chunk of Coal,” as well as some of his best songs in “Old Five and Dimers” and “I Couldn’t Be Me Without You.” 

The album also offers up two previously-unreleased songs, but it’s the recent remake of the high-flying “Live Forever,” recorded with Big & Rich, that best showcases Shaver’s warm voice above his songwriting skills. Billy Joe Shaver’s Greatest Hits offers up old-school honky-tonk country with a bit of Lone Star spirit for both new and old listeners alike. (Compadre Records, released April 3rd, 2007)

Review originally published by Country Standard Time...

Archive Review: Billy Joe Shaver’s Everybody’s Brother (2007)

There’s often a fine line between sin and salvation and, like most outlaws, Billy Joe Shaver has one foot in the honky-tonk and one in the church pew. Shaver has long expressed the desire to record a “gospel” album and it’s fitting…the same weathered voice that speaks convincingly of barrooms and broken hearts is also perfectly suited for singing the praises of Jesus. And it’s not like religion is a little-traveled path for Shaver; he has typically included a spiritual song on each album through the years.

With Everybody’s Brother, however, Shaver focuses more on salvation, bringing friends like Kris Kristofferson, John Anderson, Marty Stuart, Bill Miller, and Tanya Tucker along for the joyous ride. Listeners expecting a collection of staid church hymns will be disappointed; although Everybody’s Brother has its loftier moments, much of the material approaches God from the sinner’s side of the fence, and songs like the rollicking duet with Stuart, “Winning Again,” wouldn’t feel out of place in a beer-soaked honky-tonk. 

Shaver’s performances, captured by producer John Carter Cash, are heartfelt and passionate while the album’s closer, a late ‘70s duet with Johnny Cash and a 15-year-old Eddy Shaver burning up the guitar, will put a smile on the face of any listener. (Compadre Records, released 2007)

Review originally published by Country Standard Time...

Archive Review: The Drive-By Truckers’ A Blessing and A Curse (2006)

With A Blessing and A Curse, America’s favorite cult band takes a shot at the mainstream with a musically and lyrically expansive effort. Working again with producer David Barbe (Sugar, Son Volt), who further sharpens the band’s sonic edge, tunes such as “Feb. 14” and “Aftermath USA” are replete with Barbe’s trademark soundwork of snaggletooth guitar and dense instrumentation. In terms of pure wordplay, the Truckers eschew the conceptual Southern provincialism of their previous work, pursuing a universal vibe that encompasses classic romanticism and working class blues. The songs are like eleven short stories rather than chapters in a single lengthy novel. 

Old-line fans need not fear, however, ‘cause Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell are triple-threat songwriters and songs like “A World of Hurt” prove that there’s more than enough twang and tears here to satisfy even the most diehard listener. With an embarrassing wealth of talent and musical chemistry, the Drive-By Truckers roll out a bigger, broader sound without sacrificing their endearing charm. A Blessing and A Curse is more of a lateral move than a great leap forward, the band satisfying its core audience even while trying to elevate its vision to the next level.  (New West Records, released April 18th, 2006)

Review originally published by Country Standard Time...

CD Review: Warner E. Hodges’ Absolutely (2026)

Warner E. Hodges will forever be known as the flamethrowing guitarist for Jason & the Nashville Scorchers, the rowdiest bunch o’ rockers to make a run out of the Music City. But since the Scorchers called it quits after 2010’s criminally-overlooked Halcyon Times, Hodges has applied his talents to a number of outfits, including veritable Nashville pick-up band the Disciples of Loud, his own Warner E. Hodges Band, the Bluefields, and solo albums he’s released under his own name. At this point in his career, Hodges has released more albums apart from the Scorchers than with that legendary band, but none of them have reached the peaks of Absolutely, the latest entry in the Hodges’ musical canon. 

Warner E. Hodges’ Absolutely

Absolutely was recorded with the crème de la crème of alternative Americana, roots-rock, or whatever you want to call it this week – longtime Hodges’ friends Joe Blanton (Royal Court of China, The Bluefields) and Dan Baird (The Georgia Satellites, The Bluefields), bassist Keith Voegele (The Bottle Rockets), pianist Pete “Wetdawg” Gordon (Mojo Nixon & the Toad Liquors), and drummer Mauro Magellan (The Georgia Satellites, Dan Baird & Homemade Sin). The excellent results speak for themselves. The album’s title track is a swaggering rocker co-written by the street-smart and savvy artistic conglomeration of Baird, Eddie Spaghetti and ‘Metal’ Marty Chandler of the Supersuckers, album producer Blanton and, of course, Mr. Hodges himself. Although I generally frown or dismiss committee-written songs as they, well, as a rule suck, but this is one tasty lil’ sucker that, given the rock ‘n’ roll pedigree of all involved, is guaranteed to raise the roof wherever played. 

Warner E. Hodges

The rock keeps on rolling with the Baird/Blanton/Hodges tune “Get Outta Town,” which features some stellar, razor-sharp Hodges’ fretwork and propulsive rhythms courtesy of Magellan and Voegele. The performance downright threatens to jump out of the grooves to grab you by the throat with just the right amount of musical menace. The rockabilly-tinged “Here Comes My Baby” swings like tire hanging from an oak tree, with Warner’s trembling, Duane Eddy-styled guitar licks juiced up by a jaunty backbeat and walking bass line while “When My Baby’s Blue,” a sort of sequel that amps up the guitar, pumps up the percussion, takes on a lightning bolt of confidence and draws from the energy of the jump blues to deliver a stunning tour de force. Warner’s vocals here really adapt to the song’s needs, which is a sort of metallic cross between hard rock and harder rhythm and blues, with plenty of blazing guitars and cacophonic instrumentation to launch the song into the stratosphere.

The twangin’ ‘n’ bangin’ “Good Company” is hard-edged Americana with just a hint of Scorchers sitting on the fringe, the loping rhythms complimented by a delightfully melodic chorus, harmony vocals hiding in the mix and, naturally, Warner’s incendiary guitarplay, which echoes ‘70s styled Southern rock while incorporating flashes of country stringplay. The album slows down for the first time with the mid-tempo stomp ‘n’ stammer of “North Star,” a bluesy ‘70s-styled hard rocker reminiscent of Texas rocker John Nitzinger, if only for the song’s six-string pyrotechnics, with the fluid solo around four minutes into “North Star” a thing of innate beauty. The serpentine “Carried Away” could have easily slotted into the mid-to-late ‘80s L.A. “hair metal” scene, something that Royal Court of China made a run at, with Warner’s growled, somber vocals thrown up against a semi-metallic soundtrack of dueling, swashbuckling guitars, explosive percussion, and an overall musical chaos grounded and saved from veering towards absurdity by Warner’s occasional twangy vocal lapses. 

Hottest Thing In Town

Warner E. Hodges, guitarslinger

“Individually” brings the band back to Nashville with a country-flavored rocker that choogles along like a cross between Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Scorchers with a touch of booger-rock rhythms, but an effective chorus and Warner stretching out his vocals with a challenging lyrical arrangement. By contrast, the punch-drunk “Happy Wife, Happy Life (Nothin’ Rhymes With Husband),” written by Blanton, but sounding like something Shel Silverstein or John Prine would have penned, is knocked out of the park with Warner’s tongue-in-cheek vocal delivery, which imparts timeless wisdom above rollicking throwback country instrumentation like Gordon’s piano (and accompanying old school honky tonk harmony vocals). At times, Warner’s vocals here sound eerily like his former bandmate Jason Ringenberg, which is to be expected as the two ran the roads together for a couple of decades. 

Warner had a friendly relationship with late outlaw country legend Billy Joe Shaver and his late guitar-slinger son Eddy, so it makes perfect sense to cover “Hottest Thing In Town,” from Shaver’s 1993 album Tramp On Your Street, as a sort of tribute to the pair. Hodges affords the song a raucous, country-rock performance with a red hot guitar solo that surely would make the younger Shaver smile. Magellan’s drums cascade through the speakers like cars piling atop each other in a trainwreck, and the overall dense squalls of instrumentation make for a helluva good time. Absolutely closes out with the slower-paced “Still Got A Ways To Go,” a searing sorta-ballad with emotional vox, bluesy guitars, syncopated percussion, and an overall Allman Brothers/Creedence Clearwater Revival vibe that finishes up the album with a sizzling slow-burner of a performance.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Hodges may be best-known for his genre-bending, forward-thinking performances with his former band, but put aside the onstage gymnastics and the larger-than-life persona and consider the man’s imaginative and creative guitarplay and you’ll find an artist that stands quite tall on his own merits. An overlooked instrumentalist, and a dynamic performer, Hodges’ recordings – none of which have been released in the United States (save for the first, self-produced and limited edition Disciples of Loud CD) – have only found an advocate in Mick Brown and his U.K. based Jerkin’ Crocus (JCPL) label, which is likely why Hodges has found an enthusiastic European audience. Wake up U.S. labels – there’s a market for these guitar-driven roots-rock sounds that eschew autotuned vocals or A.I. generated soundtracks. Absolutely is the stone cold real deal, hand delivered by Warner E. Hodges and a gang of creative collaborators that are musically unimpeachable. (JCPL Records U.K., released February 5th, 2026)

Archive Review: Blue Cheer’s What Doesn’t Kill You (2007)

Although they’ve influenced everything from Seattle grunge to modern “stoner rock,” Blue Cheer has always been nothing more than a humble ‘60s-era Frisco hippie band. Hard to tell, really, with the amps turned up past eleven and the band’s trademark blues-based, psychedelic candy-coated, acid-drenched hard rock sound. Forty years after the “Summer of Love,” Blue Cheer has bounced back with a brand new album featuring a streamlined old sound. 

Although not as crude as the band’s earliest output, What Doesn’t Kill You rocks every bit as hard, Dickie Peterson’s callused vocals pitched against Andrew McDonald’s strangling riffs, with drums that sound like a demolition derby. The songs are all sandpaper grit and diamond flash, showcasing a hard-won instrumental finesse and unflagging rock spirit, and what the band does to Albert King’s classic “Born Under A Bad Sign” is just downright sinful…which is exactly as it should be. (Rainman Records, released 2007)

Review originally published by Harp Magazine...

Book Review: Apocalypse Omnibus: The Adam Parfrey Reader (2026)

In the early 1980s, after serving a two-year penance in Detroit, I returned to Nashville and landed in a rooming house in the Belmont area near downtown. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood, but it was surrounded by pockets of dodgy housing that stubbornly refused to be gentrified into over-priced apartments for the university crowd. The tenants largely kept to themselves – Philly Tom, Vic the Dick, and others whose fleeting appearance and subsequent departures were barely worth remembering. 

One warm summer evening, I strolled down the block to the 7-11 store for a package of Slim Jims and a beer, walking in on an armed robbery. A young black man was holding the lily-white teenaged cashier at gunpoint with what appeared to be a .357 Magnum revolver. He looked at me, in my greasy biker garb, and asked “you don’t see nothing, do you brother?” “I’ve been blind since birth,” I replied, and walked right back out the door. A year later, at the same store, I walked in on the same guy, robbing a different cashier. “You again?” he asked. “Still blind,” I replied, and stumbled back out the door… 

Apocalypse Omnibus: The Adam Parfrey Reader 

That’s the world that writer and publisher Adam Parfrey inhabited. A world of petty criminals, prostitutes, junkies, killers, gamblers, hustlers, otherworldly religions, free thinkers, fringe artists…the flotsam and jetsam of waning capitalist glory, all provided a glimmer of dignity via his words, a consideration not provided by the police blotter or with newspaper ink. I knew Adam – we conversed by phone, by email, and he offered some helpful publishing tips – but I didn’t really know Mr. Parfrey. For that you’d have to turn to the written word, and even then you’d have questions. 

Feral House, the independent publishing house launched by Parfrey in 1989, recently published what may well be the culmination of nearly four decades of the founder’s intellectual obsessions in Apocalypse Omnibus: The Adam Parfrey Reader. A monster 456-page trade paperback, the Omnibus collects the best of  Parfrey’s writing from previously-published tomes like the notorious Apocalypse Culture (1987, Amok Press) and the even more controversial Apocalypse Culture II (2000), Cult Rapture (1995) and Ritual America (2012) as well as various assignments for publications like Penthouse, Hustler, and the Village Voice. 

After co-founding Amok Press with Ken Swezey in 1986 in New York City, Adam moved to L.A. after splitting with Swezey and formed Feral House. Parfrey had gotten a taste of intellectual freedom when Amok published Michael, a novel by Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbel, which was reviewed by The New York Times and sold well enough for the imprint to follow it up with the Parfrey-edited Apocalypse Culture, which became an underground cult classic resulting in multiple printings. The Manson File, an anthology of writings by Charlie Manson, considered “one of the last true heretics of our time,” followed in 1988. Amok’s last book was 1989’s Rants and Incendiary Tracts, which was edited by Parfrey and anarchist Bob Black (who actually introduced me to Adam) and co-published with Mike Hoy’s libertarian-leaning Loompanics Unlimited.* 

Feral House Explores the Taboo

Parfrey launched Feral House with much the same sort of free speech philosophy that he pursued with Amok. Feral House titles included The Satanic Witch, and other books by Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey; Bob Black’s Beneath the Underground (typeset by yours truly); Steven Blush’s American Hardcore: A Tribal History (later turned into a documentary film); and Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground, a 1998 book by Michael J. Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind that was also adapted to film. Sometimes Adam’s interests eerily paralleled real life; the Parfrey-edited 2001 anthology Extreme Islam: Anti-American Propaganda of Muslim Fundamentalism sold exceptionally well in the wake of the September 11th attacks of that year.

Protestations that he wasn’t really a writer aside, Parfrey’s Apocalypse Omnibus offers up some very good writing, indeed. Adam brought the same level of zealotry and intellectual curiosity he expected from Feral House’s books to his own work, and it shows throughout the book. Aside from pieces from the aforementioned Amok and Feral House books, the Omnibus includes his scandalous 1992 “Citizen Keane” essay from the San Diego Reader, Parfrey’s reporting the basis for his book of the same name that was later made into the 2014 film Big Eyes by director Tim Burton. Chapters on “Satanic Panic” and “Fascists, White Supremacists, and Their Friends” largely reprint some of Adam’s best work from the two Apocalypse Culture books and Cult Rapture, as well as interesting articles from various publications.

The “Killer Correspondence” chapter reprints letters and postcards received by Parfrey, sent by notorious figures like Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Ramirez, and Ted Kaczynski, the “Unibomber,” while the chapter “At The Margins” dives deep into the wild and wooly worlds of Russian mail order brides, the cosmic religion of Unarius, the dubious celebrity of “Mr. Awesome,” and the manufacturer of lifelike sex dolls. Another chapter compiles various interviews with Parfrey by people like comedian Marc Meron, Tamra Lucid, and Stephen Lemons  which provide a bit of insight into Adam’s thoughts, history, and interests. 

Feral Man In A Feral Land

The most interesting chapters of Parfrey’s Apocalypse Omnibus are, to my mind, the book-opening “Feral Man In A Feral Land” – also the name of a painting by artist Joe Coleman included at the end of the book – and “HelL.A.,” a collection of columns written by Adam for almost five years circa 1991-1995 for the San Diego Reader, which itself comprises better than 1/3 the book. The first chapter includes early 2010s blog posts that tell of Parfrey’s years in the Big Apple, as well as essays on larger-than-life figures like filmmaker and bull fighter Budd Boetticher and director Don Siegal (Dirty Harry). I found the 1992 interview/article with Boetticher to be particularly fascinating, a glimpse into the über-masculine Los Angeles based film industry of the 1940s and ‘50s.    

The “HelL.A.” columns showcase Parfrey’s deftness with the written word, and an immense skill at conveying a story in a mere few hundred words. Writing a weekly column is hard (don’t ask me how I know) and doing it well even harder, yet Parfrey makes it seem effortless. Over the course of a couple hundred columns, Adam writes of long-gone but fondly-remembered celebrity watering holes, street hustlers, strip-mall preachers, notorious racists, and various crackpots that comprise the seedier side of Hollywood. He also writes of uniquely Angeleno characters like poet/novelist Charles Bukowski, former L.A. mayor Sam Yorty, Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, and the Jewish Defense League’s Irv Rubin, among others. What makes the columns so interesting is not only the insight that Parfrey brings to each, but his ability to whittle each story down to a core principle that reaffirms the humanity of the subject. 

And that, friends, is the basis of Adam Parfrey’s writing, his ability to imbue his subjects, no matter how sleazy, taboo, or controversial, with a shred of redemption (yes, even punk rocker G.G. Allin). Although Parfrey has long been accused of far right sympathies, I found the man to be more complicated than a bumper sticker slogan could convey. The one aesthetic found throughout Adam’s writing is the authenticity – no matter the charlatan, crackpot, hustler, or conman he may be writing about, they were real in a way that modern celebrity fails. 

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Parfrey may have been the free-thinking inspiration for contemporary podcasters and “influencers” but, unlike these so-called acolytes, Adam possessed a truly open mind that he constantly challenged with both his written words and with the books he published. Parfrey didn’t always agree with the most controversial and despised figures he wrote about or published, but he was a free speech absolutist that felt that a diversity of ideas – no matter how disdained by the mainstream – deserved an honest hearing. It was this perspective that makes Adam’s writing so fascinating, and helped make Feral House the most daring and interesting book publisher in America.

Feral House’s Apocalypse Omnibus: The Adam Parfrey Reader perfectly showcases its late founder’s ever-churning thoughts and obsessions (Parfrey passed away in May 2018), creating a living tribute to one of America’s foremost underground documentarians. If you want comfort, look elsewhere; if you want to challenge your pre-conceived notions of the world, Apocalypse Omnibus is the book for you! (Feral House, published July 21st, 2026)

Buy the book from Amazon ‘cause I get human monies from your purchase: Apocalypse Omnibus: The Adam Parfrey Reader
  
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* Back in the 1970s, libertarians were “live at let be” styled semi-anarchists that valued personal responsibility and the freedom to live without government interference on issues like drugs, guns, and speech. When some of ‘em got together later and formed a political party, they evolved into the headline-grabbing racist asshats we despise today. Parfrey certainly had libertarian leanings, as did many of Feral House’s authors.