Wham Bam Thank You Gram!

Gram Parsons, if he was still alive, would have turned 65 this year, making him younger than Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and any amount of his contemporaries, many of whom continue to tour.

He loved to play. Even when he was making records with the International Submarine Band, The Byrds or the Flying Burrito Brothers, nothing gave him more pleasure than hauling his ass out to some crunky dive in the boondocks of LA County to belt out some covers from his seemingly inexhaustible repertoire. So it’s a reasonable assumption that if he were alive he’d still, like Haggard and Kristofferson, be doing the rounds.
Of course, it’s impossible to guess what turn his career might have taken. After floundering for years as a member of a string of moderately successful (and very successful in the case of The Byrds) bands and then effectively trying (and failing) to join The Rolling Stones, he seemed to have found his feet as a solo artist with the fledgling talent of Emmylou Harris at his side. Only one solo album – GP – was released during his lifetime (Grievous Angel came out shortly after his death). However, it was well-received and his influence, partly due to the wide circle of musicians he had worked with, started to spread beyond the confines of the cliquey Los Angeles country music scene at whose centre he had reigned. He had, for instance, played with Bernie Leadon, now a member of The Eagles, while in the Flying Burrito Brothers. His influence on Leadon was apparent even though his view of The Eagles was fairly contemptuous.
Even knuckled down and rehearsing regularly as he was with his new band The Fallen Angels (supposedly at the behest of Emmylou Harris) he failed to catch the public imagination. When he died you might have expected that his legacy would have been a short footnote in the history of what he himself termed ‘Cosmic American music’. His legacy, though, proved to be a tsunami of country rock bands like The Eagles and a strong country streak apparent in that juggernaut of the early ‘70s, The Rolling Stones. He had lived with Keith Richards during much of the recording of Exile On Main Street and rumours persist that he appears somewhere on the record, although this seems improbable, as Mick Jagger tolerated him at best, possibly jealous of his relationship with Keith Richards. Relations between them only seemed to thaw when they sat at the piano in Nellcote, Richards’ South of France bolt hole, jamming out old Hank Williams numbers.
His reputation in the rock world secure, you might think that country music would have embraced this restless innovator. He covered the Louvin Brothers, Merle Haggard and loved both the music which emanated from Nashville and the Bakersfield sound. Alas his records never made it on to the country charts and, within the scene, his legacy has been shunned. While his harmonist Emmylou Harris was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008 his ghost still waits outside the door. Each year on his birthday a series of concerts is held around the globe to mark his life and to campaign for him to be nominated to the Country Music Hall of Fame. You can sign it at gramparsonspetition.com – hopefully when his next birthday comes around he’ll have taken his rightful place in the pantheon of country greats.
Ana Egge was born in rural Saskatchewan and grew up in the town of Ambrose, North Dakota, population 50. At the age of 12, her family relocated to Silver City, New Mexico, where her parents established a school named Down To Earth. Her astrology teacher, Don Musser, was an accomplished luthier and the summer before she turned 17, he invited Ana to apprentice with the intention of helping her build her own guitar. She drove to his house once a week for seven months until the guitar was completed and it’s the main guitar she continues to play today.
It’s small wonder then that she wanted to get out and see some big bad world but after living in Austin, TX for five years in the 90s while working on her music, Ana returned to Silver City and began building her own house on her sister’s land just outside of town. While she still maintains the home and visits often, she has called Brooklyn, NY her primary residence since 2002.
She has toured and shared the stage with Lucinda Williams, Ralph Stanley, John Prine, Ron Sexsmith, Shawn Colvin, Joan Armatrading, Iris Dement, Richard Thompson and George Jones. She has, in addition, just released Bad Blood, a 12-song collection recorded in Levon Helm’s studio in upstate New York, with Steve Earle manning the controls. He too is extravagent in his praise, stating, “Ana Egge’s songs are low and lonesome, big square-stare noir ballads which she plays on a guitar she built with her own two hands and sings like she’s telling us her deepest, darkest secrets.”