Singer-songwriter Hayes Carll returned to The White Water Tavern in Little Rock, Ark. on Tuesday, March 28 for his first show at the venue in 12 years. It was night one of a three-night stand at the venue, which he called one of the greatest in the world.

Carll is one of a few artists I’ve heard say that about The White Water Tavern while attending shows at the tiny bar venue and you can tell the artists are being truthful and not just saying it because they’re performing there because I don’t ever hear similar things from artists at other venues. The White Water Tavern with its intimate setting – it’s literally just a small stage in the corner of a barroom – and passionate music lovers who attend shows there really is a magical place.

I’ve seen Carll a few times at The Revolution Room in Little Rock, but this was my first time seeing him at White Water. He’s one of my favorite active singer-songwriters in country music or Americana (I’m fine calling his music either of those genres) and he always puts on a terrific show and tells interesting, often funny stories, especially about his ties to the area. Carll is from the Houston area of Texas and I believe splits his time between Austin and Nashville when not touring, but he attended college at Hendrix University in Conway, Ark. (which is literally a mile and a half from my house) – about 30 miles north of Little Rock.

Carll’s set on night one at White Water (unfortunately the only night of the stand I’ll be able to see) focused a lot on his new stuff – playing six songs off his most recent album You Get It All from 2021 – including opening the show with that album’s title track.

Most of the tracks from the recent album were performed in the first half of his show on Tuesday night and were: “None’Ya,” “Any Other Way,” “Different Boats,” “She’ll Come Back to Me” and “To Keep From Being Found.”

The audience didn’t seem to mind the surplus of newer songs – and I know I didn’t mind. Carll simply doesn’t make disappointing albums and this one came out since the last time I got to see him live see these were all live debuts for me.

Carll sprinkled some recent, but not as recent songs in his first five or so songs performed on his set on Tuesday like “If I May Be So Bold” and “What It Is” from 2019’s What It Is and “Love is So Easy,” from 2016’s stripped-down Lovers and Leavers.

The show really got into a groove when Carll performed fan-favorite “Drunken Poet’s Dream,” from 2008’s Trouble In Mind, my personal favorite Hayes Carll album. Immediately going from “Love Is So Easy” to “Drunken Poet’s Dream” without so much as a pause in the music was one of the real highlights of the evening and probably ended up being the loudest sing-along from the faithful audience.

Carll told the crowd a story about meeting one of his heroes Ray Wylie Hubbard while working as a bartender in a Texas bar before covering Hubbard’s “Mississippi Flush.”

Another highlight of Carll’s night one at White Water was when he invited the show’s opener Melissa Carper, who came to Arkansas by way of Nebraska, for a cover of Arkansas’ finest Johnny Cash with a beautiful rendition of “I Still Miss Someone,” for my money Cash’s most underrated song. The two then turned Carll’s “Girl Downtime,” from Trouble In Mind, into a duet.

Carll told a couple of stories about his time in Arkansas before performing two Arkansas songs: “Arkansas Blues,” which he said he wrote after performing his first paying gig with some college buddies in a supper club outside of Conway, and “Little Rock,” which is the absolute perfect song to see live while attending a show in Little Rock.

Carll followed his Arkansas songs with a three-song tribute that included “Sake of the Song,” off Lovers and Leavers, the rocking “KMAG YOYO” with a bit of Waylon Jennings’ “T for Texas” thrown in the middle, and then the band left the stage leaving Carll alone for a solo performance of his lovely “Beaumont,” which is potentially his greatest song (though many songs are in contention for that).
Carper opened the show with her old-timey, rural style of country music with her upright bass and guitar accompaniment from Mose Wilson.

Carper would perform tracks off her three solo albums to date: Arkansas Bound (2015), Daddy’s Country Gold (2021) and Ramblin’ Soul (2022). Among the highlights of Carper’s set was the cute “Would You Like to Get Some Goats,” a paean to her old van “My Old Chevy Van,” the local-flavored “Arkansas Hills” and a couple of songs that show off her sense of humor in “Boxers on Backwards” and “Christian Girlfriend.” Wilson also got a chance to show off his chops with the excellent “I Don’t Need You” off his self-titled 2021 album.

by Julian Spivey
Jim Gordon has died. He may have written the most beautiful piece of pop music ever. And then the voices in his head told him to murder his mother.

At 17, Gordon got his first professional music gig playing drums for the Everly Brothers in 1963. He passed on a music scholarship to UCLA for this opportunity.

It wasn’t long before he was one of the most sought-after session players in Los Angeles, the protégé of Hal Blaine of the famous “The Wrecking Crew” of session players.

In 1969-1970, Gordon toured as the drummer for Delaney & Bonnie, who at the time had Eric Clapton, already done with The Yardbirds, Cream and Blind Faith, playing guitar for them. Clapton embarked on a solo career in 1970, but he also took Delaney & Bonnie’s entire rhythm section – Gordon, Carl Radle on bass and Bobby Whitlock on keyboards – and formed Derek and the Dominos.  

Derek and the Dominos only recorded one studio album – the 1970 double album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs – but that album contained one of the greatest tracks in rock and pop music history – “Layla.”

“Layla,” released as a single in March of 1971, was mostly written by Clapton (though arguably the two greatest pieces of music on the track were written by others). The song was inspired by a seventh-century love story in Arabia that later formed the basis of the 12th-century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi’s The Story of Layla and Majnun. In the story, a young man falls hopelessly in love with a beautiful young girl, went crazy and because of this could not marry her. The story reminded Clapton of his secret love for Pattie Boyd, the wife of his friend and Beatles guitarist George Harrison.

Clapton, who penned the lyrics, originally envisioned the song as a ballad – which he would record it as famously for his MTV Unplugged appearance in 1992, which gave the song a second life on radio and in pop culture.

It would become a rocker when Allman Brothers Band guitarist Duane Allman showed up and created the song’s signature guitar riff. Clapton would collaborate with Allman on the rest of the track’s guitar pieces with Allman also contributing on slide guitar.

While in the studio, Clapton would overhear Gordon playing a piano piece he has composed separately. Clapton was greatly impressed by what he heard and talked Gordon into using the piece as part of the song – it became the coda for the song and what I’ve long considered the most beautiful piece of popular music I’ve ever heard. I think director Martin Scorsese might agree – he notably used the coda as the soundtrack to the final scene of his 1990 classic “Goodfellas.”

This is where the story turns dark, the kind of dark not even Scorsese could probably create.

Gordon may not have composed the coda to “Layla,” or at least may have had help.

In a 2011 interview with whereseric.com, Whitlock claimed: “Jim took that piano melody from his ex-girlfriend Rita Coolidge. I know because in the D&B days, I lived in John Garfield’s old house in the Hollywood Hills and there was a guest house with an upright piano in it. Rita and Jim were up there in the guest house and invited me to join in on writing this song with them called ‘Time’ … her sister Priscilla wound up recording it with Booker T. Jones … Jim took the melody from Rita’s song and didn’t give her credit for writing it. Her boyfriend ripped her off.” Graham Nash would substantiate the rumor in his 2014 autobiography Wild Tales and Coolidge would, as well, in her 2016 autobiography Delta Lady: A Memoir. Only Clapton and Gordon would be credited on “Layla.”

The story gets even darker than potentially stealing your life’s greatest work from your girlfriend.

Following the disbanding of Derek and the Dominos after their one album, which despite the excellence of “Layla” was unsuccessful, Gordon played with Steely Dan, Alice Cooper, Frank Zappa, Tom Waits and Tom Petty among others. But, Gordon, who had a history of mental health issues, would see his paranoia and erratic behavior progress as the ‘70s went on and it was complicated by alcohol and drug abuse. He also had a history of abusing his partners, including Coolidge and his future wife Renee Armand. Work began to dry up for Gordon after word got around about his issues.

Gordon had developed schizophrenia, which at the time went undiagnosed, and began hearing voices (including that of his mother). On June 3, 1983, Gordon attacked his 72-year-old mother Osa Marie Gordon, with a hammer before fatally stabbing her with a butcher knife. He would claim a voice told him to kill her. It was only after his arrest for his mom’s murder that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

At his trial, the court accepted that Gordon has schizophrenia, but he was not allowed to use an insanity defense because of changes made to California law due to the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. On July 10, 1984, Gordon was sentenced to 16 years to life in prison. He was denied parole many times as he never attended a parole hearing.

Publicist Bob Merlis confirmed that Gordon died of natural causes on Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, Calif.  “after a long incarceration and lifelong battle with mental illness.” Gordon was 77.

I’ve always been haunted by the fact that the man who is at least credited with writing what I consider to be the most beautiful piece of pop music wound up brutally murdering his own mother before finishing out his life in prison. It doesn’t feel like someone capable of that kind of beauty could also be capable of such brutality and darkness.  

Jason Boland & the Stragglers brought their excellent brand of red dirt country music or “folk music” as Boland likes to say to The Revolution Room in Little Rock, Ark., one of the band’s usual Arkansas haunts, on Friday, March 10 for a unique evening of their music in a stripped down fashion they’re calling The Delectric Tour.

This is the sixth time in the last 10 years I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Boland and the Stragglers, the last being in February of 2020 just before live concerts basically shut down for a year-and-a-half due to COVID-19, but it was a new experience seeing the band do an entire show acoustically. In fact, in all of my years seeing live shows it’s the only one I’ve seen done completely acoustic.

The band has made a few changes since the last time I saw them – guitarist Cody Angel is no longer in the band with AJ Slaughter in as the new pedal steel and guitar player. Maybe more importantly, Nick Worley is no longer the band’s fiddle player with Nick Gedra taking the fiddle and mandolin slot in the band. Both Slaughter and Gedra were amazing on Friday night as steel guitar and especially fiddle play a huge role in the Stragglers’ music. It’s terrific how Boland can find new members just as good as those of the past. The rest of the band featured bassist Grant Tracy, the only other original member of The Stragglers besides Boland, playing an upright bass this time with Jake Lynn on drums and Andrew Blair on piano.

The stripped-down version of the band’s music allowed them to play many songs they don’t typically play in their more raucous, electric honky tonk shows. Four of the first five songs performed on Friday night were ones I’m almost certain I’d never seen the band do live in my five previous concert experiences with them, including the show opener “Hell or Bust,” off 2004’s Somewhere in the Middle. The others were “Spend All Your Time,” “No Reason Being Late” and “Predestined” with my favorite of the bunch being “No Reason Being Late” off 2008’s Comal County Blue. Boland mixed in the raucous truck stop song “Truckstop Diaries,” which I had heard before.

My favorite performance of these stripped-down ballads that don’t usually find a space in Boland’s sets was “Obsessed,” a love song ultimately about not being lonely which was on 2011’s Rancho Alto, which was my first experience with Boland as a songwriter and performer thanks to a local radio station that played red dirt country at the time and featured multiple tracks off the album, which was new at the time, on air.

Despite being a stripped-down, acoustic show, the band really can’t be tamed all that much – though I’m a bit surprised Boland managed to remain seated on his chair at center stage the entire time. He’s a guy who likes to move around and kind of do a honky tonk shuffle with his boots while performing. Deep down they’re a hardcore troubadour honky tonk band no matter if their instruments are plugged in or not.

Boland fit many of his usual crowd favorites into the set like “Pearl Snaps,” off the group’s 1999 debut of the same name, which I consider a modern country classic (and the damn thing doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page).” The group also played “Somewhere Down in Texas,” my favorite performance of the evening, and “Proud Souls,” which wasn’t on the setlist but they performed as a request from a couple in the front row celebrating their anniversary, from the debut.

The band played a surprising amount of songs that weren’t on their original setlist, which I could see taped to the stage from my spot right in front of Slaughter’s Emmons pedal steel guitar. This shows the loose style of performance Boland and the band has. Among the songs performed off the original set was the title track from their most recent album, 2021’s The Light Saw Me, “Down Here in the Hole” off Rancho Alto and “Fuck, Fight and Rodeo” off 2015’s Squelch.

Other highlights of the show included 2011’s “False Accuser’s Lament” and 2013’s “Dark and Dirty Mile,” two regulars in Boland’s sets.

Boland took the opportunity on Friday night to debut two new songs for us: “Take Me Back to Austin” and “Truest Colors,” which were both incredible and have me wanting the group to get their next album out ASAP. If you’re a fan of the band I think you’re really going to dig these songs.

The group finished their main set with a terrific performance of “Ponies,” from their debut album, that led directly into the tornado song “Blowing Through the Hills,” which appeared on the band’s terrific live album High in the Rockies in 2010, which is one of the most epic songs the band does live and it being done acoustic does not change that fact whatsoever.

The band finished the evening with a two-song encore of the raucous “When I’m Stoned,” the entire Rev Room crowd shouting alone, before finishing with the quiet, sincere and fitting for the evening “See You When I See You.”

If there was one slight disappointment to the evening it was not seeing “Outlaw Band,” my favorite performance at every show I’ve seen them do previously, which they always seemed to end their shows with. It’s the absolute show-ender, but for a stripped-down night of music “See You When I See You” was probably the right call thematically.

Thomas Csorba (pronounced with a “ch” sound), a country singer-songwriter from Texas who looks incredibly young, opened the show for Boland and the Stragglers and he’s a performer you’re going to need to pay attention to. He’s released two albums thus far: 2017’s From the Foxhole and 2020’s well-received self-titled album and he’s working on another one. Many of the songs from his set on Friday night were new, and thus I didn’t get song titles for them, but they’re impressive and make me anticipate the album greatly.

Csorba’s stage presence was a bit funny; he talks a lot between songs kind of in an uncomfortable, anxious rambling manner. I found it to be winsome, not sure if the majority of the audience who’d likely never heard his name before did or not. I did think talking about how he’s heard great things about the White Water Tavern, another local Little Rock venue, which he said he hoped to play one day and see us there while at The Rev Room was a bit of a faux pas, but he’s young and again seemed a nervous chatter.

The songs he performed that have appeared on his albums thus far were all terrific, including “Walking Sideways,” “Green Velvet,” “Goodbye to Goodbye” and “Plastic Jesus (Reborn),” a traditional song you may know from Paul Newman’s emotional performance in the movie “Cool Hand Luke,” which Csorba added more verses and a chorus to to great effect.

Definitely keep an eye on Csorba. I think he could be one of the next big things in singer-songwriter country music that borders on Americana.