Album Notes for "Texas Socialist Infiltration Dance Songs"

I titled this album with tongue slightly in cheek. Most of the songs are fun and non-political. But, I do not believe that “In the beginning God created heaven and the earth” so that T. Boone Pickens could own and control the water. I do not believe that “And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good” so that Monsanto could co-opt the sacred process and become the god of seeds.
I do believe in the Public Library, Public Health Departments, and Community Fire Departments. You see, much of what Socialism does is to provide a democratic control of things that, by logic and By God belong to the People and for the People. The early basis for laws governing broadcast radio and later TV, was that the “airwaves” belong to the People. I see no difference now that we have cable and the internet. The electromagnetic spectrum was always in the “airwaves.”
Many grandparents and great-grandparents of today’s Texans were farmers and they knew exactly who their enemies were: national banks, corporate and private monopolies topped the list. Lampasas and Parker Counties were hotbeds of activity for populist causes like cooperatives and water rights. And, Texas was the only southern state whose Farmer’s Alliance was open to black farmers!
Remember, before George W. and Rick Perry the Governor of Texas was Ann Richards. Jim Hightower was the Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture. Mr. Hightower (who, by the way, has great taste in hats as well as quips) managed the presidential campaign of the great Oklahoma Senator Fred Roy Harris. In one of Senator Harris’ novels an Okie grandmother expresses Biblically based disgust at the practice of making money from loans instead of work.
So just put it out of your heads that Texas is nothing but a bunch of gun-nut, racist yahoos. It’s half progressive and overdue for a progressive comeback. So keep on coming to Austin in the springtime. Keep on being the freak you are and don’t let the current national insanity overwhelm you. Don’t blame Texas.
If you take out the tragedy of the Viet Nam War from the legacy of LBJ he was one fine president. I am no more a party-line Socialist than I am a party-line Democrat. As to the title, I'll quote an old Seattle friend named Robert Smith, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke!"
Before I had my albums replicated by CD Baby I burned them on my computer. Naturally, after the first year I recorded with Big John Mills and Sterling Finlay I put all the songs I liked from that year on the CD. I had Contrary replicated first because it was all such a fresh creation and I was so proud of it. My wife did not like Contrary's guns and threats and murder AT ALL, but I put it out first. When I was preparing Texas Dance Songs I followed Big John's advice. He said why put in a controversial song or two on an album that otherwise is dance music? So I saved all my political stuff. "Demand and Supply" was recorded the first or second day of the first year. Big John counted us in at a tempo way faster than I had ever played it and man, it improved the song 100%. You can just hear how much fun we had. And, by the way, the song is about private property rights - sorta strange for a socialist album, eh? 
Neither Big John nor Sterling said a word about "I Wasn't Born in the Homeland," and trust me, if Big John was offended he would have let me know one way or another. I'm not saying they agreed with every word, just that they played it quite sweetly. By the time we did "My Magical Horse" Big John was so into his big lyrical sound that I stopped the first take and said, "Hey man, it's just a simple folk song. It doesn't need to sound majestic." 
In 2011 engineer Russell Tanner fed and mixed some recordings that my son, Forest Arturo Dunn, and I had recorded on an early Roland digital workstation. Forest added so many tracks that he had to do a lot of bouncing and Russell worked hard with some fancy plug-ins to bring out some aspects, such as Forest's piano playing. Big John used his Tele to overdub parts on "The Real Thing" and "Bar Talk."
Forest spent his last years in Tucson and he had a great drummer friend named Rick Moe. Forest told me that the first tracks he did for Bar Talk was Rick's drums. I wasn't there and Forest did not play along. Imagine that! He somehow communicated every nuance of that song to Rick and Rick wailed out every beat and every change. Then Forest added all his parts and finally I came to town and did rhythm guitar and sang as the very last things! That's the kind of talent we lost when we lost Forest. And Rick, I sure hope you are in a great band in New York City or wherever you are now. Nobody sounds like Rick Moe except Rick.
Kundalini Baby and Don Felp's '65 Ford were the only songs on this album from the 2013 session. I heard Don in Austin and fell in love with his songs. Don is a real deal cowboy tall drink of water writer and I thank him for working out publishing so that I could record his song without it just being a handshake deal. It's published by Don and registered with BMI. 
All my albums can be heard on Spotify and some other online stations. All my albums can be downloaded from iTunes, amazon, CD Baby and others. 

Winfield, Kansas where you're not in Kansas anymore at the Walnut Valley Festival

If you are a foreign or domestic tourist (scary phrasing in this day and age) I’m about to do you a favor. If you don’t know what the Walnut Valley Festival is, read on for a real Americana treat, even a shocking , yet delightful treat. The locals call it simply “Bluegrass.” If you ask for directions in Winfield, Kansas you can just say, “Where’s Bluegrass?” (Doesn’t work the same way in Colorado.)

I’m going to tell you about the unofficial festival which is just across the street from the official one, but first a bit about what the promoters would want me to say. At this music festival you can attend contests wherein outstanding musicians from all over the world compete for glory and great prizes.

Thurs. 9:00 AM	Stage 4	International Autoharp Championship
Thurs. 3:00 PM	Stage 4	International Finger Style Guitar Championship
Fri. 9:00 AM	Stage 4	National Mountain Dulcimer Championship
Fri. 1:00 PM	Stage 4	National Mandolin Championship
Fri. 5:00 PM	Stage 1	Finger Style Winners (victory lap)
Fri. 6:00 PM	Stage 4	Walnut Valley Old Time Fiddle Championship
Sat. 9:00 AM	Stage 4	National Flat Pick Guitar Championship
Sat. 3:30 PM	Stage 4	National Hammer Dulcimer Championship
Sat. 5:00 PM	Stage 1	Flat Pick Winners (victory lap)
Sun. 10:00 AM	Stage 4	National Bluegrass Banjo Championship

There are the contests; the days this year refer to the dates from September 17^th through the 21^st, but the chart online said 2012 so just know this years festival is Sept. 17-21. Past winners of one or more of the contests include Mark OConnor, Alison Kraus, Chris Thile, and Peter Ostroushko. If you have no idea who these folks are, no matter. Also, look online for the artists who will be performing. The party I’m going tell you about is across the street. If you don’t like to par-tay, scroll down to one of my political blogs! Or, you can search online for the festival info.

You need to search wvfest.com and select ‘camping’ info because I’m telling you too late to get a motel room unless you drive to St. Louis. If you do that you mis the party. Camp. Now, in 2009, there was a flood of rain and I managed to get a motel room because so many people canceled, but the festival went on. (Bring mosquito repellant and coils to burn) You’ll be camping and trust me, you want to camp! You want to camp in Pecan Grove, my partying friend. You’re too late to bring an RV this year, but you can find a place to park a car and pitch a tent. Stake a reasonable amount of space for your tent by placing stuff or stakes around, because on the weekend a Pecan Grove that seemed full all week will swell to half again that full of college kids.

Here is a picture from 2009 that gives you an idea of the funky fun to be had in Pecan Grove. This is not Pecan Grove, they had to move Stage 5 that year due to mud.

Yeah, Stage 5 man! Wow! You want to see and hear three barefoot hillbillies get DOWN jammin’? You want to hear folk tunes on a concert harp? You want to hear songs about drinking? Smoking pot? And, really – songs about killing bad cops? Whoa. Yep, I’ve heard it all at Stage 5. There are bands that sing songs sooo deeeeep in Americana that they must know they have no chance of hitting the big time, but they have big followings in and around the Ozarks. You will see crowds heading places around Pecan Grove. Follow them. They are heading to other stages where a popular person or group is about to play. Stages 5, 6, etc. all began as unofficial projects, but Stage 5 is now semi-official. Let’s say not official enough to be censored. I didn’t specify that this is an acoustic instrument festival – I mean its Bluegrass. They don’t even want a drummer! I wandered into a dispute one year that ended with a drummer getting kicked out of a roadside jam. He took it like a man, but I was drunk and, after another song I called out, “Great, but it’d be perfect if you got a drummer!”

There's a lot of drinking going on, but most people are sober (most of the time). Then there's the dude who yelled, “Play on, I’m just hitting my first wall.” I’ve never drunk enough to get past the first wall, but you will see plenty of more experienced drinkers.

This raises the question – bring the kids? Hell, no, but people do. I guarantee you that no one will change their set list. They’ll still sing songs like Suck My Balls. Fights? I wouldn’t worry. Cops? Yes, enough, but they have backed off a lot. The festival lost money during years when the police were overzealous about arresting people. It’s so much a let-your-hair-down event that one year I even questioned things. A young woman left her drunken man after an argument. He drank on, yelling shit. We were camped by the river. He yelled, “I’m gonna kill someone.” Then there was a big splash. “Fuck, I fell in the river!” The cops came, talked to him and left. His friends spent the rest of the day baby sitting. I commented to a friend, surprised he had not been arrested. The regular attendee said, “You see that camp? All cops off duty having fun. You see that one? All firefighters. That asshole was just al talk.” The firefighters were taking turns hitting each other with a swat board (like in old-time schools). “A young woman called out, “You made a welt!” I don’t think she minded that much.

Well, this crap is not why I would want to go so let’s move to music. Do you play? Guitar, banjo, mandolin, acoustic bass, fiddle? Just carry it with you as you stroll around anytime day or night. There will be a jam session going. Join in! I jammed with a band called Whistle Pig (a word for, I think a groundhog). Three mind-bogglingly good musicians man, I hung on by the seat of my pants. Sometimes I play softly on the outskirts of a jam until there’s a song I know. Then, I get louder, maybe get nodded to for a solo, “You want one?)  Fun, fun, fun until Daddy takes your T-Bird away.

Here’s a thing. Years before I attended there was a tradition of some large camp putting up a façade that looked like it came from “Streetcar  Named Desire.” Folks began standing front of it doing their best Marlon Brando. “Stellllllaaa!!!!!”  So, I’m  sitting with a new friend, somewhere in the distance we hear “Stella” and he tells me the story. The façade hasn’t appeared for years! It’s just that some old-timers still yell out “Stella!”

There you go. Will one more thing – all the other campgrounds are for normal people so you can camp there and just go slumming in Pecan Grove if you don’t drink too much to find your way back to reality.

Oh, yeah, I am, after all shamelessly promoting my music and my son’s. I’m a Winfield Winner! YeeeeFuckingHaaaaaa! I won a category of the song contests (across the street) and, new contest that it is, the only prize is getting to sing your song on an official stage. That was enough for me. I overcame my horrific performance anxieties (we won’t talk about my humiliations in the dulcimer and autoharp competitions- “How’d you do?” “I sucked.” I heard you practicing, you’re good!” “I sucked – donkeys.” “Oh sorry man, here have a beer.”) and did good! That was the highest high of the year for this old man! Here is a link to my picture onstage. The guy copyrights his work so I won’t paste it here.

 And here is my Winfield-Winning song, as recorded in Texas with Big John Mills and Sterling Finlay. The song category was “religion/spirituality.” The gospel truth is that I was runner-up, but There Bible (yes) couldn’t attend so I won.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I mean you will be right next to Missouri so people of color might want to know - you'll see hip Japanese tourists, hispanics, and some black folks. This thing is very white, but I'll bet you will not experience any racism. In fact, this year I bet people will go out of their way to make you welcome. Come for the bluegrass and not to gawk. Gawking would raise hackles. Don't come to laugh at people. Come to get crazy and/or jam. You may even get kissed by a libertarian. Many local attendees might have right-wing leanings, but they ain't there for political or religious reasons. What happens in Pecan Grove stays in Pecan Grove.

album notes for Texas Socialist Infiltration Dance Songs

I titled this album with tongue slightly in cheek. Most of the songs are fun and non-political. But, I do not believe that “In the beginning God created heaven and the earth” so that T. Boone Pickens could own and control the water. I do not believe that “And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good” so that Monsanto could co-opt the sacred process and become the god of seeds.
I do believe in the Public Library, Public Health Departments, and Community Fire Departments. You see, much of what Socialism does is to provide a democratic control of things that, by logic and By God belong to the People and for the People. The early basis for laws governing broadcast radio and later TV, was that the “airwaves” belong to the People. I see no difference now that we have cable and the internet. The electromagnetic spectrum was always in the “airwaves.”
Many grandparents and great-grandparents of today’s Texans were farmers and they knew exactly who their enemies were: national banks, corporate and private monopolies topped the list. Lampasas and Parker Counties were hotbeds of activity for populist causes like cooperatives and water rights. And, Texas was the only southern state whose Farmer’s Alliance was open to black farmers!
Remember, before George W. and Rick Perry the Governor of Texas was Ann Richards. Jim Hightower was the Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture. Mr. Hightower (who, by the way, has great taste in hats as well as quips) managed the presidential campaign of the great Oklahoma Senator Fred Roy Harris. In one of Senator Harris’ novels an Okie grandmother expresses Biblically based disgust at the practice of making money from loans instead of work.
So just put it out of your heads that Texas is nothing but a bunch of gun-nut, racist yahoos. It’s half progressive and overdue for a progressive comeback. So keep on coming to Austin in the springtime. Keep on being the freak you are and don’t let the current national insanity overwhelm you. Don’t blame Texas.
If you take out the tragedy of the Viet Nam War from the legacy of LBJ he was one fine president. I am no more a party-line Socialist than I am a party-line Democrat. As to the title, I'll quote an old Seattle friend named Robert Smith, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke!"
Before I had my albums replicated by CD Baby I burned them on my computer. Naturally, after the first year I recorded with Big John Mills and Sterling Finlay I put all the songs I liked from that year on the CD. I had Contrary replicated first because it was all such a fresh creation and I was so proud of it. My wife did not like Contrary's guns and threats and murder AT ALL, but I put it out first. When I was preparing Texas Dance Songs I followed Big John's advice. He said why put in a controversial song or two on an album that otherwise is dance music? So I saved all my political stuff. "Demand and Supply" was recorded the first or second day of the first year. Big John counted us in at a tempo way faster than I had ever played it and man, it improved the song 100%. You can just hear how much fun we had. And, by the way, the song is about private property rights - sorta strange for a socialist album, eh? 
Neither Big John nor Sterling said a word about "I Wasn't Born in the Homeland," and trust me, if Big John was offended he would have let me know one way or another. I'm not saying they agreed with every word, just that they played it quite sweetly. By the time we did "My Magical Horse" Big John was so into his big lyrical sound that I stopped the first take and said, "Hey man, it's just a simple folk song. It doesn't need to sound majestic." 
In 2011 engineer Russell Tanner fed and mixed some recordings that my son, Forest Arturo Dunn, and I had recorded on an early Roland digital workstation. Forest added so many tracks that he had to do a lot of bouncing and Russell worked hard with some fancy plug-ins to bring out some aspects, such as Forest's piano playing. Big John used his Tele to overdub parts on "The Real Thing" and "Bar Talk."
Forest spent his last years in Tucson and he had a great drummer friend named Rick Moe. Forest told me that the first tracks he did for Bar Talk was Rick's drums. I wasn't there and Forest did not play along. Imagine that! He somehow communicated every nuance of that song to Rick and Rick wailed out every beat and every change. Then Forest added all his parts and finally I came to town and did rhythm guitar and sang as the very last things! That's the kind of talent we lost when we lost Forest. And Rick, I sure hope you are in a great band in New York City or wherever you are now. Nobody sounds like Rick Moe except Rick.
Kundalini Baby and Don Felp's '65 Ford were the only songs on this album from the 2013 session. I heard Don in Austin and fell in love with his songs. Don is a real deal cowboy tall drink of water writer and I thank him for working out publishing so that I could record his song without it just being a handshake deal. It's published by Don and registered with BMI. 
All my albums can be heard on Spotify and some other online stations. All my albums can be downloaded from iTunes, amazon, CD Baby and others. 

album notes for "Texas Dance Songs"

I miss the mere size of old lp records with pictures you can see and notes on the back you don't have to unfold and squint at. These are the album notes for my CD I call "Texas Dance Songs."
Every third of July as I grew up I watched my Uncle Joe Dunn play his fiddle and lead a band of Dunns through some fine old songs and hymns. When the '60s Folk Boom hit I was primed to learn guitar and when I heard Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan - well it was all over. I was twelve and I taught myself to play, but of course I had been playing violin since the fourth grade so I thank the Amarillo, Texas Public School District for teaching me to read music.
...
Well, in 2011, my wife Rosemary encouraged me to go to Austin and see if I could get something going. I found the open mic at the Cheatham Street Warehouse run by the great Kent Finlay. He had a studio, the Woodshed, and could get you any backup musician you needed. It all depended on how much you could pay the player. Rosemary was eager to pay for a record. I thought that if I could get some recognition I could bring my son's songs to the attention of the world.
I thought I'd get a country band sound complete with fiddle and steel guitar, but then I heard Big John Mills play an acoustic set at Cheatham Street. My God, what a talent! Kent's son Sterling is a fine upright bass man. I thought about one of my favorite old records - Gordon Lightfoot's first album. It's all Gordon singing and playing guitar, a lead guitar, and an upright bass, so that's how we did it. I even copied Gordon by having one song that was just bass and voice - "Pack Rat Nest." Sterling and I did that in one take.
I was determined to play ensemble style, not lay down track by track. The first song we recorded was "Cockroach Fever."  Nailed it in two takes. I labeled it as explicit when I listed it with CD Baby which I wish I hadn't done especially because if you see the album on Amazon they have every single song labeled "explicit." My favorite cousin, a strict Southern Baptist loves it so it sure ain't dirty.
As that first day sailed along we recorded most of what became "Texas Dance Songs" and several of the songs on "Texas Socialist Infiltration Dance Songs." I was mighty proud that I kept up with Big John and Sterling. We clicked. Late in the session we were playing some song and my mind drifted into how amazing it sounded and - I fucked it up. After that I bowed out for two songs. I had lyrics and chords written out. I played a few bars of each song to give them the idea and then they played. What came out was beautiful, but it wasn't those two songs anymore so I put them on the back burner.  After Big John and Sterling left I laid down my guitar part for Rosemary's two favorites - "I Never Waltzed With You" and "In Our Dance" - because I was afraid I wouldn't capture the lilt of those two songs in the ensemble setting.
The second day we finished up. Then Big John laid down electric lead parts on some songs that Forest and I had recorded around 2000. 'Round and 'Round is one of those. More on that when I write notes on "Texas Socialist Dance Songs."
It had been a prolific session. I was happier than I had been for a long time.
Next year, 2012, was also a prolific year. I wrote seven new songs in a month or so. After recording that album (Contrary) I sat in a motel room and wrote four chord progressions using the common chords from the diatonic scale - major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished. It was an exercise for old three chord Burl. I asked Big John to play those chords but didn't specify how. Then Johnny Arredondo added drums. I was so amazed with the results that I offered Big John the chance to own half of the copyright and performance rights in exchange for free work later. I tried to offer that twice, but each time, before I even got the whole concept of the deal out of my mouth he turned it down. It makes me think of all those guys going to the California Gold Rush (me) who went broke and the one who set up a supply store (Big John) and made fortunes. The two best of these songs are on Texas Dance Songs: "Top Down" and "Just Us Chickens."
 All my albums can be heard on Spotify and some other online stations. All my albums can be downloaded from iTunes, amazon, CD Baby and others.  I go by my middle name, Burl, because if you google "Burl Dunn" it's easy to find. Try it! Thanks.