Tag: Country Music

Chicago native, Patrick Lyons, makes his mark on country music.

At the Ian Noe/Colter Wall show in October of 2018, I missed grabbing a photo with either of the 2 headliners as they walked the grounds of Codfish Hollow but, was lucky enough to stumble upon drummer Jordan Solly Levine, and Patrick Lyons who handled the lap steel and dobro that night. In hopes of getting these wonderful musicians a little more exposure, I submitted an event review for Ink19.com and started to follow the guys to see what they would be up to next. Interestingly enough it wouldn’t be long before I would come across Patrick’s name again, but this time in addition to a musician credit, he was also listed as a co-producer on a new album I picked up.

Photo by Jeremy Glazier at Codfish Hollow

Josh Morningstar’s 7 song EP, The Plea, was in and out of my radar and I grabbed a copy to check out the buzz. While pouring over the liner notes, as any good music enthusiast should, I found Patrick’s name and was immediately curious how he came to help out on the album. The lion pack at Young Mary Records label is a tight knit family, with everyone seemingly playing a number of rolls and helping each other out wherever they can make an impact.

I called Patrick, a Chicago native and recent transplant to Nashville, to see how he landed such a great gig with Colter Wall and how he ended up on the Josh Morningstar album. He explained that he landed the Colter Wall gig through his time playing with Cody Jinks, and mutual friends who had suggested that they needed to get together. Fortuitously they made a connection and the rest as they say is history.

Patrick says in a jovial manner “They didn’t even hold rehearsals they just like, in the beginning of April they asked if I wanted to practice. So we had a rehearsal on a Monday and then asked if I’d come back on Tuesday to rehearse again. And then Tuesday night they asked if I wanted to go out on the road Wednesday. So literally I meet them 2 days before we went out on the road for a month of tours.”

With not much time to learn all the songs I asked how he approaches that kind of situation. Patrick says “They had some live recordings but they didn’t have a pedal steel in the band ever. They had some (pedal steel) on some of the recordings so I just try to be as overly prepared as I could. He (Colter) wanted me to play pedal steel and dobro so I learned some of the steel parts how they were on the record and then he’s like, hey I want you to play dobro.” Patrick laughs, “It was cool, we hit it off right away and it was a pretty good set up, and were all pretty good friends now.”

Photo by Mark J Smith (Cropping the water mark was unintentional)

I moved on to Josh Morningstar’s album, “The Plea”, and his role in playing guitar, Mandolin, Pedal Steel, Dobro, Banjo, Bass and co producing the album. Since Josh had opened up a number of shows for Colter, I thought they may also have been friends before the album. I asked how he ended up being involved with Josh and being on the album.

“So Travis, the tour manager for Colter, he manages Josh. Travis had asked me, and I can’t remember if Mary or Travis or both of them had asked, if I want to help do it and sent me some of of his stuff and, I had heard of him and knew that he’d played with Colter but, I really didn’t know Josh that well.

So they were looking for some musicians and I got some good buddies in town…Geoff Henderson, I got him to play bass on it and my buddy Russ Garner… we had played a couple gigs together in Nashville…he’s a really good drummer. They kind of gave me liberties to get everyone on Joshes record, like my buddy Michael Hartigan plays fiddle and piano…so they kind of let me make a lot of decision on the personnel stuff on the record.

Josh came over to my house and we just rehearsed a couple times before we went in the studio just to kind of run the songs, he had some demos of them and he said just kind of do what you guys want with them. So yeah we just went over some stuff for a day or two at my place and went into the studio and recorded everything in like 2 days. We did it pretty quickly, and yeah it was cool because it came together really quickly.”

I mentioned that “Jerry Lee” is the song that got me hooked on Josh Morningstar before I bought the album and dug into it. Patrick laughs and says “Yeah I heard that one and said yeah, that’s one of the coolest tunes I’ve heard in a long time. Josh is a killer writer man he writes some really cool stuff and we were just trying to do our best to add some stuff to it.”

I asked if he had previous experience in the co-producer arena or how it worked out. “Well, they just wanted me to play pedal steel on it (Jerry Lee), originally, or dobro, or slide stuff, and then Travis asked if I’d play guitar on it and I’m like yeah. So, they had a drummer lined up and they weren’t sure if that was going to work out. So they didn’t come to me and say, hey can you do this, it just kind of added on over time.”

There is a really unique chord that sets off “Jerry Lee” and Patrick explains “I play that weird chord in the beginning and, it’s a baritone guitar, and a buddy of mine gave me that guitar and I’m like, I need to use it on something. We were going to do it at the beginning of the song and the ending and then we decided to just do it at the beginning and it’s just kind of a cool way to start the record.”

I wasn’t familiar with Barrick Recordings, the studio that’s listed on the album, and asked if it was all recorded in Glasgow, KY or where they put it together. Patrick says “It was a studio in Kentucky by this guy David Barrick, whose good friends with Mary (Sparr), and has a really cool studio, he’s a great engineer. He’s worked with everybody and really knowledgeable, he gets a lot of great sounds out of his studio, I had fun working with him.”

My December 28th conversation with Patrick took place between the tour I saw at the end of 2018 and the one that they just finished up in February 2019. He was on a break and really enjoying spending some time at home with his wife. I asked Patrick what else was coming up and besides the pending Colter Wall tour, and what other projects he had on the books.

Photo by Sean Mathis

“I’m supposed to go to New York to play dobro with a guy named Zephaniah Ohora. Have you heard of him? He’s a really great country singer out of New York. He’s friends with the drummer in the (Colter Wall) band, Solly, and he’s got a really good album out his first album, we listen to it a lot. We got introduced and then he came out to see us in NY and we got to talking and he asked me to play some stuff on it, and I’m gonna go out there and play a couple tracks with him.”

Career wise, I was curious if he would ever take the step and put out his own album. Patrick answers hesitantly “Uh yeah, I’ve got a bunch of songs I’ve written and ideas about different stuff and I wouldn’t mind doing it when I get some more time or money. It’s just expensive and I’m trying to work as much as I can and not spend a bunch of money on an album. It could possibly happen but, right now I’m just enjoying what I’m doing. I’m in a good band with a bunch of good people.”

Patrick, despite racking up a number of amazing accolades to his resume and being an amazing multi instrumentalist, is humble, down to earth, and a great guy to talk to. I really appreciate him taking the time to talk about his career and projects that he’s worked on. Follow his social media to see what he’s working on next and I look forward to catching up with him out on the road again soon.

(UPDATE: Since the time of this interview in late December 2018, Josh Morningstar, just today, announced that he signed with True Grit Talent Agency. I’m not sure how that effects his management and didn’t want any confusion based on various statements in the article)

Patrick’s Instagram

February 27, 2019
Tony Logue

Kentucky has always been a hot bed for great music artists going back to the beginning of country’s roots. Bill Monroe, Loretta Lynn, Tom T Hall, and Dwight Yoakam are the roots of where country has been, and help lay the foundation on which some of the best music has been built. Luckily for us fans of true country, a new breed of music has been fighting it’s way out of Kentucky and back to the mainstream with big names like Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, and Tyler Childers on the country front and bands like Magnolia Boulevard and The Watson Twins making waves in their own respective genres.

Tony Logue is another up and coming country singer out of Benton, Kentucky with a gift for storytelling and a name that may one day soon be among the ones listed above. He brings his life experiences and ability to tell a story from his heart to his music. Luckily, he saw my article about another Kentucky powerhouse, Magnolia Boulevard, and sent me a link to his music.

Tony’s latest album is titled Serpent’s & Saviors and he made the trip to Nashvile’s House of David to work on the album with producer Brandon Henegar. Tony says “I actually just went in to do a hand full of songs with just me a a guitar. I’m a huge Springsteen fan, so like Springsteen’s Nebraska is my favorite record. We just added a few hand full of things and that’s basically how it went down.”

The album is 11 tracks and Tony pours his Kentucky roots all over each song. It’s hard to pick one but, a few favorites are “Jenny Ridge”, with classic storytelling reminiscent of the classic “Long Black Veil”. “The Girl From Dead Horse Hollow” is a love story which dives head on into a couple fighting the battle against breast cancer. While each song is not directly autobiographical, a song like “Earnhardt” is loosely based around his father in law but written from a father/son perspective.

The themes of hard work and struggle are both present in songs like “The Storm” and “Hanging by a Thread” without being dramatically overwritten. With Tony’s blend of country music you get a story that could have been pulled from the headlines of the local paper, and none of the trappings of “hit country”. He’s not putting in elements to sound good in a country song, he’s writing honest songs that in turn, sound good and resonate with fans of country music.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

When I spoke to Tony on the phone, I could hear in his voice that he’s excited about the prospects that he’s working on, but being a musician is a long hard road. Of his album he says “It’s kind of hard to, just being kind of acoustic it’s kind of hard to market. I don’t know if folks take it very seriously because it’s kind of not a full band or record. I don’t know if folks are going to play it much. It’s been pretty well received and as far as sales… but it’s kind of hard to market. You know it’s a neat project and showcases my songwriting.”

I think that once Tony gets the album out into a few more hands, a lot more people will be playing, and talking about the album. It’s not heavy on instruments but it does showcase Tony, and in my opinion, that’s what this album should be doing for him. He’s not hiding behind layers of instruments or overly produced songs that just offer a beat and a hook to grab your attention. It’s the album that he needs to push into some new areas.

Not yet signed to a label Tony is handling all aspects of his career. He’s married with a family, and still working a regular 9-5, all while pushing hard to get his music off the ground. Luckily he’s got a good partner in his wife Sara and says “My wife is very supportive of what I do and she tries to help me keep rolling, but yeah it’s tough.”

Photo of Tony Logue’s goal log book.

Tony has a few more dates before the end of the year and one really exciting gig is coming up in January. He’s playing Red Barn radio on 1/23/2019 and said “The red barn thing has really grown since Tyler Childer came through there and put out that record. (Live on Red Barn Radio) So I do have that coming up so yeah that’s cool. It’s kind of a right of passage for Kentucky, anybody that’s anybody has played there.”

It will be streamed live the night of the show so luckily, although I’ll be in Iowa, I’ll still get to listen in and hear him make his mark. It’s another in a number of steps to fulfill his goals and I’m anxious to see what next year brings for Tony Logue.

I’ve listed below a number of ways to get to Tony and his music. Check out the new album via soundcloud but also, help support him by grabbing an album or a download through iTunes, Amazon, or any other way you find his music. Shoot him a message and I’m sure he has some CD’s in stock to send out as well.

Tonyloguemusic.com

Tony Logue SoundCloud

Tony Logue Facebook

Tony Logue Instagram

Tony Logue on Amazon

Red Barn Radio Streaming Stations

December 16, 2018
Ian Noe and Colter Wall.

In October, I attended another show at Codfish Hollow and was stunned by the music created by these two gentleman and their accompanying band mates.

They are simultaneously the roots of where their individual brand of music came from and, the direction that great music should be going. They each blend personal life experience with a mix of wonderful characters that result in rich lyric content and match that up with very accomplished music.

Below is my article I posted on Ink19 and the direct link will be listed below as well.

Maquoketa, Iowa 10/27/2018

Codfish Hollow in Maquoketa, Iowa, is a venue that needs to be experienced to understand it’s genuine appeal. Situated down a dirt road, you park free of charge in the cow pasture. Walk carefully to avoid the cow-pies as you head back up to the road where Marv, his tractor, and the hay rack style wagon will take you about about a half mile down the road to the actual barn where the events take place.

After a check in for my ticket at the first of several fire pits situated through out the property, I walked up the hill to the barn to find my spot near the stage.

Photo by Jeremy Glazier

Complete with built-in merchandise area at the entrance of the barn, drinks on the side, and food, arts and crafts under the barn, Codfish Hollow offers and delivers a complete concert experience.

Now, to the evening’s entertainment. I will go on record as saying that when we look back 10 years from now, this duo of artists will be listed among names like Isbell, Childers, Simpson, and Nelson as the precipice of when music changed for the better. When the artists writing, singing, and living the truth of their music started chipping away and gaining more attention than your nationally, pre-programmed hitmakers.

Ian Noe and Colter Wall lace their lyrics with hard looks at everything from the opioid epidemic to wonderfully thought out stories and characters that actually shake you emotionally and mentally as you listen. Each song and strum of their respective guitars relay the extent of the talent that we desperately need in music today.

The opener this night was Ian Noe, a Kentucky native with influences that touch on the highest of folk and country royalty. His storytelling is at times whimsical like Arlo Guthrie or John Prine but as poignant as Bob Dylan. His almost permanent scowl while singing conveys the depth and intensity of his lyrics but completely subsides while addressing the audience.

He mentions before singing “Dead on the River” that it was written after finishing the first season of True Detective. While he laughed with the audience at the notion that binge watching Netflix could produce any kind of inspiration, it speaks to his artistic vision and an inside glint of what Ian is capable of.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

He ran through a wide range of songs including the 4 songs on his EP that include “Irene”, “Off This Mountaintop”, “A Young Felon Dates an Old Woman”, and “Methhead”. As this was my first time hearing him preform, I wasn’t familiar with the other songs in the line up but a quick YouTube search resulted a number of the tunes I look forward to hearing on a full length record sometime around April of 2019. Joining Ian on stage were Andrew Sovine on guitar, Adam Beard on bass, and Erin Nelson on drums.

Juxtaposed to Ian’s attention to the crowd, Colter Wall casually took the stage alone and treated the fans to a step back in time when a true cowboy/plainsman might sit next to a fire and serenade those around him. His Speedy Creek, Saskatchewan roots are proudly embedded in each song as much as his influences from guys like Marty Robbins or Willis Alan Ramsey.

Colter carries about 4-5 songs on his own before the rest of his talented band joins him mid song and add some extra weight to the storytelling. They are a tight combination of Jason Simpson on bass, Jordan Solly Levine on drums, Jake Groves on harmonica, and Patrick Lyons on lap steel.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

During songs like “Kate McCannon” and “Sleeping on the Blacktop”, they will slow and/or stop playing completely to give Colter, his booming voice, and the guitar the focus

his storytelling deserves.

Colter sings a crowd favorite “Me and Big Dave” from his self titled album as well as “Thirteen Silver Dollars” and also, as he works through the set, the up-beat tune “Motorcycle”. He mentions, with a noticeably measure of pride, that that his friend and fellow country artist Blake Berglund wrote an additional verse to his song and proceeded to sing it with the extra verse. I can’t recall ever hearing of artists doing this but it’s a great addition to an already amazing song and again, speaks to the artistry of a new breed of country musicians pushing back against the spoon fed hits on modern country radio.

A few more from the new album Songs Of The Plains included “Saskatchewan in 1881”, “Calgary Round Up”, and “John Beyers (Camaro Song)”. Why the Camaro song? We’ll, Colter jovially explains before the song that he drew the story line from a couple of real life brothers that decided the best way to resolve their differences was to shoot each others vehicles with their .22 rifles. The song and the origin story aren’t an exact match but it’s another great glimpse into where he draws his varied inspirations.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

While Colter is only 23 years young, he has the demeanor and stage presence of a soul triple his years . He often sings with his head down so only a sliver of his face is visible under his black cowboy hat. And when you do catch a look at his face, it’s often holding a strained expressions as though he’s reliving the sorrows and pains of the stories he’s written. Colter’s honesty and familiarity with the music he creates sits on him as perfectly as the Stetson that crowns his head.

I cannot heap enough laurels onto both Ian Noe and Colter Wall. My hope is that the tour and subsequent word of mouth will place them on the radar of enough people to make successive albums, and tours a must. If you can catch them out on the road, do so before the tour ends or, help support their music by visiting their respective websites for a cd or vinyl album.

Ink19 Article link

Colter Wall

Ian Noe

Young Mary Records

November 30, 2018
Boo Ray ain’t no good time…he’s a blast!!

June 16, 2018 Boo Ray interview

Photo by Chad Cochran

Lately, I’ve been touting the music, and fashion sense, of country music singer/songwriter and recording artist, Boo Ray. His brand of redneck rock and roll music reflects blue collar, hardworking values that lean heavily on his varied experiences. From making his way out of the mountains of North Carolina, to the Sea of Lights in Los Angeles, Boo Ray’s real life experiences, and his nose to the grindstone attitude are what drew me to his music and why I wanted to talk to, and write about him.

Aside from being the embodiment of a blue collar singer songwriter in the tradition of Jerry Reed or Merle Haggard, he’s a traveling troubadour in every sense of the word. His tour schedule is wherever he can get to with a 5 piece band with steel guitar, and a few tanks of gas. He’s covered everywhere from Athens, Ga, Texas, Louisiana, and California. He’s been grinding out a career gig by gig and, in my opinion, with his BooCoo amigos singles, a new album, the One Mic Series, and a team of hardcore ladies scheduling and managing his next steps, Boo Ray is about to pop up on a lot of peoples radar.

I caught up with him on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of getting a PR mailing out of 300, 7” singles and eating a sandwich for lunch. I let him know that I really appreciated him signing the album that I bought the week before, Sea of Lights, and got right into some questions.

First up was about a series of duets that Boo Ray affectionately calls the BooCoo amigos series. I was familiar with the Boo Ray and Lilly Winwood cover of the 1983 “Islands in the Stream”. It’s a fresh take on the Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers classic, and also a reminder of what amazing harmonies come out of country duets. I wanted to know more about what he’s doing now with those and what’s next.

“The first thing, digitally, was Lilly Winwood “Islands in the Stream” cover came out when the Kenny Rodgers tribute came out in Nashville. Then last Christmas I put out “All Strung out Like Christmas Lights”, a Christmas single with Elizabeth Cook. And the next one, I’m sitting here in the middle of a PR mailing, is with celebrity chef Sean Brock…he’s the guy that took Anthony Bourdain to Waffle House here in Nashville. And so we discovered each other really through a hashtag of a tattoo artist we both have in common, an old school Athens Georgia tattoo artist that we both have in common. It turns out that we both did stints in Georgia so we kind of like old school Athens Georgia townies together. So anyway the tattooist is Mitchell Atkinson and was one of these wild rebel characters, he was all the time driving a dune buggy or a monster truck or some kind of crazy ride and you kind of always knew in the back of your mind that he’d die in some kind of hot rod crash, and he did…in a hot rod maverick.”

“Anyway once we got to talking about Mitchell, the tattoo artists, we said well hell, we ought to write a song about that sun of a gun, and so we did. We wrote this song “Saint Misbehavin” and it’s just about tattoos and sort of a running thread of old Athens folk lore and gossip and rumor. That’s the A side single and that came out so we said Hell we need to write the obligatory food song and make a damn package out of it right. So we wrote “Soul Food Cookin’” and its got twin guitar solos…Shawn’s a cool guitar player and so it’s got a bunch of Jerry reed and Allman brother’s kind of twin guitar stuff and stuff.”

I asked about a video I’d just seen on YouTube for the One Mic Series at Sun Studios in Memphis by Recording Engineer John Cuniberti. I wanted to know what they were like and how much he recorded there.

Photo courtesy of Boo Ray

“..It’s a series called the One Mic Series, that guy (John Cuniberti) literally records drums, bass, guitars everything, and vocals, everything with one microphone. He mixes with a damn measuring tape. He’s going and capturing these beautiful studios, these legendary studios, and he’s recording indie artists, and that was a real special experience. I get a kick out of it because he’s the guy that recorded all those fuckin Joe Satriani albums.” He says through a genuine laugh of joy. “Yeah, yeah, which I just think is wonderful cause I grew up on those records man. So it was just amazing. We decided to record 2 songs off a brand new record that’s not out yet. So we recorded 2 songs off of that record and there’s another one of those one mic series that will come out in a month or so.” (Since I spoke with him on the 16th, “Honky Tonk Dream” joined “Don’t Look Back” as the second release from that session.)

I asked Boo Ray if my information was correct that they had tracked Sea of Lights in just a few days. That lead into a somewhat related but different story that was as interesting as the original question, which I love and enjoy when it happens.

“Yeah we tracked in in two days. My buddy and Producer Noah Shain he called me and said I’ve got this old tape machine from Quonset Hut Studio in Nashville, and yeah we tracked that entire album in a couple days.”

“He (Noah Shain) produced 2 tracks that were on my 2010 record Bad News Travels Fast. He produced “Constantina” and “Allez Allez”, which is like a broken French, cajun chorus. “Constantina” is like a Eagles kind of LA, R&B, country, Jackson Brown, uh country esque, even Eddie Rabbit kind of shit.”

“So, In 2010 I got kind of stranded and waylaid in Athens, Ga. At the time I needed a new album real bad you know a $10 item to sell at gigs, so I just compiled all the sessions that I had done over the past 2 or 3 years from LA and Texas and Louisiana and I finished the thing in Atlanta with a hip hop producer just cause I had zero budget. I was livin in a halfway house in Athens Ga, literally, literally 1 block behinds New West Records, not even a full block, across the damn street kitty corner. I released that record, Bad News Travels Fast record out of that halfway house on the halfway house computer and phone line. I’m still rerecording songs off of that record.”

Photo by Price Harrison

“I’ve released the 2012 record, 6 Weeks in a Motel, that the title track was off of that 2012 record Bad News Travels Fast and of course I rerecorded Bad News Travels Fast for the new record Sea of Lights. I don’t have a song recorded off of that record for the new record but I’ve already got sights on one of the songs I’m gonna record for the next new record off of the Bad News Travels Fast record. Bad News Travels Fast was my first Americana record, it charted on the AMA chart on the Americana Music Association music chart and I released it out of a damn halfway house right behind New West Records.”

When I interview someone like Boo Ray, I kind of felt the need to explain my taste in music and who I consider “country”. There is a great divide between the country music fan listening to today’s “radio hits” and a guy like me that counts Hank Williams, Gram Parsons, and Dough Sahm in the same category as Sturgill Simpson, Blackberry Smoke, and of course Boo Ray.

Photo provided by Boo Ray

When I asked him about guys that he’s listening to he says “I’m like you, I listen to Sturgill, Stapleton, and feel like were fighting the same fight, like kindred, like were different sides of the same coin of those guys you know. And Black Berry Smoke too you know, I’d like to play bills with all those guys.”

I mentioned the Hinterland Festival in Charles City Iowa in August where top names like Stugill Simpson, Blackberry Smoke, Margo Price, and Nathaniel Rattliff and The Night Sweats will be performing. It a weird musical situation that newer artists are making more traditional, throwback, music, that are similar to the hits I heard on the radio growing up, but now can’t get any air play.

Of that Boo Ray says “You know that the outlets that carry that music, the Americana radio world and then really one of the biggest purveyors of our style of music is Serious XM Outlaw Country. That’s sort of what I consider my home base they have been playing my record since 2010.”

Photo by Price Harrison

As a fellow guitar player, I have to ask the obligatory guitar gear questions. When I ask about the guitar he uses with the grafitti tag on it he says that it’a an old Gibson flat top that he hasn’t played in the clubs for about 5 years. “…and the reason being, I kind of gave up playing acoustic instruments in clubs because you just don’t have enough control of the sound. Your basically 100% at the sound man’s mercy. So my rig right now is a 70’s style telecaster with a pair of humbuckers in and I play a resonator, a Washburn resonator. It’s a signature model Richie Owens signature model; he and Washburn gave me that guitar. It’s got electric guitar pickups in it so I can plug it in the same line I plug my telecaster in and I don’t have to change my settings or anything, it just plugs right in. It totally transformed my live show. Cause otherwise if you play an old national you have to have a whole separate guitar rig”

On the subject of the ever fashionable home studio Boo Ray says;
“Yeah, I’m not an engineer-producer, I’m an old-school, I like to work with an engineer. I’ve got a few different engineers that I like and work with around Nashville, and Los Angeles, and Athens Georgia, so no. I track songwriter demos at home but when I’m fixin to record anything beyond a songwriter demo then I, the go to studios I use are Gold Cassette Studio in Nashville and also Welcome to 1979 studio in Nashville, that’s where we recorded the new full length record. That will come out this fall.”

“I can’t say much about it but we just signed a record deal. The new Sean Brock single and the new record are going to come out with a little more horse power, hopefully, behind the release than what were used to you know, so hopefully were going to actually were going to become a little bit visible for a minute.

“I think this new record is, it’s the furthest out I’ve gone. Like, I mean it opens with a damn 6 minute song with a 1 minute fade out. The records pretty out there and its singer songwriter, it’s the most singer songwriter record that I’ve done yet.”

I also wanted to know what the tour schedule is for the rest of the year and if I would be able to catch him locally in Iowa.

Photo by Todd Sapre

“I just got a scattering of dates across the South East right now. I’ve been doing Thursday-Sunday, satelliting within a 5 hour radius or so out of Nashville, 5-7 hours, you know I’ll do Tallahassee and South Georgia but um, I’m just now starting to get into the Midwestern region. I’ve been working Paducah Kentucky a little bit and Bowling Green and I’m gonna get out and do Paint ballroom and I’m going to get out and I’d love to get out your way and, you know cowtownchad’s in Ohio, and (over to) Iowa too.”

“…we’ve just got this new booking agent, we’ve just signed this new record deal so you know hopefully things are gonna take on a new process, it’s all still in the works. The new record company was pretty hot on getting behind the new record and Sean Brock single so I think there’s going to be an announcement made next week.”

“But uh, I’ve never released anything with a full team I’ve had publicists and radio promoters but I’ve never had a booking agent that was working in conjunction with a publicist and a label to hit the markets where were lighting the meter up.”

“I mean we’ve been scrapping man; we’ve been scrapping hard for fuckin 5 years. I’ve played such low quality, shit hole, honky tonks that I’ve had good band members, that I’m paying well, you know were making money, but these places are rough man I mean it’s knife cutting, shooting, kinda bad scenes. I’ve got guys that won’t go down and play those place regardless of what they are paying.”

“That’s been a bit of a wake up call for me in that I was like, you know what, my band mates are right, I shouldn’t have to do this, and my booking agent’s not doing me any favors by doing this to me. So that helped me transform and roll up my sleeves and go to work on my own team, it’s so complex. I’m constantly overwhelmed at the degree of difficulty with the business side of this thing.”

Carving out your place in the music industry while trying to write, play, and juggle the business end as well has to be a daunting task. I expressed that hopefully the new team would help out and alleviate some of those issues.

“Well, our publicist has been with us for over a year and is a wonderful woman. In fact, my whole team, the entire team, the record label, the booking agent, my manager, my publicist is all bad ass women, the whole team, it’s a trip right.”

The damn trip is Boo Ray himself. He’s as real as they come and our conversation was more like friends chatting over some PB&J’s on his porch instead of an “interview”. He finished our conversation by thanking me for writing the article about Ellie Monster and helping get her a little more coverage.

I thanked him for his time and implored him to keep pushing hard and writing his brand of music. It not often that I get to converse with a true country music troubadour so, if I can lend my support by spreading the written word and grab him a few more fans, it will all be worth it to see him keep on putting out new music.

Boo Ray

Feature Image photo by Victoria Huff.

July 9, 2018
Ellie Monster – A cut above the rest.

I don’t mean to brag but, this article content is awesome and will possibly have more damn pictures than words. Every time I think I have the coolest photos of Ellie Lahey’s work in here, I find, or she posts more that I switch out.

A couple years back I was obsessed with a particular shirt that I saw Duane Allman wearing in a photo taken by John Gellman. It appeared one time, at one show, and then disappeared into history.

Photograph by John Gellman

I searched for months for someone that may be able to recreate it when I ran across a post by singer and songwriter, Boo Ray.  He was wearing a very cool, handmade Troubadour suit by Ellie Lahey and I started looking around for this mysterious, Ellie Monster.

BadAss BooRay wearing Ellie Monster. Photo by Michael Weintrob

Now I also have to mention that I’m a huge fan of Gram Parsons Nudie Cohn suit, his music as well of course, and think it’s one of the coolest R&R/country outfits in the history of music. Ellie’s work is a stark reminder of that amazing skill and, attention to detail. I knew that I was on the right track.

Jeremy, JD Simo Band, and Ellie Monster.

I sent a few messages and within 6 months I had a near perfect recreation of that shirt. It was incredible seeing it in person because she brought out things that I hadn’t even seen in the photographs, It’s truly my pleasure to shine some light on her amazing talent and bring some attention to her business, Ellie Monster.

J: Ellie, I’ve watched a few different videos and looked around your Instagram and Facebook and what you do is just amazing.  How did this journey start and what led you into making these kinds of shirts/suits?

E: A childhood spent in starched wranglers with a country radio station playing in the background 24/7 is partly to blame, the punk obsessions of my teenage years definitely played a part too.

Photo by Sharky Crowley

As far as the more direct route goes- I made a shirt for myself and other people liked it enough to ask me to make more of them. It was a hobby for a while, until I had the (mis)fortune of having a supervisor who made my life pretty miserable. The day I quit that job, in 2009, my friend offered me retail space in the French Quarter, I said yes, and I’ve been doing this thing ever since.

J: How was the move from New Orleans to Nashville?  Do you find that there is a bigger market in Nashville?

E: Oh man. It was rough, it was real hard to get things going in Nashville. I knew Nashville would be different, but I greatly underestimated just how different it is. It was basically starting over completely, and it took me a couple years to get anywhere near the sales figures I had in NOLA.

The market in Nashville is bigger, but it’s harder to get folks through your door here, and it took a long time for me to get that figured out. I don’t regret it though, Nashville is good to me these days.

Photo by Ellie Lahey

J: It’s crazy but, you are basically making custom clothes in a very old school way for a very modern market.  The video I watched was incredible because you cut every piece of the shirt and stitched it all together from scratch.  What kind of time frame do you need to get a shirt or a suit of custom clothes done for a customer?

E: Time from order to completion really depends on how many folks are already waiting on me to make them things. Usually it’s somewhere between a couple weeks and a month.

Photo by Ellie Lahey

The actual time it takes to sew something- I can make a simple kids shirt in about an hour, and I’ve spent weeks on some of the suits I’ve done. Embroidery adds a lot of time, especially when I’m making new designs. My embroidery machine and software communicate via 3.5″ floppy disk, so yeah, nothing moves very fast with them.

Booray wering Ellie Monster shirt. Photo by Chad Cochran.

J: When I was having my shirt made, I came across your page through a Boo Ray’s Instagram post.    Who else out there is wearing your clothes that we may know or should keep an eye out for?

E: This question is the one that’s kept me from having this thing done for so long.

I do get excited when I see bad ass people wearing things I’ve made/sold, but man, dropping names always feels so dang awkward to me.

That being said..

My customers include Margo Price, Kacey Musgraves, Kacey Musgraves’ dog Bambi, Jimmy Carter, and Hank 3.

The lesser known but excellent musician customer list is.. I can’t even get started on that right now.

J: You have a unique range of clothing, including a very cool Iron Maiden shirt that popped up on the Facebook page, how are you selecting what to make for stock? (Of course I couldn’t find that Maiden shirt so enjoy these in lieu of that one.)

Collage of Awesome. Photos by Ellie Lahey.

E: That Iron Maiden shirt is good one. That customer brought in the tee he lived in through high school, that didn’t fit him anymore, and I chopped and sewed it into something that did. I’ve done a ton of tee shirt ones, started with that because I ran out of closet space and wanted to do something with all the tees I didn’t wear much. I ran through mine years ago, but my friends hook me up when they clean out their closets, and I find good ones in thrift stores occasionally too.

Generally speaking though, I just make what I like, what I think will look interesting.

Since I find all of what she makes interesting, I also wanted to find out about a couple of shows that I saw her participating in this year. She let me know that the most recent one was at the Nashville Boogie Vintage Weekender. Te fashion show side of it, The Western Round Up, is put on by Riley Reed.

Here’s a couple close up shots of the Ellie Monster Space Suit owned by Tony Perdue.

Photo by Ellie Lahey

Photo by Ellie Lahey

Ellie relayed that Jason Galaz, head honcho of the Boogie, described it this year as: “The epicenter of the Western Fashion industry is right here at the Nashville Boogie. Industry leaders and tailors to the stars all show their wares.”

Photo by Ellie Lahey

E: And that’s a pretty good description. This was the fourth year for it, I’ve been there from the start. There are a bunch of other amazing designers who’ve taken part in it too (older and newer) but that could be a pretty long road to go down.

Photo by Ellie Lahey

I was in a fashion show over in Memphis in February at the Ameripolitan Awards too. It’s been a good year for showing off.

J: For anyone that is looking for a unique piece of Nashville authentic clothing, how should they get a hold of you and what do you need from them?

E: They can come by and see me in person at the shoppes on Fatherland in east Nashville, or find me on all the normal places.  Generally speaking, I just need an idea, some measurements, and a little $.

Facebook

Instagram

Etsy

Email ellie@elliemonster.com

Phone: (615) 295-6248 (not the best way, my shop flip phone is about as outdated as my sewing machine is, I drop calls all day long)

I encourage you to scroll through her various pages and look at the variety of clothing that Ellie has created. I’m always impressed, surprised, and fascinated by her creations and greatly appreciate her taking the time to talk to me.

June 5, 2018