(Written long time ago for my old website) Ray Mason is from Haydenville, Massachusetts. This middle-aged gentleman has been around with his guitar for some twenty years now, and it looks like people in the local scene know him and respect him very much, as he was already an object of a tribute album. In his lengthy career, Mason left handful of cassette tapes in the eighties and five cd’s in last five years. He recently compiled his early cassette work on a cd called Square Crazy. That disc includes an interesting collection of great pop tunes with a twist, recalling NRBQ’s sense of humor. All those early tunes are recorded on a simple four track tape recorder, and the sound has a wonderful lo-fi charm. His two last regular issues came out in just a year span. One of them in early 2001 with a great rock’n’roll title When the Clown’s Work is Over. The other one came out in May 2002, Ten Dollar Man.
When the Clown’s Work is Over is full of nice guitar music and some of the songs are written in a righteous rock’n’roll style, and they’re worth of any Dylan’s, Young’s or Wynn’s tune. One can easily see how his style matured from his early tapes without dropping down in quality. My personal favorite is Up But So Loose which in just two minutes tell us a great rock story spiced up with a very creative riff. So you thought that the guitar rock is dead, huh?
Ten Dollar Man is the newest Ray Mason’s Work. He gathered his band again and recorded an album with just 10 songs, filling out just a small fraction of what can be fit on a cd, but all songs are really nice which makes up for the quantity. It’s a collection of tunes all enriched with a fine sense of humor. Similar usage of humor is also done by NRBQ. But what takes this issue a little bit farther is that there’s a special personal seal that all of the tunes carry. The album is very consistent in its quality through all 30 minutes of its lenght.
Mason also has a band Lonesome Brothers that he runs parallel to his solo career together with his friend Jim Armenti. Lonesome Brothers just came up with the new album called Swamptown Girl, which is a little more acoustic than Ray Masons’ solo work, but it’s still filled with cool songs. And what a suitable name for the band! Lonesome is probably the most frequently used name in country and brothers – well I guess Jim and Ray are some kind of creative brothers…
Website: www.raymason.com
There are two central blocks in todays show. One is about T Bone Burnett and the other is about his ex wife Sam Phillips. Burnett has a new album Tooth of Crime and we sample one song from it together with three older Burnett’s songs. Sam Phillips also has a new album Don’t Do Anything which she recorded without Burnett’s help for the first time. Some of the songs on it seem to be about their divorce.
Today we start off with a few upbeat classic songs and then we check out the new Modey Lemon lp called Season of Sweets. Then we dwell into a jazz moment when we check out television actress Marla Gibbs as a singer and then classic British acid jazz from the eighties – Working Week. Jayber Crow is a new Minneapolis duet obsessed with Midwest folk mythologies. We end the show with a live version of The Magnificent Seven Theme from the new live album for the Nashville instrumentalists Los Straitjackets.
The new Laura Cantrell’s album deals with means of transportation. Trains, boats, planes… One of the songs on it is Merle Haggard’s Silver Wings and we check out several versions of it in today’s show. We also make two quick runs through the John Hiatt and Hold Steady songbooks, including their brand new albums. The show ends with Danish band Cola Freaks that I saw live last year. They Will be coming back to the USA (and Cleveland) in August.
X lead us into today’s episode of the Little Lighthouse. I finally saw them live in Cleveland after a failed attempt due to the sold out club in New Orleans and it was unforgettable. We also have some new stuff – The Old 97’s are back with a very good album Blame it On Gravity and Willie Nelson has an amazing box set out, One Hell of a Ride, that reminded me how great he really is. Not that I ever doubted! We also introduce Heartbreak Willie (actually Luka from My Buddy Moose) and Petra, brother and sister from Rijeka who made some nice demos in their home studio.
Sad news from Zagreb, folks! 
Drazen Vrdoljak wore the most recognizable moustache on Yugoslav TV, he had the strangest accent on the entire radio scene, but those are all just small funky things about him that don’t really matter at this point in time… The news comes to me that he had passed away recently at the age of 57, leaving a great legacy of rock journalism and rock enthusiasm that is rarely seen anywhere. He started off in the late sixties/early seventies by publishing eloquent and analytic music press texts raising a bar in that branch on the local scene. He moved on to television, but his most important influence lied in his close and friendly ties with musicians. Here is the list of five greatest Drazen’s contributions that made the Yugoslav rock scene the better place:
First 30 minutes of today’s show is very loud and the the other half of the show we mellow down easy with some folksy type of rock… at least if you consider young savage Westerberg strumming his acoustic guitar mellow. We do. So, yes that second block begins with his “protest” song Bad Worker that’s one of the “extras” on the newly re-re-released expanded versions of first four Replacement records. We check them out pretty carefully in today’s episode. The we had also the new Billy Bragg’s double CD which he calls Mr Love and Justice. Steve Wynn recoded an album in Ljubljana, so we check that out as well. In the first half, we have the new band for the former Dead Moon members Fred and Tony. They call it Pierced Arrows. We also check out new records for Wedding Present and The Ettes. Also, I got a chance to shake hands with legendary Tommy Ramone who played a show with his bluegrass duet Uncle Monk in Cleveland. So, the show ends with one of the songs that I recorded on my voice recorder that night. So, yeah – a lot of new stuff today. Dig in.
For all the hard working people all over the world, happy May Day! We’re bringing you some interesting new stuff at the Little Lighthouse today. First of all, Tim Lee is back with a rocking new album