This recording offers one Grand Entry, one song, and 13 poems.... Metaphorically put, Charles Badger Clark crosses trails with George Carlin and “Deadwood’s” Calamity Jane. Go ahead—eavesdrop on the banter and antics of their colorful romp, to a backdrop of dancehall piano, rodeo organ, speak-easy saxophone and roadhouse cello and drums.
This recording includes:
Grand Entry
Ain’t No Life After Rodeo
Why I/We Like Butte
Long Sagebrush Drives [read the transcription]
Love the Color of Trout
A Cowboy Reel
The Meaning of Intimacy [listen to the track] [read the transcription]
Potatoes [read the transcription]
BIZARzyski Feeds the Finicky Birds
Telemarketer Malediction [read the transcription]
The Day Beelzebub Gave His Jezebel a Hotfoot
Tumbleweed Munchies
Hunting [read the transcription]
Calico Fever Blues
Ridin’ Double Wild [read the transcription]
When my bareback-bronc-twistin’ hero Chris LeDoux first sang his hit Even Cowboys Like A Little Rock And Roll, I KNOW Hank Williams applauded from Leonard Cohen’s Tower of Song. I too cheered and dittoed Chris's credo with a wild “You Bet! And a whole lot of ROCK ‘N’ ROWEL, to boot!” Because I’m a Rodeo Poet—because my roughstock lines are rendered, ridden, with all the musical jump-‘n’-kick-lilt-‘n’-lingo I can infuse into them, be they “cowboy poems” or otherwise. And speaking of the latter, this CD has a fraternal, yet somewhat identical, twin, COLLISIONS OF RECKLESS LOVE. The simultaneous release of both titles was our way of intimating from Open Path Music that there's a little ROCK ‘N’ ROWEL in every reckless love collision, and vice-versa. As well as a little hilarity—lest we forget French philosopher Voltaire’s view that “God is a comedian playing to an audience who's afraid to laugh.” May our fearless laughter during the production of this record shine through and spur you raucously toward a similar celestial response. Sax, Drums, and Rock-‘n’-Rowel! (And BUTTE!)
Paul Zarzyski
[read the review by Tom Russell]
[read the review by Ray March]
Muchas gracias to all who contributed a “musical voice,” especially to Gordon, Tim, Lee, Scott, and Gary—the Open Path Hole-In-The-Wall gang—as well as to The Deacon, Tom Russell, for his double-aught-buckshot “sawed-off Remington” critique. And our most fervent gratitude to artist Walter Piehl, whose paintings ricochet and reflect—both in color and sharp-stroked, high-voltaged, consonant line—the visceral energy of my poems. Willem de Kooning crosses trails with Wild Bill Shakespeare, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Calamity Jane, Star Trek’s Spock and The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling— “Imagine, if you will....”
Rock ‘N’ Rowel CDs are available at the Western Folklife Center — www.westernfolklife.org or phone 775-738-7508, ext 2 — and at CD Baby — www.cdbaby.com
© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.
