carnage and culture

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Equating Christians with Racists

The American Spectator

http://spectator.org

That is the Washington Post’s official policy.

Last Sunday, the Washington Post’s ombudsman casually revealedthat the official policy of reporters at the paper is to treat opponents of gay marriage as the moral equivalent of racists.

Addressing the complaint that the paper is a propaganda sheet for gay activists, ombudsman Patrick Pexton disclosed an e-mail exchange between a reader and a Post reporter. The reader had asked the reporter why the paper covers the gay marriage debate so one-sidedly.

“The reason that legitimate media outlets routinely cover gays is because it is the civil rights issue of our time. Journalism, at its core, is about justice and fairness, and that’s the ‘view of the world’ that we espouse; therefore, journalists are going to cover the segment of society that is still not treated equally under the law,” responded the reporter.

In other words, reporters don’t cover debates but decide them. On the basis of their notions of “justice and fairness,” they tailor all coverage and determine in advance the winners of debates. This admission—that there is no difference between the paper’s front page and editorial page—would have been bad enough on its own. But then the reporter dug the hole deeper by telling the reader that opponents of gay marriage are no more legitimate than segregationists: “As for accuracy, should the media make room for racists, i.e. those people who believe that black people shouldn’t marry white people? Any story on African-Americans wouldn’t be wholly accurate without the opinion of a racist, right?”

“Of course I have a bias. I have a bias toward fairness,” he added.

Pexton seemed only mildly concerned by this reporter’s bald advocacy. He tried to explain it sympathetically (while hoping for more “detachment and objectivity”), but ended up just reiterating that reporters see traditional Christians as modern-day racists: “They see people opposed to gay rights today as cousins, perhaps distant cousins, of people in the 1950s and 1960s who, citing God and the Bible, opposed black people sitting in the bus seat, or dining at the lunch counter, of their choosing.”

That a major American newspaper likens Christians to racists would once have generated outrage. Now it inspires little more than a shrug. The paper’s outnumbered ombudsman blandly notes it, wishes for a little more “objectivity,” and then moves on.

The bias has never been more open and unapologetic, and yet a supposedly serious figure like NBC’s Chuck Todd can say with a straight face, as he did last week, that its existence is “mythology.”

Operating under its typical bias, the Post got excited this week at the news that Keith O’Brien, a Scottish cardinal accused of misconduct, had resigned his office and bowed out of the upcoming conclave. The story received above-the-fold treatment and was shoehorned into familiar liberal categories.

“O’Brien, one of the church’s most strident voices against homosexuality, abruptly stepped down amid allegations of ‘intimate’ acts with priests,” said the story. That line conforms to the paper’s preconceptions nicely. The only problem is that it is not true. Had the reporter done even a minimal amount of research, he would have known that O’Brien is not one of the “church’s most strident voices against homosexuality” but a supporter of gay teachers in Catholic schools. “If there happens to be a gay teacher and he does happen to be living with a partner, that’s their personal, private life. I don’t see it as a problem,” said O’Brien in 2005. Does that sound like a strident voice against homosexuality? It sounds like the voice of a permissive post-Vatican II bishop.

To report the story in those terms would have undercut the “hypocrisy” angle. So the reporter, if he did know about those remarks, made sure not to let them complicate his story. Only late in the piece does the reporter acknowledge that “his positions were not always easy to define,” breezily noting his comment last week in favor of relaxing clerical celibacy. In paragraph two, he was presented as a bastion of conservatism. By the end of the piece, we find out that he doesn’t even support priestly celibacy.

The real story is not conservative hypocrisy but liberal decay in the Church. It could have just as easily been titled “Opponent of Clerical Celibacy Quits in Homosexual Scandal.” But reporters at the Postknow not to pursue such an ideologically inconvenient angle. That doesn’t comport with their “view of the world.”

In WFB's Footsteps

By Larry Perelman

http://www.nationalreview.com

February 27, 2013

“A few days passed, and young Hans Castorp had now spent seven months up here, whereas Joachim, who already had five months to his credit when his cousin first arrived, could now look back on twelve months, one round year — round in the cosmic sense, as well, for in the time since the small, sturdy locomotive had dropped him off up here, the earth had returned to its starting point, having completed one orbit around the sun.”

—Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

This is one of my favorite passages from this extraordinary novel. I feel it’s appropriate to the occasion, as we have now all completed five orbits around the sun since Bill Buckley died on February 27, 2008. Things are unequivocally different for us all.

Four years ago, on the first anniversary of Bill’s death, Christopher Buckley wrote a remembrance in which he stated, “Jews observe a formal period of one year’s mourning for a parent, called an avelut. We aren’t Jewish, but I get, and like, the idea, even though I don’t suppose the mourning ever really ends, until one’s own time comes.” I wrote to Christo to reiterate my condolences. He replied: “Dear Larry, Thanks so much. Yes, hard to believe that almost a year ago you were about to put on a concert at Wallacks Point. I have his appointments diary beside me as I type, and the last entry in it, in his impenetrable handwriting, is PERELMAN—CONCERT for the evening of February 27, 2008.”

Although I had given up the piano as a vocation, Bill’s enthusiasm for my playing kept me from letting it deteriorate even as I pursued another career. Knowing that the last event in his diary was the concert that never was, but to which he had been looking forward eagerly, has a special meaning for me.

On this, the fifth anniversary of Bill’s death, I am observing a Yahrzeit (a Jewish tradition of commemorating the dead) because I feel the absence of Bill in a particularly profound way. Five years ago I wrote about my friendship with Bill and the dinner I had with him on what ended up being the night before he died. I ended that piece at the point when he went upstairs to bed. In fact, I too spent that night at Bill’s house so that I could practice the next day for the concert.
I wrote the following not long afterward, but saved it for publication until I felt a comfortable period had passed. Now is the time I’ve decided to share it.

* * *

February 27, 2008. The Buckley residence, Wallacks Point, Stamford, Connecticut. I was waking up from a deep sleep and looked at my BlackBerry. “Ugh. 6:30 a.m. Footsteps in the hallway? It must be Bill going downstairs.” My birthday had been two days earlier, and I was still recovering from a night out with friends, not to mention the dinner with Bill the previous evening. I thought about getting up, but instead returned to my slumber. This guest room is the one Christo usually occupied on his visits home, and it had been used by many friends and luminaries during their visits to the Buckleys. Staying at Wallacks Point was always a special treat, and the house evoked a Victorian charm through the interiors chosen by Pat. She had been gone not quite a year, and Bill’s health had deteriorated very noticeably since April 2007. Nevertheless, he was still himself in most ways, and for those like me who viewed the glass as half full, it was still our Bill who was with us. And we were thankful to have him still.

I finally got up at 8:30, showered, threw on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweater, and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Tonight I was to give my second performance of Bill’s favorite work by Beethoven, the Diabelli Variations; last week I had given the “premiere” (as he called it) for a small group that included three of his siblings, a niece from Washington, D.C., a cousin from Texas, and my mom, who was in from St. Paul. Bill simply called the work “The Diabelli,” but he would pronounce it in his ironic manner, which could have been code for “You’ve gotta be insane to even attempt playing Beethoven’s magnum opus, but good luck!” A dozen friends were invited for the performance, with dinner to follow. Bill had asked me to come to Wallacks Point a day early, to have dinner with him and to stay the night so that I could practice on the day of the concert.

I walked into the kitchen and found Julian, the Buckleys’ cook, and the two maids in conversation; the staff was like family, having worked for the Buckleys for decades. When I said “Good morning” they laughed a bit, given that 9:00 a.m.was quite late in a house where Bill was now known to ring for breakfast at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. I asked where Bill was, and Julian said he was out in the study. This corroborated that it was in fact Bill whom I had heard at 6:30. Eighty-two years old and writing a book about the Reagan he knew. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s book number 55! Incredible. Bill’s study was a converted garage; he needed an epic amount of space. It was in some respects the conservative movement’s Sistine Chapel. Lined with hundreds of books (including multiple copies of the 54 books he had published so far), the study was the ultimate work space, consisting of desks and tables strewn with papers, manuscripts, computers, typewriters, and assorted gadgetry from decades of curiosity spanning his Renaissance-man worlds, including those of sailing, music, and religion.
After breakfast I walked to the living room, where stood one of the two Bösendorfer pianos the Buckleys owned; the other was a fixture at their maisonette at 73 East 73rd Street. Anyone who ever attended a concert at the Buckleys’ had heard Pat announce with great pride, “Bill married me for that piano.” The plush red carpeting warmly welcomed me into the room, and I sat down at the piano. I warmed up with some Bach and then a Schumann song transcribed by Liszt. At about 9:30, after 30 minutes of practicing, I went up to the guestroom to get another sweater.

I thought about what a gorgeous day this was, and reflected that spring was on the way. As I donned my sweater I was startled to hear what soon would become a continuous sound of yearning pain. What is that? No one screams in this house. It was a female voice. I couldn’t decipher the words but the sound was so out of place in this house. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and my skin went cold from the feeling of unease. Something wasn’t right. Within a couple of seconds I thought that Bill must have fallen. I had been told that he had fallen a few times — he was losing his balance and stubbornly reluctant to use a cane. But then I thought again and my mind darted toward the inconceivable. I looked out the window and couldn’t see anyone. That sound. Where is it coming from? No. No. No. It can’t be. No. No. Don’t think about that. It’s not possible. It’s just not possible. “Larry, don’t think about that.”

I ran down the stairs in the direction of the wailing. As I entered the kitchen I encountered one of the maids. She was the source of the sound. I finally focused and began to reluctantly understand her. She looked directly in my eyes: “Señor . . . Señor . . . Padre no more. Padre no more.”

It still didn’t sink in. I felt like I was in a Hemingway novel, “Padre no more. Padre no more.” Over and over again. I immediately asked, “Where’s Danny?” Danny was a childhood friend of Christo’s and was living at Wallacks Point in order to keep an eye on Bill. The maid showed me Danny’s mobile number and I quickly dialed. No answer. “Where’s Julian?” Earlier Julian had told me that he would be heading to the store to buy some things for the dinner. “Julian there . . . Julian there . . .” she said, pointing in the direction of Bill’s study.

I bolted out the door and ran the 30 yards to the study. The door was ajar and there was Bill. He was on the floor face down. His omnipresent Cavalier King Charles spaniels were confusedly walking around him while the other maid stood crying. A shocked Julian was on the phone, and a fire siren could be heard approaching. Within a minute the fire engine arrived and the firemen made their way in with EMT gear. I stood outside the door and watched other medical personnel arrive. It was surreal.
I walked back and forth on the driveway near the study door. I was next to Julian when one of the EMT men came over and said that Bill had a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) bracelet. There was a part of me that thought that maybe, just maybe, they were going to take him to the hospital anyway. Soon the same EMT man came back and said, “Mr. Buckley has passed away.”

I looked at the American flag outside the study and at Long Island Sound. I thought about everything Bill had done for his country, and for my family and the countless millions of people who waged battles against Communist regimes around the world.

The police arrived. It is a necessary formality in the case of any death at a residence. I walked into the house with one of the officers, and he asked me, “Did you know Mr. Buckley?”

I thought to myself, “Did I know Mr. Buckley? Did I know Bill?” I analyzed this question. Past tense. Why is he asking me this question in the past tense? The idea of death had yet to penetrate my mind. An hour ago, I would have said, “I know Mr. Buckley.” From now onward it was going to be, “I knew Mr. Buckley.”

The police officer was an innocent bystander to the emotions I was experiencing. I looked at him with tears forming in my eyes and said, “He was one of my best friends.” The officer replied, “I’m so sorry for your loss.” With those words it became reality. My eyes welled up completely as I said, “Thank you,” and ran up the stairs to the room where just four hours earlier I had awakened to the sound of Bill’s footsteps. What was especially difficult to process was the fact that I had had dinner with Bill just the night before. It was sinking in, and I was sinking along with the feeling. I couldn’t stop crying.

My BlackBerry began to vibrate. Text messages, e-mails, and phone calls began coming in. The news was out. Bill was still in his study, but everyone around the world was beginning to learn of the news.
Several hazy hours passed, and I prepared to return to New York. Julian kindly offered to give me a ride to the train station.

Before we left, I asked Julian, Danny, and the maids to gather in the living room. I said it was imperative for us to honor Bill’s memory with music that very afternoon. I proceeded to play the first prelude from the second book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. This simple work in C Major, the simplest of keys, managed to bring us together in our grief while also giving us a sense of salvation. I’ll never forget the feeling of the tears coming down my cheeks as I finished the closing passage. As the sound disappeared, the five of us embraced and wept.

* * *

Five years on, the lasting influence Bill left has continued to grow. What is very evident is just how my understanding of selflessness has expanded, based on those memories. Here was a great man who epitomized selflessness, which manifested itself in goodness. His generosity and mentorship were legendary, but he didn’t look for credit where credit was due. What I think he looked for was for his friends to continue those actions, like the perpetual motion found in a great work by his favorite composer, J. S. Bach. Bill powered his friendships with this motion, and those lucky enough to have come into contact with him benefited greatly.

On June 8, 2007, two months after Pat passed away, I had received a letter and a gift from Bill. It was the last physical letter I received from him, and I’m sure it barely made it to my apartment given how illegible the handwriting was on the envelope. It left me speechless. The letter foretold what his friendship would mean to me in the years following his passing: “Dear Larry: What is enclosed is very simply a gift. It is, to be sure, an appreciation of your attainments, but hardly conceived as a reward for them — such rewards are to be received from other quarters. It is, simply, a gesture of appreciation and admiration, from a friend who greatly esteems you. XXB”

In the last five years I have made many meaningful friendships. The fact that I would never have met most of these people if not for my friendship with Bill reinforces the continuing presence he has in my life. Those “rewards” he referred to in his last letter are still materializing. I am forever grateful to him for answering the first letter I wrote him nearly 20 years ago. It formed the basis for an everlasting friendship, as I hear and follow his footsteps to this day.

— Lawrence Perelman is managing director of Semantix Creative Group, a strategic-advisory firm that counts cultural institutions like the Salzburg Festival among its clients.

Treachery at the top in Afghanistan

By Ralph Peters
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com
February 27, 2013

In his latest act of ingrate treachery, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered US Special Forces out of Wardak Province, the back door to Kabul. His demand came two weeks after he halted US close air support for the Afghan National Army, crippling his own military’s capabilities.

And that came atop multiple incidents when “our man in Kabul” blamed US troops for everything that went wrong in his wretched country.

That’s what you get for $600 billion these days. Without our support and protection, Karzai would have been swinging from a lamp post years ago — just as his predecessor Najibullah did in 1996. But stuck in our strategic battered-wife syndrome, we’ve continued to make excuses every time Karzai lashed out at us.

The decisive point came in 2009, when we let him steal the presidential election, discrediting all our rhetoric about democracy and the rule of law. After that, Karzai must’ve figured he had us by the “stacking swivel,” as my drill sergeant used to say.

And Karzai was right. Two thousand American troops have died to keep in power an unscrupulous incompetent who isn’t even grateful. And Karzai is confident that we’ll keep the money flowing after we leave. Meanwhile, he appears to be cutting deals with side-jumping tribal chieftains, fence-sitters and our outright enemies to ensure his own survival.

Which brings us back to that order to remove our Special Forces from a key province. Our special operators have been by far the most effective tool we’ve had on the ground in Afghanistan. While the tactics forced on our other troops left them easy targets for roadside bombs and assassins, the SFers built the only counterinsurgency programs that worked.

With Karzai’s Afghan National Police hated for their corruption and unreliability, our Green Berets built village militias — neighborhood policing, frontier-style. They empowered locals to protect themselves. Unsurprisingly, the locals liked it.

Karzai resisted the program: The National Police were under his control, but not those village self-defense forces. Solution? Trumped-up charges that Afghanelements associated with our troops engaged in torture and kidnapping.

Although NATO and US investigations found zero evidence of such activities, it served Karzai as a lever to neuter both our most effective troops and those pesky militias.

Who benefits? Karzai apparently thinks he does, but the real winners are the Taliban, who were losing ground in Wardak.

Karzai seems to be positioning himself for an ultimate bargain with some Taliban elements, renegade tribal chieftains and his ethnic-Pashtun homies.

He doesn’t trust the members of the old Northern Alliance (our 2001 allies in Afghanistan and the guys we should’ve supported all along) who serve in his government. But by trying to forestall a civil war that would drive him out, Karzai may be making civil war inevitable. And the guy we’ve backed looks likely to be on the anti-American side.

That’s what we get for backing individuals, rather than supporting institutions.

We’re suckers for the devious exile who speaks English and knows the magic words “democracy” and “human rights.” Result? Iraq has become a satellite of Iran, and Afghanistan’s going to come apart again.

Meanwhile, we’re chained to one of the world’s most corrupt regimes and enthusiastically backward countries. We want to get out, but can’t do it overnight. The huge force infrastructure we’ve built up takes years to dismantle and ship home — over Pakistan’s rickety transportation net (we’re hostages to the Pakistanis, too), or through Central Asia and Russia.

We have never before chosen to expose a major US force in such a strategically idiotic position. We never should’ve had one more soldier or system in Afghanistan than we could bring out by air in an emergency. Logistics, not nation-building fairy tales, should’ve shaped our actions. Now we’re going to have to bribe our way out, paying tribute money to thugs from Moscow to Islamabad.

My bet is that Karzai isn’t half as smart as he thinks he is. If he’s expecting to cut a deal with Taliban elements, he may be focused on the wrong threat. By pandering to terrorists and halting the US air support his army desperately needs, he may have set himself up for a post-American coup staged by Afghans who actually care about their country.

Karzai may swing from a lamp post yet.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Teen walks 10 miles for job interview

4 days ago

Local News

Teen goes viral, lands job after walking miles for job interview

4 days ago

by Kent Erdahl

Reporter
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What started out as a miserable day battling an icy 10-mile walk for a job interview, ended with a job offer and social media fame for an Indianapolis teen.

It was all thanks to a chance encounter along the way.

Art Bouvier decided to delay the opening of his restaurant, Papa Roux Cajun Cooking, due to the snow and ice. It was when he was salting down his sidewalk that he noticed a young man, 18-year-old Jhaqueil Reagan, walking toward him with a determined look on his face.

“He came walking through the parking lot and cutting the corner to get down westbound on 10th Street and he says, ‘Excuse me, can you tell me how far it is to 10th and Sherman?’” said Bouvier, who also goes by Papa. “I looked at the ground, it’s all ice, and I said, ’10th and Sherman? That’s about six or seven miles away. You’re not going to get there anytime soon in this weather. You’ll probably need to take a bus, and he said, ‘Okay, thank you sir.’ And he just kept going.”

Not only was 10th Street icy, it doesn’t have a sidewalk for an extended stretch on the east side. Papa said that’s why he was surprised to run into Reagan again while driving down 10th Street 20 minutes later.

“I said, well how come you’re not on the bus?” Papa said. “He said, ‘I can’t afford the bus until I get a job.’”

Reagan told Papa that he was walking to a job interview for a minimum wage job at a local thrift store. Though Papa knew the interview was at 10th and Sherman, he soon found out that Reagan was actually living at 42nd and Post, nearly 10 miles away.

“I’m thinking to myself, here’s a kid walking almost 10 miles in the ice and slush and snow for the hope of a job at minimum wage,” Papa said. “That’s the kind of story your parents used to tell, my parents used to tell, up both ways in the snow.”

Papa gave him a ride the rest of the way, gave him money for lunch, and told him he’d try to see if he could find room for him in his kitchen if he still needed a job after the interview.

Papa then shared Regan’s story on Facebook. Within a few hours he had more than 7,000 likes.

“More likes than I have friends,” Papa said. “It’s been shared 1,200 times. I have no explanation for that.”

On Friday night that promise became reality. Papa, called Reagan and offered him a job. He also offered to pick him up and bring him in for his first shift.

“I’m lucky I met him,” Reagan said. “I’m really lucky I met him.”

Reagan said it’s been hard finding opportunities. He was forced to quit school two years ago when his mother died. He completed his GED while staying home to care for his siblings.

Now that he has a job, and a following on Facebook?

“It’s crazy. I don’t even know. It’s really crazy,” Reagan said. “My heart’s just racing right now. I’m just too excited, just excited to start.”

“I can show you the ropes tonight if you want. We’re really busy in there,” Papa said to Reagan.

“Thank you very much,” Reagan said.

Reagan’s story inspired an outpouring of support on Facebook. Several people offered to buy him a bus pass in order to make it to his new job, but that won’t be necessary. After seeing the story on Fox59, a representative with IndyGo offered him a complimentary one year bus pass.

The Relatives: A Funky Gospel Sound is Resurrected

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com

February 20, 2013

The Rev. Gean West says he feels like Abraham, whom God made a father in his dotage. It’s been 43 years since he and his brother Tommie formed the gospel group the Relatives in Dallas and 33 years since the band broke up after releasing a few funky singles but scoring no hits.

Yet here the West brothers are, putting out their first full-length album, with several new songs and a few of their old numbers. At 75, Gean West is touring again, playing places like Lincoln Center, the Bell House in Brooklyn and Joe’s Pub.

“This is a God-sent thing because of the way it came about, how everything fell in place,” he said, sitting in a dressing room with the other original band members after a recent performance at the Greene Space, the performance site of WNYC radio. The drummer Earnest Tarkington, 66, nodded in agreement. “God kept us healthy for this occasion,” he said. Tommie, 66, the lead singer, chimed in: “My congregation can’t wait until the CD drops. Every one of them wants one.”

On Tuesday the Relatives released “The Electric Word” (Yep Roc), a collection of 10 gospel songs that the group recorded with the producer Jim Eno last year in Austin, Tex. These are not traditional church tracks. The Relatives sing a burning gospel refracted through the lens of psychedelic rock, heavy R&B and 1970s funk. Their riffs and drum grooves owe as much to Jimi Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone as to the Rev. James Cleveland and Shirley Caesar. “Even back then people would tell us that we was ahead of our time,” Gean said. “We always did our own thing.”

These days forgotten groups like the Relatives are being resurrected by young crate-digging producers at indie labels with some frequency, as musicians weaned in the era of Auto-Tuned voices and electronic drum tracks search for a rougher, handmade sound, an authenticity rooted in a place and a time.

“There has been a backlash against overproduced music, and I think these older cats have something to teach us about raw music,” said Noel Waggener, the producer who rediscovered the Relatives.

Others recently rescued from history’s dustbin include Rodriguez, the Detroit songwriter who saw his long-dormant career revived over the last year by the documentary movie and album “Searching for Sugar Man” (Light in the Attic Records). Similarly, Bettye LaVette, the R&B singer, was saved from obscurity about 10 years ago, and Anti- records, home of bands like Calexico and Dr. Dog, gave her a deal in 2005. Bill Bragin, the director of public programming at Lincoln Center, said the trend was not unlike the folk revival of the 1960s, when young musicians in Greenwich Village sought out and recorded folk and blues masters like the Rev. Gary Davis and Mississippi John Hurt. “There is always this interest when you discover a great artist that somehow history never picked up on,” Mr. Bragin said.

For the Relatives the road back to making music started with a cracked 45 r.p.m. record that the mother of an Austin drummer, Mike Buck, found at a thrift shop more than seven years ago and gave to her son. It was one of the three singles the group had released in the early 1970s — the grooving “Don’t Let Me Fall” and, on the flip side, a funk number, “Rap On.” Mr. Buck, who also owns Antone’s Record Shop in Austin, shared the recording with his friends, including Mr. Waggener, a founder of an archival record label, Heavy Light. “I was completely blown away,” Mr. Waggener said.

Mr. Waggener and his partner, Charisse Kelly, tracked down Gean (pronounced gene) at a ramshackle church in Dallas, where he was pastor over a dwindling flock. Surprised by the inquiry, he said there were about five unreleased Relatives songs that Phil York, the Dallas producer, had recorded in 1975. When Mr. Waggener and Ms. Kelly visited Mr. York, he not only remembered the recording session but made them a copy of the master, which he had called “The Electric Word” because he didn’t know the group’s name.

Heavy Light reissued these recordings as an album, “Don’t Let Me Fall,” in 2009, which received good reviews. Gean West, who had a successful career in the 1960s with influential gospel groups like the Mighty Golden Voices and the Southernaires, reassembled a band to begin touring again.

“I didn’t believe it,” Mr. Tarkington recalled. “I thought he was crazy.” Since only three of the original lineup of seven were healthy enough to perform, Gean recruited two younger singers — Tony Corbitt and Tyron Edwards — to fill out the sound.

Starting with a 2009 reunion concert at the Continental Club in Austin the band spent the next three years barnstorming festivals with its four-part harmonies and funky grooves. The group blew away a crowd at the Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans in September 2010, and that success led to appearances at Austin City Limits and the Bonnaroo festivals. Mr. Bragin engaged them to open for Mavis Staples at Lincoln Center Out of Doors in the summer of 2011 and brought them back to headline a show this year.

In March 2010, Mr. Eno, the producer and drummer for Spoon, heard the Relatives play in Austin, opening for the garage-soul group Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears. Awed by the sound, he approached the Relatives about recording an album. “It was this gospel group with heavy rock and psychedelic influences,” Mr. Eno said. “I felt like this would be really great to document.”

During two sessions last year Mr. Eno preserved the group’s 1970s rock-and-funk aura but also gave the sound a contemporary indie-rock texture. The five gospel voices — led by Tommie’s cracked and soulful timbre — are backed by a trio of young rockers from Austin: the guitarist Zach Ernst, the drummer Matt Strmiska and the bassist Scott Nelson. There are only two traditional gospel tunes on the album, one of them the a cappella “Trouble in My Way.” The record is mostly hard-driving R&B dance grooves that evoke James Brown or the Parliaments, like the funky “It’s Coming Up Again” and the hypnotic “Let Your Light Shine.”

The West brothers said it had been surreal to be touring again. Tommie quit the group in the mid-1970s, started a bar and played in R&B bands for a time.

“We was on our way to Houston, and Tommie and I was in the back seat and I punched him and said, ‘Man, what are we doing back out here?’ ” Gean recalled. “He said, ‘Man, I don’t know.’ And we all started laughing. It’s just amazing.”

Tommie said people seem more open to their style now. The Relatives often got a cool reception from older churchgoers in Dallas in the early 1970s. Their sound was too close to R&B for the church, too laden with gospel lyrics for R&B radio. They ended up playing in hotel bars and nightclubs as well as churches.

These days audience reaction at festivals and clubs has been more open-minded, Tommie said. “It’s electrifying,” he said. “It’s really awesome. I get a charge, I get energy, when I look out and they are clapping, they are jumping.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 20, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to one of the New York clubs where the group the Relatives has played recently. It was the Bell House in Brooklyn, not the Brooklyn Bowl.

It's all Relatives: Meet the funky, God-fearing West Dallas proselytizers and hear their unique sound

To hear the Rev. Gean West tell it, this is how it was supposed to happen — the decades’ worth of waiting, of wanting, followed, finally, by all this attention, all this acclaim.

His band of soulful, funky, far-out, God-fearing West Dallas proselytizers broke up forever ago — sometime around 1980, give or take, when Gean’s young brother and bandmate Tommie hopped off the stage and into the pulpit, Gean close behind. Theirs was a brief, glorious and nearly forgotten run that began in 1970 and was highlighted by a few national tours and the release of a handful of singles that turned into fading echoes.

And that would have been that, had He not intervened.

“It’s a God-sent thing,” says Gean one cloudy, chilly Friday afternoon in January. Dressed all in black, from his fedora to his patent leathers, the 76-year-old sits at a table perched near the front door of Tommie’s No Walls Ministry. It’s a cavernous house of worship tucked away on the deserted side of a bustling strip shopping center, facing a South Lancaster DART light-rail stop. The occasion for this visit: On Tuesday, The Relatives will release a new album, The Electric Word.

It will also be the band’s first.

“My nephew, he’s kind of in that world,” Gean begins, his voice full of the age and gruff that vanishes when he slips on his shiny suit and finds an open mike.

“He do that stuff — drugs and stuff,” says the reverend. “And he sat down one day and said, ‘I wanna tell you something. You know what y’all doing, the singing?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘What you used to do?’ Because I hadn’t done it for 30 years. He said, ‘One of these days, I can feel it in my soul, one of these days somebody’s gonna pick y’all up.’ And he was on that stuff. I sat and listened to him, and something about him talking, even though he was on that stuff, it called me.”

Gean’s voice rises. “It called to me. I felt what he was saying. And it came to pass just like he said. He told me. And that was about, hey, that’s been about seven, eight, 10 years ago. He sat down and told me that. It’s just …” A pause. “It’s a gift from God, and when God orders something to be, some way and somehow, it’s coming to pass.”

On this afternoon, Gean is surrounded by his closest allies, his choir of angels. There is brother Tommie and percussionist Earnest Tarkington, along with Gean, the last of the original Relatives. There is guitarist Zach Ernst, the young fan once the anchor of Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears — maybe the most beloved band in Austin — who is now a full-time Relative and wears grooves up and down Interstate 35 for band practice and performances. And there is Charisse Kelly, co-owner with husband, Noel Waggener, of the Austin-based label that rescued these men from the unwanted fame afforded shoulda-been legends long after they’ve gone.

This record coming out Tuesday, The Electric Word on Yep Roc Records, wouldn’t have been possible without Waggener and Kelly, who were hipped to a cracked copy of one of the Relatives’ few surviving 45s from the 1970s and spent on-and-off years tracking down Gean. They’d never heard anything like it: the gospel group Mighty Clouds of Joy raining down a hailstorm of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, gospel and soul drenched in fuzz and feedback. And they needed to hear more.

In time they found among engineer and producer Phil York’s possessions a collection of unreleased tracks made at his Dallas studio in 1974. Thirty-five years after those songs were recorded, Waggener and Kelly made them available on a collection titled Don’t Let Me Fall in 2009, which you’d swear was a greatest-hits culled from albums’ worth of material.

Even those few songs were not easy to find: York, who died last year, couldn’t recall the band’s name. So he labeled the box of tapes “The Electric Word.”

That just had to be the name of the new album, which was produced by Jim Eno, drummer for Austin’s pop ’n’ rockers Spoon. It’s fitting: The Electric Word may be the grooviest gospel record ever made — sin and salvation sharing the same speaker.

“When we started out, we wanted to reach the younger people and the older people,” says Tarkington, explaining the genesis of a sound born in 1970, resurrected for the true believers in 2009 and now widely available for the heathens come Tuesday.

“When we started out, the younger people got with the beat,” he continues. “They didn’t listen to the words. But the older people listened to the words. And some of them said, ‘I like what y’all are saying, but the music …!’ They weren’t into the music. Now God has put it all together.”

“We always believed there was no such thing as what they call a sinner note or a worldly note or a church note,” says Gean. “E is E. Music comes from heaven, you know what I’m saying? It’s all in the person who’s playing it.”

Here, Tommie chimes in: “We’ve always sung in the church, and we’ve always had a message, but we wanted to go beyond the church. We wanted to reach the world.”

Now they have: The band broke in Austin upon its return, sharing stage and studio with Black Joe Lewis; then began making trips to out-of-town festivals; and just returned from an extended stint in New York City. It took awhile for the locals to take note of the Relatives’ return; Jeff Liles at the Kessler Theater began booking the band, first at the opening of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge last March and then at the Oak Cliff theater, where the band returns for an album release on March 22.

Now, the comeback is complete. Like the song says, “Things Are Changing.” Finally.

“God just … what would you say? Reserved me?” says Gean. “I found I still had a voice. He brought it around in my old age. And I said, ‘Why would you wait till I get to this age to do this?’ I pondered it in my heart. I wondered about it. I was driving in my car, and a voice spoke to me. And it said, ‘You’re gonna be an inspiration to older people as well. And it’s gonna prove to them that when they go and sit in the rocking chair, it’s not over for them.’

“God’s using us as the instrument, to set things in order the way he wants things set in place. We’re not doing anything for ourselves. It’s his work. He’s setting it in motion.”

How We Met: Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell

'She told me she had an extra ticket; I went the next day and stayed for seven years'

Sunday, 24 February 2013

Emmylou Harris, 62

A 12-time Grammy winner, Harris has been at the forefront of country music for 40 years, selling 15 million albums and collaborating with artists including Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Ryan Adams and, most memorably, Gram Parsons. She lives in Nashville with her mother.

The first time I heard of Rodney I was in Toronto with my producer Brian Ahern. It must have been 1974 and I was there to choose material for the LP I was going to do later that year, but there wasn't anything that interested me. As the day went on there was still nothing. Finally Brian said, "I've only got one more recording by this young songwriter." It was still in the mailing envelope. He stuck it in the machine and there was Rodney singing "Bluebird Wine". It was so fresh and real and his voice was incredible. I said, "OK, this is the one."

Brian asked Rodney to fly to Washington DC, which was where I was living, and we got along great. We talked about music all night. It was great to find a new writer who was of my generation. He was like a kid brother. If we had grown up together we would have been making music together all our lives.

It was obvious to me that he would end up playing in my band. He was a great energy source and a great compadre. A few months later the band and I came through Austin, Texas, where he lived. He came to the show and I said to him, "Why not come on out to LA with us?" So he did, and he stayed. Rodney and I were both pretty young in those days. We were these two kids who were learning as we went.

We have a rich, rewarding friendship. So many other friends and so much great music has come from it. We had always talked about making a duets album together, but the right time, when neither of us were touring or doing other things, never seemed to come.

I was the one who finally made the call this time. I hadn't written any songs since making [2011's] Hard Bargain and I think perhaps I was tired of it all being me. It's quite a thing being out front on your own all the time.

Also – and this may sound a little morbid – you get to a stage where you start losing friends and a sense that you have a finite amount of time. I didn't want Rodney or me to regret that we didn't get around to doing it. So finally, we made an album together. And I have to say, I think it's a good one.

Rodney Crowell, 62

The Grammy-winning country musician was a producer, guitarist and songwriter-for-hire before finding solo success with the album 'Diamonds & Dirt' in 1988. His songs have been recorded by artists including Bob Seger and Crystal Gayle. He lives in Nashville with his wife, the singer Claudia Church.

I had known of Emmylou before we met. I'd heard her singing with Gram Parsons on record and had happily climbed into the intimate world that they had created. The first time I laid eyes on her, she was playing a show at a folk club in Washington DC. There was talk of her recording one of my songs, so I had gone to meet her. Afterwards, we went to the house of one of her friends and sat until the wee hours with guitars talking about songs. I would sing an obscure Townes Van Zandt song, or a Louvin Brothers song, and she would say, "I know that!"

Of course, me being a 24-year-old male, it was love at first sight, but she was actually the first person to teach me about the beauty of a real friendship with a woman. I also had huge respect for her as an artist – and of course the fact that she drew the attention of the music industry to my songs.

We met again in Austin, where we played on stage together, then she asked me to come to LA. She told me she had an extra ticket so I went the next day and stayed for seven years. I was writing songs and providing her with new material. I joined her band, half of whom were also playing in Elvis's band, so I knew I'd gone up a level. The world was beautiful, big and all out in front of us.

Our friendship is not unlike a sibling relationship: intense and held together by love. Our conversation hasn't changed much over 40 years – it's about our faith and passion when it comes to music, and our sense of wonder that these songs that we love even exist.

A lot of the time we're in different parts of the world and five years can go by not seeing each other. Then I'll run into her backstage somewhere or at an airport and it's as if no time has passed.

What has changed is that I have grown into my own skin. It's only in recent years that I've been truly comfortable both as a performer and as a person, which makes it a perfect time for us to collaborate. Making an album together has been great, not least because I've had dinner with my friend more times in the past year than we have in the past 15.

Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell's 'Old Yellow Moon' is out on 4 March

Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris come full circle on 'Old Yellow Moon'

Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris

Rick Diamond/WireImage

Eric R. Danton

February 20, 2013 11:00 AM ET

Emmylou Harris laughs when she's asked how long her new album of duets with Rodney Crowell has been in the works. "Thirty years?" she says.

At least. Old Yellow Moon, due February 26th, is the latest entry in a long-standing relationship: Harris has been recording Crowell's songs since "Bluebird Wine," the opening track on her 1975 major-label debut, Pieces of the Sky. He played guitar and sang backup in an early incarnation of her Hot Band in the Seventies, and she backed him on his first solo album in 1978. They've been talking about recording an album together since then, but though they've been friends and co-written tunes over the years, the timing never worked out for a full-on

"I think we always knew we would do a record together one day," Harris tells Rolling Stone. "I guess it was sometime last year that I said, 'You know, if we're going to do this record, we've got to put a fence around some time and get started.'"

It didn't take long once they did. Crowell offered four new songs for the album, which they rounded out with eight covers they chose from among various options each suggested while sitting around producer Brian Ahern's kitchen table in Nashville.

"Brian brought a bunch of songs, Rodney and I both brought songs, and we would listen every day. And if it was something that we liked, we'd set about finding a key and a sketch of an arrangement and make a demo of it right there at the table," Harris says. In fact, the title track is the version they recorded on the spot at Ahern's house.

"We were going to cut it with a bunch of musicians, but we decided that what we got in that moment was perfect," Harris says.

Choosing songs wasn't far different from how they worked in the old days. In fact, one of the tunes they recorded was from the old days: Harris and Crowell recorded a new version of "Bluebird Wine," cementing the full-circle aspect of Old Yellow Moon.

"I love the fact that although Rodney wrote it, he had never actually recorded it himself to put on any of his records," Harris says. "I thought it should be included because it was one of those early points of our collaboration as musicians and friends."

Crowell agreed, with one caveat: he wanted to touch up the words. "I wrote those lyrics when I was 21 years old. I could have done it better," he tells Rolling Stone. "I revised the first couple of verses and said, 'OK, I can stand behind this.'"

The tune was Harris' introduction to Crowell back in 1974, when Ahern (to whom she was married in the late Seventies and early Eighties) gave her a demo while they was looking for material for Pieces of the Sky. "The first song was 'Bluebird Wine,'" Harris says. "I loved his voice, I loved his material, so Brian got on the phone and started trying to track him down."

Crowell flew to Washington D.C., where Harris was living at the time, to play some songs with her. He had recently moved to Austin, and when Harris came through on tour, she offered him a job. "She said, 'Hey, I've got an extra ticket, I'm going to L.A. tomorrow, do you want to go?'" Crowell recalls. "And I said, 'Yeah, I'll go,' and I stayed seven years."

He spent three of those years in her Hot Band before striking out on his own as a performer and producer, leading to decades of crossed connections before they found the time to make Old Yellow Moon. It's not, strictly speaking, a country record – each has veered closer to folk and Americana over the past 20 years – but it follows a proud country tradition that Harris first learned when she sang with Gram Parsons in the Seventies.

"I came to country music through duet singing with Gram and hanging out with Gram," Harris says. "I love it. I love the sound of two voices together, whether it's two women or two men or a man and a woman. It just creates a third voice, and I love the conversational aspect of it."

Harris has been a sought-after duet partner for years, contributing vocals to albums by Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, Mark Knopfler, Steve Earle, Ryan Adams and Conor Oberst, among plenty of others. Teaming with Crowell again, though, was like coming home. "It's kind of in our blood," she says.

Crowell elaborates. "There's never been a lack of chemistry for Emmy and I," he says. "For a lot of the time when she was putting together the original Hot Band, it was just she and I, and we sat around playing the Louvin Brothers' songs and looking for those arcane melodies that work best with two voices."

Their shared history means a shared repertoire for the tour that will accompany Old Yellow Moon, which begins March 13th in New Orleans. "I don't think we'll have any problem finding material," Harris says. "If there's any problem, it'll be that we have too much."