Cybergrass Bluegrass Music News: CMHoF Hosts Loudon Wainwright III On Charlie Poole, Aug 1

BMNN wrote: on Jul. 08, 2009:

On August 1, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, TN will host a performance and discussion with Loudon Wainwright III previewing his new album, which delves deeply into the music of country music pioneer Charlie Poole. Loudon has long been fascinated by the North Carolina Ramblers band leader, moonshiner, and all around raconteur and explores his life and times on the new album 'High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project' (August 18 / 2nd Story Sound Records). Multi-instrumentalists Chaim Tannenbaum (banjo, guitar, harmonica) and David Mansfield (violin, mandolin, slide guitar; Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder, Johnny Cash, Lucinda Williams) will accompany Loudon for this exclusive Nashville performance. Vice President of Museum Programs and country music scholar Jay Orr will moderate the program.

WHO: Loudon Wainwright III
WHAT: A performance of and interview about Charlie Poole
WHEN: Saturday, August 1
WHERE: Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, 222 Fifth Avenue South, Nashville, Tennessee 37203 (615-416-2001)
TICKETS: free with museum admission; museum tickets $19.99 for adults

For the forthcoming double album High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project (August 25 / 2nd Story Sound), Loudon Wainwright III and producer Dick Connette immersed themselves in the Poole canon and they also penned nine new songs about the life and times of the country music pioneer. Connette and Wainwright drew inspiration from Kinney Rorrer's definitive biography of Poole, Ramblin' Blues, and even visited Poole's hometown of Spray, NC, with Kinney as their tour guide. They also, however, allowed themselves a little narrative poetic license.

The new song "High Wide & Handsome" - the title track of the album - comes from a phrase that Loudon heard from his mother, who grew up in Tifton, GA, but Poole also used it. Wainwright says, "He was quoted as saying that he wanted to go out as high, wide, and handsome which usually means prosperous and together and great looking. But I think in his case it just meant partying until the very end."

Another Wainwright/Connette original, "The Man In The Moon" imagines how Poole's wife might have felt about his chosen life style:

"It was hard bein' married to Charlie; it was no kind of regular life. He never stopped ramblin' or drinkin' or gamblin' - at least not while I was his wife."

Immortalized in the 2005 box set, You Ain't Talkin' To Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music, Poole was a bootlegger, banjo picker, amateur baseball player, drinker, rambler, gambler, and textile mill worker -- and one of the most popular musicians of his day, recording over 110 tracks for Columbia, Paramount, and Brunswick. Born in 1892 in North Carolina, he lived fast and died at the age of 39.

About The Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum is operated by the Country Music Foundation, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization chartered by the state of Tennessee in 1964. The Museum's mission is the preservation of the history of country and related vernacular music rooted in southern culture. With the same educational mission, the Foundation also operates CMF Records, the Museum's Frist Library and Archive, CMF Press, Historic RCA Studio B, and Hatch Show Print.

More information about the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is available at www.CountryMusicHallOfFame.com or by calling (615) 416-2001. www.TheCharliePooleProject.com.

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