3 Chords & the Truth: As the Nut Cracks

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(THEME MUSIC SWELLS.)

Join us for the next 90 minutes for As the Nut Cracks, the story of a country just a bit off its nut, sponsored by Planters, where every can is full of nuts, just like American politics. Planters, where nuttery is our business.

(DISSOLVE TO OPENING SCENE.)

"Bing bong, bing bing bing! Sharks! Electric boats! Shocking! Jaws! Mass deportation now! Commies! Commies!"

We will return to the Big Show after these messages.

Buy Planters. Our nuts are the good kind. Really.

Now back to . . . As the Nut Cracks!

"Doctor, is there anything that can be done? I'm afraid, Doctor, I'm afraid! That's some weird shit."

"It's a difficult case, Jane. One of the worst I've ever seen . . . but we'll do our best. But for you, dear, I recommend you start drinking heavily. After all, I'm a doctor.

"Also, you might want to listen to some good music. It will be very calming. I'll give you a prescription."

"Thank you, Doctor. Thanks for everything."

(MUSIC SWELLS.)

Can the doctor restore sanity? Or will the nut crack? Find out tomorrow on the next episode of As the Nut Cracks, the story of a country that's just around the bend.

Now a final word from our sponsor -- Planters. Our nuts won't hurt you, just so long as you're not allergic.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: America today

We find ourselves living in the Age of Disunity. Now, more than ever, the mother's milk of politics is bullshit.

This applies much more to some political parties than others. Boy, does it.

Listen, I watched all of Donald Trump's historically weird acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, otherwise known as Nuremberg for Dummies. That über über gathering in Milwaukee was notable among American political conventions for the placard handouts that got right to the point -- "MASS DEPORTATION NOW."

Sieg heil, y'all.

THIS IS the American milieu from which 3 Chords & the Truth emerges every week. You sometimes wonder whether doing this thing, amid this level of ugly, every week amounts to whistling past a national graveyard.

Oh, yeah. Some 20-year-old nutter attempted to assassinate Trump last week. So there's that.

I absolutely cannot wait for what lies ahead . . . said no one ever the past few years.

Then we have the Democrats trying to force a diminished and doddering Joe Biden off the ballot. The niceties disappear when the stakes are existential, and losing may be death.

Ready for some music yet?

Ready or not, here it is, and it's damn good. As usual. In times like these, you have to keep on keepin' on -- until you can't. We'll keep the eclectic wonderfulness of the Big Show coming . . . until we can't.

It's that kind of America right now.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Really? What the hell?

If you know, you know.

First, I ain't young. I started in radio -- long before the Internet and 3 Chords & the Truth -- during the age of cartridge machines, big studio consoles with round knobs, turntables and reel-to-reel tape decks. Editing was done with a grease pencil and razor blade. The computer was the Heathkit they built in electronics class, which was where it stayed.

And the thing about being Not Young is that I've seen some things. And I remember most of them.

SECOND, I ain't never seen what I'm seeing now. Enter the 2024 presidential race -- 81-year-old Joe Biden, who's had a pretty damn good run as president vs. 78-year-old Donald Trump, an adjudicated rapist, convicted felon, federal defendant, Georgia defendant, word-salad aficionado, and all-around reprobate.

And the felonious reprobate, running on a flat-out authoritarian platform, is winning. I was born in the Deep South in 1961. What we'll get under a second Trump Administration, I've seen. It was called Jim Crow. It was horrific.

No wonder that I felt the need to bang my head on this week's edition of the Big Show.

I am old enough to have seen a lot of good music. This is it. Trust me.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Xanax, take me away!

If you can't laugh, you'll end up sticking your head in the oven.

Yeah, I watched the presidential debate pitting a bad debater who's lost a step . . . and a pathological liar who aspires to be Short-Bus Hitler. Couple that with a thoroughly broken journalistic infrastructure (I'm looking at you, CNN), and if cannabis were legal in this state, I'd be snarfing pot gummies like Raisinettes in a freakin' movie theater.

Thus, the importance of good music on 3 Chords & the Truth . . . and the ability to laugh at this s***.

I'm hoping I achieved the good-music and humor goals on this week's edition of the Big Show. I am betting heavily that you are, too.

Well, I guess you'll just have to see, now, won't you?

This has to work. I have an electric oven. Ouch.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Baby, it's you

Here's to you.

After all, without you, we at 3 Chords & the Truth are talking to ourselves and playing records for the wind.

So, musically, that's where we're starting on the show this week. But that's not where we're going to end. There is lots to love -- as usual -- about yet another episode of the Big Show. I mean, we're talking some seriously good music, intelligently presented.

Thank a seriously massive music library.

And that's about all I have to say about that. If you know, you know. If you don't -- yet -- this is as good a time as any to find out. You can thank me later.

With that said. . . .

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: You get what you get

By the time I got to Memphis, I was sinking.

You'll find the note I left hangin' on your phone. You'll laugh when you read the part that says I'm flailin.'

 
'Cause I've flailed on here so many times before.

 

BY THE TIME I hit record, I was low energy. You'll probably think the Big Show is nothin' at all.

 
But you'll just have to go on thinkin' . . . mighty small. That's all.

 

By the time you figure it out, show'll be over. You'll turn and say "That's 3 Chords & the Truth!"

 
And you'll cry just to think I'd really done it -- tho' time and time again I've pulled it off.

 
You just didn't know . . . it's the Big Show.

 

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

 

3 Chords & the Truth: What just happened?

What just happened here?

Well, as this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth came together and headed to the Internet tubes, a former president of the United States was convicted on 34 felony counts in New York. That's a first in two and a half centuries.

Momentous stuff, to say the least.

And, unsurprisingly, convicted felon Donald Trump and Republican politicians from soup to nuts -- emphasis on the nuts -- are waging a brutal rhetorical war on the American justice system. Throw some dude in the 'hood under the jail, our criminal courts are great. Convict a psychologically damaged, orange authoritarian? THE TRIAL WAS RIGGED! DEMOCRATS ARE WAGING WAR AGAINST THE PEOPLE!

EVEN THOUGH our system held here, even though we saw that no man is above the law -- in New York state, at least -- the United States remains in a world of hurt. American patriots (the real ones, not the performative ones) continue to fight for our democratic lives.

Interesting week to come out with another Big Show.

And the existential question remains: Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on?

Here, we're on the side of America -- the noble idea of America. America is an idea, you know. It's a creed, an aspiration. We haven't fully lived up to the tenets of that creed yet, but the defining characteristic of Americanism is that we keep trying to.

Our national bond, now so horribly frayed, is in the trying . . . trying to live up to the words of the Declaration of Independence. Trying to remain faithful to our constitution.

This is a music program, however. We're also on the side of great music, and we're pretty firmly rooted in that respect. I'd recommend, after the day -- after the decade -- we've had that you kick back and chill with the musical greatness of the Big Show.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Seeing darkly via rose-colored specs

Life is a mixed bag, and not everything was better when we were young.

Actually, lots of things were awful, even cruel, when we were young. To deny that, it seems to me, is to fall into what I like to call malignant nostalgia. Rose-colored glasses tend to make your hindsight blurry.

Perhaps even offensive.

THAT'S WHAT is on my mind as another edition of 3 Chords & the Truth goes into the can and onto the Internets. For instance, I think the music from my time back in the day was, overall, pretty damned good. That doesn't mean it all was . . . God, no! A lot of it was crap.

Same goes for today. There's a lot of crap on the radio -- and on Spotify or whatever, There's also a lot of amazingly good stuff which, as was true to a lesser degree when I was young, can be less in your face and might take a little effort to connect with.

But the thing about the Big Show is that we celebrate the good. The bad, we don't mess with.

That, methinks, is all that needs to be said here. Really, it's time to get to the music now.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: What can I say?

What can I say?

Well, I don't know.

I've been in a contemplative mood but, unfortunately, that hasn't readily translated into something in particular to actually say on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth. Guess the music will have to do the talking.

Good thing the music, as usual, just says it all.

That's the Big Show for you.

And that is all I have to say.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Nudge dread

"These are the times that try men's souls."

Thomas Paine opened his essay "American Crisis" with that sentence in December 1776. The revolution against Great Britain wasn't going so well at that point.

Two hundred forty-eight years later, with a country riven as much as it's been since the Civil War, with a deranged authoritarian commanding the loyalty of a good 40 percent of Americans -- with American democracy itself teetering on the sharp edge of oblivion -- these are the times that try people's will to get out of bed in the morning.

SCRATCH MILLIONS of average Americans, and you're likely to bring forth a flood of existential dread. It's been that way for much of the past nine years.

And here I am doing a music podcast. You may have heard of it -- 3 Chords & the Truth. And the Truth is, we don't know how much more of this mess we, and the United States, can take. Think of the 3 Chords part as a pleasant refuge from the encroaching dread.

Ninety minutes' peace a week from existential dread ain't nothing. Well, that's one way to market the Big Show.

The quintessential 2024 way to market a music program.

Fortunately, that 90 minutes a week of musical refuge are 90 quality minutes of musical refuge. An absolute dread-free zone.

Thank God.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Spiraling

This is where I'm supposed to be clever or funny -- or something -- as I say something that's vaguely about this week's episode of the Big Show.

And perhaps you've noticed that I'm rather late posting this week's 3 Chords & the Truth.

Truth is . . . clever, funny or saying much about this week's show isn't really in the cards this early Saturday morning. I'm posting the show because it's been in the can since early Friday morning, but hyping it would be, in my reckoning right now, kind of vulgar.

Maybe you've heard on the news that Omaha (a.k.a., Omaha, by God, Nebraska) was hit hard by tornadoes Friday afternoon. The biggest one, out in far western Omaha, was massive and powerful -- perhaps an EF-4 or EF-5. That has yet to be officially determined, but it was really big, really powerful . . . and there are many homes and a few neighborhoods that no longer exist.

ON THE OTHER side of town, just north of downtown Omaha, a tornado tore through our airport, heavily damaging the general aviation section. My wife and I saw that happen on live TV.

The monster tornado missed our house (a.k.a., the Culture War bunker) by about 9 miles or so. The other one missed us by about 7 miles and change. We were lucky.

Not so for folks in a ruined path through western Douglas County, the western suburbs of Omaha and up through Bennington and well into Washington County. Also down toward Lincoln, Neb. And across the river in Iowa, tornadoes leveled huge parts of a few small towns, as well as some areas in Council Bluffs.

This area hasn't seen anything like that since the Tornado of 1975, an EF-4 monster that ripped through the middle of Omaha and was the United States' first billion-dollar twister.

Yes, this week's Big Show is as fine as ever. It's just that that seems rather unimportant now. As is the self-serving social-media hype one is expected to do these days.

I mean, "Too bad about the devastation across town, but now let's get back to the bitchin' tunes!" just doesn't cut it.

The show's done, and I didn't want to junk it, and that's about all I feel like saying about it. So I suck at modern marketing. Whoopee.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Listen. Or don't.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not that important, actually.

3 Chords & the Truth: Here comes the music

Sooner or later, the Big Show's gonna get ya.

Sooner or later, friend, you got to give in.

Sooner or later, the tunes are gonna let 'cha.

Sooner or later, the music's gonna win. Music's gonna win.

IT'S JUST a matter of time before you make up your mind.

To give all those grooves that you've been hiding.

Its just a question of when, I've told you time and again. You'll get all the tunes you've been denying.

Sooner or later, 3C&T is gonna get ya.

Sooner or later, friend, you got to give in.

Sooner or later, the tunes are gonna let 'cha.

Sooner or later, the music's gonna win. Music's gonna win!

So . . . here comes the Big Show. You betcha.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Nekkid truth

I sit here at the keyboard, naked before you, telling and playing the truth.

Well, not naked naked but figuratively naked. And certainly not nekkid. As any Southerner will tell you, there's a difference between naked and nekkid. Naked is clothesless. Nekkid is naked while up to something. There's a 3 Chords & the Truth naked truth for you.

I'll tell you the naked truth of why Linda Martell's debut country album was her last album. It is not an easy path for Black women in Nashville today. It was exponentially harder in 1970 and, indeed, it didn't work out -- for obvious reasons five years past the technical end of Jim Crow.

Back then, the miraculous apparently was all used up on the great Charley Pride's stardom.

HERE'S ANOTHER naked truth for this edition of the Big Show: Great music encompasses all genres, and they all can coexist on a single program. You know. like this one. And yet another one: Too many people are too parochial to embrace that fact.

Having grown up before the culture splintered into microcultures, it was pretty easy for an old guy like me to realize that at a relatively early age. It got even easier when I aged out of any concern for being "cool."

And the nakedest truth for me right now is that, in writing this, I'm just all over the place. Like, are people going to think I'm an idiot when I say The Who's "Naked Eye" is on Who's Next? Well, if you have a later CD re-release, it is.

Another version is on Odds and Sods (1974). The naked truth is that digital re-releases of classic albums make one's musical-geek life confusing. Bonus tracks good; bonus tracks kinda bad if you nerd out on who released what when.

Like I said, all over the place, I am. No, I am not Yoda. I just write like him.

Perhaps I'd better stop now. That's the naked truth, but not the nekkid truth. Nekkid truth, you would not want to see.

And there goes the thread, which I have lost.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Off to the races

Ever had one of those weeks when all you could manage was to go off on a tangent?

This has been one of those weeks, following a couple of weeks off. Which led to this week on 3 Chords & the Truth, with what I could manage.

But -- oh! -- what a tangent. Actually, make that two legitimate tangents. Sometimes, all you can manage after a couple of challenging weeks turns out to be pretty glorious.

And this week, that is your Big Show.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Moonglow

When does "old people's music" become your music, too?

I think that happens in a couple of ways -- when you start playing it yourself, then something happens in your head and in your heart . . . and when you encounter magic in the night. Let's just call it "moonglow."

Or, more properly, "Moonglow."

That is what this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is all about. Let's go deeper, and I'll use my own experience to do that.

Big band was my parents' music, kind of like country, Lawrence Welk and Guy Lombardo. As a kid in the pre-digital age, I was force-fed three things on TV in the days of one or two TV sets in the house and just two channels in Baton Rouge. First, it was The Porter Wagoner Show. Second, The Lawrence Welk Show. Third, every Dec. 31, Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians counting down to the new year . . . also pre-digital.

OF COURSE, I was lucky to have grown up playing, and loving, the records bought by the younger version of my parents. We're talking jump blues, gut-bucket jump blues, Western swing, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers and Thin Elvis.

The "race music" thing and my racist parents? One of the many contradictions of the segregated South. If you try to make sense of it, you'll fail.

But . . . then came high school, and high-school radio.

Two of the shows I had to do as a student DJ at Baton Rouge High's FM station, WBRH, were the big-band show and the jazz show. I not only learned a lot (in some cases, painfully), but I also learned to love the music -- the music of the "old folks."  Go figure. Maybe the folks, in their own hidebound way, were planting seeds with all that forced viewing of Larry, et al.

And then, when I was in college at Louisiana State, I discovered Moonglow With Martin on WRKF public radio, which then was a brand-new thing in Baton Rouge -- broadcasting from a house trailer on Frenchtown Road. The late-night program was a continuation of something legendary disc jockey Dick Martin had been doing, on various stations around the country, since the early 1950s on clear-channel, 50,000-watt WWL in New Orleans.

Martin was a big-band and jazz DJ. He only played the good stuff -- the really good stuff. His show was, not to put too fine a point on it, magic. I missed out on his WWL show, and I was just a little kid when, after a stint in Kansas City, he brought it for a time to Baton Rouge's WJBO-FM in 1965. (Besides, who listened to FM in 1965? Apart from the folks in dentists' offices.)

Martin at WJBO, 1965 (Sunday Advocate)

BUT I DIDN'T miss Moonglow With Martin on public radio after 'RKF came to my cultural-wasteland of a hometown in 1980. Seriously, people, we didn't have public TV until 1975; WBRH was the city's first noncommercial radio station since WLSU-FM went under in 1957, a generation earlier. And we had only Channel 2 and Channel 9 until 1971, when we got an ABC affiliate, Channel 33.

And in the white, working-class world of my childhood, subversiveness was called SOOOOUL Train! But what about my parents' old race records? Do not try to square that circle; you will hurt yourself.

So, like my parents' old country and blues records, and the Top-40 and progressive FM rock of my growing-up years, Dick Martin's Moonglow With Martin is in most every episode of the Big Show. It is a marvelous mix of my youthful force-feedings, rebellion and . . . musical discovery.

If you want to know what 3 Chords & the Truth is, exactly, it's me. And maybe it's you, too.

Whatever the case, it's good. It's damned good. Thank you, Mr. Martin.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Let's put on a show!

Perhaps you've rolled your eyes through a less-than-stellar production put on by not-so-good high school thespians.

Well, if you sat through U.S. Sen Katie Britt's response to the State of the Union address, you certainly have had that experience. Alabama's got some 'splainin' to do.

Well, this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is not that. If it ever is, I'm hangin' it up for the public good.

But the proof is in the listening, and I guaran-damn-tee that there's not a cringe in the entire 90 minutes. I play music on the Big Show; you decide.

That is all.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Reflections

Right now, my mind has drifted back 45 years, to the strictly analog age of radio.

I'm picturing the old control room at WBRH, the FM voice of Baton Rouge High School. When we'd do the rock show after school let out, student announcers like myself liked to turn off all the lights in the studio, save for one lamp right over the audio board -- just enough to see what we were doing and read what we had to read.

Then we'd crank it up. The music, that is.

WE WERE "setting the mood."  If I knew then what I know now, this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth would have been perfect.

Perfect.

I would have been sitting there at 2825 Government St., and my target listener would have been sitting in a bedroom, stereo cranked and the lights off . . . except for the dial light and one of those flickering bulbs mounted in an old 7-Up can.

If you're under 60-ish, you had to be there.

Man, it'd just be you, the music and your thoughts. Yeah, this week's Big Show would have been perfect for that. It would be the next best thing to hopping on a cross-country train to Somewhere Else.

I bet you might know the feeling. This show just might bring it back . . . even if the only escape lies in your thoughts and in your dreams. All aboard.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Feebling stubbfy

Ogbayb, dis willb be shorbt anb sweeb. I hab a code in my nobe and keeb coughinb.

I dib a showb, anb I managbed to keeb thinbs togebber longb enough to doob dis edibsion ob da Bibg Showb. Anb ib turbed oubt prebby goob despibe eberythinb.

And I dib nob cough onb anythinb, so I don'b thinb you bill catchb anybing fromb libbening to dis 3 Chorbs & da Trub.

Ib reallyb ib prebby goob dis weebk. Lobs ob goob mubic.

Ib's 3 Chorbs & da Trub, y'all. Be dere. Alobha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Make radio great again

In the past few decades, radio has become a real sh*thole medium.

It's real programming and Music Carnage out there, people. And I alone can fix it.

The fix is 3 Chords & the Truth. Bigly.

"Sir, I turn on the radio, and all I hear is crap. Where is this fixing you talk about?"

I am glad you asked that question. And I will answer it while my Enthusiastic Supporters beat the crap out of you for your insulating . . . insurance? Impotence?

I will tell you the suppressed truth while my Enthusiastic Supporters beat the crap out of you for being a Smart Ass.

THE TRUTH is that Deep Radio wants this program to fail. The big men at Big Companies are censoring the programming genius -- a very great genius -- that is the Big Show. They won't put it on the air . . . something about "formatics." And that shows you what kind of Bird Brains make up Deep Radio; the show has nothing to do with countertops.

They don't have a clue. They don't have a clue.

And I have very wonderful countertops. The best countertops. I also have the best Music Show on the Internets, but it's not a countertop. I guess you can put your computer or smartphone on the countertop -- maybe put some speakers up there, too.

It would look wonderful. It would, I think, work out very nicely. But 3 Chords & the Truth is not a countertop, but who knows? We have some Very Great Scientists . . . and I could have been a scientist, a Very Great Scientist, very much like Fat Albert Einstein . . . now that's a guy who could make the show also be a countertop, and we're working on that now . . . we're trying to get Einstein in on the project as I speak.

And we'll get there. We'll get there. Because I alone can fix it, and the fix is in; we're Fixing right now.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Covfefe.

3 Chords & the Truth: Placement is everything

Placement is everything.

Placing the right players in the right positions on the right team? It's everything.

Hiring the right coaches? Everything.

Placing the right people in Congress, while placing the wrong people far, far away? As we have seen the past few years . . . everything.

Placing the right man in the White House? Everything.

Placing the man with 91 criminal counts pending before a jury -- and definitely not placing him in the presidency again? Everything.

Here at 3 Chords & the Truth, it's an undisputed canon of life that placement is everything. And that covers everything, including the music you hear. If the wrong song is in the wrong place, it will not be pleasant for anybody.

If a totally unexpected song is in just the right place, it can be magical. On this episode of the Big Show -- every episode, actually -- we go for the magic. Thank your lucky stars for good placement.

You see, as I've said previously, placement is everything.

Now, if you would be so kind as to place yourself in a comfy chair and place your favorite high-fidelity audio device on "loud," we can commence with some musical magic.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.