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Big Mo Pod Show: “Planting Seeds”

The Big Mo Pod Show title is about planting seeds in a metaphorical way. One of the seeds Big Mo sows is his comedy bit on MayRee’s hand-battered catfish. It’s just one of his hilarious faux sponsor routines that he frequently tweaks, and the subtle changes are difficult to catch if you don’t listen to his show every Friday night. It evolves, kind of like a shaggy dog story joke. My lame imitation from my crippled memory is below:

You see, MayRee’s hand-battered catfish is better because it’s battered, cooked to perfection with manic delight, packed with nitrates at her shack which you can find at the corner of Highway 6 and Snowflake Drive, and if you tip her and give her a wink, she’ll set you up with a mason jar of her famous kickin’ mule’ not sure if it’s all the way legal, but it comes in 3 flavors, Classic Clear, Golden Grabass, and just right for the holidays, Pumpkin Spice, that’s Mayree’s hand-battered catfish; it’s better because it’s battered.

You get the idea. I’m still trying to sell him on my design for a MayRee’s hand-battered catfish tee shirt. Don’t know why he’s not biting that hook. The catfish could be a fire truck red color, just sayin’.

So, the pod show title is “Planting Seeds” and that’s related to the idea of fundamental, historically important basic elements of blues music, specifically in the case of Jessie Mae Hemphill’s song “Jump, Baby, Jump.” Both Big Mo and Producer Noah agree that this example of North Mississippi hill country folk trance or hypnotic griot music (or grio, pronounced Gree-oh; a kind of West African traditional oral folklorist) which serves as the seed or basis for building on other layers (instrumental or otherwise). That’s just what I picked up from the internet.

Big Mo distinguishes this from “production” style music you hear a lot of nowadays on the radio and I get his disparaging tone about it.

Big Mo Pod Show 076 – “Planting Seeds”

Anyway, that’s the rich music history part of the pod show, which you can get by listening to KCCK on your radio dial at 88.3 or click on the Listen Now to hear by internet.

Now, what is also great about the show is Big Mo’s own historical perspective on music. That’s what you get by growing older. And that’s why my favorite song from last night from the Big Mo Blues Show was Curtis Salgado’s “The Longer That I Live.” I can identify with the lyrics.

Connecting the Dots between Kintsugi and the Blues

Since I wrote the blog about the Big Mo Pod Show, Hickory Smoked Blues, I’ve been trying to remember how I connected the dots between Kintsugi and blues music, which is said to be healing even though often it sounds like it could make you hurt.

I had a devil of a time tracking this down. The image of Kintsugi or Kintsukuroi, which is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the broken parts a mixture which contains powered gold.

The main idea is that repairing something broken using something like gold (read blues music here) can be healing.

You could also apply this to some other process, including psychotherapy.

The writing of a couple of people helped me make the connection. One of them is now a child psychiatrist named Jenna, who used to write the blog The Good Enough Psychiatrist, a link for which is still on my blog menu. Her post entitled “Amae” (a Japanese concept meaning cherished) caught my attention. Amae has both positive and negative aspects. In a way blues music is similar. It can be nourishing as long as it isn’t too focused on trauma.

About a month later, I found an essay by another child psychiatrist, Dr. Ashmita Banerjee, MD, entitled “The Power of Reflection and Self-Awareness,” actually mentions kintsukuroi at the end of the essay following her poem, called “Not A Poem.”

So, I think what I was getting at was pain and suffering can be reduced in healing ways, which can include art forms, like music. Some blues music can be repetitious, negative and even demoralizing when the emphasis is only on the pain. The other side of the blues can be uplifting, especially when there is the element of cherishing the tender, the wise, and the healing notes—the golden glue.

Both essays were the inspiration for my post, “Food for Thought.” The image of the kintsugi bowl is on both that post and “Big Mo Pod Show: Hickory Smoked Blues.” I still think the Robert Cray Band version of “I’ll Always Remember You” is a reminder of Kintsugi, at least for me.

Big Mo Pod Show: “Hickory Smoked Blues”

Today, the Big Mo Pod Show was about how blues music can you help you “exorcise your demons” as Big Mo himself put it today. Isn’t that what it’s always about? And I can’t explain how that even works.

But I don’t always understand how it works. I’m going to admit I’m not sure at all how one song last night by Toranzo Cannon would help anybody, and that’s “I Hate Love.” Of course, it’s contradictory and ironic. I’m not going to pretend I know what blues music is all about and how it can sometimes heal your inner soul pain.

But a lot of people believe that blues can help you get past the pain and it seems that it works paradoxically. I don’t always get it. But I’ve been listening to the Big Mo Blues Show for years.

That reminds me. We had a couple of guys install motorized window shades yesterday and one of them was a blues musician. He plays bass guitar and I gather he plays in local bands. He wore the best hat; it’s a fedora! Sena and I sort of ribbed him about it, but I had a fedora like that once, decades ago. It was gray with a narrow leather band. I don’t have it anymore.

I told him that I wore it while I was interviewing for residency. I wore it to dinner in a hotel in St. Louis, Missouri and a woman passing through the hotel restaurant looked at me and said with a grin, “Wear that hat!”

Sena reacted as if she’d never heard that story before. The fedora guy thought it was funny. Fedora man had that style to him that I think is fairly common in musicians. They look and may act in a way that makes you notice them. I don’t think you can always tell what somebody does just by the way he or she dresses. But when he told us he was a musician who liked the blues, that didn’t surprise us.

What did surprise us was that he didn’t recognize the name of a prominent blues musician in Iowa and a lot of other places—Kevin Burt. But he did have a sense of humor.

I think most blues musicians have a kind of slant sense of humor. It probably comes out in some of the music. I’m more drawn to blues music that makes me chuckle. On the other hand, I liked one song on the blues show last night they didn’t discuss today on the pod show. It’s not funny and I had a hard time finding the lyrics for it. It’s “I’ll Always Remember You” by the Robert Cray Band. I found a couple of sites I think got the lyrics below wrong and didn’t make sense. The way I heard the song the lines went like this:

“Old clothes and worn-out shoes
Empty bottles and a book that’s way past due.”

The line I keep finding that I think is wrong is the second one, which is often written as “Empty bottles and I put this way past due.”

I think the line “a book that’s way past due” makes more sense because it conveys a sense of regret, waste and loss and promises not kept and opportunities lost and probably a half-dozen other ideas that you probably can’t easily encapsulate. It evokes sorrow that is only partly fixed by the letter’s promise— “I’ll always remember you.”

That may not completely heal you, but it’s a little like something I read about kintsugi. It’s about mending broken pottery with gold in a literal sense. In a metaphorical sense, it’s about repairing what might be broken emotionally broken in us and, despite not being the same as we were before we were broken, we’re somehow still functional and healed though not perfect. A psychiatry resident blogger wrote about that.

A Bolt from the Blues!

The title of this post is inspired by a short comment I got today from an Iowa City musician named Ed English. It’s on my blog post from April 14, 2024 entitled “KCCK Big Mo News and More.” I blog a fair amount about the Big Mo (John Heim) Blues Show and the Big Mo Pod Show.

Ed says “Always available on the web and the KCCK App, too… ;0)”

I’m not up to speed on emoticons, but I wonder if it means amazement, although about exactly what I’m not sure. I really appreciate hearing from him.

Anyway, it turns out that Ed English is a long time Iowa City blues music scene guy and he’s part of The Beaker Brothers Band.

Ed (informally known as Uncle Ed) also started the Tanya English Band. Ed and Tanya are married.

I listen to the Big Mo Blues Show every Friday night. When he does the part of his show called The Shout Outs, he mentions Dr. Tanya, healing with the blues. I suspect a lot of the Shout Outs are to local blues musicians, many of them known by nicknames—I think.

I’m honored to get a nod and a wink from Uncle Ed. Now, can we talk about my MayRee’s Hand Battered Catfish tee shirt design?

Big Mo Pod Show: “Spiritual IV”

I’m trying to figure out what the meaning of the title is of this week’s Big Mo Pod Show. It’s “Spiritual IV” and I looked at all of his past pod shows looking for Spiritual I-III. I can’t find them.

The other thing I noticed about the pod show is that the theme of many of last night’s songs is less about spirituality and more about carnality and brutality. Now, that doesn’t mean I’m preaching. I just wonder if the title “Spiritual IV” is ironic.

Take the song “Talk to Me Baby” by Elmore James, or “44 Blues” by Little Arthur Duncan. One song that didn’t make the pod show list was “The Circus is Still in Town (The Monkey Song)” by Rick Estrin and the Nightcats. And Buddy Guy sang his new song “Been There Done That,” meaning he’s been to hell and back. He’s 89 years old and still does gritty blues. The music often seems only about sex, violence and drug addiction.

And the discussion gravitated to guns, specifically the .44 caliber handgun. I never knew Muddy Waters carried a gun. Hey, even Big Mo owns a .44. I didn’t make that up; he said so. It weighs about 7 pounds, by the way.

This morning’s pod show is a reminder that a lot of blues music sounds more earthy than spiritual. However, you can usually find at least one spiritual note letting in a little ray of hope. One of the songs featured in the pod show is Sugaray Rayford’s “How the Other Half Lives.” One line seems to offset the misery and injustice in the rest of the lyrics: “Take it slow, find the flow.”

I’m going to put my nickel down on one of last night’s songs that didn’t make to to the pod show list and it’s “Don’t Wanna Go Home” by Eric Gales, featuring Joe Bonamassa. It’s not spiritual. It’s about having a good time—but notice, he paid all of his bills first.

Big Mo Pod Show: The Yellow Butane Curse and Other Fun Things

I got off my schedule last week on listening to the Big Mo blues show, but as it turns out, he was gone last Friday. I heard last night’s blues show and heard Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Riviera Paradise.

So, of course that was not on the list of songs for the pod show today, but Big Mo did mention that Riviera Paradise and the name of the collection, which was In Step was related to Stevie Ray Vaughn’s having been successful at staying sober from substance use disorder for a year. The name In Step was evidently related to his going through a 12-step program to achieve sobriety. I learned about Stevie Ray Vaughn early in my residency (if I recall correctly) from a University of Iowa psychiatrist who is now the chair of the psychiatry department.

Big Mo Pod Show 072 – “The Yellow Butane Curse”

The name of today’s pod show was “The Yellow Butane Curse” which is about superstition. I’m not sure if this means that blues music enthusiasts are prone to being superstitious, but Big Mo did admit to believing that yellow butane lighters were unlucky for him.

This is probably going to seem like a disconnected transition but I missed last week’s pod show (“He plays what can’t be written down” see below), which was not the usual format of song talk but an interview with a successful local musician, Merrill Miller. I don’t know anything about him except what I learned in the podcast. I got a kick out of listening to a couple of musicians just more or less shooting the breeze about living the musician’s life.

Merrill mentioned playing in places like Strawberry Point, Iowa. I don’t have a musical connection to Strawberry Point, and I never went anywhere there that was connected with music like Merrill did. In fact, the only reason I was in Strawberry Point was because I was part of a survey crew staking Highway 13 between there and Elkader to straighten out some of the many curves in the road. We didn’t have much time to listen to music.

One piece of Iowa history they talked about was the issue of black musicians not being able to find a place to stay in this area because of racism. They had to find somebody they knew who would put them up while they were in town for a gig. Funny where a rambling, relaxed conversation will sometimes lead you.

I had few connections to music while I was growing up. My mother tried to teach my little brother and I how to play piano. It was an old out of tune piano. I managed to learn where the “middle C note” was—and that’s about all I recall about it. I took guitar lessons and got pretty good at making buzzing notes with it. Man, I could make that guitar buzz, although my teacher got a good laugh out of it—and couldn’t get me to break the habit. I could blow into a harmonica (what real musicians like Merrill and Big Mo call a harp), but I couldn’t kidnap any notes out of it. I tried picking notes on a banjo for a short while, had a second stab at the guitar, and got not much more than callouses on my fingers before moving on to non-music making careers.

You can be glad about that. Now about that suggestion that I have for a tee shirt design about my favorite faux sponsor created by Big Mo, Mayree of the legendary Mayree’s hand battered catfish; it’s better because it’s battered. I wonder if there’s any movement on that.

The Big Mo Pod Show: “In the Pocket”

Here’s something fun, try to explain what the phrase “in the pocket” means. The song selections in the pod show led up to a short discussion of what it means—which I didn’t get at all. I don’t think it matters for the ordinary listeners, although former music teachers like Big Mo obviously know what the term means. He taught music for years, has performed, and uses the lingo to explain what “in the pocket” is all about. It’s way over my head, but then I don’t need to know anything about it to enjoy music.

Big Mo Pod Show 070 – “In The Pocket”

I tried to look up the meaning of the terms “in the pocket” on the web. I took a quick look at a website called Sage Audio. The title is “What is In-the-Pocket for Music?” I couldn’t find the author’s name because I didn’t see a byline. It’s very long and technical and seems geared for sound engineers. One sentence by the writer caught my attention under the heading “What is In-the-Pocket for Music in Detail”:

“It isn’t uncommon to hear a music term and wonder what it means exactly. Becoming well versed in music means understanding its discourse, which can certainly be easier said than done.”

Here’s how far out in left field I am. Depending on how I read that, I’d almost recast the last part of that sentence: “…which can certainly be easier done than said.” I realize the sense of it is that becoming adept in making music means understanding the lingo. I just don’t understand the lingo, which makes me wonder if musicians have some kind of inner body sense for timing in music as it’s performed which may not readily translate to language for the layperson.

I was like a lot of other students in junior high music class. We were pretty good at whispering or half-mumbling the songs we were supposed learn to sing out loud. That really annoyed the music teacher. I don’t know if Big Mo can relate to that or not. We were supposed to learn the song “Sloop John B.” I’m not sure if we were doing the Beach Boys version or the original “The John B. Sails.”

It hardly mattered. We sounded like we ate up all the corn and held it in our mouths while mumbling. We just stuck our hands in our pockets, moaned the words, and were never in the groove. I don’t think a metronome helped. In fact, I’m not sure there was a metronome.

I have to mention that I probably was too young to know that the song by Little Ed and the Blues Imperials, “Walking the Dog,” was about a kind of dance. I never danced although most of the dancing kids on American Bandstand had the same answer to Dick Clark’s question on what they liked about the song—it was always “the beat.” I guess they knew that meant the number was “in the pocket.”

Starting Without the Big Mo Blues Show Today!

Well, I’ve been waiting all morning for the Big Mo Pod Show and it usually shows up long before now on Saturday morning. In spite of this, Big Mo did say on the blues show last night that the first two songs on the show would be on the pod show and I know what they are. So I’m going to go ahead and start without Big Mo and Producer Noah today.

The first one is a song by someone Big Mo mentioned last week, Monster Mike Welch, “Keep Living Til I Die.” It just happens to be related to my post yesterday on death doulas—only it’s full of raw and feisty humor in how it approaches the usual ideas about death, which can be morbid.

In the lyrics, I think there’s even a classical Greek mythology reference to the river Styx, “I pay my toll at the river…” It could be referring to the river which separates the living from the dead in Hades.

There’s nothing morbid about death in this tune. The singer doesn’t seek death, but neither does he try to run away or hide from it. He’ll just keep living till he dies.

I’m less sure what to think of the next song Big Mo would be on the pod show. It’s by Lil’ Ed & the Imperials, “Walking the Dog.” I can’t make sense of the lyrics.

That’s about as far as I can go so far without the pod show. On the other hand, there was another song on the blues show by an artist I didn’t know about until last night. “Been Here Before” is a striking song because right away I wondered if was about reincarnation. It is sort of related to the idea of what happens after we die.

In fact, the artist, Christone Kingfish Ingram speculates in an interview he might be open to the idea of his have been reincarnated. This is not that different from a few of Dr. H. Steven Moffic’s thoughts about the death, reincarnation, and the afterlife in some of his recent Psychiatric Times columns. A couple of examples are “Past Lives and Psychiatry” and “Past Lives, Death, Dying, and the Afterlife.”

And that’s the “old soul” side of the story about death.

Cribbage Lingo in The Crib Song by Brett Kissel

I modified the YouTube cribbage video “One for his nob short” to be about the same length as Canadian country singer Brett Kissel’s song about cribbage “The Crib Song.” I didn’t change any of the subtitles on the video because they fit the game play in the video.

There is no audio in the short version because you’ll need to play the YouTube video of the song “The Crib Song” along with our cribbage game video (see below). We think they still go together.

I found a Facebook entry on the web that must below to Brett, because it shows images of the computer cribbage game Cribbage Classic (which I’ve reviewed in the past, see my YouTube channel) and he says. “I’m a legend. I will play anyone at crib. Except if you’re over 70 years old. I won’t be able to beat you if you’re 70+.” I wonder why. I don’t have a Facebook account so I can’t ask him about the lyrics of The Crib Song.

Anyway, I found the lyrics for the song. OK, it clips along but I can’t verify some of the cribbage lingo in it. Maybe they’re common parlance for cribbage players in Canada. If any of you know what the following mean let me know:

Romney’s-no idea but it’s evidently something Ebs keeps getting

Loins-if all you get is “loins,” what are those? Sounds like if that’s all you get you might be lucky or good or maybe neither.

Gino-from context it sounds like something you win (“I just won a Gino”)

There’s another that I couldn’t figure out:

Piled-this is connected to “Deuce Neon” in some way (Deuce neon got him piled”); maybe a player?

There are a few I recognized. The kitty is another name for the crib (the two extra cards from the non-dealer and the dealer which are for the dealer). A flush is a hand of cards all the same suit, which can include the cut card. You can’t get a flush in the crib unless the cut card is also of the same suit.

The lyric “I’m looking for that 29” is about that very rare hand of 29 points: the nob jack (jack of the same suit as the cut card), and 3 fives in your hand, the cut card being the other 5. And a score of 19 is slang for zero points because 19 is not a possible score in cribbage.

I think the lines below are about forming sequences during pegging:

“Don’t give away your hand

I’ll rope you right into a run

Peg 8 or 9 or 10

Looking at your face”

You can find lists of cribbage lingo, but admittedly they’ll probably be mostly American usage. The American Cribbage Congress (ACC) list is pretty good and so is the Cribbage King list.

Big Mo Pod Show: “Wiggle Your Way Into People’s Hearts”- and Down The Rabbit Hole!

Hey, I’ve got some confusion about one of the tunes in the Big Mo Pod Show today. I heard most of the Big Mo Blues Show last night although I think I might have dozed off for a few minutes about the time one song came on about 7:40 pm. I guess I don’t feel so bad about not remembering Kris Lager’s song “Shake It” because Big Mo didn’t either.

Big Mo Pod Show 069 – “Wiggle Your Way Into People’s Hearts”

The first thing I wonder about is the spelling of Kris Lager’s name on the pod show. His first name was spelled “Chris.” That’s minor; those things happen. But the remarks by Big Mo and producer Noah on it were intriguing.

While the short clip (starts about 10 minutes or so in) of the song “Shake It” (which is a cover) by Kris Lager was played, Big Mo said the song originally was done by Howlin’ Wolf and he thought it was “Shake for me.” I also vaguely remembered the guitar licks from somewhere in my distant past, but when I played the YouTube Howlin’ Wolf “Shake for Me,” it didn’t sound at all to me like Kris Lager’s version of “Shake It.” The clip from the On Air Schedule from last night didn’t sound like the clip on the pod show either. I tried looking up Lager’s song “Shake It” from the album Blues Lover and got misdirected to other artists who did songs with the same title. I found Lager’s version on Apple Music and heard a preview, but it didn’t sound like the pod show clip either.

I realize that probably part of the problem is the clips are too short. But I can’t account for why Howlin’ Wolf’s version would sound so different. Big Mo mentions Hubert Sumlin’s guitar lick, referring to the clip but I just can’t get that from the Howlin’ Wolf band recording of “Shake for Me,” at least not the one I found.

Big Mo mentions a Mike Welch, which implies that he “Shake It” but all I can find is a blues artist called Monster Mike Welch but no connection to a song by that name. He mentions John Popper (musician connected to the group Blues Traveler) but nothing “shakin” there.

Long story short, which is too late because we’re way down the rabbit hole by now, Big Mo gives up and has to admit he doesn’t recall playing the song “Shake It.” He says he found something which he might have been doing a web search on at the time of the pod show. He found something from 2023 but the Blues Lover album with the song “Shake It” is from 2021. He says Lager was “around here this summer” but I don’t know whether “here” means Iowa or not. I think he’s coming to Okoboji this summer but I’m not sure.

Then Noah asks Big Mo which version of “Shake It” he likes better: Howlin’ Wolf’s or Kris Lager’s. Hang on a sec, I didn’t find comparable versions on the web as I mentioned earlier! Amazingly, Big Mo then replies that Lager’s version is a lot slower than the one by Howlin’ Wolf—but near as I can tell they’re not the same song. He says it has that “recognizable Hubert Sumlin lick” on the guitar—except I can’t hear Hubert Sumlin doing that.

That’s how far I went down the rabbit hole. Can anybody throw me a rope?