LIVE AT THE RYMAN (2006)

COMPACT DISC LINER COPY   Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives   Live at the Ryman    B0004961-02

INLAY TRAY CARD:

1. Eddie Stubbs Intro
2. Orange Blossom Special
3. No Hard Times
4. Homesick
5. Shuckin’ The Corn
6. The Whiskey Ain’t Workin’ Anymore
7. Mr. John Henry (Intro)
8. Mr. John Henry, The Steel Drivin’ Man
9. Uncle John’s Intro
10. Train 45
11. Josh’s Joke
12. The Great Speckled Bird
13. Sure Wanna Keep My Wine
14. Walk Like That
15. Hillbilly Rock

Produced by Marty Stuart and Harry Stinson

© & (P) 2006 Universal South Records, LLC 40 Music Square West, Nashville, TN  37203.  Distributed by Universal Music & Video Distribution, Corp.  WARNING:  All rights reserved.  Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws. 

**SPINE OF INLAY:

B0004961-02   Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives   Live at the Ryman    Universal South

COMPACT DISC BOOKLET:

FRONT COVER:

Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives  

Live at the Ryman   

BACK PAGE OF BOOKLET:

B0004961-02  

© 2006 Universal South Records, LLC

INSIDE PAGES OF BOOKLET:

It was just another night in a string of long, hot summer shows in July 2003.  We had been touring the nation with Merle Haggard and the Strangers, the Old Crow Medicine Show and Connie Smith.  I had conceptualized a show called the Electric Barnyard Tour, which was part circus, part tent revival and part musical event. We carried the show into the back roads and small towns across America to play to what Merle called, “the forgotten people.”  One critic called it “a magical event proving that the Cirque Du Soleil mindset and Roy Acuff's Grand Ole Opry tent show of the 1940s can co-exist in the modern age."  It was a cool concept that will happen again.  It was a disappointing outing to say the least, due to the staggering three-digit heat index out West, which caused us to take a beating at the box office.

I'd come in off the road at the end of July to lick my wounds and to try and figure a way to salvage my dream.  After being home for a couple of days, my assistant, Maria-Elena Orbea, reminded me that I should get around to thinking about the upcoming bluegrass show at the Ryman.  I said, "What bluegrass show at the Ryman?"  She then reminded me of the concert I'd earlier in the year agreed to do.

The last thing I thought I needed at that moment was to have to create anything musical beyond what the Superlatives were already doing.  However, I asked Maria-Elena to call Stuart Duncan, Charlie Cushman, Uncle Josh Graves and Eddie Stubbs.  Combining those guys with the force of the Superlatives, gave me a good feeling that something interesting would happen.

When the day of the concert rolled around, the cast met at the Ryman at 3:00 in the afternoon for a sound check and a dressing room rehearsal that lasted no more than twenty minutes.  Since we had no time to learn anything new, we agreed on marquee level songs with a built in fun factor.  That seemed a good way to go because we sure didn't have enough time to get serious about anything.

When Ryman deaconess, Roxanne McIllwain, came into my dressing room and informed me that the concert had sold out, it gave me a much needed shot of confidence that had gotten lost along the way out West earlier in the month.

The Ryman Auditorium is my home show place.  I have an ongoing love for the building and adopted it years ago.  It's the first place I ever played in Nashville.  It was my home with Lester Flatt's band for nearly two years before the Grand Ole Opry moved its show across town.  I feared for the Ryman in the years that followed as it was repeatedly threatened by the wrecking ball.  I was a very vocal cheerleader, along with others who held onto the historical and spiritual significance of the place, and lobbied to save it.  Gladly, I was there to cut the ribbon at the ceremony to re-open the doors.  Much of my musical life has been lived out on that stage.

Walking from the dressing room to the stage that night, I made a comment to Charlie Cushman that, “I hated being thought of as an unrehearsed, half-assed, bluegrass band,” to which Charlie replied, "Why don't we go out there and just play music and not worry about calling it anything?"  That was good advice.

From that first note to the last it was magic.  At the end of the evening as I was about to walk out of the building, Les Banks walked up and handed me two CDs and said, "You should listen to this."  I asked him what it was and he said, "Proof of what just happened on stage."  I did listen and it was special.  I had no idea that he had recorded the concert.  Had I known, some things might have sounded differently.  But in the natural light of another day, it turned out exactly the way it was supposed to.

Marty Stuart

1. Eddie Stubbs Intro
2. Orange Blossom Special

Written by Ervin T. Rouse

3. No Hard Times

Written by Jimmie Rodgers

4. Homesick

Written by Billy Cole

5. Shuckin’ The Corn

Written by Louise Certain, Buck Graves and Gladys Stacey

6. The Whiskey Ain’t Workin’ Anymore

Written by Marty Stuart and Ronny Scaife

7. Mr. John Henry (Intro)
8. Mr. John Henry, The Steel Drivin’ Man

Written by Marty Stuart and Earl Scruggs

9. Uncle John’s Intro
10. Train 45

Written by G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter

11. Josh’s Joke
12. The Great Speckled Bird

Written by Roy Carter

13. Sure Wanna Keep My Wine

Written by Burkett “Josh” Graves

14. Walk Like That

Written by Kenneth W. Vaughan and Jeffrey Leroy Smith

15. Hillbilly Rock

Written by Paul Kennerley

Ryman Bluegrass

Before you did it for money, you did it for love. Whatever “it” was. Before you used it for some other reason, it was its own reason.

This is a deceptive record. On the surface it appears to be a grab-bag of tunes old and not so old, played live on one evening in Nashville. But, in fact, on it Marty Stuart is making a wide and deliberate reconnaissance of his roots, of the music, and the spirit, that has counted for him, and for the rest of us, too. Not just bluegrass but honky-tonk, rockabilly, rock and roll, country, and blues – the deep waters that made the music important before it turned into a theme park of sanitized badasses and silicone cowgirls and homogenized clichés. Stuart has come up with one of the best and freshest recorded bluegrass performances in years by re-injecting the music with the funk and the wildness – along with the dead-eye precision – that made it so explosive in the first place.

This is a live recording, in all senses – spontaneous, electric with energy. It’s no accident that it was recorded at the Ryman Auditorium, spiritual home of country music. From the first notes of “Orange Blossom Special” (who would have thought there was anything fresh you could do with “Orange Blossom Special”?), fiddler Stuart Duncan and the rest of the band play not just with limitless technique but with soul and risk and wit and a jazz like imagination. They take the corners on two wheels as often as not. This, they are saying, is what we can do without special effects and trick photography. See that car chase? That was a real car chase.

En route from “Orange Blossom Special” to Stuart’s signature tune “Hillbilly Rock” they tip their hats to Jimmie Rodgers and Jimmy Martin. They bring on a guest star, the great Uncle Josh Graves, dobro master. They keep the spoken intro in, just like the old days, as well as stage patter and even a joke. Uncle Josh’s version of “Train 45,” the old Grayson & Whitter standby, is a high point, as is a version of “Homesick,” surrounded by the celestial harmonies of Harry Stinson and Brian Glenn, that would make even rock hearts break. The band hits rockabilly territory hard with “Sure Wanna Keep My Wine” and “Walk Like That,” and that backbeat they put under Jimmie Rodgers’ blues “No Hard Times” works just right; Stuart’s blues mandolin playing on this track would give Yank Rachel a run for his money.

Stuart is, in fact, on fire throughout this whole record, but no more so than Duncan, guitarist Kenny Vaughan, and banjoist Charlie Cushman. At the end, they re-imagine Marty’s own “Hillbilly Rock” as a bluegrass romp in which everyone picks it up and breaks it down for keeps. This isn’t packaged virtuosity with every hair in place; it is the kind of virtuosity that lets you think nimbly and surprise yourself at high speeds, as when Charlie Cushman throws in that quote from Ralph Stanley’s “Clinch Mountain Backstep” at the end of his banjo solo.

There’s too much good on this record to spend time going into a lot more detail. I don’t know that you’d call it a “message” record, but for me it has a message, addressed in part to the country music industry itself, in its mansion on the hill. For one thing, it reminds us that there is no necessary contradiction between a high level of virtuosity and precision and a high level of spontaneity and spirit. For another thing, it reminds us that when you try and airbrush unruly truth out of the picture you end up with no truth at all.

“I got hard times waiting for me in Nashville town,” Stuart sings, in his own addition to Jimmie Rodgers’ lyrics on “No Hard Times”; “They say ‘we don’t want no hillbillies hanging around.’ ” Well, too bad; they’re just going to have to live with this. On this recording Marty S. brings it all back home, literally and figuratively; he takes all the musical polish and knowledge and virtuosity he has and puts it at the disposal of a spirit that mixes that hillbilly yell with the holler and funk of the blues – the high lonesome and the low lonesome and everything in between. What he comes up with is so strong and deft, so wild and precise, so full of spirit, that it could damn near raise the dead – which is, in a sense, what all the good stuff aims for anyway.

Tom Piazza

Novelist and Grammy Award-winning music writer Tom Piazza is the author of seven books, including the novel My Cold War and True Adventures With the King of Bluegrass, a portrait of Jimmy Martin. Visit him at www.tompiazza.com.

Produced by Marty Stuart and Harry Stinson

Recorded by Les Banks live at the historic Ryman Auditorium, July 24, 2003 (Nashville, TN) 

Edited and Mixed by Harry Stinson

Mastered by Jim DeMain at Yes Master (Nashville, TN)

Production Coordination by Maria-Elena Orbea

The Fabulous Superlatives:  Kenny Vaughan, Harry Stinson and Brian Glenn

Musicians:

Marty Stuart – Mandolin and Acoustic Guitar

Kenny Vaughan – Acoustic Guitar and Background Vocals

Harry Stinson – Snare Drum and Background Vocals

Brian Glenn – Bass and Background Vocals

Stuart Duncan – Fiddle

Charlie Cushman – Banjo

Josh Graves – Dobro and Background Vocals

Stuart Duncan appears courtesy of Rounder Records

Uncle Josh Graves appears courtesy of OMS Records

Harry Stinson appears courtesy of Dead Reckoning Records

Management:  Marc Dottore, Universal South Artists

Booking:  Monterey Peninsula Artists/Paradigm

Legal:  Rusty Jones

www.universal-south.com

www.martystuart.net

Art Direction:  Marty Stuart, Karen Cronin

Design:  Laura Allen, Karen Cronin

Photography:  Roderick Trestrail

Marty Stuart wishes to thank the Fabulous Superlatives, Stuart Duncan, Charlie Cushman, Uncle Josh Graves, Eddie Stubbs, John & Hilda Stuart, Jennifer Stuart, Connie Smith, Maria-Elena Orbea, Mary Gordon, the "Gov" Jim Hill, Pam Matthews, Roxanne McIllwain, Tonya Scruggs, Les Banks, Steve Buchanan, Tim DuBois, Tony Brown and the entire Universal South family, Marc Dottore, Brandon Mauldin, Kay Clary, Tamara Saviano, Tom Piazza, Ricky Skaggs, The Grand Ole Opry, 650 WSM, and Emma's – the Superlative Florist (Nashville, TN).

SUPERLATIVE CREED:  Serve God, love all.

COMPACT DISC LABEL COPY     

Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives  

Live at the Ryman   

1. Eddie Stubbs Intro
2. Orange Blossom Special
3. No Hard Times
4. Homesick
5. Shuckin’ The Corn
6. The Whiskey Ain’t Workin’ Anymore
7. Mr. John Henry (Intro)
8. Mr. John Henry, The Steel Drivin’ Man
9. Uncle John’s Intro
10. Train 45
11. Josh’s Joke
12. The Great Speckled Bird
13. Sure Wanna Keep My Wine
14. Walk Like That
15. Hillbilly Rock

Produced by Marty Stuart and Harry Stinson

© & (P) 2006 Universal South Records, LLC 40 Music Square West, Nashville, TN  37203.  Distributed by Universal Music & Video Distribution, Corp.  FBI Anti-Piracy Warning:  Unauthorized copying is punishable under federal law.