WILMINGTON — Stoneman Blues Band leader Larry Stone extracts story songs from his and others' lives in his latest release, "Thistles & Salt," on Cool Groove Records.
The 13-track gem sears and rears with bittersweet tales of characters, ordinary and infamous, caught in life's current and the rip tide of love. Stone penned or co-wrote all tracks with the exception of the Louvin Brothers's "Great Atomic Power"; Karl Davis and Harty Taylor's "I'm Here To Get My Baby Out of Jail"; Little Jimmy Dickens's "Salty Boogie"; and "Johnny," a song written by Chris Kowanko and arranged by Stone's longtime bud, Jim Colegrove. The CD was produced by Colegrove in his Fort Worth, Texas, studio. It features Lost Country band members Colegrove (guitar, bass, mandolin and vocals), Susan Colegrove (vocals), David McMillan (steel guitar), Rob Caslin (bass) and Texas-rock legend Linda Waring (drums).
The first track, "It Ain't Always Roses," is as close as Stone comes to a love song.
"I have so many girlfriends that didn't work out," said Stone, who lives with his wife, Meg, on Little Black Brook Farm in Wilmington. "It's a rework of a song I wrote in Woodstock. I added a new verse to it."
"Aces and Eights," track two, is a remake of a story song on the death of gunslinger James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok.
"I did a lot of research when I lived in Berkeley. In California, I (used) the university library and looked up a lot of stuff about Wild Bill. The story and the music are such a good fit and evocative of the Old West when that all happened," Stone said.
Track four, "It Won't Be Long," is a smooth groove about the passage of time.
The son of a Congregational minister and choir director/organist mother in Salisbury, Conn., Stone always stayed away from anything religious. His "John the Baptist" is an analogy for President Barack Obama.
"How they hand his head on a platter no matter what stuff he is trying to do," Stone explained.
A former history teacher, Stone said the dysfunction in Washington is nothing new.
"Go back in the Civil War days, and before and after, we've killed each other over stuff. The disproportionate wealth in this country, it's just crazy," he said.
sTORY OF HEARTBREAK
In the spectrum between the haves and have-nots, Doug Ostrander may have teetered to the far left, but his life and love woes were rich fodder for Stone's "Old Doug and the Salt Bag Blues."
Ostrander was the living-off-the-land, log-cabin-dwelling character of Mt. Riga. People who lived there were called raggies.
"He did odd jobs and lived off the land," Stone explained. "A few of his cronies had cabins in that area. At one point, this lady came through town pretending to be French and spoke with an accent. She got her claws into Doug. He fell in love with her and lived in the cabin. That fall, she left and broke his heart."
While in his broken-hearted funk, Ostrander asked his buddy, Howard, what to do.
"There's nothing you can do but go out in your backyard and throw a bag of salt over your shoulder on a full moon, and she will come back to you," Stone recalled of the story.
"Of course, she didn't," he said.
A few years later, Ostrander died. Stone was 12. He and a friend would hang out with him and fish along a brook. From the cabin, the boys heard music and laughing.
"It was a great time and era for these guys and girls who lived there," he said.
When Ostrander's cabin was crumbling back into the land, Stone scavenged and found the picture of Ostrander that graces the cover of "Thistles & Salt." He also found a Bible; the pages are the artwork for the liner notes.
"The presentation page of the Bible is from the Congregational Church in Salisbury where my father was a pastor," Stone said. "It was 1900 when he got it."
In the back yard, Stone found the remnants of dozens of salt bags.
"He was doing that a number of years."
ANGELIC VISITATION
Stone had a melodic fragment, but McMillan gave him a similar-melodic fragment he was working on that became the main section of the song.
"All of a sudden, it came alive," Stone said.
The rollicking instrumental "Sally McGee" features Stoneman Blues Band members Mick Changelo (bass), Jeff Lefebvre (drums) and Max Van Wie (mandolin).
"Girl in Blue Denim" is about middle-of-the-night visitations by a denim-clad blonde girl to a friend of Stone's dying of liver cancer. The man lived between Upper Jay and Keene. In the last years of his life, Stone and another friend would take the ill man out to coffee. He told Stone about the visits of the girl, who would never lift her face. The last time, the man figured out, the girl was his angel.
"He died a few weeks later," Stone said.
Email Robin Caudell at: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com
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