"New" Buckets album - Silo

John Hayes at Robert Frost's Banjo did a recent interview with "Earl Butter" (AKA Ray Halliday) of The Buckets, which, if you've even glanced at this blog occasionally, is a band that's no stranger to these pages.

He did provide a little bit of background and some video for those who may not have heard of the band - proving that in addition to having excellent taste in music and YouTube selections, he knows his subject, and his enthusiasm is evident -- what more to ask for in a blog?

I bring this to your attention, because Earl has finally finished work on SILO - the 'lost' Buckets album. Well, not exactly 'lost'... it was recorded in 1998, but has not seen the light of day until now. It's available at CD Baby, along with SOD, technically the new album - same band, different configuration -- all damn good songs.

Next up: a lotta Goldsmith soundtracks... and some Bernard Herrmann soon to come, also.

ERQ + BUCKETS singles

As promised earlier - more ERQ! This time, it's a couple of their 7" records - not quite singles, but I don't think they technically qualify as e.p.'s... Whatever.



Ed's Day
includes the Dani (previously Dan) Leone title story



Safe World Record
includes the Dom Leone story, "Bridge Woman".

Also included for your listening enjoyment are a couple of 7" from The Buckets.



Cowgirls/Western Star
this features the 'classic' Buckets grouping.



Beer Belly/Pony Express

This version of "Beer Belly" is slightly different than the version on The Buckets cd and demos and "Pony Express" is an instrumental best described as 'industrial country'. This version of the band has member "Blue Jewel" on drums, who used to drum for The Doubters.

Big Jeter - Halloween 2001

If you check the (mim-uh-zeen) archive, you can find some background info about Kansas City's late, lamented Big Jeter - although the main members have gone on to other, better things (burlesque shows and movie-making and screening), there's something very sad about living in a Big-Jeter-less universe.

BJ has been described as a cowpunk/country outfit - not totally inaccurate, since they did start out by doing tweaked countryish songs - but it doesn't tell the whole story.

They had more in common with bands on both coasts that would do wild shit, and deliver great songs. In BJ, if the musicianship was sometimes a little shaky, they more than made up for it in the passion of performance and cleverness.

Case in point: not just ANY band would do a cover of THE GREEN SLIME Theme.

Big Jeter didn't really release much - there was a promo CD-R of 5 songs that used to be sold at shows, and some MP3's were on a site or two before the Napster Smackdown canned the First Wave of FileSharing. There are a few files on the Chucky Lou A/V Club Yahoo group, but it's just a taste. What exists is on bootleg recordings, both audio and video.


This is a compilation I did of the BJ songs I'd manage to scavenge over the years, which include that CD and MP3's.

But to get a sense of what they were like onstage, you'd have to listen to their Halloween show at The Hurricane in KC, MO in 2001.