Ted Lucas "The OM Album"

Ten years of emails and phone calls, contractual negotiations, in person meet-ups, the physical relocation of a mess of tapes and probably a bunch of shit I'm forgetting. This is what it took to get Ted Lucas released on Third Man. And for me, spiritually, it was absolutely worth it.

There is so much I could write about this record, but at the moment it feels best to point you to an interview I did with local NPR station WNXP....

https://wnxp.org/on-the-record-ben-blackwell-on-1975-ted-lucas-re-release/

There's audio of me flapping my gums as well as fairly insightful text excerpts of said gum-flapping at that link. If I can further belabor maybe just two points touched on in the interview there, it's as follows:

- there is SO MUCH more Ted Lucas music to sift through and to share. Like, it might be more than 100 reels worth of material. Across every and all iterations of bands and styles that Ted embodied, from commercial jingles he wrote on spec all the way down to field recordings and answering machine tapes, Ted chronicled and saved just about everything. And film footage? You better believe it. Thank god. I said recently that Ted is the perfect combination of an artist who was prolific, an artist who was a genius, and an artist who was great at documenting himself. Those three things almost never intersect. If you're lucky you can get 2 out of 3. 

- the digital bonus track of "Love Took A Trip" is just magnificent in every way. I cannot stop listening to it even now, months after first hearing it. This is the song that overwhelmed me and brought me to tears in the Turnip Truck (local grocery store) parking lot. As a raga, as a blues ramble, as an acoustic paean to the twists and turns that are inherent to the nature of "love" as it were...this song inhabits at least three different personas and each one of them is independently brilliant. But married together they take on a profile larger than the sum of its parts. 

Cecilia Castleman at the Blue Room January 25, 2025

So...I took five excitable pre-teen girls to the Blue Room in hopes of inspiring them. 

My two eldest daughters and three of their friends were all giggling and laughing in the car ride over, going to see Cecilia Castleman for no other real reason besides it was at the Blue Room and an all-ages show and it seemed that they just might like it. My wife and I had separately come to the same conclusion that our eldest best connects with her friends via music, and given our direct connection to so much of it, we should be exposing these kids to any and all appropriate stuff every damn chance we get. So with my office mere yards away, it was an absolute no-brainer to drag a field trip on down to the Blue Room. 

None of us had listened to Cecilia prior to that night, but that kinda felt irrelevant. I remember that age, just seeing ANY live music would've captivated and enraptured me in a way that is just impossible now. The promise, the potential...it's intoxicating when you land it and some of us spend the rest of our lives dreaming of recapturing it. 

 

But 9pm start for a headliner can be a reach for the circadian rhythm of a body used to being in bed by that time. My eight-year-old laid on the floor and subsequently requested to be held all before Castleman sang a single note. The four older girls, fifth-graders all of them, held up a little better. I gave them the pep talk that the moment they wanted to leave, we could go. So after 40 minutes or so, they politely told me they were ready to go. 

The show was solid, Cecilia has a spectacular voice, it was her birthday, the band was locked in (I guess she usually plays solo?) and just a great example of an artist doing it right. And I think the girls appreciated it, in addition to the free Coca-Cola and Liquid Death I gave them (a ten year old holding a 16 oz. can will never "look" right, it just seems like a beer no matter what) and the game of Truth or Dare they played on the patio where, I shit you not, one of the dares was "say the word 'poop' as loud as you can." 

Stopped off at the merch table and I felt it was as good a reason as ever to blow some money on vinyl. So I bought multiple copies of Castleman's 8" lathe-cut single of "It's Alright" record and handed them to the girls, a little souvenir from their first-ever show at the Blue Room for the three of them whose last name is not Blackwell. I also let them each pick an LP from the storefront...two copies of "White Stripes Greatest Hits" and one copy of "No Name" if you're curious. 

Probably too soon to tell if any of my five young charges had that life-changing moment last week, but I could see other folks in the audience, adults, staring in their direction with a look on their face, not longing, but thinking back to that age, to the promise of everything that lay ahead and its ability to blow your worldview wide open. We'll get them there yet.