Reaching the age where you start to discover that people who were a significant part of your past start Exiting, Stage Left...
It's been over a month since learning of Ray's death - I can't say that I was a close friend; the last time I saw him in person was in 2019 at a Buckets reunion show in San Francisco. We were Facebook friends, but aside from the occasional comment, I didn't keep close tabs on him. But he - or more accurately stated - his work has been a consistent part of my life since going to my first Buckets show at Hotel Utah back in the early 90s. My main contact with him was at shows, aside from running into him at a Michael Nyman Band concert in 1994 - and the music, of course.
Most of what I can say about Ray I put in a Facebook post, right after learning of his death - and even that was repurposed from what I had written about him and the band, reprinting an interview I did for my first zine... Again, I wasn't a close friend. But I felt like I knew an aspect of him through his music, and that aspect I kept - and will keep - alive for quite sometime, if that makes any sense to anyone.
Death has been a part of most of my thinking over the past 5 years for obvious reasons; Covid of course. But once you get past 55, it gets harder to push it back into the recesses of your mind and you start noticing things more and more when the realization finally hits, "Oh, yeah - I'm 'Old' now." And you notice familiar faces and names disappearing, family and friends. But they're not totally gone; you have memories. It's difficult to put most of those memories across in speech and word, at least the thoughts and feelings, which are more vivid (at least for me) than the actual actions are in detail.
So with his music, he's still around - just in a different form.
I put the following together in tribute - "Breakdown Lane" is one of his best songs, although it's done by a different Buckets lineup than the one I knew.
Here's the rest of that FB post, which has that interview with Ray back in '93.
Here's some of what I wrote about Ray Halliday (AKA Earl Butter) and his band, The Buckets for my zine in the late 90s, which is probably the closest I can come to saying anything meaningful at the moment.
That, and performance footage of the band that I shot in the early 90s when I went to their shows. Look for their album on Bandcamp and some of Ray's other work (The Verms, etc.) on Soundcloud, YouTube if you're inclined to dig. But enjoy this playlist and the words in the meantime.
From MIMEZINE #4 - The Music Issue (late 90's started - early '00 when finished)
One of the law librarians in the firm that I used to work at in SF - Andrea Ebner was her name - was acquainted with some of the local musicians; I think what got us talking was an offhand mention of American Music Club. Well, one time she invited me to the Hotel Utah to hear a band that a friend of hers was playing in. Since she'd already proven she had good taste in music, I took her up on it, which is how I ended up seeing The Buckets in their first SF show. Her friend was Noah Chasin, who was then in HARM FARM, another band whose shows I caught at every available opportunity, on guitar.
I had no idea that it was a country band - I would have said, at the time that I hated country music (now I can amend that to I hate what's considered country music nowadays) [still - 2024, RH]. Noah was the only one I recognized; the others were unfamiliar - a tall, rather good-looking girl with a violin, another woman on bass, a guy with a ukelele, the drummer and the singer. I remember laughing throughout the set - the members of The Buckets all used stage names; "Earl Butter", "Wanda Taters", "Charlie Bucket" (which was Noah's name), so I didn't entirely think that they were being serious.
The other reason was the songs, which were pretty funny in a very clever fashion - they started the set with "Things Go Wrong" and from that moment on, I was hooked.
If I hadn't gone to see The Buckets, I would have not have discovered Ed's Redeeming Qualities -- I attended shows by these two bands religiously - so when I decided to do my first issue, I wanted to feature both of them.
Here's the original interview with The Buckets from Issue #1.
THE BUCKETS - 1993 Post-show, Larry Blake's, Berkeley, CA
Earl Butter (Ray Halliday) - guitar, vocals, songwriter
Wandaleen Taters (Carrie Bradley) - fiddle, vocals
Kid Coyote (Cory Porter) - guitar, vocals
Long John Gonzalez (John Pike) - bass
Slim Volume (Stephen Silbert) -bass
BeaDonna Potts (Melanie DiGiovanni[Clarin]) - drums
JoJo Hoot (Adam McCauley) - drums
Jesse "Boots" Daniels (Dani Leone) - banjo ukelele
Q: Where do The Buckets come from?
Earl: Hard to say. Utica, NY is where we’re from, but I would say we originally started playing in Boston. We’re from all parts of the U.S
.
Wanda: We were born & raised there...
Earl: Or near there, as Wanda was.
Q: How long have you all been playing together?
Earl: I’d say 2 years. Wanda & I have been together most our lives.
Wanda: We’ve been together for a long time; coming up on half a decade, aren’t we 'Ray'?
Q: What started you down this road of broken relationships & wanderlust?
Earl: Broken relationships & wanderlust, mainly. It’s absolutely true. Wanda & I moved from one part of the country to the other every couple of years & we’ve seen each other through a lot of broken relationships - one right after the other after the other & the songs come out of that. Every relationship is a different song - sometimes several.
Wanda: Ray did a whole album’s worth out of 1 relationship.
Earl: You can milk a whole album or 2 out of 1 relationship & if you don’t mind stretchin’ the truth a little, you can get a lot more - do double albums.
Wanda: “12 SONGS -- 12 BROKEN HEARTS”.
Earl: The 1st country-rock opera. “12 SONGS - 1 BROKEN HEART”. That’s what we’ll call our greatest hits album.
Q: A silly question -- why, specifically, country?
Earl: I’ll field that one...
Wanda: Please.
Earl: I don’t know -- I started out playing in rock bands pretty much & I found writing rock songs... Looking back at it, I had too many influences & too many things were trying to sound like something else and I felt like, there was no way I’d found anything that sounded original. When I wrote something, it sounded old; it sounded used. And also, the thing with R&R, you have to be, it seems to me, extremely clever all the time.
Q: But most of the Buckets songs are extremely clever...
Earl: I’ll get to that. There’s so many people doing R&R & so many good people doing it & for me, I just couldn’t find a way to make it feel comfortable. And when I first started writing country songs, I wrote them for this band I had in my head called The Buckets, & I wrote 1 song, "Postmarked VA", and within a week to 2 weeks, I had enough songs for a set. It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.
Q: How many other bands were you in before you decided to strike out on your own?
Earl: I was pretty much only in 2 other bands -- 3, if you count a small stint with a more famous band. I was in 2 bands with 1 guy who wrote all the songs & sort of was the director of the band. Got a lot of influence from him, I guess, just in mostly writing songs. He gave me confidence to just go out & do it. He’d just sit down & write songs. I’d been trying for so long & had written so many terrible songs & this guy sorta gave me the idea that you could write songs -- if you just relaxed, you could do it.
Wanda: You’d actually been trying to write songs before you met me?
Earl: Yeah. When I was 18, I just wrote all sorts of terrible songs. I’d always tried & just gave up on it all during undergrad. During grad school with this one guy, I started writing -- nothing very good. And you?
Wanda: Never occurred to me for a second that I could write a song.
Earl: Until --
Wanda: Until I met you guys.
Earl: There was a group of us that met at school & everyone was writing stories; the most amazing, well-fit group of people I’d ever met in my life. It was the biggest community of people that belonged together. It’ll never happen again, I don’t think.
Wanda: It was an amazing coincidence of kindred spirits.
Earl: And the material that came out of it; there were so many stories, so many songs, so many pieces of art & so many bands -- it was really something & it all had to do with the compatibility of the group. That’s where all these little offshoots got started.
Q: You were living in North Carolina for awhile.
Earl: I lived there for about a year, when these guys moved out here. We all decided to leave Boston & New England. These guys came here & I went to NC ‘cause I just wanted to be -- quiet. I didn’t want to go to another city, I guess.
Q: Where in NC did you live?
Earl: I was in a place called Lexington, which is famous for being the B-B-Q capital of the world, which it probably is.
Wanda: The B-B-Q is amazing.
Earl: Yeah. It’s a town of about 3 - 5,000 to, I think, about 100,000 coming there once a year for B-B-Q Fest; somethin’ to see. I went down there; didn’t do much. Just sort of hung out for a year.
Wanda: He had free rent in a cool house with, like, 10 cats.
Earl: I had 6 cats, 6 wild cats; 40 acres & a house I didn’t have to pay rent on. It was pretty nice - good for a year. Got a little lonely after that. And I got 12-15 songs out of it.
Wanda: He was working by himself with a 4-track, writing songs. They sounded more acoustic & minimal; THE BUTTER BROS.
Earl: We do some of those songs.
Wanda: Some, yeah. There’s still a lot in the wings.
Earl: They were demos for The Buckets. I thought I would try to get them going in NC, but there was nothing . The big town I was nearest was Winston-Salem & there was just nothing going on near there. There’s a lot of great towns in NC; Winston-Salem , at that time, didn’t have much happening & I couldn’t generate much interest. Also, down there, country music was sorta -- out. And I was just coming into it. When I started, the most I’d heard of country was Hank Williams & Dwight Yoakum, who got kinda big on the college charts.
Wanda: Hank Williams, Jr.?
Earl: No! I hate Hank Williams, Jr.
Wanda: Hank Williams was having a run on the college charts?
Earl: No; Dwight Yoakum was.
Wanda: Oh.
Earl: I was saying, all I had heard of country was those 2 -- and 'Hee Haw' which I watched all the time when I was a kid. (laughter) Oh God, we watched 'Hee Haw' every Sunday night.
Q: The 1st Buckets show I saw was at the Hotel Utah.
Earl: Was that the whole Buckets? Yeah, that was. Was there a girl bassist? [Tynan Northrop, Little My]
Q: Yeah, and one of the guys from Harm Farm -- T. Hallenbeck?
Earl: No, we had Noah Chasin, playing guitar. There were a lot of little things before the band got started; that was the 1st show as a full band. Then that broke to pieces, came back together & really got a semi-solid lineup.
Q: How did the other members -- Long John Gonzales, Kid Coyote & JoJo Hoot -- come in?
Earl: Long John came out of a drummer we used for a little while.
Wanda: Who was on drums at Hotel Utah -- was it Adam?
Earl: Adam.
Wanda: There was a time when we had this guy, Ross [Inden], on drums. And John was a friend of his from LA; they’d known each other for years. John was in a band that was in Mexico & he moved to LA to play bass. He moved up here & was looking for work, so Ross set us up with him.
Earl: Actually, he was the 1st permanent guy, besides me & her. Everyone else we knew or sorta knew & we didn’t know him at all. We knew we wanted him when we saw him; he’s been there ever since.
Wanda: Real comfortable fit -- Cory, we knew already. We knew his other band (Pupcage) & their mutual friends.
Earl: We actually picked him out. We were at a party one night & saw his old band. And we sat & watched him, ‘cause we knew that Noah was leaving. We approached him that night; I remember asking her, “Whaddaya think? Whaddaya think? I think that’s the guy I want.”
Wanda: We picked him for his rock style. Both of us really like guitar players that play strong leads.
Earl: Yeah. He was real precise.
Wanda: We had no idea that he really had a lot of county in him. He had all the licks & knew all the tricks. And, he had cowboy boots & has been known to wear cowboy hats.
Q: So it all fit perfectly. You currently play as a 5 piece band, since Jesse “Boots” Daniels left.
Wanda: 6 bodies is a lot of people onstage. Especially with all the small stages around here. 5 bodies feels really comfortable.
Earl: And also, the more people you have, the harder it is to get people together --
Wanda: -- and to agree on something. I really miss the banjo sound.
Earl: Definitely. I’ll tell you something, I miss him onstage. He’s a big crowd draw. Right now, we’re not thinking of replacing him. I listen to recordings & I think, “It’s amazing”, but also, we’re looking to be a little harder. Not so much R&R, but harder imagery, I guess. So hopefully, our sound is gonna change a little bit.
Wanda: Country-metal.
Earl: Yeah. We want to be right in-between Garth Brooks & Nirvana. An equal amount of both.
Q: You’ve got 2 tapes out; INTERSTATE DEMO & BARN DEMO. How is the reaction to them?
Earl: We don’t know. Our friends think it’s great.
Wanda: By word-of-mouth, it seems people really love it. But because they’re cassettes, we haven’t done anything with radio stations, so we don’t know how radio will feel about it. We’ve just submitted to labels & that’s always ...
Earl: The 1st tape; we didn’t send out that many & we sent it to sort of the wrong places. We’re just now sending out the 2nd tape to record companies, so nothing’s really gone on. The 1st tape, there were 6 companies I got responses from, but nothing more than “We like it.”
We’re hoping to put out a 2 single set -- 2 7" records. It’d be like a double album, but with singles... like FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE. We’re going to go in & record next month; that’ll be our 1st real test-the-water, see-what-people-think, get-some-radio-play deal.
Wanda: We could have one big continuous photo... me on a chaise lounge -- in a halter top.
Q: Go for the Donna Fargo look.
Earl: Exactly.
Q: With everyone’s schedule, how do plans for touring look?
Earl: We’ve finally got a band that agrees that we all can tour now. We’ve got a new drummer coming in -- Melanie from SF Seals, Harm Farm. Her name will be BeaDonna Potts.
Q: What happened with JoJo Hoot?
Earl: He had too much stuff going on.
Wanda: And he lives far away.
Earl: He’s actually gonna be our 2nd, when Melanie’s busy. He lives way out of town; scheduling problems. He’s doing his own record & writing songs; He was just over-committed. We think he’s great; we’re also excited about Melanie -- it’s a pretty big deal. It’s like getting the 1st draft pick.
[Kid Coyote, saunters in.]
Q: It’s Kid Coyote at the table!
Earl: Kid, you have an interesting guitar style. What’re your influences?
Kid: Too many; too many to name. Anybody that’s pretty crazy & wild enough to take a little chance & shoot it over the edge.
Earl: That’ll be a pull-quote.
Kid: Jeff Beck -- he’s my numero uno favorite guitarist.
Earl: Are you kidding me?
Kid: No, I would kid you not.
Earl: Be serious. Don’t say “Jeff Beck” in this -- try somethin’ else.
Kid: David Gilmour...
Earl: Oh stop it! Go back downstairs.
Wanda: Doc Watson...
Kid: Clarence White. That’s about it.
Q: Thank you, Kid.
Earl: Yeah, thanks... Can we go back & erase that?
The double 7" set never materialized (facetious as it probably was, it sounded like a great idea), but they did put out a single of "Cowgirls" b/w "Western Star", and they did release a CD on Slow River Records, THE BUCKETS in 1996. After this interview, when Melanie joined the band, John Pike left the band and was replaced by Steve Silbert in 1994. The "small stint in a more famous band" reference that Ray alludes to is in regard to The Breeders - if you check the credits for the songs "Glorious" and "Doe" on the first album, POD, he's co-credited with Kim Deal.
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