Ambient Country Dub in Magic Valley Idaho

Show date: February 17th, 2024

Location: Twin Falls, ID

Listen to the set here:

https://soundcloud.com/djalankalter/third-mennonite-fellowship-center-twinfalls-id-feb-17-2024

What's up my funky nudibranchs? It's your main thing DJ Alan Kalter coming at you from the road again. Reno was nice. I didn't have a show, I just like to spend a week in a hot tub there sometimes. But then, you know how it goes. 2am on a Friday, you’re drinking Harps and eating onion rings, bingeing Girls5Eva on your iPad at a Sizzler off the main drag. You check your calendar and realize you have a show tomorrow(actually, technically today) and when you check the map you see that Twin Falls, Idaho is a lot farther than you would think, Nevada and Idaho being neighbors and all. So you catch a nap in your car to sober up. You grab a gas station cappuccino and a honey bun and you hit the road.

I rolled into town about 2 pm and met my contact Ken at a truck stop. I was pretty fried by this point and wondered if we might go straight to the hotel. Ken said we better get to the venue and make sure everything was set first. I asked him to drive, but he said he didn't consent to government ID so I drove. Ken, I learned on the way there, is a full time nomad who lives with a couple of sheep who provide him milk and wool, and a dog who protects them from predators. They graze in various local yards and pastures. I also learned that "Ken" is actually "Kn"(pronounced the same). He told me it is a family name. When I inquired as to which family he said none other than the descendants of one Evel Knievel.

"Oh, really?" I asked. "He lived in this area?"

"No, but he jumped the Snake River Canyon right up the road," Kn said.

"Ohhh, that's right. Didn't he duff it though?" I said.

"Well sure, but he was in town for like two months before that. You can figure out the rest, I bet."

I could. Neat.

The venue was a modest two story office building with a mild barn aesthetic. The sign out front said 'Third Mennonite Fellowship Center'. Now, I've been in the game long enough to know that a venue is just that. What you do inside is the magic part, so I wasn't put off. I thought 'this is probably some type of multi use deal, the way the Unitarians do with punk shows'. Look, if I were the type of person who had an intuition about things(I'm not), this is probably where I would have started to wonder just what, exactly, was going on.

We went inside and, if the place had a sort of 'hospital waiting room' feel, that's only because that's exactly what it was. The building was currently being used as the Mennonite regional birthing center. There were several groups of women in cape dresses and bonnets with their family members scattered around on folding chairs and sofas. Reruns of chariot racing played silently on TVs mounted in the corners. It was almost silent, but for the sounds of pencils on intake forms. I took Kn back outside and gently grilled him.

"Kn, what is the deal here?"

"Ah, well, yes, what had happened was this. Some young people came to town one day, all beards and bowties and messenger bags. They had a proposition. Let's throw a little music festival. Just leave it to us, they said, we have all the contacts and know-how to weave this dream. All "Put you on the map again" and "this is just the beginning". Well, they had just enough of that Portland sheen to impress us dull mountain folk. And, given our brush with fame in the 70s, we just couldn't pass up another shot at the big time.

It wasn't a week before they had permits and a grant from a local civic organization. We were all in! The big wheels of fate were in motion. But then one fine morning, incidentally right around the time the first check from the Knights of Columbus cleared, we looked up and our dreamers from the West Coast had vanished in the night. Gone without a goodbye. But I'll tell you a secret, I had gotten friendly with these folks. And I got a hold of their documents. Now, the Knights of Columbus would love to cut their losses, pretend it never happened, but I happen to know if we fulfill the contract they will in fact have to pay us the remainder of the money owed. All we have to do is get the Mennonites on board. What do you say?"

Honestly, I wondered if Kn wasn't the music man here and I the simple townfolk. I thought about calling my manager Rick Derringer(no relation), but what was the point at this late stage? A gig was a gig. And besides, if it got extra messy, I could really play the martyr if I waited until afterward to complain.

I told him I was in and we got to work. Kn huddled with the birthing center staff and made his pitch. It went rather smoothly. It turns out Kn is actually a well regarded chap in the Magic Valley area, despite his unorthodox lifestyle. I'm told his generosity with his time and wool products assure that his friends outnumber his detractors. No easy feat for a guy who's most obvious physical characteristics are, sunburn, chunky dread locks draped over a drug rug, and a rubber gripped .38 always visible on his belt.

We got the greenlight to host our little shindig, as long as we kept the noise down and made sure the general tone of the proceedings "didn't stray too far from Christ's light". We cleared some chairs in a corner by a TV. There wasn't any PA, but Kn called some friends who brought a few bluetooth speakers and we daisy chained them together.

My hopes for freshening up a bit at the hotel were dashed when I saw musicians loading in instruments. This baby was at full term and there was amniotic fluid on the floor. I hoofed it across the street to the Texaco and splashed some water on my face and pits. I threw together the most reverent 'fit I could muster on short notice. You could say it had a certain Zegna Milan Fashion Week 2024 vibe to it, if that was the sort of thing you said.

I got back just as the music started. The first band was a hammered dulcimer/minimoog duo by the name of Enthropocene. Their vocals were a whisper/rasp, but I gathered that all the songs were part of a mythos about a future where tree/human hybrid beings lived in harmony with all life on earth. Surprisingly dissonant and sinister.

Next up was Reece Atterly, a solo guitarist doing the American Primitive Fahey finger picking thing. All instrumental, but he did announce some song titles. "Baphomet's Kia Soul", "Euclidean Plain Nonfat Yogurt", and "Marshall Mcluhan in Margaritaville". You'd laugh, but once you heard the tune, it fit so well, you thought, "yeah that is the title of that song". It was spooky.

Kn's crowd had showed up. Everything from spiked denim crustos to ag-folk in Carhartts and boots. We kept the cheering to respectful fingersnaps. The pregnants and their supporters didn't seem to mind. I wouldn't say they were into it though.

I was up next and there was still time on the clock so I really had to bring it home. I was a mess. You see, I'm a Techno DJ. That's why people book me, but, as you can imagine, that wasn't going to fly here. My mind was frayed by sleep deprivation and caffeine pills, but I had to think of something. I got up there behind the decks, closed my eyes and prayed for deliverance. What I came up with was...a thing I'm calling "Slow Country Dub". "Ambient Country Sludge"? If you've got a better name I’d love to hear it.

Anyway, as luck would have it, a friend of mine, DJ Heartworn Highways, had recently sent me a thumb drive full of country music accapellas and instrumentals. She daylights as an analytic musicologist and was doing computer assisted analysis on the vocal tracks from country songs, encoding the melodies and tracking their change over time. Whatever that means! For my part, I just slowed everything down and drenched it in reverb cause it sounds trippy.

Now, I may seem like a cold tony up there behind the wheels of steel, but it's purely pragmatic I assure you. If you smile too much, people think you want to talk to them and they will make requests, so I maintain the vicious visage. But in reality I'm a sensitive soul, looking out, checking in with the crowd, trying to anticipate their needs. At first I saw a few raised eyebrows, some smoothing of laps and folding of hands. But, as the afternoon wore on, I think the gentle waft of warm dirge and familiar vocals was comforting, and we were lulled together. No one danced or anything, it was still the waiting room in a birthing center after all, but a few women did stand up and take a step or two closer to my little makeshift booth. One or two even caught themselves indulging in some minor swaying.

I was right there with them. Halfway through the set I felt like I had always been the DJ in this ultimate of liminal spaces, literally a waiting room between birth and whatever comes before it. Nothing else existed outside of us, our hazy antiseptic bubble, and drippy Dwight Yoakam vocals over a reverbed out reversed instrumental. What else did we need? Inevitably, as evening approached we all floated softly back to earth, none too sure of what had happened.

Which is to say we made it past the minimum time barrier without getting kicked out of the venue! The Mennonites even thanked us for a pleasant afternoon.

"Same time next year?" Kn said to the woman at the front desk.

"Oh, I don't think so. Thanks a bunch, though!"

We packed up and Kn directed me to our accommodations which turned out to be his little wagon in a nearby pasture with his sheep and dog. The wool mats were actually pretty comfy and the raw milk had a tang I have never tasted before or since. I got paid $4000 a few weeks later. Thanks Kn! Thanks Twin Falls! See you out there. Love, Alan

Here’s the setlist:

Dolly Parton - I Will Always Love You

Jimmy Buffet - Come Monday

Shania Twain - Still The One

Midland - Drinkin Problem

Patsy Cline - She's Got You

Townes Van Zandt - Rake

Roseanne Cash - Blue Moon With Heartache

Keith Whitley - Miami, My Amy

Kenny Rogers - Lady

Tammy Wynette - Stand By Your Man

The Highwaymen - Highwayman

Bobby Bare - 500 Miles

Dick Curless - Bury Me With The Bottle

Tanya Tucker - Delta Dawn

Hank Williams - Pins and Needles In My Heart

Brooks and Dunn - Neon Moon

The Flatlanders - Bhagavan Decreed

Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown

Glen Campbell - Gentle On My Mind

Lady A - Need You Now

The Judds - Mama He's Crazy

Dwight Yoakam - A Thousand Miles From Nowhere

Jason Aldean - Dirt Road Anthem

George Jones and Tammy Wynette - Take Me

Billy Joe Shaver - Live Forever

The Carter Family - Bury Me Beneath the Weeping Willow