The Downtown Little Rock Partnership's staff members have had time on their hands lately, what with downtown sidewalks virtually empty the past couple of months. So Gabe Holmstrom, executive director, teamed up with Angela Paradis of the band The Going Jessies to churn out a ditty called "We Don't Want the Covid," written to the tune of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."
Then, the song needed a video, and technology allowed one to be made while being socially distant. The whole project took about three weeks, Holmstrom says. Here's how "The Downtown Update," a newsletter from the Partnership, describes the project.
"During this pandemic, people were encouraged to develop new hobbies, hone new skills, and use their time in quarantine for good. Is making a music video a skill we can say we've 'honed'? Not necessarily. Is it something we will do again? Don't count on it. Did we have fun doing it and get to showcase a bunch of Arkansas musicians? Yep. This was written, performed, and produced entirely by Arkansans! Please enjoy our 2020 pandemic production 'We Don't Want The Covid' (created with far too much time at home), to the tune of Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start The Fire' (our sincerest apologies to Billy)."
Rodney Block and his horn are the first on view as the video opens. It also features the voices and/or faces of Jamie Bryant, Chris DeClerk, Amy Garland, Trey Johnson, Randa Matkin, Paradis, Damarcus Pettus, Cliff Prowse and Susin Erwin Prowse. Aaron Farris plays banjo; Mary Parker plays fiddle; Mr. Pig plays percussion; and Derek Wood, singer and guitarist for The Going Jessies, plays guitar and bass. The music and video were edited together by Wood and Ellen Lampe, the Partnership's director of communications.
Watch the video here: arkansasonline.com/528downtown/.
• Speaking of song parodies, check out what's been done to The Beatles' "Yesterday," as rendered by The Kiffness, who can be heard at https://bit.ly/Kiffness
FOR THE KIDS
Kids, who are especially fond of the TikTok platform, can participate in the #ImJustAKid Challenge, which has TikTokers using childhood and family photos to accompany Montreal band Simple Plan's 2002 hit, "I'm Just a Kid."
The band has now launched official TikTok profiles with their own #ImJustAKid challenge videos. Before the coronavirus, the band had been planning to join fellow Warped Tour veterans New Found Glory for the "Pop Punk's Still Not Dead Tour" this summer, which has now been postponed.
Band members put out this message: "In the midst of all the chaos and bad news in the last two months, as we sat confined in our homes like the rest of the planet, it's been magical and kind of mind-blowing to watch a song we wrote almost 20 years ago take a life of its own and bring families and friends together from all over the world."
THE DRIVE-IN
James Snyder, the event promoter at Metroplex Live and Juanita's, reports the North Little Rock "drive-in" will be open again. "We are showing The Sandlot twice on Friday and twice on Saturday," Snyder says. "Gates open at 8 p.m. for first showing and 10:25 for the second.
"On Sunday we are showing the film Pallbearer Live in NYC, with Sumokem as the opening act, with gates opening at 8 p.m. Pallbearer and Sumokem are Little Rock bands that perform doom metal music.
Admission is $20. The site is the parking area of the former Windsong Performing Arts Center, just off Crystal Hill Road near the junction of Interstates 40 and 430 in North Little Rock.
And for those curious about drive-in movies and their place in the nation's cultural history, see the intriguing piece, with photos, at farmersalmanac.com/drive-in-movie-theater-125983.
Who knew the first movie ever shown at the first drive-in movie theater, in Camden, N.J., in 1933 was Wives Beware.
MUSICAL MOMENTS
Larry Campbell, the fantastic multi-instrumentalist who recently survived covid-19, has come roaring back with a toe-tapping instrumental song, "Dixie Hoedown," on which he uses the new Zoom technology with himself in each frame to show off on fiddle, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, banjo and electric bass. Campbell is well known to fans of Americana music as Levon Helm's bandleader during Helm's final years of touring and producing Grammy Award-winning albums. Before that, Campbell spent 1997 to 2004 in Bob Dylan's band.
Campbell was with Helm in a performance at Wildwood Park for the Arts in Little Rock, and he and his sweet-singing wife, Theresa Williams, were the opening act and band members for Jackson Browne in a concert at the Walmart AMP in Rogers several years ago.
(I can safely report here, without fear of contradiction, that Campbell and Williams are two of the nicest people I have ever met, either in or out of the profession of music.) Check out the song here: facebook.com/watch/?v=614904115781834.
• David Lynn Jones, a singer-songwriter from Bexar (Fulton County), wrote "Living in the Promiseland," a No. 1 hit for Willie Nelson in 1986, and now 25 Texas artists have banded together to use his song to raise money and awareness for the struggling refugee community.
Calling themselves the Fort Worth Musicians Choir, all proceeds from their video will benefit Refugee Services of Texas, a nonprofit organization. Singer-songwriter Dan Johnson arranged and conducted the choir and orchestra. For more information, see rstx.org.
• Carsie Blanton of New Orleans does a bang-up job on "Fishin' with You" of turning some of John Prine's song topics around in a nifty tribute to the late singer-songwriter. A perky semi-redhead, she can be seen with her guitar, on Prine's, "That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round," the song known to some of us as "The Happy Enchilada."
Tom Presada-Rao has an extremely timely song, "$20 Bill," about the recent killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. If Presada-Rao's name sounds a bit familiar, that's because he performed at least once at the Acoustic Sounds Café years ago, which was presented by Joe Henry, a local impresario who was Little Rock's version of Ed Sullivan.
• Keith Sykes, who might just win my "best all-time album title competition" with his I'm Not Strange, I'm Just Like You, will perform a Facebook Live show at 5 p.m. June 14. Sykes, a singer-songwriter and native of Kentucky who calls Memphis home, brought some fine shows in the past, even some festivals, to Hot Springs, along with having performed at the legendary S.O.B. in Little Rock.
• Dolly Parton has released a new song for these strange times called "When Life Is Good Again." See it at arkansasonline.com/64dolly/.
"Since our world was forever changed by the covid virus, I have felt a deep respect and appreciation for all of our front-line responders," Parton says in a news release. "This video is to pay respect to them and to remind all of us that this too shall pass. If we pull together as a community, we can rise above and look forward to more beautiful days on the horizon. I hope you love this song as much as I have loved bringing it to you."
Parton also discussed her YouTube series, Goodnight with Dolly, in which she reads select Imagination Library books, all carefully chosen for this moment in time. The 10-week series will end its run tonight. See imaginationlibrary.com
• Big Freedia, a bounce hip-hop artist from New Orleans, has the Gospel Brunch cooking show that has gotten a lot of attention during the coronavirus. Watch the first episode here, and subscribe: arkansasonline.com/64bigfreedia/.
The show features such dishes as Freedia's "Bent-Over Biscuit Benedict," made with sautéed shrimp and crab meat; fried "Wobble Wings" and waffles and the "Turn Up the Heat Po-Boy," made with Patton's hot sausage patties and scrambled eggs, plus spicy liver and onions with grits.
Her gospel brunches air at noon on Sundays and her Whatcha Cookin' Wednesdays are shown at 7 p.m. Wednesdays.
Weekend on 06/04/2020