Welcome & "Random Canyon"

I hope you don't mind I added you to the list.

Why am I getting this email?

Hi.

This is an email newsletter in which I plan to talk about music. I don’t know how it works yet. You might need to click “trust this content” in order for it to load properly.

If you are receiving this message, it’s because we’ve talked about music, because your taste has affected mine, because you’ve been known to nod respectfully, sometimes even maintaining eye contact, while I ramble on about Blind so-and-so or Mississippi whoever.

I’ve been looking for some sort of fully personalizable outlet for music writing. Some of you might remember my whisperings about starting a folk music blog this past spring. A newsletter, sort of like an itinerant blog, seemed an easier alternative. I’d encourage you to share this with anyone you think might be interested.

On the name: taken from perhaps the most mind-boggling song on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground” (1928). Make sense of it if you must, but even better, let it be senseless.

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“Random Canyon”

Ok, now to the song I really want to talk about: “Random Canyon,” written by Peter Stampfel and first performed by The Holy Modal Rounders. It’s been stuck in my head. I’ve been belting it out about the house, which is problematic, because my favorite line is “The unicorns are horny in the spring.”

The header from Stampfel’s column in the Boston folk music magazine Broadside

When I first heard “Random Canyon,” I figured Stampfel was riffing lyrically on the Laurel Canyon psychedelic sound, but the Rounders performed the song as early as ‘65, which is really before the Laurel Canyon scene took off. It’s then, instead, some surrealistic silliness, a Candy Land pastoral on 400μg from the man who was the first to use the word “psychedelic” in recorded music.

My favorite version of the song is this live one from ‘65. Stampfel is uncharacteristically tuneful. He laughs through his verses and the audience laughs along with him. “Good chorus, sloppy guitar playing,” he says, chastising Steve Weber’s strumming, which strays from uniform rhythm the way much Delta blues does.

I like to imagine singing this song to my kid, getting them in trouble when they wind up regurgitating it in class. I mean, don’t preschoolers sing “Puff the Magic Dragon,” ostensibly about pot regardless of Peter Yarrow’s insistence to the contrary. I could almost as easily spin “Random Canyon” from PG-13 to PG. The unicorn is horny because it’s endowed with its boney appendage, and psychedelic sage, well that’s just that pretty purple flower Salvia divinorum.

It’s ok if you can’t stand Stampfel’s voice; it’s an acquired taste, kind of like salvia. Dave Van Ronk, the Mayor of Macdougal Street, recorded a version of “Random Canyon” in 1971. In his memoir, Van Ronk had kind words for Stampfel:

Peter ... has always been one of my favorite people and is undoubtedly some kind of genius—though so far, no one has ever figured out what kind.

Ultimately, I’m not sure Van Ronk’s rendition is any more listenable. He was clearly inspired by Stampfel’s uninhibited exuberance, though rather than go nasally speed-freak, he leaned into his own grumbly bluesiness, which he often employed as one of the most popular white interpreters of Black blues in the 1960s folk scene. By the time Van Ronk gets to the final verse, he sounds like a deranged cowboy with bronchitis, foaming from the mouth as he defends his beloved Random Canyon from would-be haters.

Last, there’s the version the Rounders performed on 1975’s Alleged in their Own Time, their one album featuring Karen Dalton. Dalton, a close friend of Stampfel’s girlfriend Antonia, was part of this loose conglomeration of addicts and musicians, some more one than the other. The album’s title is a riff on Dalton’s first release, In My Own Time (1971).

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If you got a kick out of this, even if only as schadenfreude, share it. This year, I’m experimenting with selling myself, something that often makes me nauseous—but I’m told it’s necessary, so here’s to trying!