Podcast appearances and mentions of nancy ross

For those who haven't heard the announcement I just posted , songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a multi-episode look at the Byrds in 1966-69 and the birth of country rock. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode, on "With a Little Help From My Friends" by Joe Cocker. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud at this time as there are too many Byrds songs in the first chunk, but I will try to put together a multi-part Mixcloud when all the episodes for this song are up. My main source for the Byrds is Timeless Flight Revisited by Johnny Rogan, I also used Chris Hillman's autobiography, the 331/3 books on The Notorious Byrd Brothers and The Gilded Palace of Sin, I used Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California and John Einarson's Desperadoes as general background on Californian country-rock, Calling Me Hone, Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock by Bob Kealing for information on Parsons, and Requiem For The Timeless Vol 2 by Johnny Rogan for information about the post-Byrds careers of many members. Information on Gary Usher comes from The California Sound by Stephen McParland. And this three-CD set is a reasonable way of getting most of the Byrds' important recordings. The International Submarine Band's only album can be bought from Bandcamp. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we begin, a brief warning – this episode contains brief mentions of suicide, alcoholism, abortion, and heroin addiction, and a brief excerpt of chanting of a Nazi slogan. If you find those subjects upsetting, you may want to read the transcript rather than listen. As we heard in the last part, in October 1967 Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman fired David Crosby from the Byrds. It was only many years later, in a conversation with the group's ex-manager Jim Dickson, that Crosby realised that they didn't actually have a legal right to fire him -- the Byrds had no partnership agreement, and according to Dickson given that the original group had been Crosby, McGuinn, and Gene Clark, it would have been possible for Crosby and McGuinn to fire Hillman, but not for McGuinn and Hillman to fire Crosby. But Crosby was unaware of this at the time, and accepted a pay-off, with which he bought a boat and sailed to Florida, where saw a Canadian singer-songwriter performing live: [Excerpt: Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now (live Ann Arbor, MI, 27/10/67)"] We'll find out what happened when David Crosby brought Joni Mitchell back to California in a future story... With Crosby gone, the group had a major problem. They were known for two things -- their jangly twelve-string guitar and their soaring harmonies. They still had the twelve-string, even in their new slimmed-down trio format, but they only had two of their four vocalists -- and while McGuinn had sung lead on most of their hits, the sound of the Byrds' harmony had been defined by Crosby on the high harmonies and Gene Clark's baritone. There was an obvious solution available, of course, and they took it. Gene Clark had quit the Byrds in large part because of his conflicts with David Crosby, and had remained friendly with the others. Clark's solo album had featured Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke, and had been produced by Gary Usher who was now producing the Byrds' records, and it had been a flop and he was at a loose end. After recording the Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers album, Clark had started work with Curt Boettcher, a singer-songwriter-producer who had produced hits for Tommy Roe and the Association, and who was currently working with Gary Usher. Boettcher produced two tracks for Clark, but they went unreleased: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Only Colombe"] That had been intended as the start of sessions for an album, but Clark had been dropped by Columbia rather than getting to record a second album. He had put together a touring band with guitarist Clarence White, bass player John York, and session drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh, but hadn't played many gigs, and while he'd been demoing songs for a possible second solo album he didn't have a record deal to use them on. Chisa Records, a label co-owned by Larry Spector, Peter Fonda, and Hugh Masekela, had put out some promo copies of one track, "Yesterday, Am I Right", but hadn't released it properly: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Yesterday, Am I Right"] Clark, like the Byrds, had left Dickson and Tickner's management organisation and signed with Larry Spector, and Spector was wanting to make the most of his artists -- and things were very different for the Byrds now. Clark had had three main problems with being in the Byrds -- ego clashes with David Crosby, the stresses of being a pop star with a screaming teenage fanbase, and his fear of flying. Clark had really wanted to have the same kind of role in the Byrds that Brian Wilson had with the Beach Boys -- appear on the records, write songs, do TV appearances, maybe play local club gigs, but not go on tour playing to screaming fans. But now David Crosby was out of the group and there were no screaming fans any more -- the Byrds weren't having the kind of pop hits they'd had a few years earlier and were now playing to the hippie audience. Clark promised that with everything else being different, he could cope with the idea of flying -- if necessary he'd just take tranquilisers or get so drunk he passed out. So Gene Clark rejoined the Byrds. According to some sources he sang on their next single, "Goin' Back," though I don't hear his voice in the mix: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Goin' Back"] According to McGuinn, Clark was also an uncredited co-writer on one song on the album they were recording, "Get to You". But before sessions had gone very far, the group went on tour. They appeared on the Smothers Brothers TV show, miming their new single and "Mr. Spaceman", and Clark seemed in good spirits, but on the tour of the Midwest that followed, according to their road manager of the time, Clark was terrified, singing flat and playing badly, and his guitar and vocal mic were left out of the mix. And then it came time to get on a plane, and Clark's old fears came back, and he refused to fly from Minneapolis to New York with the rest of the group, instead getting a train back to LA. And that was the end of Clark's second stint in the Byrds. For the moment, the Byrds decided they were going to continue as a trio on stage and a duo in the studio -- though Michael Clarke did make an occasional return to the sessions as they progressed. But of course, McGuinn and Hillman couldn't record an album entirely by themselves. They did have several tracks in a semi-completed state still featuring Crosby, but they needed people to fill his vocal and instrumental roles on the remaining tracks. For the vocals, Usher brought in his friend and collaborator Curt Boettcher, with whom he was also working at the time in a band called Sagittarius: [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "Another Time"] Boettcher was a skilled harmony vocalist -- according to Usher, he was one of the few vocal arrangers that Brian Wilson looked up to, and Jerry Yester had said of the Modern Folk Quartet that “the only vocals that competed with us back then was Curt Boettcher's group” -- and he was more than capable of filling Crosby's vocal gap, but there was never any real camaraderie between him and the Byrds. He particularly disliked McGuinn, who he said "was just such a poker face. He never let you know where you stood. There was never any lightness," and he said of the sessions as a whole "I was really thrilled to be working with The Byrds, and, at the same time, I was glad when it was all over. There was just no fun, and they were such weird guys to work with. They really freaked me out!" Someone else who Usher brought in, who seems to have made a better impression, was Red Rhodes: [Excerpt: Red Rhodes, "Red's Ride"] Rhodes was a pedal steel player, and one of the few people to make a career on the instrument outside pure country music, which is the genre with which the instrument is usually identified. Rhodes was a country player, but he was the country pedal steel player of choice for musicians from the pop and folk-rock worlds. He worked with Usher and Boettcher on albums by Sagittarius and the Millennium, and played on records by Cass Elliot, Carole King, the Beach Boys, and the Carpenters, among many others -- though he would be best known for his longstanding association with Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, playing on most of Nesmith's recordings from 1968 through 1992. Someone else who was associated with the Monkees was Moog player Paul Beaver, who we talked about in the episode on "Hey Jude", and who had recently played on the Monkees' Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd album: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Star Collector"] And the fourth person brought in to help the group out was someone who was already familiar to them. Clarence White was, like Red Rhodes, from the country world -- he'd started out in a bluegrass group called the Kentucky Colonels: [Excerpt: The Kentucky Colonels, "Clinch Mountain Backstep"] But White had gone electric and formed one of the first country-rock bands, a group named Nashville West, as well as becoming a popular session player. He had already played on a couple of tracks on Younger Than Yesterday, as well as playing with Hillman and Michael Clarke on Gene Clark's album with the Gosdin Brothers and being part of Clark's touring band with John York and "Fast" Eddie Hoh. The album that the group put together with these session players was a triumph of sequencing and production. Usher had recently been keen on the idea of crossfading tracks into each other, as the Beatles had on Sgt Pepper, and had done the same on the two Chad and Jeremy albums he produced. By clever crossfading and mixing, Usher managed to create something that had the feel of being a continuous piece, despite being the product of several very different creative minds, with Usher's pop sensibility and arrangement ideas being the glue that held everything together. McGuinn was interested in sonic experimentation. He, more than any of the others, seems to have been the one who was most pushing for them to use the Moog, and he continued his interest in science fiction, with a song, "Space Odyssey", inspired by the Arthur C. Clarke short story "The Sentinel", which was also the inspiration for the then-forthcoming film 2001: A Space Odyssey: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Space Odyssey"] Then there was Chris Hillman, who was coming up with country material like "Old John Robertson": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Old John Robertson"] And finally there was David Crosby. Even though he'd been fired from the group, both McGuinn and Hillman didn't see any problem with using the songs he had already contributed. Three of the album's eleven songs are compositions that are primarily by Crosby, though they're all co-credited to either Hillman or both Hillman and McGuinn. Two of those songs are largely unchanged from Crosby's original vision, just finished off by the rest of the group after his departure, but one song is rather different: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] "Draft Morning" was a song that was important to Crosby, and was about his -- and the group's -- feelings about the draft and the ongoing Vietnam War. It was a song that had meant a lot to him, and he'd been part of the recording for the backing track. But when it came to doing the final vocals, McGuinn and Hillman had a problem -- they couldn't remember all the words to the song, and obviously there was no way they were going to get Crosby to give them the original lyrics. So they rewrote it, coming up with new lyrics where they couldn't remember the originals: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] But there was one other contribution to the track that was very distinctively the work of Usher. Gary Usher had a predilection at this point for putting musique concrete sections in otherwise straightforward pop songs. He'd done it with "Fakin' It" by Simon and Garfunkel, on which he did uncredited production work, and did it so often that it became something of a signature of records on Columbia in 1967 and 68, even being copied by his friend Jim Guercio on "Susan" by the Buckinghams. Usher had done this, in particular, on the first two singles by Sagittarius, his project with Curt Boettcher. In particular, the second Sagittarius single, "Hotel Indiscreet", had had a very jarring section (and a warning here, this contains some brief chanting of a Nazi slogan): [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "Hotel Indiscreet"] That was the work of a comedy group that Usher had discovered and signed to Columbia. The Firesign Theatre were so named because, like Usher, they were all interested in astrology, and they were all "fire signs".  Usher was working on their first album, Waiting For The Electrician or Someone Like Him, at the same time as he was working on the Byrds album: [Excerpt: The Firesign Theatre, "W.C. Fields Forever"] And he decided to bring in the Firesigns to contribute to "Draft Morning": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] Crosby was, understandably, apoplectic when he heard the released version of "Draft Morning". As far as Hillman and McGuinn were concerned, it was always a Byrds song, and just because Crosby had left the band didn't mean they couldn't use material he'd written for the Byrds. Crosby took a different view, saying later "It was one of the sleaziest things they ever did. I had an entire song finished. They just casually rewrote it and decided to take half the credit. How's that? Without even asking me. I had a finished song, entirely mine. I left. They did the song anyway. They rewrote it and put it in their names. And mine was better. They just took it because they didn't have enough songs." What didn't help was that the publicity around the album, titled The Notorious Byrd Brothers minimised Crosby's contributions. Crosby is on five of the eleven tracks -- as he said later, "I'm all over that album, they just didn't give me credit. I played, I sang, I wrote, I even played bass on one track, and they tried to make out that I wasn't even on it, that they could be that good without me." But the album, like earlier Byrds albums, didn't have credits saying who played what, and the cover only featured McGuinn, Hillman, and Michael Clarke in the photo -- along with a horse, which Crosby took as another insult, as representing him. Though as McGuinn said, "If we had intended to do that, we would have turned the horse around". Even though Michael Clarke was featured on the cover, and even owned the horse that took Crosby's place, by the time the album came out he too had been fired. Unlike Crosby, he went quietly and didn't even ask for any money. According to McGuinn, he was increasingly uninterested in being in the band -- suffering from depression, and missing the teenage girls who had been the group's fans a year or two earlier. He gladly stopped being a Byrd, and went off to work in a hotel instead. In his place came Hillman's cousin, Kevin Kelley, fresh out of a band called the Rising Sons: [Excerpt: The Rising Sons, "Take a Giant Step"] We've mentioned the Rising Sons briefly in some previous episodes, but they were one of the earliest LA folk-rock bands, and had been tipped to go on to greater things -- and indeed, many of them did, though not as part of the Rising Sons. Jesse Lee Kincaid, the least well-known of the band, only went on to release a couple of singles and never had much success, but his songs were picked up by other acts -- his "Baby You Come Rollin' 'Cross My Mind" was a minor hit for the Peppermint Trolley Company: [Excerpt: The Peppermint Trolley Company, "Baby You Come Rollin' 'Cross My Mind"] And Harry Nilsson recorded Kincaid's "She Sang Hymns Out of Tune": [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, "She Sang Hymns Out of Tune"] But Kincaid was the least successful of the band members, and most of the other members are going to come up in future episodes of the podcast -- bass player Gary Marker played for a while with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, lead singer Taj Mahal is one of the most respected blues singers of the last sixty years, original drummer Ed Cassidy went on to form the progressive rock band Spirit, and lead guitarist Ry Cooder went on to become one of the most important guitarists in rock music. Kelley had been the last to join the Rising Sons, replacing Cassidy but he was in the band by the time they released their one single, a version of Rev. Gary Davis' "Candy Man" produced by Terry Melcher, with Kincaid on lead vocals: [Excerpt: The Rising Sons, "Candy Man"] That hadn't been a success, and the group's attempt at a follow-up, the Goffin and King song "Take a Giant Step", which we heard earlier, was blocked from release by Columbia as being too druggy -- though there were no complaints when the Monkees released their version as the B-side to "Last Train to Clarksville". The Rising Sons, despite being hugely popular as a live act, fell apart without ever releasing a second single. According to Marker, Mahal realised that he would be better off as a solo artist, but also Columbia didn't know how to market a white group with a Black lead vocalist (leading to Kincaid singing lead on their one released single, and producer Terry Melcher trying to get Mahal to sing more like a white singer on "Take a Giant Step"), and some in the band thought that Terry Melcher was deliberately trying to sink their career because they refused to sign to his publishing company. After the band split up, Marker and Kelley had formed a band called Fusion, which Byrds biographer Johnny Rogan describes as being a jazz-fusion band, presumably because of their name. Listening to the one album the group recorded, it is in fact more blues-rock, very like the music Marker made with the Rising Sons and Captain Beefheart. But Kelley's not on that album, because before it was recorded he was approached by his cousin Chris Hillman and asked to join the Byrds. At the time, Fusion were doing so badly that Kelley had to work a day job in a clothes shop, so he was eager to join a band with a string of hits who were just about to conclude a lucrative renegotiation of their record contract -- a renegotiation which may have played a part in McGuinn and Hillman firing Crosby and Clarke, as they were now the only members on the new contracts. The choice of Kelley made a lot of sense. He was mostly just chosen because he was someone they knew and they needed a drummer in a hurry -- they needed someone new to promote The Notorious Byrd Brothers and didn't have time to go through a laborious process of audtioning, and so just choosing Hillman's cousin made sense, but Kelley also had a very strong, high voice, and so he could fill in the harmony parts that Crosby had sung, stopping the new power-trio version of the band from being *too* thin-sounding in comparison to the five-man band they'd been not that much earlier. The Notorious Byrd Brothers was not a commercial success -- it didn't even make the top forty in the US, though it did in the UK -- to the presumed chagrin of Columbia, who'd just paid a substantial amount of money for this band who were getting less successful by the day. But it was, though, a gigantic critical success, and is generally regarded as the group's creative pinnacle. Robert Christgau, for example, talked about how LA rather than San Francisco was where the truly interesting music was coming from, and gave guarded praise to Captain Beefheart, Van Dyke Parks, and the Fifth Dimension (the vocal group, not the Byrds album) but talked about three albums as being truly great -- the Beach Boys' Wild Honey, Love's Forever Changes, and The Notorious Byrd Brothers. (He also, incidentally, talked about how the two songs that Crosby's new discovery Joni Mitchell had contributed to a Judy Collins album were much better than most folk music, and how he could hardly wait for her first album to come out). And that, more or less, was the critical consensus about The Notorious Byrd Brothers -- that it was, in Christgau's words "simply the best album the Byrds have ever recorded" and that "Gone are the weak--usually folky--tracks that have always flawed their work." McGuinn, though, thought that the album wasn't yet what he wanted. He had become particularly excited by the potentials of the Moog synthesiser -- an instrument that Gary Usher also loved -- during the recording of the album, and had spent a lot of time experimenting with it, coming up with tracks like the then-unreleased "Moog Raga": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Moog Raga"] And McGuinn had a concept for the next Byrds album -- a concept he was very excited about. It was going to be nothing less than a grand sweeping history of American popular music. It was going to be a double album -- the new contract said that they should deliver two albums a year to Columbia, so a double album made sense -- and it would start with Appalachian folk music, go through country, jazz, and R&B, through the folk-rock music the Byrds had previously been known for, and into Moog experimentation. But to do this, the Byrds needed a keyboard player. Not only would a keyboard player help them fill out their thin onstage sound, if they got a jazz keyboardist, then they could cover the jazz material in McGuinn's concept album idea as well. So they went out and looked for a jazz piano player, and happily Larry Spector was managing one. Or at least, Larry Spector was managing someone who *said* he was a jazz pianist. But Gram Parsons said he was a lot of things... [Excerpt: Gram Parsons, "Brass Buttons (1965 version)"] Gram Parsons was someone who had come from a background of unimaginable privilege. His maternal grandfather was the owner of a Florida citrus fruit and real-estate empire so big that his mansion was right in the centre of what was then Florida's biggest theme park -- built on land he owned. As a teenager, Parsons had had a whole wing of his parents' house to himself, and had had servants to look after his every need, and as an adult he had a trust fund that paid him a hundred thousand dollars a year -- which in 1968 dollars would be equivalent to a little under nine hundred thousand in today's money. Two events in his childhood had profoundly shaped the life of young Gram. The first was in February 1956, when he went to see a new singer who he'd heard on the radio, and who according to the local newspaper had just recorded a new song called "Heartburn Motel".  Parsons had tried to persuade his friends that this new singer was about to become a big star -- one of his friends had said "I'll wait til he becomes famous!" As it turned out, the day Parsons and the couple of friends he did manage to persuade to go with him saw Elvis Presley was also the day that "Heartbreak Hotel" entered the Billboard charts at number sixty-eight. But even at this point, Elvis was an obvious star and the headliner of the show. Young Gram was enthralled -- but in retrospect he was more impressed by the other acts he saw on the bill. That was an all-star line-up of country musicians, including Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, and especially the Louvin Brothers, arguably the greatest country music vocal duo of all time: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "The Christian Life"] Young Gram remained mostly a fan of rockabilly music rather than country, and would remain so for another decade or so, but a seed had been planted. The other event, much more tragic, was the death of his father. Both Parsons' parents were functioning alcoholics, and both by all accounts were unfaithful to each other, and their marriage was starting to break down. Gram's father was also, by many accounts, dealing with what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder from his time serving in the second world war. On December the twenty-third 1958, Gram's father died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Everyone involved seems sure it was suicide, but it was officially recorded as natural causes because of the family's wealth and prominence in the local community. Gram's Christmas present from his parents that year was a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and according to some stories I've read his father had left a last message on a tape in the recorder, but by the time the authorities got to hear it, it had been erased apart from the phrase "I love you, Gram." After that Gram's mother's drinking got even worse, but in most ways his life still seemed charmed, and the descriptions of him as a teenager are about what you'd expect from someone who was troubled, with a predisposition to addiction, but who was also unbelievably wealthy, good-looking, charming, and talented. And the talent was definitely there. One thing everyone is agreed on is that from a very young age Gram Parsons took his music seriously and was determined to make a career as a musician. Keith Richards later said of him "Of the musicians I know personally (although Otis Redding, who I didn't know, fits this too), the two who had an attitude towards music that was the same as mine were Gram Parsons and John Lennon. And that was: whatever bag the business wants to put you in is immaterial; that's just a selling point, a tool that makes it easier. You're going to get chowed into this pocket or that pocket because it makes it easier for them to make charts up and figure out who's selling. But Gram and John were really pure musicians. All they liked was music, and then they got thrown into the game." That's not the impression many other people have of Parsons, who is almost uniformly described as an incessant self-promoter, and who from his teens onwards would regularly plant fake stories about himself in the local press, usually some variant of him having been signed to RCA records. Most people seem to think that image was more important to him than anything. In his teens, he started playing in a series of garage bands around Florida and Georgia, the two states in which he was brought up. One of his early bands was largely created by poaching the rhythm section who were then playing with Kent Lavoie, who later became famous as Lobo and had hits like "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo". Lavoie apparently held a grudge -- decades later he would still say that Parsons couldn't sing or play or write. Another musician on the scene with whom Parsons associated was Bobby Braddock, who would later go on to co-write songs like "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" for Tammy Wynette, and the song "He Stopped Loving Her Today", often considered the greatest country song ever written, for George Jones: [Excerpt: George Jones, "He Stopped Loving Her Today"] Jones would soon become one of Parsons' musical idols, but at this time he was still more interested in being Elvis or Little Richard. We're lucky enough to have a 1962 live recording of one of his garage bands, the Legends -- the band that featured the bass player and drummer he'd poached from Lobo. They made an appearance on a local TV show and a friend with a tape recorder recorded it off the TV and decades later posted it online. Of the four songs in that performance, two are R&B covers -- Little Richard's "Rip It Up" and Ray Charles' "What'd I Say?", and a third is the old Western Swing classic "Guitar Boogie Shuffle". But the interesting thing about the version of "Rip it Up" is that it's sung in an Everly Brothers style harmony, and the fourth song is a recording of the Everlys' "Let It Be Me". The Everlys were, of course, hugely influenced by the Louvin Brothers, who had so impressed young Gram six years earlier, and in this performance you can hear for the first time the hints of the style that Parsons would make his own a few years later: [Excerpt: Gram Parsons and the Legends, "Let it Be Me"] Incidentally, the other guitarist in the Legends, Jim Stafford, also went on to a successful musical career, having a top five hit in the seventies with "Spiders & Snakes": [Excerpt: Jim Stafford, "Spiders & Snakes"] Soon after that TV performance though, like many musicians of his generation, Parsons decided to give up on rock and roll, and instead to join a folk group. The group he joined, The Shilos, were a trio who were particularly influenced by the Journeymen, John Phillips' folk group before he formed the Mamas and the Papas, which we talked about in the episode on "San Francisco". At various times the group expanded with the addition of some female singers, trying to capture something of the sound of the New Chrisy Minstrels. In 1964, with the band members still in school, the Shilos decided to make a trip to Greenwich Village and see if they could make the big time as folk-music stars. They met up with John Phillips, and Parsons stayed with John and Michelle Phillips in their home in New York -- this was around the time the two of them were writing "California Dreamin'". Phillips got the Shilos an audition with Albert Grossman, who seemed eager to sign them until he realised they were still schoolchildren just on a break. The group were, though, impressive enough that he was interested, and we have some recordings of them from a year later which show that they were surprisingly good for a bunch of teenagers: [Excerpt: The Shilos, "The Bells of Rhymney"] Other than Phillips, the other major connection that Parsons made in New York was the folk singer Fred Neil, who we've talked about occasionally before. Neil was one of the great songwriters of the Greenwich Village scene, and many of his songs became successful for others -- his "Dolphins" was recorded by Tim Buckley, most famously his "Everybody's Talkin'" was a hit for Harry Nilsson, and he wrote "Another Side of This Life" which became something of a standard -- it was recorded by the Animals and the Lovin' Spoonful, and Jefferson Airplane, as well as recording the song, included it in their regular setlists, including at Monterey: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "The Other Side of This Life (live at Monterey)"] According to at least one biographer, though, Neil had another, more pernicious, influence on Parsons -- he may well have been the one who introduced Parsons to heroin, though several of Parsons' friends from the time said he wasn't yet using hard drugs. By spring 1965, Parsons was starting to rethink his commitment to folk music, particularly after "Mr. Tambourine Man" became a hit. He talked with the other members about their need to embrace the changes in music that Dylan and the Byrds were bringing about, but at the same time he was still interested enough in acoustic music that when he was given the job of arranging the music for his high school graduation, the group he booked were the Dillards. That graduation day was another day that would change Parsons' life -- as it was the day his mother died, of alcohol-induced liver failure. Parsons was meant to go on to Harvard, but first he went back to Greenwich Village for the summer, where he hung out with Fred Neil and Dave Van Ronk (and started using heroin regularly). He went to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium, and he was neighbours with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay -- the three of them talked about forming a band together before Stills moved West. And on a brief trip back home to Florida between Greenwich Village and Harvard, Parsons spoke with his old friend Jim Stafford, who made a suggestion to him -- instead of trying to do folk music, which was clearly falling out of fashion, why not try to do *country* music but with long hair like the Beatles? He could be a country Beatle. It would be an interesting gimmick. Parsons was only at Harvard for one semester before flunking out, but it was there that he was fully reintroduced to country music, and in particular to three artists who would influence him more than any others. He'd already been vaguely aware of Buck Owens, whose "Act Naturally" had recently been covered by the Beatles: [Excerpt: Buck Owens, "Act Naturally"] But it was at Harvard that he gained a deeper appreciation of Owens. Owens was the biggest star of what had become known as the Bakersfield Sound, a style of country music that emphasised a stripped-down electric band lineup with Telecaster guitars, a heavy drumbeat, and a clean sound. It came from the same honky-tonk and Western Swing roots as the rockabilly music that Parsons had grown up on, and it appealed to him instinctively.  In particular, Parsons was fascinated by the fact that Owens' latest album had a cover version of a Drifters song on it -- and then he got even more interested when Ray Charles put out his third album of country songs and included a version of Owens' "Together Again": [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "Together Again"] This suggested to Parsons that country music and the R&B he'd been playing previously might not quite be so far apart as he'd thought. At Harvard, Parsons was also introduced to the work of another Bakersfield musician, who like Owens was produced by Ken Nelson, who also produced the Louvin Brothers' records, and who we heard about in previous episodes as he produced Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson. Merle Haggard had only had one big hit at the time, "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers": [Excerpt: Merle Haggard, "(My Friends are Gonna Be) Strangers"] But he was about to start a huge run of country hits that would see every single he released for the next twelve years make the country top ten, most of them making number one. Haggard would be one of the biggest stars in country music, but he was also to be arguably the country musician with the biggest influence on rock music since Johnny Cash, and his songs would soon start to be covered by everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Everly Brothers to the Beach Boys. And the third artist that Parsons was introduced to was someone who, in most popular narratives of country music, is set up in opposition to Haggard and Owens, because they were representatives of the Bakersfield Sound while he was the epitome of the Nashville Sound to which the Bakersfield Sound is placed in opposition, George Jones. But of course anyone with ears will notice huge similarities in the vocal styles of Jones, Haggard, and Owens: [Excerpt: George Jones, "The Race is On"] Owens, Haggard, and Jones are all somewhat outside the scope of this series, but are seriously important musicians in country music. I would urge anyone who's interested in them to check out Tyler Mahan Coe's podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones, season one of which has episodes on Haggard and Owens, as well as on the Louvin Brothers who I also mentioned earlier, and season two of which is entirely devoted to Jones. When he dropped out of Harvard after one semester, Parsons was still mostly under the thrall of the Greenwich Village folkies -- there's a recording of him made over Christmas 1965 that includes his version of "Another Side of This Life": [Excerpt: Gram Parsons, "Another Side of This Life"] But he was encouraged to go further in the country direction by John Nuese (and I hope that's the correct pronunciation – I haven't been able to find any recordings mentioning his name), who had introduced him to this music and who also played guitar. Parsons, Neuse, bass player Ian Dunlop and drummer Mickey Gauvin formed a band that was originally called Gram Parsons and the Like. They soon changed their name though, inspired by an Our Gang short in which the gang became a band: [Excerpt: Our Gang, "Mike Fright"] Shortening the name slightly, they became the International Submarine Band. Parsons rented them a house in New York, and they got a contract with Goldstar Records, and released a couple of singles. The first of them, "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming" was a cover of the theme to a comedy film that came out around that time, and is not especially interesting: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming"] The second single is more interesting. "Sum Up Broke" is a song by Parsons and Neuse, and shows a lot of influence from the Byrds: [Excerpt: The international Submarine Band, "Sum Up Broke"] While in New York with the International Submarine Band, Parsons made another friend in the music business. Barry Tashian was the lead singer of a band called the Remains, who had put out a couple of singles: [Excerpt: The Remains, "Why Do I Cry?"] The Remains are now best known for having been on the bill on the Beatles' last ever tour, including playing as support on their last ever show at Candlestick Park, but they split up before their first album came out. After spending most of 1966 in New York, Parsons decided that he needed to move the International Submarine Band out to LA. There were two reasons for this. The first was his friend Brandon DeWilde, an actor who had been a child star in the fifties -- it's him at the end of Shane -- who was thinking of pursuing a musical career. DeWilde was still making TV appearances, but he was also a singer -- John Nuese said that DeWilde sang harmony with Parsons better than anyone except Emmylou Harris -- and he had recorded some demos with the International Submarine Band backing him, like this version of Buck Owens' "Together Again": [Excerpt: Brandon DeWilde, "Together Again"] DeWilde had told Parsons he could get the group some work in films. DeWilde made good on that promise to an extent -- he got the group a cameo in The Trip, a film we've talked about in several other episodes, which was being directed by Roger Corman, the director who worked a lot with David Crosby's father, and was coming out from American International Pictures, the company that put out the beach party films -- but while the group were filmed performing one of their own songs, in the final film their music was overdubbed by the Electric Flag. The Trip starred Peter Fonda, another member of the circle of people around David Crosby, and another son of privilege, who at this point was better known for being Henry Fonda's son than for his own film appearances. Like DeWilde, Fonda wanted to become a pop star, and he had been impressed by Parsons, and asked if he could record Parsons' song "November Nights". Parsons agreed, and the result was released on Chisa Records, the label we talked about earlier that had put out promos of Gene Clark, in a performance produced by Hugh Masekela: [Excerpt: Peter Fonda, "November Nights"] The other reason the group moved West though was that Parsons had fallen in love with David Crosby's girlfriend, Nancy Ross, who soon became pregnant with his daughter -- much to Parsons' disappointment, she refused to have an abortion. Parsons bought the International Submarine Band a house in LA to rehearse in, and moved in separately with Nancy. The group started playing all the hottest clubs around LA, supporting bands like Love and the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, but they weren't sounding great, partly because Parsons was more interested in hanging round with celebrities than rehearsing -- the rest of the band had to work for a living, and so took their live performances more seriously than he did, while he was spending time catching up with his old folk friends like John Phillips and Fred Neil, as well as getting deeper into drugs and, like seemingly every musician in 1967, Scientology, though he only dabbled in the latter. The group were also, though, starting to split along musical lines. Dunlop and Gauvin wanted to play R&B and garage rock, while Parsons and Nuese wanted to play country music. And there was a third issue -- which record label should they go with? There were two labels interested in them, neither of them particularly appealing. The offer that Dunlop in particular wanted to go with was from, of all people, Jay Ward Records: [Excerpt: A Salute to Moosylvania] Jay Ward was the producer and writer of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Peabody & Sherman, Dudley Do-Right and other cartoons, and had set up a record company, which as far as I've been able to tell had only released one record, and that five years earlier (we just heard a snippet of it). But in the mid-sixties several cartoon companies were getting into the record business -- we'll hear more about that when we get to song 186 -- and Ward's company apparently wanted to sign the International Submarine Band, and were basically offering to throw money at them. Parsons, on the other hand, wanted to go with Lee Hazlewood International. This was a new label set up by someone we've only talked about in passing, but who was very influential on the LA music scene, Lee Hazlewood. Hazlewood had got his start producing country hits like Sanford Clark's "The Fool": [Excerpt: Sanford Clark, "The Fool"] He'd then moved on to collaborating with Lester Sill, producing a series of hits for Duane Eddy, whose unique guitar sound Hazlewood helped come up with: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Rebel Rouser"] After splitting off from Sill, who had gone off to work with Phil Spector, who had been learning some production techniques from Hazlewood, Hazlewood had gone to work for Reprise records, where he had a career in a rather odd niche, producing hit records for the children of Rat Pack stars. He'd produced Dino, Desi, and Billy, who consisted of future Beach Boys sideman Billy Hinsche plus Desi Arnaz Jr and Dean Martin Jr: [Excerpt: Dino, Desi, and Billy, "I'm a Fool"] He'd also produced Dean Martin's daughter Deana: [Excerpt: Deana Martin, "Baby I See You"] and rather more successfully he'd written and produced a series of hits for Nancy Sinatra, starting with "These Boots are Made for Walkin'": [Excerpt: Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots are Made for Walkin'"] Hazlewood had also moved into singing himself. He'd released a few tracks on his own, but his career as a performer hadn't really kicked into gear until he'd started writing duets for Nancy Sinatra. She apparently fell in love with his demos and insisted on having him sing them with her in the studio, and so the two made a series of collaborations like the magnificently bizarre "Some Velvet Morning": [Excerpt: Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra, "Some Velvet Morning"] Hazlewood is now considered something of a cult artist, thanks largely to a string of magnificent orchestral country-pop solo albums he recorded, but at this point he was one of the hottest people in the music industry. He wasn't offering to produce the International Submarine Band himself -- that was going to be his partner, Suzi Jane Hokom -- but Parsons thought it was better to sign for less money to a label that was run by someone with a decade-long string of massive hit records than for more money to a label that had put out one record about a cartoon moose. So the group split up. Dunlop and Gauvin went off to form another band, with Barry Tashian -- and legend has it that one of the first times Gram Parsons visited the Byrds in the studio, he mentioned the name of that band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and that was the inspiration for the Byrds titling their album The Notorious Byrd Brothers. Parsons and Nuese, on the other hand, formed a new lineup of The International Submarine Band, with bass player Chris Ethridge, drummer John Corneal, who Parsons had first played with in The Legends, and guitarist Bob Buchanan, a former member of the New Christy Minstrels who Parsons had been performing with as a duo after they'd met through Fred Neil. The International Submarine Band recorded an album, Safe At Home, which is now often called the first country-rock album -- though as we've said so often, there's no first anything. That album was a mixture of cover versions of songs by people like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "I Must Be Somebody Else You've Known"] And Parsons originals, like "Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome?", which he cowrote with Barry Goldberg of the Electric Flag: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome?"] But the recording didn't go smoothly. In particular, Corneal realised he'd been hoodwinked. Parsons had told him, when persuading him to move West, that he'd be able to sing on the record and that some of his songs would be used. But while the record was credited to The International Submarine Band, everyone involved agrees that it was actually a Gram Parsons solo album by any other name -- he was in charge, he wouldn't let other members' songs on the record, and he didn't let Corneal sing as he'd promised. And then, before the album could be released, he was off. The Byrds wanted a jazz keyboard player, and Parsons could fake being one long enough to get the gig. The Byrds had got rid of one rich kid with a giant ego who wanted to take control of everything and thought his undeniable talent excused his attempts at dominating the group, and replaced him with another one -- who also happened to be signed to another record label. We'll see how well that worked out for them in two weeks' time.  

It's never too early or too late to stand up for what's right... or to stand against what's wrong. Though it took revelation from Wallace B. Smith to make the necessary change, women, and their advocates, started fighting for equality in the church for many years before that revelation arrived. Thanks to the work of grassroots groups like AWARE, the clarion call for equality and justice was heard around the church.  Join Cuppa Joe host Karin Peter, for an engaging conversation with Historic Sites Foundation lecturers Nancy Ross and David Howlett. Here, you'll get just a taste of what is available in the full lecture. View Nancy and David's lecture, here. If you have stories about the women's ordination or the struggle to get there, please share those with David (dhowlett@smith.edu) and Nancy (nancy.ross@utahtech.edu).  Download TranscriptThanks for listening to Project Zion Podcast!Follow us on Facebook and Instagram!Intro and Outro music used with permission: “For Everyone Born,” Community of Christ Sings #285. Music © 2006 Brian Mann, admin. General Board of Global Ministries t/a GBGMusik, 458 Ponce de Leon Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30308. copyright@umcmission.org “The Trees of the Field,” Community of Christ Sings # 645, Music © 1975 Stuart Dauerman, Lillenas Publishing Company (admin. Music Services). All music for this episode was performed by Dr. Jan Kraybill, and produced by Chad Godfrey. NOTE: The series that make up the Project Zion Podcast explore the unique spiritual and theological gifts Community of Christ offers for today's world. Although Project Zion Podcast is a Ministry of Community of Christ. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Community of Christ.

Have you been looking for ways to make church relevant in an ever-changing world? Is your congregation stuck doing things the way “they've always done them?” Fear not, you're not alone. But there's great news. God is at work doing something new in places that thought they were done. In a discussion originally held in Chesapeake Bay Mission Center (CBMC), Joelle Wight sat down with a group of panelists to talk about how they are experimenting with “new expressions” of the church... the challenges they've faced … and the blessings they've encountered.   Special thanks to CBMC, Joelle Wight and panelists: Ryan Pitt, Nancy Ross, Linda Stanbridge, John Wight, and Joey Williams for sharing this conversation with us here at Project Zion Podcast. Contact info for Joelle and the panelists in case you have questions: jwight@cofchrist.org jswilliams@cofchrist.org  linda@cofchristmi.org  rpitt@cofchrist.org  nancyross@gmail.com Download TranscriptThanks for listening to Project Zion Podcast!Follow us on Facebook and Instagram!Intro and Outro music used with permission: “For Everyone Born,” Community of Christ Sings #285. Music © 2006 Brian Mann, admin. General Board of Global Ministries t/a GBGMusik, 458 Ponce de Leon Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30308. copyright@umcmission.org “The Trees of the Field,” Community of Christ Sings # 645, Music © 1975 Stuart Dauerman, Lillenas Publishing Company (admin. Music Services). All music for this episode was performed by Dr. Jan Kraybill, and produced by Chad Godfrey. NOTE: The series that make up the Project Zion Podcast explore the unique spiritual and theological gifts Community of Christ offers for today's world. Although Project Zion Podcast is a Ministry of Community of Christ. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Community of Christ.

This is one of the most shocking accounts throughout the entire COVID pandemic – a patient named Veronica Wolski died at a Catholic hospital after being denied basic care and requested treatments.John-Henry discussed this tragedy with Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, president of Truth for Health Foundation, and Nancy Ross, Veronica's friend and power of attorney.Read more: https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/740770/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Stew talks with viral TikTok author, Megan McGlover, responsible for posting "Biden Ain't My Pimp" shortly after the dictatorial announcement of the communistic "vaccine mandate". 20-year nurse, respiratory therapist Angela Wallace, came forward blowing the whistle on the "vaccine" adverse events she's witnessing FIRST-HAND! 30-year nurse, Tracy Jaros, says massive corruption, fraud, deception and scandals are taking place behind closed doors, fueling the false narrative Americans are being fed about the COVID "pandemic". Nancy Ross is the Power of Attorney for Veronica Wolski, who was best known for her work over the Kennedy Expressway on "The People's Bridge". She was killed at a Chicago hospital after being refused the requested treatment of herself, her doctor and her advocates. Ross joined Stew for an EXCLUSIVE. Dr. Lee Vliet was doing everything she could to treat Veronica Wolski, and despite her efforts, the Chicago hospital killed her patient. Dr. Vliet spoke for the first time since Veronica's senseless killing in the name of medical tyranny.

Navigating prayer during and after a faith transition can be difficult. How does our relationship with God expand when we shift our understanding of this spiritual practice? How do we approach God in the midst of difficult experiences? Today as part of our Holy Grounds series, Nancy Ross and Brittany Mangelson discuss these questions and more. Host: Brittany MangelsonGuest: Nancy Ross 

While the Mountain Saints speak of the Law of Chastity being the iron clad rule that anything sexual should happen in marriage, the Praire Saints have a statement of Sexual Ethics. The Statement of Sexual Ethics is the distillation of years of discussion with church leaders across the world and continues as a living document up for discussion and debate. Community of Christ Apostle Robin Linkhart and former LDS members and now Community of Christ Ministers, Brittany Mangelson and Nancy Ross join me to have the conversation about sex  from the perspective of two very different restoration traditions.  

Welcome back, y'all! This week we end the chapter of the New Alliance Party: the (alleged) Marxist-Leninist-therapy cult that also just so happened to have a relatively amazing 1988. But what happens when a cult leader has to make the choice between running a serious political party or pushing his people even deeper into leader worship?

Hey, y'all! Welcome back to a freaking adventure of an episode. What if I told you there was a party that's whole purpose was to represent people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, and women? That they wanted to make food, employment, shelter, and medical care a constitutional right? And that this party had been around and active throughout the 1980s? Well, the New Alliance Party was that party and, of course, the whole thing was just too good to be true.

The justice system often re-traumatizes victims of domestic violence, according to a recent study. Dalhousie School of Social Work professor Nancy Ross tells us how we could change that.

Nancy Ross - Greenland Productions

Exponent II Editor, Margaret Olsen Hemming says of the Exponent guest edition of Dialogue, "   In this issue, we asked women to write about claiming power. We hoped that writers would think creatively about the idea of power, including traditional forms of authority in an organizational hierarchy but also going beyond this sometimes-limiting definition. We wanted women to examine their engagement of power within their families, wards, workplaces, and selves."   Artist Michelle Franzoni, Mormon scholar Nancy Ross and Margaret Olsen Hemming join me to discuss this historic issue of Dialogue:  A Journal of Mormon Thought.

Facilitating conversation around the lectionary scripture can be difficult when you've had a complicated relationship with scripture. Today, Nancy Ross shares some insights into this process as a writer for the Sacred Space resource. Host: Karin PeterGuest: Nancy Ross

Today we're catching up with Nancy Ross and Brittany Mangelson about their ordinations in Community of Christ. Both women grew up in the LDS church and currently serve in Community of Christ as elders. Nancy and Brittany share the complexities of their experiences with ordination and the significance of their calls. Brittany's faith transition storyNancy's faith transition story Nancy and Brittany's interview in Dialogue Journal Spring 2020Host: Robin Linkhart Guests: Nancy Ross and Brittany Mangelson

In this episode, my guests Nancy Ross from St George and Brittany Mangleson from Saratoga Springs discuss the Utah response to Covid-19 including some of the philosophical, ideological and religious issues with which this disease intersects.

Our No Filer series includes frank conversations about faith and sexuality. On this episode, we welcome Nancy Ross to talk about being a queer pastor in St. George, Utah. Nancy uses the hash #queerpastor to show the LGBTQ community on Twitter that there is a place in Christianity for them. Host: Brittany MangelsonGuest: Nancy Ross

The Rev. Canon Nancy Ross: Experiencing Jesus  The Rev. Canon Nancy Ross breaks down her journey from a Catholic church in upstate New York, to becoming a transitional deacon at Saint Mark’s, to why the work of Sanctuary is vital to our mission as Christians. 

Retirement plans operated by US employers collectively hold trillions of dollars in assets, so they have naturally become a target for litigation under their governing statute, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, commonly known as ERISA. Under ERISA, plan fiduciaries are subject to duties of loyalty and prudence, which can be enforced by the US Department of Labor or by private civil actions. Class actions targeting ERISA plan fiduciaries have been on the rise. Financial institutions are potentially implicated for the plans that they provide to their own employees and for the services that they provide to their clients. Mayer Brown partners Nancy Ross and Brian Netter discuss recent trends in ERISA litigation.

If you've been interested in learning more about spiritual practices, our Holy Ground series is for you! In today's episode Brittany talks with Nancy Ross to discuss how she's reframed and reclaimed prayer and scripture study in her life. Check out Nancy's suggested website/app Pray as You Go

A candid discussion with Nancy Ross about Mormon women's experiences with wearing LDS garments. From the paper "LDS Garments and Agency: A Qualitative Study of Meaning" by Nancy Ross and Jessica Finnigan: "The form of LDS garments has changed over time, from wrist-to-ankle, single-piece long underwear, to versions that included short sleeves and legs, to the two-piece styles that are common today. One of the most difficult aspects of studying garments is that talking about them is a transgressive act." This is that boundary pushing discussion.

In today's episode, Brittany sits down with past guest, Nancy Ross, to discuss some of the cultural surprises they each encountered as they started attending Community of Christ. They compare how their congregations do Sunday worship as well as some of the differences in prayers, hymns, and other mechanics of life in Community of Christ.

A few years ago, Nancy Ross and Jessica Finnigan set about trying to find out something about the relationship that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have with their temple garments.   Around 4,500 Mormons responded to their question "What do your garments mean to you?" Out of the survey data emerged some very strong themes, and to discuss their research Nancy Ross and Jessica Finnigan join me for a very interesting discussion about Mormon underwear.

In our final conversation with Sara Hanks and Dr. Nancy Ross, I'll ask them what their feminist favorite essays were. https://youtu.be/mtfYfhN6RZE Check out our conversation, as well as our previous conversations!  What are your favorite essays? What were Nancy and Sara's favorite essays from the book? 210:  Must Women Be Ordained? (Ross-Hanks) 209: The F-word: Feminism (Ross-Hanks) 208: Nancy & Sara's Spiritual Journey (Ross-Hanks) 207: Mormon Feminist Successes & Setbacks (Ross-Hanks)

Early Mormon women blessed by laying on of hands.  If the practice returned, would that be good enough for the Ordain Women movement, or do they require ordination?  Must women be ordained?  Nancy Ross and Sara Hanks answer that question. https://youtu.be/ImDlzBnipWc GT: Are you still a member of Ordain Women? Nancy: I mean, I still have a profile of a website, and I'm still supportive of the organization. GT: And you're being ordained this Sunday [July 29] anyway. Nancy:  That's right. Sara: Ordained woman. Nancy: Yes, Ordain Women! We're doing it. GT: You're going to be ordained. My question is actually two questions. Number one, what if in say October General Conference, President Nelson got up and said, "Okay, we're going to go back to the idea that women can lay hands on the sick like they used to do even into the early 20th century. Would that be good enough for Ordain Women? Or, do you think that women still need to be ordained to priesthood office? Nancy:  Do you want to comment? Sara:  I would say nothing less than full inclusion and full opportunity for every member of the church would be quote unquote sufficient. Any step in the direction of progress on any subject, in any community is great. Any step. Great. GT:  So you would welcome the laying on of hands. Sara: Oh, I would welcome that completely. I would be so excited about that. I mean I would be overjoyed. But in terms of Ordain Women as an organization, I think they chose their name very specifically. It's Ordain Women, not like give women--I mean, it would be a very long name, but it's not like Give Women More Opportunities. It's Ordain Women. LDS women out there--would you like to be ordained, or are you happy with the status quo?  Check out our conversation, as well as our previous conversations! Do LDS women want more opportunities, or must they be ordained? Nancy Ross & Sara Hanks answer that question.   209: The F-word: Feminism 208: Nancy & Sara's Spiritual Journey (Ross-Hanks) 207: Mormon Feminist Successes & Setbacks (Ross-Hanks)

After the disappointment with Kate Kelly's excommunication, how did Nancy and Sara react?  Are they still active in the LDS Church?  What has their spiritual journey been like?  Check out their answers! https://youtu.be/SWbfhT7PTLc Nancy:  About 18 months ago I was confirmed in Community of Christ and I was one of the people that helped to create the group, the little congregation and that I belong to in St George and I've been doing that ever since and I'm very happy with that. In many ways my Mormon feminist experience has really prepared me to kind of claim a faith for myself that it wasn't necessarily tightly defined by an institution. ... Sara:  I felt very scared and I felt I was having panic attacks whenever I would go to church. And so, I felt like I had to kind of take a step back and I didn't go for a few months. I had intended to not go for longer. I was like, I need to take a break of a year. And, I'm such a Mormon girl. I'm such a religiously inclined person that I couldn't even hold to my own expectations. I went back to church after just a few months and started attending again. And I had a very supportive ward at the time. And I loved relating to the people there. But my journey since then has been, it's just gotten more and more nuanced. And I've had to find a way to relate to the church and relate to my own Mormonism that was very different than how I expected it to be growing up. Find out more about Nancy's ordination, and how Sara relates to the LDS Church now!  Don't forget to check out part 1! Nancy Ross describe their spiritual Journey in Mormonism.

Dr. Nancy Ross and Sara Hanks, co-authors of "Where We Must Stand" discuss their experiences blogging at Feminist Mormon Housewives, and putting together a book on the first 10 years of the blog.  They discusses some of the feminist successes & setbacks between 2012-2014.  What were some of the successes in pushing for change within the LDS Church? https://youtu.be/c_uF51IVmZg Nancy:But at that time the community was all about activism, or so much of the community conversation turned to activism. Really. In the middle of 2012, and this is covered in the book, there's a little activist action to try and better understand different temples' policies with regard to women and young women doing baptisms for the dead while menstruating. And so, there are a bunch of phone calls made and they try to get information about what different temples policies are with the idea that, you might show up at a temple and they might have a different policy and that might make people feel excluded or embarrassed. Sara: Embarrassed. Yeah. Nancy: And so that happens in the middle of 2012. By the end of 2012, we've got the first "Wear pants to church day," and then that's followed by, "Let Women Pray," and the advent of "Let Women Pray was it's own activist event to try and ask church leaders to let a woman pray in general conference which happened with Jean Stephens, which is super exciting. Sara: Yeah. Nancy:And then we've got the arrival of Ordain Women in the Spring of 2013. And so leading up to Kate Kelly's excommunication, like from the middle of 2012 to the middle of 2014, there was just so much momentum in the community for like, Hey, we can change things. With the temple baptisms issue after all of this information gathering, someone was able to kind of make a connection further up the chain in the church and then the church issued a clarification to say no, we need all the temples to allow women young women to participate in baptisms regardless of whether or not they're menstruating. And that was, that felt huge. Concerning Kate Kelly's excommunicationin 2014, Sara: One part of the feeling was just so much shock, because not only had we felt really hopeful for the possibilities of change, but we also kind of were under the impression as a community at large that with the advent of the Internet and so much attention being paid to the church and so much possibility for exposing problems or injustices that the church wouldn't take the sort of actions that they had taken when it came to Sonia Johnson in the 70's or the September Six in the early 90's or the, the professors at BYU who were censured. We thought, "They wouldn't because it would be too much of a risk. There would be too much backlash." Nancy: And it was also right in the middle of that Mormon moment. And the church had done the "I'm a Mormon" campaign. They had spent so much time, effort, energy and resources trying to make the church look good in the eyes of the public. Check out our conversation… Co-authors Sara Hanks, and Dr. Nancy Ross discuss their book "Where We Must Stand: Ten Years of Feminist Mormon Housewives." You might want to check out our other conversations on Women's studies. 189: Women Have Had Priesthood since 1843! (Quinn) 165:  Elder Oaks Groundbreaking Talk on Women & Priesthood(Stapley) 164:  The Mormon Priestess & Ordain Women (Stapley) 163:  Women Healers in LDS Temples (Stapley) 134: Role of Women in 4 American Religions (Bringhurst) 066: Women Will Not Hold Priesthood! (Vun Cannon) 049: Mormon Polyandry:  More Than One Husband? (Hales)

Join us as we interview editors Nancy Ross and Sara Hanks to discuss their anthology, "Where We Must Stand: Ten Years of Feminist Mormon Housewives," an anthology of blog posts from the first decade of the Feminist Mormon Housewives blog, 2004—2014. The posts discuss Mormon women’s experiences of wrestling with feminism in a conservative religious tradition. The book highlights individual moments of reflection and faith while tracking the growth and progress of a larger community and religious social movement. Bloggers and community members moved from writing to activism, witnessed the public excommunication of a community member, mourned, and changed. The Feminist Mormon Housewives blog emerged at a time when the broader Mormon feminist movement was in decline. The bloggers shared their discovery of Mormon feminist history, concerns and fears about polygamy, the difficulty of navigating church and family relationships, losing and finding faith, the worst sex talk that ever happened in a church setting, and the awakening of a broader social consciousness. In doing so, they invited a new generation of women into the movement and helped to rebuild it.

Join us as we interview editors Nancy Ross and Sara Hanks to discuss their anthology, "Where We Must Stand: Ten Years of Feminist Mormon Housewives," an anthology of blog posts from the first decade of the Feminist Mormon Housewives blog, 2004—2014. The posts discuss Mormon women’s experiences of wrestling with feminism in a conservative religious tradition. The book highlights individual moments of reflection and faith while tracking the growth and progress of a larger community and religious social movement. Bloggers and community members moved from writing to activism, witnessed the public excommunication of a community member, mourned, and changed. The Feminist Mormon Housewives blog emerged at a time when the broader Mormon feminist movement was in decline. The bloggers shared their discovery of Mormon feminist history, concerns and fears about polygamy, the difficulty of navigating church and family relationships, losing and finding faith, the worst sex talk that ever happened in a church setting, and the awakening of a broader social consciousness. In doing so, they invited a new generation of women into the movement and helped to rebuild it.

In June 2014 Kate Kelly, the vocal spokesperson for Ordain Women, was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for apostasy. Kate Kelly had led a high profile campaign including two actions on Temple Square in order to ask the President of the LDS Church to pray about whether or not women should be ordained.   This public petition that eventually included hundreds of women from around the world was met by a resounding silence and denial by the LDS leadership.  But it was Kate's excommunication that either catapulted women out of the church or aroused a new awareness in the faithful that the church they had thought of as benevolent had, in this case, acted vindictively and egregiously to support the supremacy of the patriarchy. Katie Langston, Nancy Ross and Brittany Mangleson, women who arrived at an impasse after the excommunication and chose to pursue ordination in other faith traditions join me to discuss the impact of Ordain Women on them and the Mormon feminist community.

Join Lindsay as she interviews Nancy Ross and Sara Hanks about Mormon feminism, how they contextualize polygamy, and their new book, Where We Must Stand: Ten Years of Feminist Mormon Housewives.   Links mentioned in this podcast: Feminist Mormon Housewives blog […]

Join Lindsay as she interviews Nancy Ross and Sara Hanks about Mormon feminism, how they contextualize polygamy, and their new book, Where We Must Stand: Ten Years of Feminist Mormon Housewives.   Links mentioned in this podcast: Feminist Mormon Housewives blog Purchase the book here

Join Brittany and she talks with Sara K. S. Hanks and Nancy Ross about their book Where We Must Stand: Ten Years LDS Feminist Mormon Housewives. They discuss the evolution of the blog and the Mormon feminist community, and the contents of the book. Covering very specific themes in Mormon culture and doctrine, this book highlights in Mormon feminists’ own words, the complexities of what it means to be both a Mormon and a feminist.

Join Karin as she interviews Lisa Butterworth, Amy Cartwright, Nancy Ross, and Brittany Mangelson about the unique challenges being a woman in the LDS church brings.

"There's no point at which we can say, 'I've got it.'   Always and forever, mystery gets you.  Our searching for God is a search for symbols, analogies and metaphors.  All theological language is an approximation, offered tentatively in holy awe.  That's the best human language can achieve. We must absolutely must, maintain a fundamental humility before the great mystery.  If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulations, and never God." So says Fr. Richard Rohr, and thus contemplates art historian and medievalist Professor Nancy Ross.  Nancy reflects on the place of art in religion in the West and how that has shaped her own spiritual development.   

Join Karin as she interviews Lisa Butterworth, Amy Cartwright, Nancy Ross, and Brittany Mangelson about the unique challenges being a woman in the LDS church brings.

Join Brittany as she speaks with Nancy Ross about Fowler's stages of faith theory and how the stages play out in with the people within progressive Mormonism and Community of Christ.

Nancy Ross, Nurse Educator with The Allergy and Asthma Clinic, joined the show to talk about a Food Allergy information class for Grandparents being held January 25th from 7-8:30pm at 685 William.  To register, call Kelsey (204)787-4116 or email caaec@hsc.mb.ca. To check out the website, Click Here.

A long-awaited survey of LDS attitudes toward gender relationships and women’s ordination has begun to yield intriguing snapshots of just where we are within Mormonism on these issues--with continued analysis yet to come. In this episode, survey team members Nancy Ross, Michael Nielsen, and Stephen Merino join Jana Riess and Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon for a discussion of the survey--its origins, goals, methods--and key preliminary findings. For those interested in seeing more forward movement within Mormonism regarding gender and greater representation of women in leadership councils, and perhaps even ordination, what are reasons for hope? What does the survey suggest (or the panelists see) as issues and structures and attitudes that need much greater attention before this strong movement can happen?

In this second episode examining the new policies regarding LGBT women and men and children, Brad Kramer, Nancy Ross, and Rob Vox join Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon for several rounds of speculation that tries to understand some of the possible reasons behind the changes. Applying insights from sociology, anthropology, and other fields of inquiry, they discuss issues such as group boundary maintenance (both in terms of membership and doctrine) and the re-establishment of leadership authority within the church (especially re-centralizing some of it instead of leaving quite as much in the hands of local leaders), as well as efforts to continue to band alongside allied religious groups in efforts to preserve long-held definitions and categories, and to fight modernizing forces within society and find the ideal position in tension with fast-moving social changes. They discuss whether some of the impetus comes from efforts to head off or lessen potential liability in certain types of lawsuits, especially as possible reasons for labeling those in same-sex marriages as being in "apostasy" and adding barriers to their children participating in church rituals. In later sections they discuss ways in which the leadership might back off and mitigate at least some of the most extreme consequences now beginning to reveal themselves, and finally each shares much more personally about their own wrestles since the policy changes came to light, as well as changes, if any, in their own determinations regarding their engagement with Mormonism going forward.

Join Lindsay as she discusses some of the earliest known “women.” Featuring an interview about Paleolithic art with Dr. Nancy Ross.   Links and text mentioned and read in this podcast: Early hominid evolution Eagle Ancestors Hunted Early Humans, Skull Study Suggests Makapansgat pebble Ardi, Oldest Living Human PBS: Meet Lucy, the fossil Paleolithic Art […]

Host James Curtis Talks to Guests: Karen Klein, Artist; Nancy Ross, LCSW.

The voice of Mormon Apologetics in the past has been predomintely male. In this episode we explore the intersection of gender and Mormon Apologetics.  We discuss the reasons that this may be as well as how this tradition is changing and creating  a space for more and more women amungst this forum.  In this episode, we are pleased to have with us a strong panal: Nancy Ross, Assistant Professor of Art History at Dixie State Universtiy and has a Ph.D. from the university of Cambridge.  She has been blogging the Book of Mormon chapter by chapter with a feminist perspective at nickelonthenacle.blogspot.com . Kevin Barney, studied classics at BYU, then obtained law degrees from the University of Illinois and DePaul University. He also serves of the board of directors for FAIR Mormon and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Jessica Finnigan,  is a Master's Student at King's College London, where she studies religion in the contemporary world. She recently completed an advanced Diploma in Religious Studies at the University of Cambridge. She earned a Bachelors from BYU in Marriage, Family, and Human Development..

Nancy Ross, Edward Jones and Karen Smyth present their topic on August 2, 2013. [powerpress]

Nancy Ross, Edward Jones and Karen Smyth present their topic on August 2, 2013. [powerpress]

Margaret Toscano and Nancy Ross present their topic on August 2, 2013. [powerpress]

Margaret Toscano and Nancy Ross present their topic on August 2, 2013. [powerpress]

Banned books Click here to download What do Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Winnie the Pooh have in common? Patrick Webb, managing editor of The Daily Astorian, talks with Nancy Ross, Oregon board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and … Continue reading →