Working The Trapline — Strikes With A Gun & the Dogs Of War

Greg Marshall scouted up some music from Corb Lund and Colter Wall country: Richard Inman. He’s the real deal.

I caught a Townes Van Zandt vibe from this one:

And sure enough…

Richard was adopted and grew up on a dairy farm in Southeastern Manitoba. His adopted parents were Mennonite and his Grandparents were Mormon. He is First Nations of the Blackfoot Nation, and his traditional family name was Strikes With a Gun.

In his formative years, Richard listened to country gospel music and Mennonite hymns at church, with both styles influencing his writing to this day. Richard shares with listeners his musical path, from the womb to piano lessons at age 5, to “all hell breaking loose” when a girl gave him a Townes Van Zandt album at age 20.

Yeah, that’ll do it to you…

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Been watching SEAL Team on Paramount+. I never paid it any mind over the past five years, but Jack Carr said some good things about it, so I checked it out. It’s pretty damn good — and it does something few military action shows do — it grapples with the impact that the constant deployment and a total commitment to a violent job has on families and personal lives.

Here’s one for Lane Batot (and Lady Marilyn). The most badass operator in the whole of Bravo Team is Cerberus — a Belgian Malinois Hair Missile.

A little later they are joined by a bomb-detector named Pepper.

The Dogs of War. And while they were at it, the soundtrack dug into a nice piece of gritty Western-flavored blues from Blues Saraceno.

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The estimable Great War Youtube Channel continued its current dive into the multitude of small (and not so small) conflicts that raged from Eastern Europe to Anatolia to Central America to North Africa in the aftermath of the 1914-18 war. The Rif War was fought in one of the most rugged frontier environments in the world, when a savvy and charismatic Berber chieftain Abd el-Krim raised a rebellion against Spanish colonizers. The war was savage, and it marked the rise of a highly capable — and ruthlessly ambitious — young soldier named Francisco Franco, who would leave outsized bootprints in the history of the 20th Century.

 

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Hawken Horse’s single Pennsylvania Long drops tomorrow, April 21. We’re preparing an interview before the release of his full Longhunter album on May 19. I’m really looking forward to that…