The Local Voice

Beanland : Rising from the Riverbed

You know how it is: hang out in Oxford long enough and you will see two Ole Miss girls in a fistfight. I saw one yesterday in front of As Seen On TV. I go there at least once a week, because they get new releases at least that often. On this night, the story circulating through the crowd was that both showed up at the same time to rent “the Scotty Glahn movie” and there was only one left. I knew “the Scotty Glahn movie” meant his excellent documentary feature about local band Beanland and Oxford. What these gals evidently did not know is even though the movie was produced and Directed by Scotty Glahn, he is not actually in it.

Someone walked by carrying a large blackboard, so I scraped my fingernails down it and the ensuing painful screech stopped the fistfight, and I addressed the dueling damsels.

“You ladies are here for Scotty Glahn?”

They both emphatically said yes, while sneering and snarling at the other.

“Scotty is not actually in this movie,” I told them. “Scotty made this movie about a sublime Oxford band and the Oxford music scene in the late 1980’s .

Then I went Kissinger .

“It is an excellent documentary, but there is only one copy left, so why don’t y’all flip for it and the other goes over to Hot Dog Records and buy the Beanland disc? That way you both win .

“They have Beanland at Hot Dog?” they asked .

“Yep, right there between the Beach Boys and the Beatles.”

The girls agreed and the day was saved. As the crowd dispersed, a sweet little elderly lady tapped me on the shoulder.

“You’re wrong, young man,” she told me . “Over at Hot Dog Records, Beanland is between the Beach Boys and the Beastie Boys.”

–Chico Harris

Rib Magazine

Beanland: Rising From The Riverbed (Cloudscapes Productions)

Chronicling nearly 20 years of Mississippi groove, Beanland: Rising From The Riverbed steps back in time with the beginnings of southern jam band’s seminal outfits, Beanland. With interviews and archival video footage “from back porch Mississippi hippie-cover band to their hard earned arrival as a genuine musical force across the south” the documentary offers true insight into the life of the musicians who set off to conquer the jam band music scene.

Interviews included are with some of the leading stars of the southern music including: JoJo Hermann and George McConnell of Widespread Panic; Cody and Luther Dickinson of The North Mississippi Allstars; Rev Jeff Mosier of the Aquarium Rescue Unit; Cedric Burnside of the Burnside Blues Family; Cary Hudson of Blue Mountain and legendary producer, Jim Dickinson.

Beanland: Rising From the Riverbed is a two disc set and includes the film and a 12 track CD by various artists: Beanland, Aquarium Rescue Unit, Allgood, The Grapes, Cary Hudson of Blue Mountain, The Tangents, White Buffalo, Kudzu Kings, Daniel Karlish, Sweetbush Revival, Guelel Kumba, and the hidden track is Nichol and Cody Dickinson. There are also DVD bonus features with George and Bill acoustic, JoJo unplugged, Outtakes, and a moment with Jim Dickinson.

This disk is a must have for anyone who made it out of the Delta region and have longed to look back. The era is painted as it was back then and those that lived it, now can put their memories on a shelf.

–Wil Jordan

Hittin’ the Note

Beanland – Rising From The Riverbed

This DVD is billed as “a celebration of a time and place,” and anyone who has ever been involved in a thriving local music scene will feel profound déjà vu when watching it. Beanland began as friends playing Dead songs, most often at 1313 Beanland Drive in Oxford, Mississippi. The musicians played on top of the garage, making them a literal “garage band.” This DVD covers the fascinating journey, with captivating stories and many entertaining detours.

The arc of Beanland’s existence seems almost pre-ordained. George McConnell and Bill McCrory met by happenstance, assigned to adjacent seats in a class at Ole Miss. When McConnell and McCrory began playing real gigs, the club advertised them as “the guys from 1313 Beanland.” The residents objected to the club’s use of the address, so George and Bill went simply by Beanland, a name uniquely suited to their brand of rural Mississippi “river music.” They hooked up with drummer Rod Laird and bassist Ron Lewis, and soon became local favorites.

At this point, young JoJo Hermann enters the scene. The city kid from New York had hopped a bus to Mississippi in search of the music that he craved. One fateful day, someone suggested that JoJo play piano for tips at a local bar called the Hoka. Hermann dropped in, sat at the keys, and started playing Scott Joplin and Professor Longhair. The rest, as they say, is history.

JoJo’s strong New Orleans influence added the X factor that Beanland needed to distinguish themselves from other bands. Slowly but surely, they conquered their hometown of Oxford, playing rowdy late-night shows at the Hoka until the police shut them down. Beanland had by influenced other musicians, including Cody and Luther Dickinson, who are featured on Rising From the Riverbed, explaining Beanland’s broad appeal.

The Dickinson connection led Beanland to the Memphis studio of family patriarch and legendary producer Jim Dickinson. The band had wanted him to produce their debut album, but had had no luck until this fateful meeting. This story is too good for HTN to tell – let’s just say that, if it hadn’t happened this way, someone would’ve had to make it up. Indeed, the storytelling – engaging accounts provided by colorful, uniquely Southern characters right out of a Faulkner novel – is as much a feature of Rising From the Riverbed as the music.

Having completed their self-titled first album with Dickinson, Beanland hit the road in earnest, playing hundreds of shows between ’88 and ’92, playing songs that are still fresh and powerful years later.

During their travels, the band met other pioneers of the fledgling jam band scene, including members of Widespread Panic and Aquarium Rescue Unit. Beanland’s friendship with Panic also meant the end of the band that had s sprung with so much promise from Oxford. JoJo’s unique keyboard stylings were just what WP needed to flesh out their sound. Widespread had used T Lavitz of the Dixie Dregs on their debut album, Space Wrangler, but, for their second album, they called Hermann in to lay down some tracks. Soon, JoJo accepted an invitation to join the band.

“I was really disappointed,” admits Cody Dickinson. “I always loved Widespread Panic, but I was a Beanland fan.”

Beanland’s identity crisis deepened when founding member Bill McCrory got tired of life on the road and quit at about the same time. The band added guitarist Barry “ Po” Hannah and recorded an excellent album, Eye to Eye, in 1993, but they remain refreshingly honest about the void JoJo had left when he joined WSP.

“We would go on tour, and people would say, ‘Where’s the keyboard player?’ road manager Lance Lawrence recalls, “We would tell them, ‘Well, he joined Widespread Panic, ‘ and they would ask, ‘Why don’t you get someone to replace him?’ We would always say, ‘How do you replace JoJo?”

The band eventually called it quits with a farewell show in Oxford. Ten years later, after the tragic death of Michael Houser from pancreatic cancer, guitarist George McConnell would become the second member of Beanland to fill an urgently needed role in Widespread Panic. No wonder Widespread is such a powerful band: they absorbed the heart of another great band along the way.

Nevertheless, Beanland deserves to be considered on its own merits, not just as a footnote to the Widespread Panic story. As the DVD’s red-hot scenes from a 2004 reunion show testify, they can still jam with the best of them. If there is any justice, Rising From the Riverbed will help win Beanland the respect they deserve.

— Rob Johnson

Jackson Press

A Red Clay Parnassus

Art fares best in an open forum, and in the ‘80s and early ‘90s no freer field could be found than in Oxford, Miss., when businessmen such as Bill Forrester, Ron Shapiro, Willie Wallace, Syd French, John Anderson and Frank Odom maintained enterprises that promoted an eclectic marketplace for invention.

In those halcyon days, Willie Morris, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown contributed their literary wattage to an arts scene illuminated by the bright lights of the Hilltops/Blue Mountain, the North Mississippi Allstars and Beanland. It was a heyday of the muses; throw in a couple of Jere Allen’s brilliant brushstrokes, and you have nothing short of a red clay Parnassus.

Scotty Glahn and Kutcher Miller’s “Beanland: Rising from the Riverbed” attempts to and largely succeeds in capturing the freewheeling, lackadaisical, and somewhat dissipated spirit of that time and place. The result is a roman à clef best appreciated by those who were there then and knew members of the cast of characters. It’s a voyeuristic peek into a seminal period in the cultural life of Oxford. Interviews make for the largest part of the film’s appeal, but the chronicle also includes footage of Beanland’s best-known performances and glimpses of venues and buildings long gone.

Nostalgia is not a bad thing, especially when it’s worked out so carefully and lovingly. I tip my hat to Glahn and Miller not only for recognizing Beanland as worthy of a broader stage, but also their foresight in documenting a special time in a very special place.

Great job, guys; my check is in the mail.

An Honest Tune Magazine

Riverbed Tracks Early Jam Band

Watching the Beanland DVD Rising From The Riverbed is like taking a trip down the Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans. It provides you with the inspiration for the unique sound that is the band Beanland.

First time filmmakers Scotty Glahn and Kutcher Miller have provided the rest of the world a peek into the band that served as an unheralded flashpoint in the jam band explosion of the 1990’s. And even though Beanland no longer plays together (save the occasional reunion show) they have had a profound effect on fans and other musicians alike.

Rising From The Riverbed charts this influence with what is part documentary, part concert film and part fond reminiscence. Although there were thousands of stories about the road, Glahn and Miller sliced through to the pertinent ones, shining a light on what it was like to be living through that time in history. They chart the band’s first shows, the big shows, the lineup changes and the painful end.

They also, in part, define what Beanland, the band, really was. Bill McCrory puts it best: Beanland is river music, Delta blues and Memphis Soul with New Orleans rhythm. And you learn how producer Jim Dickinson taught them to take breaths of clean, fresh,Mississippi air choked by kudzu and small hills and cigarette-filled bars and translate that all into something meaningful. Beanland fed off of the art and writing culture of their Oxford, Mississippi and made it a musical hotbed as well. They were the mud providing the base to the river water…the curves and the swirls giving the bends in the water a place to go.

Even though Rising From The Riverbed can seem a little long at times, how else could you understand the significance behind something that looms larger than life?

–Rebecca Lauck Cleary