Tim Easton has been singing and writing songs since he was 14 years old. He never considered another career. After finishing college, Easton hit the road with his guitar and spent seven years singing and playing on European street corners. When he got back to Ohio, Easton joined the Haynes Boys, a roots-rock outfit that made one album before breaking up. Free again, Easton picked up his guitar and returned to the road, touching down long enough to make nine albums that earned him a loyal following with their blend of gritty roots-rock and heartfelt songwriting. Every LP took a slightly different approach and his latest, Not Cool, shows off his love of rockabilly and early R&B. Easton will be quest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on him.
Easton: I am a free American, and I can travel anywhere I wish on the planet, and no government can tell me otherwise. The embargo should be history, and also let’s not forget that it is being publicly infringed left and right through open trade with companies based in places like Alabama, for starters. It’s not the Cuban government that prevents us from entering Cuba; it’s ours that forbids us from going there, or more specifically, from spending money there.
Why can a company from Alabama trade with Cuba but a music freak from Ohio can’t go check out some amazing tunes played by men and woman who make glorious music out of sometimes very broken-down instruments? It’s hard not to get into politics about it all, and I don’t want to take a turn for the cynical, but before a few years pass it’ll be MTV Spring Break Havana or Girls Gone Wild Havana, and that will be that. Cuba is a an amazing journey that will bring you in contact with the strong and beautiful people of that nation. If you are the traveling type and are thinking to yourself you’d like to see that place now before there’s a Starbucks in Revolution Plaza, you should probably stop talking and get going. I met zero Americans on my first trip there, excepting the Alaskans who had brought me there in the first place, and on the last trip saw only a few mustachioed hipsters—and they may have been Canadians. I made field recordings there that continue to be my education in Afro-Cuban rhythms. I have made friends there for life.
I heard that Ry Cooder went back recently with Blake Mills. Looking forward to the results of that trip. There is a program called Cubamera, which is planning on having an artistic exchange between musicians from Cuba and North America. I hope to join that mission.
Video after the jump.
