I pointed my VW south on a blindingly sunny Sunday afternoon & plowed through the slushy streets after a weekend winter storm dumped 6 inches of heavy snow, nearly paralyzing central Tennessee. I aimed towards the Bluebird Cafe, housed weirdly in a strip mall along upscale Hillsboro Pike, eager to meet the roots-music writer extraordinaire Peter Guralnick. But just parking in that snow-packed little lot was a challenge. Nashville's philosophy when it comes to snow removal is laissez-faire a la Dixie: just wait for it to melt, y'all.
The guest of honor & interview subject at that photo-show/book-signing reception was Dick Waterman, a non-performer member of the Blues Hall of Fame & the man who found the long-gone legend Son House sitting on a porch in Avalon, Mississippi in 1964 & revived his career via stellar performances at the Newport Folk Festival. Mr. Waterman is an accomplished photographer, a native of Massachusetts who now resides in Oxford (Miss.). He specializes in gorgeous black/white prints from his vast collection of portraits of famous rock & blues musicians in action as well as at rest. He told riveting stories of his days as a friend, manager & booking agent for such greats as Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Fred MacDowell, Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes & later Bonnie Raitt & Buddy Guy (both Rock & Roll Hall of Famers).
Here are a few gems he shared with the crowded room of admirers:
* "Skippy" James, a vain man who spoke of himself in the third person, pausing to inhale a smoke before addressing a brash interloper (who picked up Skip's guitar, attempted a Jamesian riff & dared to ask how it sounded) with withering cool disdain: "Skip has come and gone from places that you will never get to."
* "I rubbed Ray Charles," Dick boasted. He met the incomparable master of soul after a show once & told him how wonderful his concert in Rome had been. Ray sucked coolly on a cigarette, apparently lost in some romantic reverie. "Rome..." he finally said, adding a second dramatic pause. "Nice town."
* Robert "Pete" Williams recalling the act of self-defense that unjustly landed him in Angola (Louisiana's infamous state penitentiary) for years. An angry stranger with a pistol approached him in a bar, mistaking him for another man. Pete pulled an owl-headed Derringer & tried briefly to convince the attacker that he was mistaken. "I give him the first shot," Pete said casually, as though the guy had merely thrown a punch instead of firing a bullet. "Then I had to burn that man."
Dick answered my question about his 1966 photo of Phil Ochs playing in a halo of smoke with a long sympathetic reminiscence of the radical folkie who committed suicide in April 1976. He complained that he hasn't yet gotten to photograph Dolly Parton. And he remarked that he was astounded by Dylan's evolution in style & image from 1963 to '65; his b/w photos of Dylan in a polka-dot shirt at Newport in 1965 are among his favorites. In his discussion with Guralnick, Waterman also gave kudos to Al Green, Merle Haggard & Solomon Burke.
Speaking of the King of Rock & Soul, I got Peter Guralnick to autograph my battered copy of his brilliant book "Sweet Soul Music." I asked him to sign alongside the photo of him in the early 1980s with his arm anchored to the imposing, complex, sweet-natured giant Solomon Burke: "To Joe - with all good wishes," the thoughtful Mr. Guralnick wrote (even though I didn't buy the book of Waterman's photographs to which he contributed). A very good day for me in Music City, but I'm glad that February has arrived. Soon spring will bring showers & flowers instead of ice & darkness.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Justin Townes Earle at Mercy Lounge (January 27, 2010)
I'm pleased to report that Justin Townes Earle thrilled the near-capacity crowd at Mercy Lounge (around 400 souls) on a 44-degree Wednesday night in Nashville. He played his acoustic guitar with such force that he broke a string once, but it hardly slowed him down at all. That young man - just 28 years old - has absorbed 80 years of roots-music tradition, country as well as blues & folk (not to mention his Daddy Steve's heavy country-rock legacy) & distilled it into appealing original music that is both nostalgic & contemporary.
His opening acts, the Elvis-faced but uncharismatic Caitlin Rose (with a yet-to-be-named band of five guys), plus the gorgeous & dynamic Dawn Landes (with her 2-piece band The Hounds, featuring a bearish backup singer who played harmonica while drumming), got things rolling. Now that I'm listening to Patsy Cline on WSM-AM those ladies fail to impress by comparison. But I enjoyed Dawn's sexy original song in the French language, which she introduced by dedicating it to French cowboys. She used to live in Paris, where she spotted a beauty salon that specialized in cowboy hairstyles, whatever the heck that is.
Justin Townes Earle in concert is the REAL DEAL, folks. My only regret is that I didn't wish him luck at the Grammy Awards (he's nominated in the new Americana category) when he strolled past me at the club entrance. He stopped to hug a friend & say he'd forgotten something outside. The lanky man was dapper in a black suit & red-checked shirt buttoned to the top. Onstage he looked as geeky as Buddy Holly in those large specs. Yet his awkward movements & occasional mugging did not detract from the polished performance. He was obviously entranced by the sounds his string trio made.
The lineup included a lady bassist & a bearded fiddler. They opened with "Poor Fool," my favorite song from JTE's excellent album "Midnight at the Movies" (thanks, Samara). His stage patter is charming, peppered with heartfelt "Thank you, folks" & "Ladies and Gentlemen..." Justin is an artist who appreciates & respects his audience - too rare a quality among young performers in this awful Age of Irony & Narcissism.
JTE delivered several new songs in addition to renditions of such someday classics as "They Killed John Henry" & "Black Eyed Suzy." He dedicated "Mama's Eyes" to his local mother who, he said, could not attend because of the late hour (he went on at 10:00 p.m.). With a nod to some Beat literary forebears, Justin name-dropped Gregory Corso (the poet) & Herbert Huncke (the junkie) while introducing "Midnight at the Movies." He also informed - us with deadpan earnestness - that in New York City, where he now resides, he is considered a Southerner. His drawl, his musicality & his polite manners left no doubt about that. He gave a shoutout to Woody Guthrie along the way (as he did when I saw him in Milwaukee last July) & treated us to a honky-tonk rambling-man number as well. He even reflected briefly on his delinquent youth, when he roamed the streets of Nashville with a rat-tail, bad attitude & drooping trousers. I learned today (in a book about his Daddy) that Justin was born at Baptist Hospital, just a block away from my digs at Music City Hostel.
Matt Burton, a Cheshire guitarist/pianist (& Jackson Browne fan) who accompanied me to the show, enjoyed it too. Maybe Justin Townes Earle will gain an international following a la Bob Dylan, whom he reminded me of at times with his paradoxical blend of shyness & confidence. As long as he keeps on writing entertaining songs & doesn't let New York turn him into a jaded jerk, he's got a shot.
His opening acts, the Elvis-faced but uncharismatic Caitlin Rose (with a yet-to-be-named band of five guys), plus the gorgeous & dynamic Dawn Landes (with her 2-piece band The Hounds, featuring a bearish backup singer who played harmonica while drumming), got things rolling. Now that I'm listening to Patsy Cline on WSM-AM those ladies fail to impress by comparison. But I enjoyed Dawn's sexy original song in the French language, which she introduced by dedicating it to French cowboys. She used to live in Paris, where she spotted a beauty salon that specialized in cowboy hairstyles, whatever the heck that is.
Justin Townes Earle in concert is the REAL DEAL, folks. My only regret is that I didn't wish him luck at the Grammy Awards (he's nominated in the new Americana category) when he strolled past me at the club entrance. He stopped to hug a friend & say he'd forgotten something outside. The lanky man was dapper in a black suit & red-checked shirt buttoned to the top. Onstage he looked as geeky as Buddy Holly in those large specs. Yet his awkward movements & occasional mugging did not detract from the polished performance. He was obviously entranced by the sounds his string trio made.
The lineup included a lady bassist & a bearded fiddler. They opened with "Poor Fool," my favorite song from JTE's excellent album "Midnight at the Movies" (thanks, Samara). His stage patter is charming, peppered with heartfelt "Thank you, folks" & "Ladies and Gentlemen..." Justin is an artist who appreciates & respects his audience - too rare a quality among young performers in this awful Age of Irony & Narcissism.
JTE delivered several new songs in addition to renditions of such someday classics as "They Killed John Henry" & "Black Eyed Suzy." He dedicated "Mama's Eyes" to his local mother who, he said, could not attend because of the late hour (he went on at 10:00 p.m.). With a nod to some Beat literary forebears, Justin name-dropped Gregory Corso (the poet) & Herbert Huncke (the junkie) while introducing "Midnight at the Movies." He also informed - us with deadpan earnestness - that in New York City, where he now resides, he is considered a Southerner. His drawl, his musicality & his polite manners left no doubt about that. He gave a shoutout to Woody Guthrie along the way (as he did when I saw him in Milwaukee last July) & treated us to a honky-tonk rambling-man number as well. He even reflected briefly on his delinquent youth, when he roamed the streets of Nashville with a rat-tail, bad attitude & drooping trousers. I learned today (in a book about his Daddy) that Justin was born at Baptist Hospital, just a block away from my digs at Music City Hostel.
Matt Burton, a Cheshire guitarist/pianist (& Jackson Browne fan) who accompanied me to the show, enjoyed it too. Maybe Justin Townes Earle will gain an international following a la Bob Dylan, whom he reminded me of at times with his paradoxical blend of shyness & confidence. As long as he keeps on writing entertaining songs & doesn't let New York turn him into a jaded jerk, he's got a shot.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Time travel in Nashville: radio triggers imagination
Here's a snapshot of Weirdland, Music City Section:
Driving on a cool grey Sunday afternoon through tree-lined Richland, an old planned residential district on Nashville's southwest side near Elmington Park & West End Middle School, I was lucky enough to have my VW's radio tuned in to WRVU (91.1 FM), Vanderbilt University's fine community radio station. My soundtrack for that short excursion (from the carwash on Charlotte along undulating Bowling Avenue onto upscale Woodmont Boulevard unto mall-choked Hillsboro Pike) was provided by WRVU's "Spoonful of Bluegrass." The DJ was playing scratchy old recordings circa 1930 by Fiddlin' John Carson, the Skillet Lickers & other so-called hillbilly acts from a time before country music had acquired any respectability -- despite its widespread popularity.
I tried to imagine what that old weird America (that inspired Dylan & the Band's "Basement Tapes" in 1967-68) looked like, smelled like & sounded like. How did a winter Sabbath afternoon in Nashville go down in the Depression era? Back then, the woman who became my Grandma Crawford had to leave the farm in Arcadia, Wisconsin & go to work as a maid for a rich family in Whitefish Bay; Grandpa Crawford was glad to be employed at a CCC camp & therefore able to send money home to his widower Pa; Grandpa Mrazek fished for food & rode the rails. I cast my mind back to those hard, intense times before television kept people indoors getting fatter & lazier. Before most people had cars that isolate them from one another & inflate their egos to a dangerous size. I longed for a taste of life free of the techno-media-cocoon that threatens to smother us all. My imagination did not let me down.
I envisioned streetcars clanging along rutted roads bustling with pedestrians: embittered men whose heads were covered with felt fedoras & tweed caps, anxious woman in ankle-length skirts concealing petticoats & other elaborate underthings, hungry kids in woolen knickers & gingham pinafores. I smelled coal-burning furnaces blackening the skies, piles of horse manure in the gutters, cold rivers ready to receive the baptized come spring. I heard pianos playing in parlors, tobacco-stained saliva hitting brass spittoons in taverns, preachers summoning sinners to salvation on downtown streetcorners, gospel choirs harmonizing in vaulted redbrick tabernacles, a gunshot.
And then I returned to the present, a rush of traffic & crammed consumer aisles at the Harris Teeter grocery store. At least my radio & my imagination still work.
Driving on a cool grey Sunday afternoon through tree-lined Richland, an old planned residential district on Nashville's southwest side near Elmington Park & West End Middle School, I was lucky enough to have my VW's radio tuned in to WRVU (91.1 FM), Vanderbilt University's fine community radio station. My soundtrack for that short excursion (from the carwash on Charlotte along undulating Bowling Avenue onto upscale Woodmont Boulevard unto mall-choked Hillsboro Pike) was provided by WRVU's "Spoonful of Bluegrass." The DJ was playing scratchy old recordings circa 1930 by Fiddlin' John Carson, the Skillet Lickers & other so-called hillbilly acts from a time before country music had acquired any respectability -- despite its widespread popularity.
I tried to imagine what that old weird America (that inspired Dylan & the Band's "Basement Tapes" in 1967-68) looked like, smelled like & sounded like. How did a winter Sabbath afternoon in Nashville go down in the Depression era? Back then, the woman who became my Grandma Crawford had to leave the farm in Arcadia, Wisconsin & go to work as a maid for a rich family in Whitefish Bay; Grandpa Crawford was glad to be employed at a CCC camp & therefore able to send money home to his widower Pa; Grandpa Mrazek fished for food & rode the rails. I cast my mind back to those hard, intense times before television kept people indoors getting fatter & lazier. Before most people had cars that isolate them from one another & inflate their egos to a dangerous size. I longed for a taste of life free of the techno-media-cocoon that threatens to smother us all. My imagination did not let me down.
I envisioned streetcars clanging along rutted roads bustling with pedestrians: embittered men whose heads were covered with felt fedoras & tweed caps, anxious woman in ankle-length skirts concealing petticoats & other elaborate underthings, hungry kids in woolen knickers & gingham pinafores. I smelled coal-burning furnaces blackening the skies, piles of horse manure in the gutters, cold rivers ready to receive the baptized come spring. I heard pianos playing in parlors, tobacco-stained saliva hitting brass spittoons in taverns, preachers summoning sinners to salvation on downtown streetcorners, gospel choirs harmonizing in vaulted redbrick tabernacles, a gunshot.
And then I returned to the present, a rush of traffic & crammed consumer aisles at the Harris Teeter grocery store. At least my radio & my imagination still work.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Where Have All the Weirdos Gone?
Bored by the ugly blandness of most contemporary mainstream American culture, I keep seeking signs of beautiful weirdness. God knows the universe itself is an odd phenomenon. So you think there'd be fewer dull people hanging around trying to suck you into their dreary talk. "Where have all the weirdos gone?" I wonder.
My mission with Muse of the Weird is primarily to share my weird discoveries, musical & otherwise, with the world - or, rather, the worldwide web. To those of you hip enough to have located & followed this web-log (a slightly more elegant neologism than its more widely used abbreviated form "blog"), I say thank you for joining my literary journey to the Weird Side of Life. Heeding Virginia Woolf's wise advice, I write only what I like to write. Life's too short to do otherwise if you're a real writer. I hope that you enjoy how I write it, hyperbole & all.
So what do I mean by "weird" anyway? Since Shakespeare wrote about three witchy "weird sisters" in that murderous Scottish tragedy Macbeth, the word has come to mean strange, unusual or eccentric, especially in an eerie or frightening way. Originally, the dictionaries tell me, "weird" connoted destiny. Its etymology traces the modern adjective back to the Old English word "wyrd," a noun meaning fate or luck (often bad). Over time, "weird" has drifted towards a less ominous denotation, albeit one that's no less loaded. By way of illustration, here's an example of weirdness, which I came across in Joan Baez's memoir "And a Voice to Sing With" (1987; 2008 edition).
While filming Bob Dylan's weird film "Renaldo & Clara" during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975-76, Joan once dressed up as Bob (complete with fake stubble) & improvised a scene at a hotel in which she confronts her male mirror-image about their breakup ten years earlier. "Why'd ya lie to me about Sara?" Joan-Bob boldly asks Bob-Bob. "What would our lives be like if we had married?" Sheepish & surprised, Bob says nothing.
Kudos to gutsy Joan Baez. It ain't easy to out-weird Bob Dylan. As the old falsetto-voiced dulcimer-strumming folk weirdo John Jacob Niles once said (about a concert latecomer who'd provoked him into halting his performance in order to embarrass the poor fan): "Attention follows motion, not sound."
My mission with Muse of the Weird is primarily to share my weird discoveries, musical & otherwise, with the world - or, rather, the worldwide web. To those of you hip enough to have located & followed this web-log (a slightly more elegant neologism than its more widely used abbreviated form "blog"), I say thank you for joining my literary journey to the Weird Side of Life. Heeding Virginia Woolf's wise advice, I write only what I like to write. Life's too short to do otherwise if you're a real writer. I hope that you enjoy how I write it, hyperbole & all.
So what do I mean by "weird" anyway? Since Shakespeare wrote about three witchy "weird sisters" in that murderous Scottish tragedy Macbeth, the word has come to mean strange, unusual or eccentric, especially in an eerie or frightening way. Originally, the dictionaries tell me, "weird" connoted destiny. Its etymology traces the modern adjective back to the Old English word "wyrd," a noun meaning fate or luck (often bad). Over time, "weird" has drifted towards a less ominous denotation, albeit one that's no less loaded. By way of illustration, here's an example of weirdness, which I came across in Joan Baez's memoir "And a Voice to Sing With" (1987; 2008 edition).
While filming Bob Dylan's weird film "Renaldo & Clara" during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975-76, Joan once dressed up as Bob (complete with fake stubble) & improvised a scene at a hotel in which she confronts her male mirror-image about their breakup ten years earlier. "Why'd ya lie to me about Sara?" Joan-Bob boldly asks Bob-Bob. "What would our lives be like if we had married?" Sheepish & surprised, Bob says nothing.
Kudos to gutsy Joan Baez. It ain't easy to out-weird Bob Dylan. As the old falsetto-voiced dulcimer-strumming folk weirdo John Jacob Niles once said (about a concert latecomer who'd provoked him into halting his performance in order to embarrass the poor fan): "Attention follows motion, not sound."
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Meeting a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer in Music City
My ex-biker buddy Gypsy from Racine (WI) & I were having lunch at Cafe Bosna at a suburban strip-mall in historic Hermitage when we struck up a conversation with a friendly couple at the next table. The guy turned out to be Ed King, guitarist with Lynyrd Skynyrd from 1972-75, a role that he reprised from 1987 to '95. His most lucrative claim to fame was as co-writer of "Sweet Home Alabama," which Kid Rock performed with Skynyrd at the ceremony celebrating the Jacksonville (FL) Southern rockers' induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Class of 2006).
Before that legendary stint with Ronnie Van Zant & the boys, King was a founding member of the L.A. psychedelic rock band The Strawberry Alarm Clock ("Incense & Peppermints"). While touring along with The Beach Boys in 1967-68, King said that Carl Wilson stopped by his hotel room & showed him the chords for "God Only Knows" (from brother Brian Wilson's masterpiece album Pet Sounds). Ed also told us that Ronnie Van Zant never wrote down the lyrics to Skynyrd songs before recording sessions. Man, was that good ol' boy a poet. To seal his rockstar legend, Van Zant even died in a Buddy Holly-esque way (plane crash in Mississippi, 1977).
Just goes to show you: you never know who you might bump into in Music City. Or where. Gypsy was astounded -- I've been telling him that he needs to get out more. Ed was kind enough to give us an autograph & shake his admirers' hands. The only cross word he had was when I mentioned Warren Zevon; Ed complained that the late, great L.A. raconteur & provocateur stole his "Alabama" riff on "Werewolves of London." Ed is now retired & living in Belle Meade, Tennessee. Former security manager (& crash survivor) Gene Odom had a heap of praise for Ed in his book about Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ed is quoted as saying that manager/producer Al Kooper made the band's commercial success possible. Props to Al.
Before that legendary stint with Ronnie Van Zant & the boys, King was a founding member of the L.A. psychedelic rock band The Strawberry Alarm Clock ("Incense & Peppermints"). While touring along with The Beach Boys in 1967-68, King said that Carl Wilson stopped by his hotel room & showed him the chords for "God Only Knows" (from brother Brian Wilson's masterpiece album Pet Sounds). Ed also told us that Ronnie Van Zant never wrote down the lyrics to Skynyrd songs before recording sessions. Man, was that good ol' boy a poet. To seal his rockstar legend, Van Zant even died in a Buddy Holly-esque way (plane crash in Mississippi, 1977).
Just goes to show you: you never know who you might bump into in Music City. Or where. Gypsy was astounded -- I've been telling him that he needs to get out more. Ed was kind enough to give us an autograph & shake his admirers' hands. The only cross word he had was when I mentioned Warren Zevon; Ed complained that the late, great L.A. raconteur & provocateur stole his "Alabama" riff on "Werewolves of London." Ed is now retired & living in Belle Meade, Tennessee. Former security manager (& crash survivor) Gene Odom had a heap of praise for Ed in his book about Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ed is quoted as saying that manager/producer Al Kooper made the band's commercial success possible. Props to Al.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Wilco producer weighs in on the analog vs. digital debate
I was sitting on a comfortable couch at Bayou Studio today, attending Bill Tate's 24-track-tape Americana-song demo session & perusing the latest geeky issue of Tape Op, "The Creative Music Recording Magazine" (Sacramento, CA). I came across a barely legible (why all the small fonts nowadays, damn it!) interview with Jim Scott, producer of such diverse artists as John Fogerty, Johnny Cash, Whiskeytown, Wilco, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Robbie Robertson, Natalie Merchant, the Dixie Chicks, Tom Jones & Santana. He is also the owner/operater of PLYRZ Studios, appropriately located across the street from Magic Mountain, an amusement park in Valencia, CA -- not, of course, the site of Thomas Mann's famous 1924 Swiss sanitorium novel.
Anyway, Mr. Scott had something interesting to add to the revitalized analog vs. digital debate: namely, that analog tape can be combined with digital technology (e.g. Pro Tools) to good sonic effect. Guess who likes to do so? Read on.
"Q: Do you mix to tape much?
Scott: If I have to do any analog mixing I'll rent a tape recorder. Most artists don't. They can't afford it. The only ones lately that have used tape have been WILCO, because they really care and they can hear the difference between tape and Pro Tools. You can't get away with anything around Jeff [Tweedy}. . . On ['Wilco (The Album)'] we tracked everything to tape and then transferred it to Pro Tools. Jeff likes the sound of tape, but he's not anti-anything . . . Pro Tools and tape-transfer just had a little flick that was good."
I knew there was a reason - other than the fantastic songs - why I love Wilco so much. Jeff Tweedy is a retro-perfectionist after my own heart. As analog-champion Jack White says: "Your record player isn't broken." For something truly weird, dig the new cover of Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good" by 72-year-old former rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson, produced by Jack White for Nashville's Third Man Records (see www.thirdmanrecords.com).
Anyway, Mr. Scott had something interesting to add to the revitalized analog vs. digital debate: namely, that analog tape can be combined with digital technology (e.g. Pro Tools) to good sonic effect. Guess who likes to do so? Read on.
"Q: Do you mix to tape much?
Scott: If I have to do any analog mixing I'll rent a tape recorder. Most artists don't. They can't afford it. The only ones lately that have used tape have been WILCO, because they really care and they can hear the difference between tape and Pro Tools. You can't get away with anything around Jeff [Tweedy}. . . On ['Wilco (The Album)'] we tracked everything to tape and then transferred it to Pro Tools. Jeff likes the sound of tape, but he's not anti-anything . . . Pro Tools and tape-transfer just had a little flick that was good."
I knew there was a reason - other than the fantastic songs - why I love Wilco so much. Jeff Tweedy is a retro-perfectionist after my own heart. As analog-champion Jack White says: "Your record player isn't broken." For something truly weird, dig the new cover of Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good" by 72-year-old former rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson, produced by Jack White for Nashville's Third Man Records (see www.thirdmanrecords.com).
Monday, January 18, 2010
John Lydon (alias Johnny Rotten) describes his final epiphany
I was at Borders on this warm Martin Luther King Day in Music City, perusing the 20th anniversary issue (Dec. 2009) of Clash, a hip British music & fashion magazine, when I read something that made me laugh. It came at the end of an interview with punk pioneer turned butter pitchman John Lydon (Public Image Ltd., The Sex Pistols). That old sneering pseudo-anarchist rock 'n' roll rogue now lives in posh sunny Malibu (California), where he seems to have caught the dreaded American self-improvement virus. At least he's kept his sarcastic English wit about it. This is what he said:
Lydon: "I'm trying to improve myself all the time."
Q: Do you think you'll ever get there? Will you ever be satisfied with who you are?
Lydon: "It'll probably be the day I get run over by a bus. I'll have an hour and a half of contentment . . . In a weird way that would be a good life. Anything. Even ten seconds of going 'Ah! There it is! The ultimate wisdom!'"
Q: The final epiphany and then SPLAT.
Lydon: "Yeah. But it'd be a shame, though, if you got it wrong."
Indeed, man. Nothing worse than a misleading epiphany.
Flashback record tip of the day -- L.A. freak-folk hipster Devendra Banhart (Vetiver & solo) claims in a recent Rolling Stone feature that this album saved his life when he was homelessly down & out in Paris: Ms. Veshti Bunyan's 1967 psychedelic Brit folk album "Just Another Diamond Day." Hard to find offline so far.
Lydon: "I'm trying to improve myself all the time."
Q: Do you think you'll ever get there? Will you ever be satisfied with who you are?
Lydon: "It'll probably be the day I get run over by a bus. I'll have an hour and a half of contentment . . . In a weird way that would be a good life. Anything. Even ten seconds of going 'Ah! There it is! The ultimate wisdom!'"
Q: The final epiphany and then SPLAT.
Lydon: "Yeah. But it'd be a shame, though, if you got it wrong."
Indeed, man. Nothing worse than a misleading epiphany.
Flashback record tip of the day -- L.A. freak-folk hipster Devendra Banhart (Vetiver & solo) claims in a recent Rolling Stone feature that this album saved his life when he was homelessly down & out in Paris: Ms. Veshti Bunyan's 1967 psychedelic Brit folk album "Just Another Diamond Day." Hard to find offline so far.
Steve Earle makes it to age 55
Stephen Fain Earle turned 55 on January 17, 2010. Despite his past addictions & fascination with firearms, Steve managed to outlive his songwriting hero & hellraising mentor, fellow Texan Townes Van Zandt (who died at age 52 on New Year's Day 1997).
Steve covers several of Van Zandt's transcendental songs on the critically acclaimed 2009 tribute album "Townes." His son Justin Townes Earle is now a noteworthy musician in his own right. Steve's 6th wife (in 7 marriages - he has one double-ex), singer-songwriter Allison Moorer, is expecting their first child (together) quite soon.
Born in Virginia & raised in Texas, Steve Earle came of age in Nashville, but he never fit in with the conservative Music City establishment. In addition to his many great albums since 1986 ("Guitar Town"), Steve has worked as a record producer, a writer (of fiction, poetry & a play), a Sirius Satellite Radio DJ (the "Hardcore Troubadour" show on the Outlaw Country Channel) & even an actor, appearing in several episodes of HBO's "The Wire" as a recovering addict named Walon. Steve is also a high-profile activist on anti-war & death-penalty issues. He kicked heroin & crack-cocaine while incarcerated in the mid-1990s, following a 2-year period that he described with typical dry wit as his "vacation in the ghetto." Steve frequently collaborates with other musicians, including Patti Smith (he plays banjo on her cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"), folk legend & fellow leftist Joan Baez, and the bluegrass master Del McCoury.
Here are a few more fun facts about Steve Earle, a/k/a the Hardcore Troubadour:
* He has been nominated for 14 Grammy awards, in country & folk categories (it's high time he won one too, I reckon);
* He was given the 2004 "Spirit of Americana" Free Speech Award by the Americana Music Association & the First Amendment Center.
* He's the subject of the documentary film "Just an American Boy," directed by Amos Poe, & the fine biography "Steve Earle: Fearless Heart, Outlaw Poet" by David McGee.
I encourage those of you who don't know his earthy yet sensitive music to check out "Copperhead Road" (1988) & "Transcendental Blues" (2000). Happy Birthday, Steve! I raised a toast to you, your art & your political courage Sunday night in Nashville.
Steve covers several of Van Zandt's transcendental songs on the critically acclaimed 2009 tribute album "Townes." His son Justin Townes Earle is now a noteworthy musician in his own right. Steve's 6th wife (in 7 marriages - he has one double-ex), singer-songwriter Allison Moorer, is expecting their first child (together) quite soon.
Born in Virginia & raised in Texas, Steve Earle came of age in Nashville, but he never fit in with the conservative Music City establishment. In addition to his many great albums since 1986 ("Guitar Town"), Steve has worked as a record producer, a writer (of fiction, poetry & a play), a Sirius Satellite Radio DJ (the "Hardcore Troubadour" show on the Outlaw Country Channel) & even an actor, appearing in several episodes of HBO's "The Wire" as a recovering addict named Walon. Steve is also a high-profile activist on anti-war & death-penalty issues. He kicked heroin & crack-cocaine while incarcerated in the mid-1990s, following a 2-year period that he described with typical dry wit as his "vacation in the ghetto." Steve frequently collaborates with other musicians, including Patti Smith (he plays banjo on her cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"), folk legend & fellow leftist Joan Baez, and the bluegrass master Del McCoury.
Here are a few more fun facts about Steve Earle, a/k/a the Hardcore Troubadour:
* He has been nominated for 14 Grammy awards, in country & folk categories (it's high time he won one too, I reckon);
* He was given the 2004 "Spirit of Americana" Free Speech Award by the Americana Music Association & the First Amendment Center.
* He's the subject of the documentary film "Just an American Boy," directed by Amos Poe, & the fine biography "Steve Earle: Fearless Heart, Outlaw Poet" by David McGee.
I encourage those of you who don't know his earthy yet sensitive music to check out "Copperhead Road" (1988) & "Transcendental Blues" (2000). Happy Birthday, Steve! I raised a toast to you, your art & your political courage Sunday night in Nashville.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Weird, wonderful guitarist charms Frist Museum audience
I heard a truly weird set Friday by experimental guitarist/composer John Danley on Friday evening in the glorious Grand Lobby of the Frist Museum, the re-purposed Art Deco building on Broadway, formerly Nashville's main post office. As I said to him during the break, "I don't know what's more impressive, your playin' or your talkin'. Either way, it's an irresistible combination." Here's why that artist (a term I don't use loosely) charmed me so.
Danley played entrancing instrumental pieces with percussive flair, picking notes & striking chords enhanced by occasional taps on his acoustic guitar. Sometimes he used only his hands & other times he employed a tool that he'd concocted out of a 3-inch housepainter's brush, a fingernail-file, a raised felt pad, Velcro & black electrical tape. The titles ("Logarithms," "Obscurantis," "Coriander," "Free Association," etc.) fit his idiosyncratic New Age style perfectly. It was like entering the mind of some idiot savant, a quirky genius uncannily attuned to the strange harmonies & melodies of the universe. All while playing a 6-string guitar with the down-to-earth skill of a master folk musician. The atmospheric sounds echoed off the granite & glass walls, gleaming floor & high-ceiling like urgent dispatches from the long-lost Telstar satellite.
Danley added to the sonic fun by treating his small audience to the weirdest, hippest & funniest stream-of-consciousness stage patter I've ever heard from a serious musician. One monologue focused on memories of his Irish Catholic grandfather, a man who moved from Kansas to Montgomery (Alabama) & alarmed his neighbors by lighting brushfires in the backyard, an individualist who drove a Ford "ANGER" (after the initial 'R' fell off its tailgate). Danley gently detoured our attention into discussions of Nashville trolleys & the DSM mental-illness diagnostic manual (where he hoped to find his obsession with Velcro as an official disease one day), existentialism, tossing out such terms as "Kottke-esque" (a dual homage to guitarist Leo Kottke & writer Franz Kafka) along the way. Citing a riff he'd stolen from Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, Danley added with deadpan understatement that "We don't need no education" was the state motto of Mississippi, Alabama & Louisiana. Ya gotta love a Southerner who tells it like it is. Maybe it helps to have some Russian Jewish ancestry, as the bemused Danley said he does.
Discussing his affinity for physics, Danley quipped: "If we didn't have quarks and gluons, we just wouldn't have a good weekend." Thanks in part to that dignified -- albeit eccentric -- musician, I had a very good weekend indeed. I tipped him without hesitation but, alas, did not have enough cash to buy a CD. (When I mentioned that I was a music blogger, he offered me one gratis, but I politely declined. Even artists have to buy groceries now & then.) Check out his website (www.johndanley.com) & hear why the weekly Nashville Scene selected him as "Best Guitar Hero" of 2002. He is also a regular contributor to a pair of excellent radio programs: NPR's All Things Considered & Public Radio International's To the Best of Our Knowledge, produced by Wisconsin Public Radio (shout out from a Badger in Dixie).
Danley played entrancing instrumental pieces with percussive flair, picking notes & striking chords enhanced by occasional taps on his acoustic guitar. Sometimes he used only his hands & other times he employed a tool that he'd concocted out of a 3-inch housepainter's brush, a fingernail-file, a raised felt pad, Velcro & black electrical tape. The titles ("Logarithms," "Obscurantis," "Coriander," "Free Association," etc.) fit his idiosyncratic New Age style perfectly. It was like entering the mind of some idiot savant, a quirky genius uncannily attuned to the strange harmonies & melodies of the universe. All while playing a 6-string guitar with the down-to-earth skill of a master folk musician. The atmospheric sounds echoed off the granite & glass walls, gleaming floor & high-ceiling like urgent dispatches from the long-lost Telstar satellite.
Danley added to the sonic fun by treating his small audience to the weirdest, hippest & funniest stream-of-consciousness stage patter I've ever heard from a serious musician. One monologue focused on memories of his Irish Catholic grandfather, a man who moved from Kansas to Montgomery (Alabama) & alarmed his neighbors by lighting brushfires in the backyard, an individualist who drove a Ford "ANGER" (after the initial 'R' fell off its tailgate). Danley gently detoured our attention into discussions of Nashville trolleys & the DSM mental-illness diagnostic manual (where he hoped to find his obsession with Velcro as an official disease one day), existentialism, tossing out such terms as "Kottke-esque" (a dual homage to guitarist Leo Kottke & writer Franz Kafka) along the way. Citing a riff he'd stolen from Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, Danley added with deadpan understatement that "We don't need no education" was the state motto of Mississippi, Alabama & Louisiana. Ya gotta love a Southerner who tells it like it is. Maybe it helps to have some Russian Jewish ancestry, as the bemused Danley said he does.
Discussing his affinity for physics, Danley quipped: "If we didn't have quarks and gluons, we just wouldn't have a good weekend." Thanks in part to that dignified -- albeit eccentric -- musician, I had a very good weekend indeed. I tipped him without hesitation but, alas, did not have enough cash to buy a CD. (When I mentioned that I was a music blogger, he offered me one gratis, but I politely declined. Even artists have to buy groceries now & then.) Check out his website (www.johndanley.com) & hear why the weekly Nashville Scene selected him as "Best Guitar Hero" of 2002. He is also a regular contributor to a pair of excellent radio programs: NPR's All Things Considered & Public Radio International's To the Best of Our Knowledge, produced by Wisconsin Public Radio (shout out from a Badger in Dixie).
Searching for Townes Van Zandt's shack in Fernvale, Tennessee
Today songwriter & fellow roots-music enthusiast Bill Tate & I drove out to Franklin (Tenn.), site of a bloody Civil War battle on Nov. 30, 1864, an inspiration for Townes Van Zandt's song "Flyin' Shoes." We were searching for the dilapidated shack in Fernvale where Townes lived for a while in the 1980s, subsisting mostly on wild critters & booze. We did our detective work armed only with scant clues gleaned from John Kruth's recent biography of Townes, "To Live's to Fly." We never did find that damn shack, but we sure met some nice country folks along the way.
We met a kind lady (originally from Florida) at the Visitor Information Center, located within spittin' distance of the obligatory Civil War soldier atop an obelisk on the town square. She made several calls on our behalf, but couldn't offer any specific location advice. Following a tip from a guy at Puckett's Grocery, a fine restaurant & music venue on Fourth Street in gentrified Franklin, we headed west on Hwy. 96 toward Fairview, where Townes used to buy liquor when he wasn't broke or tied to a tree to dry out. After turning onto Old Harding Road, we entered a weird tree-blessed valley where lamas, cows & goats graze the pastures, where farms have evocative names like Glimpse of Glory & Canandaguia.
At a fork in the road we stopped at a tiny old Shell gas station converted into a home. Steve Turner answered the door, backed up by his friendly terrier mutt Peanut. Steve couldn't direct us to the shack, but he said that he'd played drums on a record that Emmylou Harris did using a tape of Townes singing. (She also once had a hit covering Townes' song "If I Needed You," a duet with Don Williams.) We followed another asphalt road across the creek and tried our luck at a feed store on Hwy. 100. While his son chased a small black cat, a good ole boy with a thick Tennessee accent referred us to Steve Skelton, supposedly a former neighbor of Townes. But that Steve was also unable to provide directions; I'm not sure he even knew who Townes Van Zandt was. The feed-store gent enthused about Steve Earle, who once lived out there for a spell & was inspired by the hilly terrain to write his great song "Copperhead Road."
At least Bill & I had a pleasant drive in the country on a grey Saturday afternoon. En route back to Nashville, we stopped for a tasty barbecue dinner & a pint of Yazoo's Beer Named Sue stout at Puckett's. I just wish I had had room for the blueberry cobbler that our waiter raved about. Check out Townes Van Zandt's classic "Live at the Old Quarter" album or Willie & Waylon's cover of his desperado tune "Pancho and Lefty." Townes was an artist who wrote enduring songs because he had too much poetry to keep it all inside him, a rare gift for musical self-expression.
We met a kind lady (originally from Florida) at the Visitor Information Center, located within spittin' distance of the obligatory Civil War soldier atop an obelisk on the town square. She made several calls on our behalf, but couldn't offer any specific location advice. Following a tip from a guy at Puckett's Grocery, a fine restaurant & music venue on Fourth Street in gentrified Franklin, we headed west on Hwy. 96 toward Fairview, where Townes used to buy liquor when he wasn't broke or tied to a tree to dry out. After turning onto Old Harding Road, we entered a weird tree-blessed valley where lamas, cows & goats graze the pastures, where farms have evocative names like Glimpse of Glory & Canandaguia.
At a fork in the road we stopped at a tiny old Shell gas station converted into a home. Steve Turner answered the door, backed up by his friendly terrier mutt Peanut. Steve couldn't direct us to the shack, but he said that he'd played drums on a record that Emmylou Harris did using a tape of Townes singing. (She also once had a hit covering Townes' song "If I Needed You," a duet with Don Williams.) We followed another asphalt road across the creek and tried our luck at a feed store on Hwy. 100. While his son chased a small black cat, a good ole boy with a thick Tennessee accent referred us to Steve Skelton, supposedly a former neighbor of Townes. But that Steve was also unable to provide directions; I'm not sure he even knew who Townes Van Zandt was. The feed-store gent enthused about Steve Earle, who once lived out there for a spell & was inspired by the hilly terrain to write his great song "Copperhead Road."
At least Bill & I had a pleasant drive in the country on a grey Saturday afternoon. En route back to Nashville, we stopped for a tasty barbecue dinner & a pint of Yazoo's Beer Named Sue stout at Puckett's. I just wish I had had room for the blueberry cobbler that our waiter raved about. Check out Townes Van Zandt's classic "Live at the Old Quarter" album or Willie & Waylon's cover of his desperado tune "Pancho and Lefty." Townes was an artist who wrote enduring songs because he had too much poetry to keep it all inside him, a rare gift for musical self-expression.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The Infamous Stringdusters pack The Station Inn
On Wednesday, January 13th The Infamous Stringdusters charmed a nearly full house at The Station Inn, warming us up on a chilly night in Nashville. That six-pack of young bluegrass-inspired acoustic harmonizers even brought their own microbeer brand from Virginia (see my mini-review below). Their performance was intoxicating in a sober kind of way---a bit too clean, controlled & contrived for my taste. But then I'm a sucker for Appalachian murder ballads & honky-tonk grit. Anyway, I went as a proxy for my German pal Raphael, a TIS superfan busy working on an Arizona cattle ranch.
The Infamous Stringdusters lineup is a non-Dixie geographical smorgasbord: the memebers hail from Idaho, Colorado, Wisconsin, upstate New York & Long Island. From stage left to right, the players strum, pick or slap the following instruments: banjo, dobro, fiddle, double bass, mandolin & 6-string guitar. They play their acoustic instruments well & with enthusiasm. Their repertoire consists of originals in a bluegrass boogie style, with lead vocals embellished by 2- & 3-part harmonies. The Stringdusters' most acclaimed song so far is the title track to their 2007 debut album "Fork in the Road." They swap solos with jam-band gusto--I imagine that both Bill Monroe & Jerry Garcia would dig these guys.
The Stringdusters write and perform with levity, as in the whimsical tune "You Can't Handle the Truth," but they mix in some moments of gravity. For example, the guys dedicated a bluesy compassionate number to the people of Haiti, ravaged by an earthquake this week. Instrumentals & covers are thrown in for variety's sake. They have an admirable rapport with the audience--bassist/singer Travis Book even thanked a lady near the stage for her tropical perfume. His big grin & blissed-out guffaws, however, wore thin on me.
The second set featured a lovefest with guest singer/songwriter/guitarist Sarah Siskind, who's had a song covered by the great Alison Krauss & whose boyfriend is in the band. She told their meet-cute story about an open invitation to jam at a festival in the Rockies, but her songs sounded mediocre to my jaded ears. I couldn't help but think that the obscure part-timers in Folkswagon (from Racine, WI) put on a better, more moving show than these full-time professionals.
The Infamous Stringdusters are doing a weekly January residency at the venerable venue on Twelfth Avenue South, where the audience was overwhelmingly comprised of 20-somethings apparently turned off by the pop pablum that still dominates the mainstream media. In between a heavy tour schedule roaming the byways of America by van, the band released "The Infamous Stringdusters" album on Sugar Hill Records in 2008. Check them out if you like fine string music with pleasant harmonies.
Insider Info: Prompted perhaps by my flattery, Stringduster Andy Falco (guitar/vox) told me that their special guest next week (Jan. 20) will be the acclaimed country star Dierks Bentley. But the boys are trying to keep it on the down-low for fear of a mob scene at The Station Inn, so don't tell anyone else. The club only seats 200 people & the bar is tiny.
Beer Review: I tried the Starr Hill (Virginia micro-brewery) Jomo Lager that the Stringdusters supplied for this gig, but I found it a bit bland compared to the piquant local Yazoo Dos Perros ale. At least the lager was a buck cheaper than the ale ($3 vs. $4 per bottle). I got drunk & lost a leather driving glove--my second this month! What does that Freudian slip suggest?
The Infamous Stringdusters lineup is a non-Dixie geographical smorgasbord: the memebers hail from Idaho, Colorado, Wisconsin, upstate New York & Long Island. From stage left to right, the players strum, pick or slap the following instruments: banjo, dobro, fiddle, double bass, mandolin & 6-string guitar. They play their acoustic instruments well & with enthusiasm. Their repertoire consists of originals in a bluegrass boogie style, with lead vocals embellished by 2- & 3-part harmonies. The Stringdusters' most acclaimed song so far is the title track to their 2007 debut album "Fork in the Road." They swap solos with jam-band gusto--I imagine that both Bill Monroe & Jerry Garcia would dig these guys.
The Stringdusters write and perform with levity, as in the whimsical tune "You Can't Handle the Truth," but they mix in some moments of gravity. For example, the guys dedicated a bluesy compassionate number to the people of Haiti, ravaged by an earthquake this week. Instrumentals & covers are thrown in for variety's sake. They have an admirable rapport with the audience--bassist/singer Travis Book even thanked a lady near the stage for her tropical perfume. His big grin & blissed-out guffaws, however, wore thin on me.
The second set featured a lovefest with guest singer/songwriter/guitarist Sarah Siskind, who's had a song covered by the great Alison Krauss & whose boyfriend is in the band. She told their meet-cute story about an open invitation to jam at a festival in the Rockies, but her songs sounded mediocre to my jaded ears. I couldn't help but think that the obscure part-timers in Folkswagon (from Racine, WI) put on a better, more moving show than these full-time professionals.
The Infamous Stringdusters are doing a weekly January residency at the venerable venue on Twelfth Avenue South, where the audience was overwhelmingly comprised of 20-somethings apparently turned off by the pop pablum that still dominates the mainstream media. In between a heavy tour schedule roaming the byways of America by van, the band released "The Infamous Stringdusters" album on Sugar Hill Records in 2008. Check them out if you like fine string music with pleasant harmonies.
Insider Info: Prompted perhaps by my flattery, Stringduster Andy Falco (guitar/vox) told me that their special guest next week (Jan. 20) will be the acclaimed country star Dierks Bentley. But the boys are trying to keep it on the down-low for fear of a mob scene at The Station Inn, so don't tell anyone else. The club only seats 200 people & the bar is tiny.
Beer Review: I tried the Starr Hill (Virginia micro-brewery) Jomo Lager that the Stringdusters supplied for this gig, but I found it a bit bland compared to the piquant local Yazoo Dos Perros ale. At least the lager was a buck cheaper than the ale ($3 vs. $4 per bottle). I got drunk & lost a leather driving glove--my second this month! What does that Freudian slip suggest?
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Giving Two Late, Great Producer /Arrangers Their Due
Like most music critics & enthusiasts, I give so much attention to artists & songwriters that I sometimes neglect to properly credit other key players in the recording process. A pair of great producer/arrangers died last week, both at age 81. It's high time to spread some Muse of the Weird love around.
(1) Memphis-based Willie Mitchell produced many instrumental hits in the 1960's as well as the Rev. Al Green's irresistibly soulful romantic ballads ("Let's Stay Together" etc.) in the early 1970s. Owner of Royal Studio & the Hi Records label, Mitchell kept busy late in life producing newcomers like John Mayer as well as old-timers such as Solomon Burke & Buddy Guy. He crafted the string & horn arrangements for Rod Stewart's new R&B covers album. Mitchell was awarded a special Grammy in 2008 & has a Memphis boulevard named after him.
Born & raised in Mississippi, Mitchell was a trumpeter before evolving into an inspired & inspiring entrepreneur/producer. Willie Mitchell & his band frequently provided New Year's Eve entertainment for Elvis Presley at Graceland (now a shrine to the King of Rock 'n' Roll). Mitchell's survivor's include a son & 2 daughters. On NPR's "Fresh Air" last year Al Green discussed making his first records (rather bizarrely, a cover of The Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand") & how grateful he was to have met Willie Mitchell, who coaxed Green into letting his powerful originality emerge.
(2) Nashville-based arranger Sheldon Kurland "helped broaden the appeal of country music," writes Peter Cooper in his Tennessean obituary. A native of Brooklyn & a graduate of the Juilliard School in NY, Kurland came to Music City in 1964 to teach at Peabody College. He eventually played on thousands of Music Row sessions as a violinist/arranger in the heyday of the Nashville "countrypolitan" Sound, pioneered by producers Chet Atkins & Owen Bradley, which brought crossover success to many country artists through the 1970s & beyond.
Among his notable accomplishments, Kurland:
* arranged the strings on Waylon Jennings' beloved "Dreaming My Dreams" album;
* played regularly on ABC-TV's The Johnny Cash Show;
* toured with Neil Young & contributed to Young's classic "Comes a Time" album;
* enhanced Bob Dylan's "Self-Portrait" record;
* worked with such diverse luminaries as Willie Nelson, Jimmy Buffett, Hank Snow, Bobby Bare, Kris Kristofferson, Reba McEntire, Crystal Gayle & Dolly Parton.
Legendary producer 'Cowboy' Jack Clement said that Kurland "made Nashville string players a credible thing" at a time when Music City was still regarded as a hick backwater by many in the NY/LA music establishment. Kurland's son Peter (director of the Darkhorse Theater) & daughter Amy (ex-owner/operator of the famous Bluebird Cafe) also contributed to the cultural scene in Nashville; survivors include another daughter, Wendy.
(1) Memphis-based Willie Mitchell produced many instrumental hits in the 1960's as well as the Rev. Al Green's irresistibly soulful romantic ballads ("Let's Stay Together" etc.) in the early 1970s. Owner of Royal Studio & the Hi Records label, Mitchell kept busy late in life producing newcomers like John Mayer as well as old-timers such as Solomon Burke & Buddy Guy. He crafted the string & horn arrangements for Rod Stewart's new R&B covers album. Mitchell was awarded a special Grammy in 2008 & has a Memphis boulevard named after him.
Born & raised in Mississippi, Mitchell was a trumpeter before evolving into an inspired & inspiring entrepreneur/producer. Willie Mitchell & his band frequently provided New Year's Eve entertainment for Elvis Presley at Graceland (now a shrine to the King of Rock 'n' Roll). Mitchell's survivor's include a son & 2 daughters. On NPR's "Fresh Air" last year Al Green discussed making his first records (rather bizarrely, a cover of The Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand") & how grateful he was to have met Willie Mitchell, who coaxed Green into letting his powerful originality emerge.
(2) Nashville-based arranger Sheldon Kurland "helped broaden the appeal of country music," writes Peter Cooper in his Tennessean obituary. A native of Brooklyn & a graduate of the Juilliard School in NY, Kurland came to Music City in 1964 to teach at Peabody College. He eventually played on thousands of Music Row sessions as a violinist/arranger in the heyday of the Nashville "countrypolitan" Sound, pioneered by producers Chet Atkins & Owen Bradley, which brought crossover success to many country artists through the 1970s & beyond.
Among his notable accomplishments, Kurland:
* arranged the strings on Waylon Jennings' beloved "Dreaming My Dreams" album;
* played regularly on ABC-TV's The Johnny Cash Show;
* toured with Neil Young & contributed to Young's classic "Comes a Time" album;
* enhanced Bob Dylan's "Self-Portrait" record;
* worked with such diverse luminaries as Willie Nelson, Jimmy Buffett, Hank Snow, Bobby Bare, Kris Kristofferson, Reba McEntire, Crystal Gayle & Dolly Parton.
Legendary producer 'Cowboy' Jack Clement said that Kurland "made Nashville string players a credible thing" at a time when Music City was still regarded as a hick backwater by many in the NY/LA music establishment. Kurland's son Peter (director of the Darkhorse Theater) & daughter Amy (ex-owner/operator of the famous Bluebird Cafe) also contributed to the cultural scene in Nashville; survivors include another daughter, Wendy.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Steve & Justin Townes Earle, critical darlings
Will Hermes, one of the critics polled by Nashville Scene (NS), a local weekly, had these kind & insightful things to say in NS's 10th Annual Country Music Critics Poll (see the Jan. 7th issue at www.nashvillescene.com) about two of my favorite Americana/country musicians:
"I loved the father/son symmetry of the Steve Earle/Justin Townes Earle records, which both spoke to tradition, albeit in different ways. Pops bowed to his own creative father on "Townes," with covers that played fast and loose stylistically (see Tom Morello's weirdly appropriate hip-hop noise guitar on "Lungs"); the kid played originals looking back to a still-earlier era while also covering The Replacements. These guys understand tradition is something to be both cherished and run up against." - Will Hermes, whose music journalism/criticism appears in the NY Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly & The Village Voice as well as on National Public Radio.
Overall, Steve Earle finished 16th with "Townes" in the NS critics poll's list of the best country albums of 2009, while Justin Townes Earle's "Midnight at the Movies" got the #8 spot. JTE was also voted the #8 songwriter, ahead of Kris Kristofferson & Guy Clark, but behind Buddy & Julie Miller & even Taylor Swift. The talented Avett Brothers took 15th with their fine record "I and Love and You." Number one went to Miranda Lambert's "Revolution." Thankfully, the Americana sub-genre is embraced by Nashville Scene's editors as being "country," rather than relegating its artists to the margins - as some narrow-minded industry leaders seem to prefer.
Sadly, Neko Case didn't make the cut in either the album, the singles or the female vocalist categories. Apparently the 77 critics who participated in NS's poll think that Ms. Case's brilliant "Middle Cyclone" strayed too far from Americana/alt-country land into pop/rock territory. But at least they showed some wider awareness by choosing Elvis Costello's "Secret, Profane & Sugarcane" as the #11 country album of 2009. Maybe that's Elvis' reward for his many years of championing New Orleans roots music & the classic songs of George Jones & his traditional country ilk. Thankfully, such quirky & often neglected artists as Lyle Lovett & Loudon Wainwright III got nods in the NS poll as well.
NOTE: I'll give you a report on Justin Townes Earle's Jan. 27th show at Nashville's hip Mercy Lounge at Cannery Row as soon as I can.
"I loved the father/son symmetry of the Steve Earle/Justin Townes Earle records, which both spoke to tradition, albeit in different ways. Pops bowed to his own creative father on "Townes," with covers that played fast and loose stylistically (see Tom Morello's weirdly appropriate hip-hop noise guitar on "Lungs"); the kid played originals looking back to a still-earlier era while also covering The Replacements. These guys understand tradition is something to be both cherished and run up against." - Will Hermes, whose music journalism/criticism appears in the NY Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly & The Village Voice as well as on National Public Radio.
Overall, Steve Earle finished 16th with "Townes" in the NS critics poll's list of the best country albums of 2009, while Justin Townes Earle's "Midnight at the Movies" got the #8 spot. JTE was also voted the #8 songwriter, ahead of Kris Kristofferson & Guy Clark, but behind Buddy & Julie Miller & even Taylor Swift. The talented Avett Brothers took 15th with their fine record "I and Love and You." Number one went to Miranda Lambert's "Revolution." Thankfully, the Americana sub-genre is embraced by Nashville Scene's editors as being "country," rather than relegating its artists to the margins - as some narrow-minded industry leaders seem to prefer.
Sadly, Neko Case didn't make the cut in either the album, the singles or the female vocalist categories. Apparently the 77 critics who participated in NS's poll think that Ms. Case's brilliant "Middle Cyclone" strayed too far from Americana/alt-country land into pop/rock territory. But at least they showed some wider awareness by choosing Elvis Costello's "Secret, Profane & Sugarcane" as the #11 country album of 2009. Maybe that's Elvis' reward for his many years of championing New Orleans roots music & the classic songs of George Jones & his traditional country ilk. Thankfully, such quirky & often neglected artists as Lyle Lovett & Loudon Wainwright III got nods in the NS poll as well.
NOTE: I'll give you a report on Justin Townes Earle's Jan. 27th show at Nashville's hip Mercy Lounge at Cannery Row as soon as I can.
Joan Baez , Birthday Gal: "Dixie," Dylan & The Band
Sensational soprano singer/songwriter & guitarist Joan Baez turned 69 on January 9th. She's still a beauty as well as an inspiring social & political activist. The first big - and youngest - star of the late-Fifties folk revival, Baez had just one pop-radio hit (a Billboard chart #3 in 1971) with Canadian-bred Robbie Robertson's Civil War-themed ballad "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."
Baez's cover version might not have as great an arrangement as The Band's original 1969 recording, which features a creaky rustic lead vocal by Levon Helm, but it stills give me chills. Robertson was inspired to write that brilliant, poignant song after hearing several people in Dixieland claim that 'the South will rise again.' "There's a pain here, there is a sadness here. In Americana land, it's a kind of a beautiful sadness," Robertson has said about his timeless "Dixie Down."
By the way, Baez does a devastating impression of her ex-boyfriend Bob Dylan (see Scorcese's Dylan documentary "No Direction Home"), with whom she shared many stages from 1963 (Newport Folk Festival & the historic March on Washington) to 1975-76 (the Rolling Thunder Revue tour). Maybe it's her revenge for Dylan's wisecrack that "folk music is for fat people."
Baez's cover version might not have as great an arrangement as The Band's original 1969 recording, which features a creaky rustic lead vocal by Levon Helm, but it stills give me chills. Robertson was inspired to write that brilliant, poignant song after hearing several people in Dixieland claim that 'the South will rise again.' "There's a pain here, there is a sadness here. In Americana land, it's a kind of a beautiful sadness," Robertson has said about his timeless "Dixie Down."
By the way, Baez does a devastating impression of her ex-boyfriend Bob Dylan (see Scorcese's Dylan documentary "No Direction Home"), with whom she shared many stages from 1963 (Newport Folk Festival & the historic March on Washington) to 1975-76 (the Rolling Thunder Revue tour). Maybe it's her revenge for Dylan's wisecrack that "folk music is for fat people."
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Historical Weirdness at The Hermitage - a Battle Anniversary
This is the kind of town where you might spot an odd pair of bumper stickers on the same Chevy sedan, as I did last week in east Nashville. One said "Trust Jesus" & the other read "I Don't Suffer from Insanity, I Enjoy Every Minute of It." So, in anticipation of some historical weirdness, I drove out Lebanon Pike on a frigid Friday afternoon in order to take advantage of a free-admission offer by The Hermitage, former plantation home of the semi-democratic genocidal slaveholder General & later President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845). [See a $20 American banknote for a heroic portrait of the man nicknamed "Old Hickory".]
The occasion for this act of public generosity by the caretakers of that national historic landmark was the 195th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans (Jan. 8, 1815). On that date U.S. Army regulars under the command of Gen. Jackson, aided by Jean Lafitte's pirate band as well as some local Indians, defeated the numerically superior British invaders near Chalmette, Louisiana. Due to the slow spread of news in those pre-telegraph days, the men who fought & died there didn't realize that the War of 1812 had already officially ended by the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve 1814. At least the battle later proved useful to Gen. Jackson, whose victory at New Orleans vaulted him to such national prominence that he won election to the White House in 1828.
Jackson's first biographer, the British-born James Parton (apparently no relation to Dolly), visited The Hermitage in 1859 & was struck by a stern painting of the President. It inspired Parton to describe Jackson paradoxically but memorably as a "democratic autocrat, urbane savage, atrocious saint." After quitting Congress in 1798, just one year into his only term in that corrupt club of blowhards & master schmoozers, Jackson said: "I was born for a storm, and a calm does not suit me." Instead of pursuing electoral politics, he became a lawyer & land speculator in Nashville. He eventually built his 100-slave cotton plantation & quasi-classical mansion 10 miles away, very close to my pals Yuri & Gypsy's house in suburban Hermitage, Tennessee.
Styling himself a "Great White Father" to besieged native Americans, Jackson came to be called "devil" by the Cherokee & other tribes upon the Trail of Tears, which led those poor people from Georgia to Oklahoma circa 1831. Pres. Jackson ordered that death-march relocation (on the heels of Congress's infamous Indian Removal Act of 1830) so that white folks could grab more arable land. Jackson then maneuvered for re-election in 1832 by co-founding the so-called Democratic Party, long-time home of Southern segragationists & their spineless Northern liberal allies. End of history lesson.
My favorite part of the visit, aside from the cafe's free hot chocolate & the fine linen-cotton postcards with black & white historic photos on sale in the museum giftshop, was the elderly "interpreters" in period costume who guided us through the mansion, tossing off facts like faded confetti. I posed several questions in order to break their boredom at the rote recitation of antebellum life at the beautifully preserved Hermitage with its 175-year-old French mural wallpaper. I also dug the large brick smokehouse, built perilously close to the kitchen -- the original mansion burned to the ground in 1834. And I especially appreciated the show & tell demonstration by Mr. Meyers Brown, Curator of History at the Tennessee State Museum, in the Hermitage museum's window-lit lobby.
Dressed in a sharp 1812-era blue woolen US Army uniform (complete with high leather boots, white breeches, fancy black shako hat, big silver buckles, leather chest straps & cool old wire-rimmed spectacles), Myers stood beside a table groaning with military supplies of the time from his personal collection: hard-tack biscuits in a tin pan, dried salt pork, rope tobacco, cotton fatigues for summer wear, a metal specs-case and, of course, much weaponry (bayonet, smooth-bore rifle with ball-and-buckshot cartridges, rifled hunting gun & a deer-horn pocket-knife). His enthusiastic account of the battle, fought on a marshy barren plain alongside the Mississippi River (I visited the site when I lived in New Orleans 20 years ago), as well as some military tactics of the time provoked many queries from me & a bearded gun afficianado with his fascinated young son.
This brief trip backwards in time almost made me regret having missed the morning wreath-laying ceremony at the sheltered Grecian tomb shared by Old Hickory & his beloved wife Rachel, who didn't quite live long enough to assume the role of First Lady. Not being militaristically inclined, I wondered whether I'd have joined in the Pledge of Allegiance as the Tennessee Army National Guard posted the colors. I just have too many qualms about the US government's past & present policies abroad to feel very patriotic anymore. Afghanistan looks too much like the Vietnam of my boyhood television horror.
Nevertheless, I do recommend that you visit The Hermitage the next time you're near Music City USA (adult admission fee: $17). The grounds are gorgeous & peaceful, and an architectural restoration of the mansion's facade & columns is progressing nicely. There are aslo several outbuildings that I didn't explore, on account of the 20-degree cold.
The occasion for this act of public generosity by the caretakers of that national historic landmark was the 195th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans (Jan. 8, 1815). On that date U.S. Army regulars under the command of Gen. Jackson, aided by Jean Lafitte's pirate band as well as some local Indians, defeated the numerically superior British invaders near Chalmette, Louisiana. Due to the slow spread of news in those pre-telegraph days, the men who fought & died there didn't realize that the War of 1812 had already officially ended by the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve 1814. At least the battle later proved useful to Gen. Jackson, whose victory at New Orleans vaulted him to such national prominence that he won election to the White House in 1828.
Jackson's first biographer, the British-born James Parton (apparently no relation to Dolly), visited The Hermitage in 1859 & was struck by a stern painting of the President. It inspired Parton to describe Jackson paradoxically but memorably as a "democratic autocrat, urbane savage, atrocious saint." After quitting Congress in 1798, just one year into his only term in that corrupt club of blowhards & master schmoozers, Jackson said: "I was born for a storm, and a calm does not suit me." Instead of pursuing electoral politics, he became a lawyer & land speculator in Nashville. He eventually built his 100-slave cotton plantation & quasi-classical mansion 10 miles away, very close to my pals Yuri & Gypsy's house in suburban Hermitage, Tennessee.
Styling himself a "Great White Father" to besieged native Americans, Jackson came to be called "devil" by the Cherokee & other tribes upon the Trail of Tears, which led those poor people from Georgia to Oklahoma circa 1831. Pres. Jackson ordered that death-march relocation (on the heels of Congress's infamous Indian Removal Act of 1830) so that white folks could grab more arable land. Jackson then maneuvered for re-election in 1832 by co-founding the so-called Democratic Party, long-time home of Southern segragationists & their spineless Northern liberal allies. End of history lesson.
My favorite part of the visit, aside from the cafe's free hot chocolate & the fine linen-cotton postcards with black & white historic photos on sale in the museum giftshop, was the elderly "interpreters" in period costume who guided us through the mansion, tossing off facts like faded confetti. I posed several questions in order to break their boredom at the rote recitation of antebellum life at the beautifully preserved Hermitage with its 175-year-old French mural wallpaper. I also dug the large brick smokehouse, built perilously close to the kitchen -- the original mansion burned to the ground in 1834. And I especially appreciated the show & tell demonstration by Mr. Meyers Brown, Curator of History at the Tennessee State Museum, in the Hermitage museum's window-lit lobby.
Dressed in a sharp 1812-era blue woolen US Army uniform (complete with high leather boots, white breeches, fancy black shako hat, big silver buckles, leather chest straps & cool old wire-rimmed spectacles), Myers stood beside a table groaning with military supplies of the time from his personal collection: hard-tack biscuits in a tin pan, dried salt pork, rope tobacco, cotton fatigues for summer wear, a metal specs-case and, of course, much weaponry (bayonet, smooth-bore rifle with ball-and-buckshot cartridges, rifled hunting gun & a deer-horn pocket-knife). His enthusiastic account of the battle, fought on a marshy barren plain alongside the Mississippi River (I visited the site when I lived in New Orleans 20 years ago), as well as some military tactics of the time provoked many queries from me & a bearded gun afficianado with his fascinated young son.
This brief trip backwards in time almost made me regret having missed the morning wreath-laying ceremony at the sheltered Grecian tomb shared by Old Hickory & his beloved wife Rachel, who didn't quite live long enough to assume the role of First Lady. Not being militaristically inclined, I wondered whether I'd have joined in the Pledge of Allegiance as the Tennessee Army National Guard posted the colors. I just have too many qualms about the US government's past & present policies abroad to feel very patriotic anymore. Afghanistan looks too much like the Vietnam of my boyhood television horror.
Nevertheless, I do recommend that you visit The Hermitage the next time you're near Music City USA (adult admission fee: $17). The grounds are gorgeous & peaceful, and an architectural restoration of the mansion's facade & columns is progressing nicely. There are aslo several outbuildings that I didn't explore, on account of the 20-degree cold.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Seasick Steve, "Scruffy" Bob & a Music City tourist tip
While reading "Uncut," a hip British pop-music magazine at Borders the other day, I came across these bits of funny musical trivia:
(1) In an interview with Seasick Steve, a cantankerous 67-year-old California-bred tattooed & bearded bluesman whose recent debut record -- entitled "I Started Out with Nothin' and I Still Got Most of It Left" -- has reportedly sold a quarter million copies, Seasick Steve asserts that "It's a good idea to bleed [as a performer onstage, a la Son House & Mississippi Fred MacDowell] or you're just a karaoke act." Let it bleed, Steve!
(2) After arresting a man, later identified as Bob Dylan, for being a suspected burglar or vagrant while the genius was walking in the rain without ID near Bruce Springsteen's boyhood home last July, 22-year-old Long Branch (New Jersey) Police Officer Kirstie Buble explained her decision by describing the Mystery Man a "an old scruffy man acting suspiciously."
Now, you can call him Bobby, or you can call him Zimmy, you can even call him Travelin' Lucky Wilbury--but ya don't have to call him "Scruffy," ma'am. No wonder Bob said, on the debut of his Theme Time Radio Hour, that "whichever way I go, I always end up in one place: Lonely Avenue." Hang in there, man. At least it's a better address than Desolation Row.
Obscure Nashville tourist tip: Check out the Tennessee Central Railroad Museum, if you can find it (near the river downtown; donations accepted). Pretty blond Miss Amy gave me a cool little tour. I bought a red "TC Nashville Route" patch there yesterday & have already sewn it onto my brown denim jacket. All aboard!
(1) In an interview with Seasick Steve, a cantankerous 67-year-old California-bred tattooed & bearded bluesman whose recent debut record -- entitled "I Started Out with Nothin' and I Still Got Most of It Left" -- has reportedly sold a quarter million copies, Seasick Steve asserts that "It's a good idea to bleed [as a performer onstage, a la Son House & Mississippi Fred MacDowell] or you're just a karaoke act." Let it bleed, Steve!
(2) After arresting a man, later identified as Bob Dylan, for being a suspected burglar or vagrant while the genius was walking in the rain without ID near Bruce Springsteen's boyhood home last July, 22-year-old Long Branch (New Jersey) Police Officer Kirstie Buble explained her decision by describing the Mystery Man a "an old scruffy man acting suspiciously."
Now, you can call him Bobby, or you can call him Zimmy, you can even call him Travelin' Lucky Wilbury--but ya don't have to call him "Scruffy," ma'am. No wonder Bob said, on the debut of his Theme Time Radio Hour, that "whichever way I go, I always end up in one place: Lonely Avenue." Hang in there, man. At least it's a better address than Desolation Row.
Obscure Nashville tourist tip: Check out the Tennessee Central Railroad Museum, if you can find it (near the river downtown; donations accepted). Pretty blond Miss Amy gave me a cool little tour. I bought a red "TC Nashville Route" patch there yesterday & have already sewn it onto my brown denim jacket. All aboard!
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Brit magazine's list of top 2009 Americana albums
I know I still have a lot to learn about the relatively recent & very elastic music genre known as "Americana" (a term first popularized circa 1994), but I hadn't heard of half of the artists listed below. Any favorite records of yours among them?
The January 2010 issue of "Uncut", a hip London-based magazine, offers this odd list of the Best Americana Albums of 2009:
1. The Low Anthem - "Oh My God, Charlie Darwin" (cutesy title, but a nice band name)
2. Alela Diane - "To Be Still"
3. The Duke & the King - "Nothing Gold Can Stay"
4. The Felice Brothers - "Yonder Is the Clock"
5. Richard Fonatine - "We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River"
6. Levon Helm - "Electric Dirt" (still rockin' 41 years after The Band's debut)
7. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - "Beware"
8. Neko Case - "Middle Cyclone" (to know her is to love her, and I do indeed)
9. Monsters of Folk - [eponymous title] (a rare supergroup that didn't disappoint)
10. M. Ward - "Hold Time" (one of the Folk Monsters scores twice)
11. Patterson Hood - "Murdering Oscar"
12. Steve Earle - "Townes" (a moving tribute by a master to his dead mentor)
13. A A Bondy - "When the Devil's Loose"
14. Arbouretum - "Song of the Pearl" (why the British spelling? Very un-Americana)
15. Guy Clark - "Somedays the Song Writes You" (a cool Dualtone release by perhaps Townes Van Zandt's best friend, after Guy's wife Susanna Clark)
16. Kris Kristofferson - "Closer to the Bone" (groovy video for the title track too)
17. Deer Tick - "Born on Flag Day"
18. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit - [eponymous title]
19. Devon Sproule - "Don't Hurry for Heaven" (I'll try not to, sir)
20. The Handsome Family - "Honey Moon"
Notably absent from those UK editors' selections: Buddy & Julie Miller's "Written in Chalk", Wilco's "Wilco (The Album)", Justin Townes Earle's "Midnight at the Movies," The Avett Brothers et al. Nominate your own best Americana records of all time here. Mine just might be Bob Dylan's 1966 album "Blonde on Blonde" (recorded in Nashville with such session players as Charlie McCoy on harmonica,etc.).
The January 2010 issue of "Uncut", a hip London-based magazine, offers this odd list of the Best Americana Albums of 2009:
1. The Low Anthem - "Oh My God, Charlie Darwin" (cutesy title, but a nice band name)
2. Alela Diane - "To Be Still"
3. The Duke & the King - "Nothing Gold Can Stay"
4. The Felice Brothers - "Yonder Is the Clock"
5. Richard Fonatine - "We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River"
6. Levon Helm - "Electric Dirt" (still rockin' 41 years after The Band's debut)
7. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - "Beware"
8. Neko Case - "Middle Cyclone" (to know her is to love her, and I do indeed)
9. Monsters of Folk - [eponymous title] (a rare supergroup that didn't disappoint)
10. M. Ward - "Hold Time" (one of the Folk Monsters scores twice)
11. Patterson Hood - "Murdering Oscar"
12. Steve Earle - "Townes" (a moving tribute by a master to his dead mentor)
13. A A Bondy - "When the Devil's Loose"
14. Arbouretum - "Song of the Pearl" (why the British spelling? Very un-Americana)
15. Guy Clark - "Somedays the Song Writes You" (a cool Dualtone release by perhaps Townes Van Zandt's best friend, after Guy's wife Susanna Clark)
16. Kris Kristofferson - "Closer to the Bone" (groovy video for the title track too)
17. Deer Tick - "Born on Flag Day"
18. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit - [eponymous title]
19. Devon Sproule - "Don't Hurry for Heaven" (I'll try not to, sir)
20. The Handsome Family - "Honey Moon"
Notably absent from those UK editors' selections: Buddy & Julie Miller's "Written in Chalk", Wilco's "Wilco (The Album)", Justin Townes Earle's "Midnight at the Movies," The Avett Brothers et al. Nominate your own best Americana records of all time here. Mine just might be Bob Dylan's 1966 album "Blonde on Blonde" (recorded in Nashville with such session players as Charlie McCoy on harmonica,etc.).
New York Times' narrow notion of Nashville
In the Sunday (January 3, 2010) Arts section, the NY Times featured an article by Jon Caramanica headlined "Nashville Inches, Ever So Grudgingly, Into the Future." In that reductive piece Caramanica makes several controversial claims, including this one: "[C]ountry has been the most commercially significant genre with the smallest amount of stylistic innovation. In addition it's been particularly slow on the uptake with digital and social media, making it less accessible to younger audiences, and more deaf to their desires."
Caramanica dismisses Taylor Swift's massive crossover success as being "marked with an asterisk" & he never even bothers to mention such breakout young artists as Miranda Lambert & Lady Antebellum. Instead, he focuses on tired old stories, like the travails of the Dixie Chicks, who were "all but excommunicated" from country radio after their public attack on Pres. Bush in 2002. "It felt like a warning shot to upstarts of any kind: Thank you for coming, Nashville will neutralize you now," he concludes.
Describing Music Row as "lumbering, stubborn" & "the last vestige of the record industry as it used to be," Caramanica completely ignores the vibrant Americana scene in Nashville. What do those whom he refers to as "the city's oligarchy" make of that Yankee journalist's comments? I'll follow the Music City press & let you know--should the industry's mouthpieces or local music journalists here bother to react at all. But I reckon that those folks have grown impervious to attacks by the Yankee intelligentsia.
Caramanica dismisses Taylor Swift's massive crossover success as being "marked with an asterisk" & he never even bothers to mention such breakout young artists as Miranda Lambert & Lady Antebellum. Instead, he focuses on tired old stories, like the travails of the Dixie Chicks, who were "all but excommunicated" from country radio after their public attack on Pres. Bush in 2002. "It felt like a warning shot to upstarts of any kind: Thank you for coming, Nashville will neutralize you now," he concludes.
Describing Music Row as "lumbering, stubborn" & "the last vestige of the record industry as it used to be," Caramanica completely ignores the vibrant Americana scene in Nashville. What do those whom he refers to as "the city's oligarchy" make of that Yankee journalist's comments? I'll follow the Music City press & let you know--should the industry's mouthpieces or local music journalists here bother to react at all. But I reckon that those folks have grown impervious to attacks by the Yankee intelligentsia.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Townes Van Zandt's 1969 Carnegie Hall concert on Dualtone
Late last night I was reading John Kruth's biography "To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt" when I came across this passage on p. 97: "A Gentle Evening with Townes Van Zandt", finally released in 2002, reveals a set of nine songs [plus "A Joke"] that Van Zandt performed that evening [in 1969 at Carnegie Hall]." Hallelujah for that!
Issued by Nashville's hip Dualtone Vintage label (see dualtone.com; price: $13.00), the album opens with the controversial "Talking KKK Blues" & includes such classic TVZ numbers as "Tecumseh Valley," a heartbreaking tune about a prostitute, as well as his minor-key waltz "Rake" & the moving "She Came and She Touched Me." This first-ever live recording of Townes, in an unusual venue for him, closes with a cover: "Ira Hayes," Peter LaFarge's ballad about the tragic alcoholic Pima Indian, a flag-raising hero at the Battle of Iwo Jima. That song was a 1964 hit for the compassionate Man in Black. Oddly enough, TVZ was followed onstage at that weird New York show by an equally brilliant fellow Poppy Records artist, the legendary black comedian Dick Gregory.
Kruth goes on to quote Wisconsin folksinger Bill Camplin, who offers this insight about hippies & Van Zandt: "Townes didn't strike me as much of a hippie at all. What makes a hippie? Being a free spirit? Townes was only interested in heaven once he was down in hell and looking up at it." Indeed. And the music world is a better place for his having described so well in song his journeys to hell & his visions of heaven.
Issued by Nashville's hip Dualtone Vintage label (see dualtone.com; price: $13.00), the album opens with the controversial "Talking KKK Blues" & includes such classic TVZ numbers as "Tecumseh Valley," a heartbreaking tune about a prostitute, as well as his minor-key waltz "Rake" & the moving "She Came and She Touched Me." This first-ever live recording of Townes, in an unusual venue for him, closes with a cover: "Ira Hayes," Peter LaFarge's ballad about the tragic alcoholic Pima Indian, a flag-raising hero at the Battle of Iwo Jima. That song was a 1964 hit for the compassionate Man in Black. Oddly enough, TVZ was followed onstage at that weird New York show by an equally brilliant fellow Poppy Records artist, the legendary black comedian Dick Gregory.
Kruth goes on to quote Wisconsin folksinger Bill Camplin, who offers this insight about hippies & Van Zandt: "Townes didn't strike me as much of a hippie at all. What makes a hippie? Being a free spirit? Townes was only interested in heaven once he was down in hell and looking up at it." Indeed. And the music world is a better place for his having described so well in song his journeys to hell & his visions of heaven.
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