The Sound of Blackbirds

Article on Tom Russell and His New Disc

2011-11-27T16:59:00.000-08:00

There's a nice piece in the Houston Chronicle talking about Tom Russell's new CD Mesabi and generally covering Russell's life and career.

Bearfoot w/ Hoots and Hellmouth @ One Longfellow Square, Portland, ME, November 20th, 2011

2011-11-22T18:28:00.001-08:00

This past Sunday night, I walked up the hill for a lovely evening of music at One Longfellow Square. This was my second time at this venue, and I've grown very fond of it very quickly. In fact, I was first alerted to Sunday night's show at One Longfellow when I was there a couple of weeks ago to see Jorma Kaukonen. I had never even heard of Bearfoot until then.

I wasn't aware that there would be an opening act until after I arrived. Hoots and Hellmouth are a Philadelphia-based band--guitar, stand-up bass, drums, and mandolin--that played a mixture of mellow folk-rock and jazz, with a touch of spacey, psychedelic instrumentation. A couple of songs into the set, I found myself thinking about a group called The Secret Life of Sophia, which I saw open for the Black Spoons over 5 years ago, in New York City. TSLoS was a much harder, edgier group, but something about H&H's vibe reminded me of them. At any rate, the drummer was the man to watch, at least at first, as he switched off between sticks and brushes to dictate the feel of each piece. There were some great rocking moments on a song called "I Don't Mind Your Cussing" and there were some sweet harmonies, especially on something called "City Lights on a Country Ceiling." By the end of the set, though, I was paying more attention to the singer-guitarist, whose picking was nimble and confident. "Apple Like a Wrecking Ball" featured a particularly nice guitar part and, listening back to it now, courtesy of the band's website, it's making me want to buy their album. And I just might do it.

The featured act, Bearfoot, was every bit as good as I was hoping they'd be. They are a five-piece band--Angela Oudean on fiddle and Jason Norris on mandolin, Alaskans who founded the band 10 years ago, along with Nora Jane Struthers on guitar, PJ George on bass, and Todd Grebe (another Alaskan) on guitar--who play mostly original material (although I really enjoyed their cover of AP Carter's "Single Girl" and, for an encore, the Stanley Brothers' "Sweet Thing"). They performed all the songs from their recent album, American Story (2011), and they ranged from good to great. I was especially partial to the ones that Todd Grebe took the lead on--"Mr. Moonshine" and "Midnight in Montana" and "Must Be Hard Being You"--he apparently is in charge of the band's M songs. Nora Jane Struthers sang "When You're Away," the video for which One Longfellow had used to advertise the band when I saw Jorma Kaukonen there a couple of weeks ago. That's the one, in other words, that made me want to come see the band. She also sang a great song called "Country Girl Yodel #3," which isn't on the recent album, and one called "Come and Get Your Lonesome," which is.

Their music was mostly upbeat, and each band member had a moment to shine. PJ George had a solo or two, but he mostly was unobtrusive, alternating between stand-up bass and bass guitar. He was there to serve the songs, and I actually found myself paying a lot of attention to him, precisely because of how understated he was. I understand he's a newer member of the band--I hope for their sake he stays. Jason Norris sang some great harmonies and played some loud, flashy mandolin solos, although there was some problem with the placement of his mandoline mic for the first couple of songs. Angela Oudean had some tasty solos and harmonized wonderfully in song after song. And Nora Jane Struthers and Todd Grebe, newer members of the band (I've since learned) who did the lion's share of the songwriting for the recent album, were excellent hosts, introducing songs, chatting up the audience, and singing and playing with a lot of enthusiasm. At one point, the men left the stage, leaving Angela and Nora Jane alone to sing a duet. It took an uncomfortably long time for Angela to get her guitar in tune, leaving her bandmate to make small talk with the audience. During this sequence, Todd Grebe poked his head out from backstage and gestured intently to his watch. The song that the two women sang, "Romance," wound up being the only one for the duo, as the guys came back to help out with "Country Girl Yodel #3."

On my way out, I shook hands with a couple of members of each band. A bit tired, as the adrenaline rush of the show was already ebbing, I didn't stop to chat and pay them the big compliments they deserved. According to their website, Bearfoot won't be playing another show around here for awhile. But they're worth seeking out.

Jorma Kaukonen @ One Longfellow Square, Portland, ME, November 5th, 2011

2011-11-05T20:27:00.001-07:00

Saturday night, I walked up the street to attend my first One Longfellow Square concert. This is a great venue, small and intimate, yet still managing to fit a couple hundred people or so. While I can't imagine what it would be like to hear a full band play there, it was ideal for the show that I just saw: Jorma Kaukonen, accompanied by his Hot Tuna bandmate Barry Mitterhoff. It was a sold-out show, the venue's first sold-out show for some time, we were told.

I've seen Jorma play a number of times now: 7 or 8 Hot Tuna shows since 1999, plus Jorma's set at the Half the Sky benefit show last year. But I've never been as close to him as I was Saturday night. I sat in the second row, a stone's toss from where he and Barry were stationed onstage. My view of Barry was almost completely unobstructed. Jorma had his music stand with him and it, and the sheet music that was on it, blocked my view of his right hand. But I sat right in front of where his left hand was positioned all night. Watching his left hand on the fretboard over the course of two 75 minute sets, including an encore, was a truly humbling experience. Over the past year or so, I've been trying to learn to play several of his songs, and watching the master himself at work, at such close range, was awe-inspiring. When the encore turned out to be "Water Song," I leaned forward, trying to make sure his fretting looked familiar to what I was trying to do when playing it.

Jorma and Barry were clearly in a good mood. Jorma was chattier than he's been on the previous occasions I've seen him, and his banter with his bandmate was fun. One of the themes of the night was presidents. Almost every time they played a song that was written before 1975 or so, Barry would mention the name of the president in office into the microphone. Before "Bread Line Blues," Herbert Hoover. Before "Vicksburg Stomp," FDR. And so forth. It was much more amusing, however, whenever it was a Jorma original. In fact, the matter first came up about five songs into the set, when Barry informed us that the next song was first recorded when Richard Nixon was president. That turned out to be "Sea Child," a high point of the first set. Nixon came up again, just prior to "Genesis." And a third time just after "I See the Light," prompting Jorma to say "Gimme a break." I was close enough to the stage to hear Barry say, "C'mon, your songs stand the test of time!" Jorma: "Better than he did."

After the second song, "Let Us Get Together Right Down Here," someone in the audience called out, "the Reverend!" "They're very sharp," Jorma said to Barry, gesturing to the crowd. "What did he say?" Barry asked. "I believe I heard someone say, 'the Reverend.'" "I thought he said, 'the rapper.'" "Different show, Barry." Later on, Jorma talked about a deranged fan who, sometime in the 1970s, wanted to have a gold tooth just like Jorma's, so he actually had one of his own teeth knocked out. "He knocked out the wrong one," Jorma said, grinning, so we could all see the gold. The same guy wanted to have a tattoo just like Jorma's, so he went to the tattoo parlor with a crumpled up poster of Jorma that depicted the tattoo. And the tattoo artists proceeded to reproduce not just the tattoo, but the wrinkles that the crumpling had created in the poster. Oops.

The show began with "What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?" which Jorma recorded for his Blue Country Heart (2002) album. It's one of his gentler numbers, and it preceded "Let Us Get Together Right Down Here," the first of several Reverend Gary Davis songs he'd perform. In my mind, I always hear the recording from Burgers (1972), with Papa John Creach on fiddle, but it sounded just fine last night with Barry's frills and flourishes.

There were plenty of high points. I am partial to "Sea Child," a Burgers song whose guitar part is one of Jorma's greatest creations. I never tire of hearing that song. The same goes for "I See The Light," which makes me realize how much I love the man's songwriting. Of his more recent songs, I'm particularly fond of "Things That Might Have Been." He also did "Second Chances," which I remember hearing at the Half the Sky concert last year. The second set included "Good Shepherd" which featured the longest jam of the night. Barry outdid himself on that one, which Jorma pointed out afterward, asking him to "please remember that," because "you might have to do that again sometime," or something like that. The end of the second was "Parchman Farm," which segued into "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning," another great moment. Beyond all those, every song that Jorma originally recorded for the first Hot Tuna album in 1970 elicited big applause when he played them Saturday night: "Know You Rider," "How Long Blues," "Hesitation Blues," and "Uncle Sam Blues."

Madeleine Peyroux w/ Nellie McKay @ The State Theater, Portland, ME, October 6th, 2011

2011-10-06T19:13:00.001-07:00

Thursday night, I returned to the lovely State Theater for the first time since January of 2008. Back then, I was living in Brunswick, ME, and I had to rent a car for the evening to make it down for the Ani Difranco show. I seem to recall listening to a Celts-Mavs game on the radio for the ride back, but my memory might be playing tricks on me. Anyway, I now live within walking distance of the State, and it takes 15 minutes to mosey over and 15 minutes to mosey back home. And rather than rock out with a theater full of screaming Difrancophiles, this time I sat quietly through a mellow 75 minute set of Madeleine Peyroux's jazzy crooning.

But before I get to her, there is the matter of Nellie McKay. I will never forget listening to WFUV one evening in May of 2003, alone in my girlfriend's apartment on the Upper West Side, when Rita Houston interviewed this then-19 year old for Words and Music from Studio A. She was simultaneous giddy, shy, nervous, and self-effacing. Lots of stuttering, but in a really charming way. It peaked with her referring to herself as a "ketchup whore," before wondering if it was ok to say that on the radio. As I type this, I'm listening to a recording of this interview, available via WFUV's archives here, and it's as fun as I remember it.

This was my second time hearing her perform live. The first time was in May of 2007, when she recorded a 20 minute set at Town Hall for a recording of Mountain Stage (which also featured The Roches, David Bromberg, and Joan Osborne). This time, she played for about half an hour, cramming 9 songs in, with very little chatter in between tunes. The set focused on older material, particularly from Get Away from Me (2004), and she opened with "Toto Dies" and "The Dog Song" and "I Wanna Get Married." Great song after great song, her voice rang and glistened, and her piano playing florid and strident and, for the third song, quiet and subtle. It was interesting listening to the audience respond to her. The majority were clearly there to hear the featured act, and it took until "I Wanna Get Married," with the line about reading Danielle Steele, to get some laughter. "Won't U Please Be Nice" is one of my favorites, and that got some some laughs too, but the set peaked when she got out from behind her piano, took up her banjo, walked up to the microphone center stage, and sang "Mother of Pearl" with its priceless opening line: "Feminists don't have a sense of humor." By then, everyone knew it was ok to laugh, and her "dance break" in the middle of the song was hilarious, with her high-heeled soft-shoe toe-tap and twirl performed with a big, charming smile. A couple of songs I didn't know came after that one, before she concluded with a song she said was about illegal immigration. Turns out that was "Don't Fence Me In," which I think was originally recorded by Bing Crosby sometime in the '40s.

While Nellie McKay dealt mostly in sarcasm and double entendres and quirky musicality, Madeleine Peyroux is a romantic, pure and simple. She performed with a four-piece band (guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums), and her set of a dozen songs was smooth and loose and relaxing. The songs I know best are the ones from Careless Love (2005), and she opened with three of them, "Don't Wait Too Long," "Don't Cry, Baby," and Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." That last one was the first of several to get to me. She cradles the words and melody in her voice with a lot of care, seeming to speak and sing the words simultaneously. Not that that quality didn't sound great in the first two songs, but "you're gonna make me give myself a good talking to" and "you can make me cry if you don't know" gave me goose bumps.

Madeleine Peyroux's most recent album, unheard by me, contains mostly songs that she wrote herself. She played several of them at the show I saw. "The Kind You Can't Afford," about money, was lovely, although she spoke the words a bit too softly. "Don't Pick a Fight with a Poet" was jaunty and fun and I wasn't really paying much attention to the poetry on that one. She also played a Robert Johnson song from the latest album, "Love in Vain." That happens to be my favorite Robert Johnson song, and I was thrilled with her arrangement. It was slow and plodding and featured a slightly distorted single note on the guitar that cut through the verses and seemed to mirror the psychic agony permeating the words: "the blue light was my blues / the red light was my mind."

Although, like the rest of the attendees, I was happy to hear Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me to the End of Love," I was more moved by her slower numbers. And her encore consisted of two of them. First, there was "J'ai Deux Amours," performed more slowly than the recording from Careless Love. "Walkin' After Midnight" came last, and it left me wanting more.

Chris Smither @ Stone Mountain Arts Center, Brownfield ME, August 12th, 2011

2011-08-13T10:59:00.001-07:00

I took Hillary to the Stone Mountain Arts Center (SMAC) on Friday night to share an even of Chris Smither music with her. I can't remember how many times I've seen him perform--a dozen? maybe more?--but his concerts are the very surest of sure things. And this was my first time at the SMAC since Anthony and I drove out there to hear Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas over three years ago. Hillary and I arrived early and partook of their delicious chicken soup (with cornbread and watermelon on the side) and spent over an hour chatting with each other and with the couple sitting next to us. In fact, I even found myself defending Hot Tuna to the gentleman sitting next to Hillary, after my passing mention of them yielded expressions of contempt from him and his woman friend. Jefferson Airplane? That got more eye rolls. It turns out that this couple has being seeing Chris Smither play shows all around New England since the late 1960s. "Are you on a hot date?" the woman asked us.

Chris Smither looked and sounded great. "Does he wax his hair?" Hillary wondered, which made me laugh. What didn't make me laugh, but did make me smile, was the way the great man foot-tapped his way into "Open Up," which he's been opening his concerts with for years now. Ditto the way he picks the introductory guitar licks to "Link of Chain" before his feet and guitar launch the blues shuffle that backbones the song. The laughter began next, as he talked about losing his GPS machines, which he eventually began calling "Lola," his next song. "She's got hooks to make a fish think twice."

I've seen Chris Smither enough times, and listened to his music enough, to know what was coming. His stories, even when I've heard them before, are a delight. He talked about his daughter's question about royalties before playing "I Don't Know," the fruit and vegetable man from his New Orleans childhood before "No Love Today," his father's longevity before "Father's Day," the difficulties of writing topical songs before "Surprise, Surprise," and the first time he met Dave Carter before Carter's own "Crocodile Man." His sets don't vary too much from show to show, but the quality of his voice, the intricate guitar playing, the toneless foot-tapping continue to call me back.

Having been "called back" at different times over the past 9 years or so, certain songs make more of an impression on me. Friday night, I was particularly moved by two of his newer songs: "I Don't Know," which I'm convinced is one of Chris Smither's very best songs, and "Time Stands Still," which is not the only love song he's written, but it's as close as he comes to a romantic song. Beyond those two, his version of "Sitting on Top of the World" is stark and ethereal in his voice and hands, and I never tire of hearing him singing it. He sang his own "Drive You Home Again" with plain-spoken gravity, and the audience's chuckle at the final lines, "if I drive you to distraction / I will drive you home again" was a great moment. "Seems So Real" sounds just fine on his Train Home (2003) album, but it really gathers steam in concert.

For the encore, he played Dylan's "Visions of Johanna" and got the last of the evening's big laughs with the song's greatest nonsense line, "geez, I can't find my knees." I'd forgotten how beautiful his version of this song is, performed in waltz time, with his rich easy voice delivering some of the greatest opening lines Bob Dylan has ever written: "Ain't it just like the night / to play tricks when you're trying to be quiet? / We sit here stranded / though we're all doing our best to deny it."

On our way out, Hillary and I watched the great man greet his fans and sign autographs, and I remembered the first time I ever got his autograph, at Joe's Pub back in the fall of 2006. That, and having heard him wish me a happy birthday from the stage in upstate New York in the summer of 2007 are enough for me. But I sure could use a dozen or so new songs from the great man, and it's those I await.

Weezer and The Flaming Lips

2011-08-04T11:53:00.001-07:00

Kudos to Ben Ratliff for the following awesome paragraph from his review of the integrated Weezer / Flaming Lips shows in the New York area last week:

Rivers Cuomo, the geeky major-domo of Weezer, has grown famous on twitchy, distorted power-pop with strong melodic lines. If his songs were people, they’d be around 16, smart, self-absorbed and a little nasty; they would not like the taste of beer. Wayne Coyne, the relaxed, glad-handing singer and songwriter of the Flaming Lips, writes spaced-out, psychedelic singalongs. His songs might be around 21, kind of looking for an internship and very interested in who they were at 5. They have just dropped acid and want to talk to you.

A Capella "Africa"

2011-07-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

Wow. It seems to have been over two years since we posted anything about Toto's "Africa" -- what is happening to this blog?

Luckily, the fabulous Marjorie Tucker has called our attention to an a capella version of the song that begins with the choir creating a full-on tropical rainstorm out of finger snaps, palms-on-thighs and cringe-inducing jumping on the risers.

Check it out.

Unforgettable Rain: U2 in Minneapolis

2011-07-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

As you no doubt read in Matt's post about U2's Chicago show, we witnessed one of the best stadium shows I've ever seen...that is, until I saw their Minneapolis show at TCF Stadium (pictured left). While I had spent much of last week feeling sad I wasn't joining Matt and fellow Sound of Blackbirds bloggers Nick and Allan out at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, I ended up having an amazing weekend of music. I even got to enjoy some great folk music myself at the 13th Annual Northeast Folk Festival, a fun festival of local talent at none other than Grumpy's Bar NE. With music indoors and out, there was a great cross-section of the local roots and Americana scene with performances by Charlie Parr, The Brass Kings, Jeff Ray and more. Sporting my "Nordeast" t-shirt, I played with my Mother Banjo Band on the outside stage with Pocahontas County's Jake Hyer sitting in on fiddle, which was a real treat. We played U2's "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World," which has now become a band staple. This pleased the crowd, esepecially because I discovered many of them were going to the U2 show that night. In fact, Martin Devaney, who played a sweet set right after me, was also going after he stopped by yet another festival to play. (On a side note, I just found out that he's playing with Robbie Fulks at the Turf Club on August 12th--can't wait for that one!)

After wolfing down a tasty pulled pork sandwich, I bused it down to Whitey's Bar, where I met up with some pals for pre-show whiskeys (important since the University-owned stadium has no alcohol). Although there was no U2 playing on the jukebox (as there was when Matt and I were in Chicago at that Irish hotel bar), it was still clear many of these folks were going to U2. In fact, really it seemed like everyone and their mom (literally) was going to the show. What with light rail construction on University Avenue and the crazy amounts of traffic headed to the University of Minnesota's new TCF Stadium, it was madness. Luckily, one of the gals going with us was able to get her husband to drop us off so we arrived with no problem. The very first concert to be held in this stadium (usually used for Gophers sporting events) and the biggest outdoor concert in the Twin Cities in decades, this was the event to be at. In fact, I keep finding out more folks were there (including our Democratic Senator Al Franken and our former Governor Tim Pawlenty, now making a Republican bid for US President). And with only 60,000 seats (compared to the 70,000 at Chicago's Soldier Field), everyone felt pretty close to the gargantuan stage set, including the folks watching from outside the gate.

U2 has the stadium show down to a perfect art form--a spectacle that somehow seems personal. Ross Raihala captured this most eloquently in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Although I couldn't take down the whole setlist due to the torrential downpours, I was able to find this setlist from U2's website. Normally I would just craft a little story to remember the song titles, but as you'll see, there were so many snippets of songs that Bono threw in (many rain-related) that I totally lost track of my Hitchcock-inspired story of the zoo that is the city where you go crazy with vertigo...

This show was supposed to be the final date of their tour, and although this rescheduled date was actually the third-to-last, U2 played it like it was their finale. And the crowd was with them the whole way, even amidst the threatening thunder and lightning, making this a truly unforgettable show. All week they had been predicting storms for Saturday, but the evening started out beautiful. The weather had cooled off a little and there was a light breeze while Interpol played their opening set. Fans bounced balloons and beach balls around from their seats, and in between sets, while the 360 screen scrolled world statistics, someone in our section actually released hundreds of balloons all at once. Like little kids, we all started cheering--a truly magical moment I was actually able to capture on camera.

As the seats filled up with people, it was clear that this crowd was a crowd that was committed to seeing U2. When the first drops fell, and everyone started cheering. Even when the torrential rains came down, no one's spirits were dampened, especially not the band who powered through like it was nobody's business. Not staying under cover, Bono was on the runway most of the night, getting just drenched and adding in fun rain-inspired covers, most notably "Purple Rain" (Prince always gets a big reaction in his hometown) and "Singin' in the Rain." Adam Clayton's white shirt got so drenched, he ended up ditching the thing completely, showing off his good-looking abs (someone's been working out!). It made me really respect how dedicated this band is to performing a good live show. When I think of all the musicians I've seen, who complain because it's too hot or too cold or too wet, I will always think of these guys, and how they could have stayed undercover playing a solid but sedate set under a canopy. Instead, they brought the show to the crowd, getting soaked like the rest of us.

Local critics Jon Bream and Chris Riemenschneider put together some of their highlights along with cool pics in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, including the surprise guest appearance by Somali hip-hop artist and former Minneapolis resident K'Naan and the acoustic rendition of "Stuck in a Moment" that Bono and The Edge sang for Amy Winehouse. Another great moment was when the crowd continued to sing "Pride" long after the song was over. He kind of stood there awe-struck and then clapped for us. But my favorite moment came at the end. After the band took its final bows and started leaving the stage, Bono ran back to the mic and started singing "Singin' in the Rain" for the second time, leading us all in a grand sing-along. He then waved goodnight, and we all kept singing, drenched and happy.

Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, 2011

2011-07-26T19:26:00.001-07:00

A superb weekend of music at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival came to its conclusion Sunday afternoon, albeit not without a touch of sadness. Ever since Dave Carter passed away nine days before he and Tracy Grammer were scheduled to perform at the 2002 festival, the Falcon Ridge mainstage has been marked by souls departed. Curiously, Tracy’s stage presence on Sunday was upbeat and cheerful, with a little off-color humor and insular banter with her bandmates. I say “curiously” because the news had slowly been filtered to the festival goers by various sources that both Amy Winehouse and Bill Morrissey had passed away over the weekend. While Winehouse was not a part of the folkie scene, Morrissey certainly had his fans at Falcon Ridge, and there were plenty of solemn faces in the Sunday afternoon audience. Combine these strands with the loss of Jack Hardy, whose songs were honored in a workshop performance early Saturday evening, and a web of wistfulness was woven into the musical architecture of the weekend.

In years past, the New Artists Showcase has been a pleasure to behold, as the novices try to make good, but I barely caught any of it this year. My late arrival combined with the blistering heat meant that my slow, staggered efforts to set up camp happened out of sight of the mainstage. Not out of earshot, however. Among other things, I heard Occidental Gypsy’s catchy updated gypsy jazz, a song from I’m-not-sure-who that mentions trains and was co-written with Brooks Williams, a percussion-heavy trance/trip-hop performance by Bulat Gafarov from Moscow (who I now see has a pretty impressive resumé), Paul Sachs from Jack Hardy’s crew who sang with a strong and clear voice and was accompanied by Mark Dann on bass, and a band called ilyAIMY that sounded catchy. After nine or ten performers, I walked down the hill to peruse the vendors, drink lots of water, and wait for fellow Sound of Blackbirds bloggers Matt Winters and Allan Roth to arrive.

While waiting, I stumbled on a tent devoted to Jack Hardy. In attendance was Angie Page, Jack’s partner for many years, and the mother of some of his children, including Morgan, a former student of mine. There were dozens of photographs of the great man, along with LPs and CDs of his music and of the Fast Folk recordings, and plenty of other goodies. Some of it was on display only for educational purposes, but some of it was on sale to help pay for some of Jack’s outstanding medical bills. There were two photographs of particular importance: one of Jack with Tom Waits and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, which was just plain cool, and another of him with Matt Winters and Matt’s dad. As I later heard Morgan say to Matt’s dad, “you’ve been hanging on my dad’s wall for years!”

A little after 2:00, Matt and Allan arrived with Matt’s friend, Mandy, and we made our way up to the campsite to play some guitar together—for me, a Falcon Ridge first—and, eventually, head down to the mainstage to enjoy the rest of the new artists and explore.

Another Falcon Ridge tradition is the Friday night song swap. This year, we were treated to Red Horse, the trio comprising John Gorka, Lucy Kaplansky, and Eliza Gilkyson. After opening with Neil Young’s “I Am a Child,” the remainder of the set consisted of each musician singing a song written by one of his or her bandmates or, toward the end, by him- or herself. So, John sang Lucy’s “Don’t Mind Me,” Lucy sang John’s “Blue Chalk,” and so forth. Each member of Red Horse also played 45 minute sets the following day on the mainstage, one after the other, with each singer inviting bandmates to join him/her for various songs, including ones recorded for the Red Horse album. In the context of the festival, blurring the individual and group concepts worked just fine, as the communal spirit of the festival and the folk music tradition seemed to be reflected in the combination of the properly rehearsed and the casually offhand.

Although I think of Eliza Gilkyson as being my favorite of the three Red Horsers, both as group participants and as individual performers, I now find myself thinking more about Lucy Kaplansky’s set. She began it with “Manhattan Moon,” from one of her recent albums that I’ve yet to listen to from beginning to end and made me want to revisit all her albums. Later on, she invited her 8 year old daughter onto the stage to show off her drumming lessons on a few songs, including “End of the Day” and “Don’t Mind Me.” “Written on the Back of His Hand” is one of her best melodies, and she even found time for Loudon Wainwright’s “Swimming Song.” As for Eliza, I missed the first half of her Saturday solo performance, unfortunately, but I returned in time for “Dark Side of Town,” which Matt had requested at the top of his lungs from the seat next to me. Finally, John Gorka, who began the mainstage performances at noon on Saturday, played eight or nine songs of his own and others’ and kept my attention. The most memorable moment of his set was his performance of Tim Hardin’s “The Lady Came from Baltimore,” which fit the contours of Gorka’s warm voice just right. And, pretty much for the first time at a folk festival, I found myself hooked by some of John Gorka’s own material. Not so much the newer “Where No Monument Stands,” but older stuff like “I’m from New Jersey,” “Writing in the Margins,” and “Semper Fi.” A pleasant surprise.

Exhaustion led me back to my tent after the song swap, so I missed the night cap—Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson and The Magic Rockers—which sounded great from my tent, and I’m sorry I missed them. Friday night’s music was dominated by two up-tempo acts: Professor Louie and the Crowmatix and The Honeycutters, neither of whom I’d heard of before this weekend. Professor Louie was a colleague of the Band’s and worked closely with them on their post-Robbie Robertson records, like Jericho, a song from which the band played during their set: Bob Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell.” Their overall sound was very similar to the Band’s, with Professor Louie himself playing keyboards and accordion, singing Levon Helm-ishly, and talking about the late Rick Danko in between songs. The Honeycutters played country music, medium-to-fast, without any aggressiveness of rhythm or attitude, but plenty of assurance and poise. The feel of the band was more Tennessee Three than Garth Brooks. There were some mandolin solos, but they punctuated the songs rather than distracting from them. And some of the songs were very good, like “Lillies,” sung from the perspective of a colonist fighting the redcoats who dies after taking a bullet to the chest, or “Firebreathing” which includes the line “you’ve got no business on the wild side,” thereby summing up a folk festival audience, including the drug-addled participants in Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams’ Saturday night dance party. One of the best acts of the weekend.

I also missed all but the final two songs from the Most Wanted Song Swap, another Falcon Ridge tradition, wherein the most popular of the previous year’s new artists return for a round robin-style performance. I’m sorry I missed it too, because what I heard from The Folkadelics and Spuyten Duyvil sounded great.

The Saturday event I was most looking forward to was the Jack Hardy tribute on the workshop stage. I’ve been working on an essay about the great man for this blog, and the events of this past weekend have stoked my interest in finishing it. Since he died, I’ve been listening to his music more often, and I sense, perhaps without good reason, that more and more people have become aware of his songs and his contributions to the music scene in New York City and beyond. The initial plan had been to leave the mainstage at around 4:30, about halfway through Mary Gauthier’s set, to make sure I didn’t miss anything. But as so often happens at these festivals, plans got derailed; I wound up missing the first 10 minutes or so. And for a damn good reason. Matt and Allan weren’t around for Mary Gauthier’s set, but Matt’s friend Mandy was, and she and I sat spellbound by an artist who was so supremely in command of her gifts as a performer, that I couldn’t imagine leaving her for anything. I’ve heard part of her newest album, The Foundling, and it sounds wonderful, but she only played one song from it on Saturday afternoon. Instead, her set emphasized the material that first put her on the map. Three of the first four songs were from her excellent 1999 album Drag Queens in Limousines, and she also treated us to the three best songs from Mercy Now (2003): “Mercy Now,” “Prayer without Words,” and “Wheel Inside the Wheel,” the last of which sounds like Chris Smither’s “Train Home” with celebrities doing the “graveyard dancing.” In between songs, she talked earnestly about the folk music tradition, emphasizing the need to tell stories, and she told great ones in her songs, about the death row convert to Christianity, Karla Faye Tucker (“Karla Faye”), the man once elected king of the hobos, Steam Train Maury (“Last of the Hobo Kings”), the dirty sugar business in Thibodaux (“Sugar Cane”), and herself (“Drag Queens in Limousines”). With Tania Elizabeth backing her up tastefully on violin and harmony vocals, the performance was also musically astute, each melody perfectly formed and each violin lick and harmony vocal perfectly deployed. Sometimes her music even became rhythmically propulsive, like on "Prayer without Words" and “Wheel Inside the Wheel.” The singer threw out the emotional fishing rod with her opening drawl, “I hated high school / I prayed it would end,” and had us caught on the line by time she hit the climax: “sometimes you’ve gotta do / what you’ve gotta do / and pray that the people you love / will catch up with you.” Best act of the festival, by far.

There were other fine moments. The Jack Hardy tribute, of which I only missed the first song (John Gorka’s version of “Potter’s Field”), had some good stuff in it. My favorite was probably David Massengill’s version of “Tree of Rhyme” from the Landmark (1982) album, and I also liked the way that Dan Navarro put his full, deep voice into “I Oughta Know.” Mary Gauthier had made her way over to the stage after her set was over and quietly climbed onto the stage with her fiddler. When it was her turn, she damn near stole the show, first by talking about what great stories everyone was telling about the man (or was she talking about the stories in the songs?), before recapping her belief in the power of songs to tell stories, which she had just been talking about on the mainstage, and then wowing us with Jack’s unrecorded “Ain’t I a Woman,” sung from the perspective of Sojourner Truth. Then, after the dinner break and a fine set of bluegrass music from Dirty Kitchen, Greg Brown played a leisurely, laid-back set of songs, peppered with some self-amused chatter and augmented with Bo Ramsey’s electric guitar. “The Poet Game” is a great song, and I was happy to hear it, and I was also happy to hear “Let the Mystery Be,” written by his wife, Iris Dement. “She’s funny,” he said off-handedly, practically to himself, as he mumbled about his wife, accounting for one of the funniest moments of the weekend. “Freak Flag” and “Tenderhearted Child” from the new album, Freak Flag (2011), both sounded great, and “Fat Boy Blues” made me laugh out loud. The Sunday morning gospel wakeup call, another Falcon Ridge tradition, featured some great stuff from Susan Werner, particularly the decidedly un-gospel “Probably Not,” and Red Molly’s take on “Come on In My Kitchen.” And there was a Band tribute on the workshop stage, led by Professor Louie and Terry Kitchen, which was a lot of fun, particularly when Professor Louie himself led the way through the songs. I smiled to see Katryna Nields with her two lovely children on hand to enjoy the Band tribute. And during their own set and during the gospel set, a trio called Bro Sun offered some soulful singing.

I only caught a few minutes of Susan Werner's set, and I sense I missed out on something great. And by leaving during Sunday afternoon, I also missed the featured act, Mary Chapin Carpenter, who I haven’t seen live since a beautiful, understated performance at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore sometime in the late ‘90s.

Finally, there was Tracy Grammer, one of the acts I was most excited to see, and someone who will forever be linked, for better and for worse, to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. I remember quite clearly how moved I was by her performance with Dave Carter in 2000 and 2001, when they upstaged acts like Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, among others. And Dave’s workshop stage appearances, and his warm stage presence, and the 2002 tribute to him, with Erin McKeown’s “Gentle Arms of Eden,” Chris Smither’s “Crocodile Man,” Mark Erelli’s “Cowboy Singer”…I could go on. Now, 9 years after Dave Carter’s death, Tracy Grammer has long since come into her own as a performer. This time around, she appeared with a five-piece band that included Massachusetts folk scene stalwarts Dave Chalfant and Ben Demerath. Her set included a Decemberists’ song that I didn’t know, the instrumental fiddle feature “28th of January,” and a series of Dave Carter songs, including “Gentle Arms of Eden,” his greatest, and “Shadows of Evangeline,” which benefited more than the other songs by the presence of the band. I also took note of her concluding song, “The Verdant Mile,” which gave this blog its name, and also hinted at the deaths that hung over the festival—“it’s everything and nothing / when the spirit cracks the sky”—even as it embraced life which, with her chipper stage presence and happening band, Tracy seemed to be doing. She mentioned Amy Winehouse and Jack Hardy in some between-song moments and joked about her band’s name, “The Hot Nuts,” in others. And as if to verify the power of positive, life-enhancing music, the very next act, the last act I stayed for, was a Zydeco band, whose danceable rhythms and soulful vocals pretty much epitomize life. In other words, it got people up and dancing. I was about halfway up the hill, on my way back to the car, when I had to stop and listen almost to the end of their set, as a searing electric guitar solo cut through the air, splitting through the polyrhythms.

Looking forward to next year already.

Kasey Chambers @ The Iron Horse, July 7th, 2011

2011-07-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve now been living in Portland, Maine for two weeks. For the purposes of my Sound of Blackbirds contributions, that means exchanging the Iron Horse for One Longfellow Square and the Calvin Theater for the State Theater. In fact, there are more possibilities for live music in the greater Portland area than there are in greater Northampton, as near as I can tell, but there’s nothing quite like the Iron Horse. And that’s one reason why, for my first concert in a couple of months, I drove three hours back to the Valley for another concert at that magnificent room.

The other reason is Kasey Chambers. I first heard of Kasey about 10 years ago. I recall sitting in my friend Joanna’s living room in Brooklyn, listening to her friends and roommates talk with great enthusiasm about the act that upstaged Lucinda Williams at her recent Roseland concert in the city. There was an album out called The Captain (2000), and a couple of them raved about it. I wasn’t sure what to make of these reports at the time; had I missed out on something big? Lucinda Williams is great, no doubt, but I had seen her be upstaged before, most notably in Baltimore, when her Shriver Hall performance felt remarkably flat after Patty Griffin torched the stage with her Flaming Red (1998) songs. And I’ve also seen her open for rocks icons—the Allman Brothers in 1999, Neil Young and Crazy Horse in 2003—in a way that didn’t do justice to her own greatness. Lucinda Williams (1988) and Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998) will always be great albums, but…I digress.

I got the answer to my question when, in early 2002, I attended an acoustic WFUV-sponsored Kasey Chambers performance at the Museum of Television and Radio in midtown Manhattan. She was touring to promote Barricades and Brickwalls (2002), but I don’t think I had heard an album of hers yet. I went to the show on the recommendation of Joanna and in the company of her friend Marisa. As I type this, I’ve accessed an audio recording of that performance, available from the WFUV archives, and it sounds fabulous. What I remember best is hearing a song that I figured had to be an old Hank Williams song that she’d updated slightly and being pleasantly surprised to learn that “A Little Bit Lonesome” was a Kasey Chambers original. I also remember being completely floored by her natural instrument; her voice, I mean. Listening back today, hearing her perform “On a Bad Day” makes me wonder why I haven’t been a huge fan ever since. But the whole performance was wonderful, and so was meeting her and getting her autograph after the show.

Even after that, however, the real breakthrough for me was seeing her with Annie in the fall of 2004 at Irving Plaza with her full band. There, she rocked. I had only listened to Wayward Angel (2004) once or twice before the show but, afterwards, I began listening to it constantly. The Irving Plaza show featured not only great songs from each of her three albums, but fantastic covers of Lucinda Williams’ “Change the Locks,” harsh and rocking, and Neil Young’s “Comes a Time,” slow and acoustic with lush harmonies from her bandmates.

And it was Annie who I took with me to see Kasey on Thursday night. This was the first time she's accompanied me to an Iron Horse show since we saw Dar Williams there in the fall of 2009, as detailed here. She drove 90 minutes or so from Vermont, I drove 3 hours from Maine—the longest drive I’ve ever taken for a concert. Since Kasey doesn’t come to the states all that often any more, I figured this could be the last chance we’d have to see her for a long time. It turns out that Kasey is 6 months pregnant with her 3rd child.

Before she took the stage, her bandmate and father Bill Chambers entertained us with about 20 minutes of solo guitar and songs. The originals—“Theresa,” “South-end Rain,” and, best of all, “Drifting South”—worked just fine, but I was particularly impressed by the two covers. First came Mary Gauthier’s “I Drink,” which I haven’t listened to in a long time and elicited some laughter, just like I remember it doing over 10 years ago when I first heard Mary play it (opening for Richard Shindell at the Bottom Line). It’s actually a deeply serious song, about alcoholism and selfhood, and the laughs were in the same vein as the laughter that Loudon Wainwright elicits with his best material. And then there was a Fred Eaglesmith song called “Just Dreaming,” which I had never heard before. The mood of the song was interrupted a bit by an Iron Horse waitress who starting topping off my water glass without noticing that I had hard cider, not water, in the glass. But whatever. By the time the music had begun, the show had sold out, and even watered down cider couldn’t dilute my excitement.

Kasey Chambers hit the stage at about 7:35 with her band and launched a couple of songs from her new album, Little Bird, out into the room. I didn’t know these songs, but they were delicious, especially one that, I’ve since learned, is called “Beautiful Mess.” After that, the band leaned into “Last Hard Bible” from her first album, The Captain (2000), drawing big applause and, from there, she and her band took us through songs from each of her albums, with a focus on the new one, and included some ace covers along the way (including a Nancy Griffith song that I didn’t know). From the opening song, her huge voice filled the room and

Her band is sharp. Along with her immensely talented father, a second guitar player was onstage, Michael Muchow, and so was a beautiful 18 year old fiddler, Ashleigh Dallas, who was, in her own shy, rather endearing way, having the time of her life on-stage. This was, it turned out, her first time in the United States. Kasey assured us that she’d done her best to acclimate Ashleigh to American culture…by having her watch the complete My Name is Earl DVD set. Michael Muchow didn’t talk much, but he smiled and laughed at Kasey’s gags. After a particularly long story from Kasey, Michael discovered that his gear wasn’t yet ready for the next song. He fiddled with it a bit and said, into the microphone, “It’s not like I haven’t had enough time to get it ready.” That crack drew some of the hardest laughter not only from us, but from Kasey, not to mention Ashley, whose eyes widened in delighted shock at that comment. The band's accompaniment was functional, direct, and to the point. Not many solos. One song, whose title I did not catch, was a Bill Chambers-Ashleigh Dallas co-write, and it was really good. Michael had only recently learned the banjo, Kasey told us, specifically to play with her on tour. He did fine, and so did Ashleigh.

Kasey was a charming, gracious hostess. She and her band were really happy to be there. Really happy. And by "there," she meant the Iron Horse in Northampton, Massachusetts. She reported that this is one of her very favorite venues in the world, a place that she talks about and yearns for playing even while they’re on the other side of the world. She joked about her pregnancy, noting that “getting knocked up” was one of her only skills outside of playing music. She told stories about her band, her travels, her children. She was cheerful and upbeat and impossible not to warm to.

Her newest album, Little Bird, is already out in Australia, and it will appear in the US next week. Based on what she played Thursday night, I sense it’s a great one. Along with “Beautiful Mess,” there was a song called “Nullarbor (The Biggest Backyard)” about her childhood, growing up in the Australian desert, a theme she first addressed in “The Nullarbor Song,” from Barricades and Brickwalls. All told, she sang half a dozen songs from Little Bird, and they all sounded great to me.

What else? She played “The Captain” alone on stage. There were a bunch of Barricades and Brickwalls songs—“On a Bad Day,” “Not Pretty Enough,” “Still Feeling Blue” (one of the highlights of the whole show), and, for the final encore, “Barricades and Brickwalls”—but only one song from Wayward Angel –“Pony.” As her band was getting in tune for “Pony,” someone from the audience asked if she would name her next child after Ralph Stanley, a reference to a line in the song. She laughed at that and talked about the problems with naming her second child, Arlo. She and the father had wanted to name him after a great songwriter. For the father, that meant Neil Young. But Neil didn’t seem quite right to them, particular given all the Neils in the world. So they decided they’d go with Neil Young’s middle name…until they learned that his middle name was Percival. “So that’s how we settled on Arlo,” she concluded, and we all laughed. Then, “Neil Young is the coolest guy in the world...but his middle name is Percival,” and we laughed even harder.

Toward the end of her set, she mentioned that Australians are not particularly into bluegrass music, so they had to be eased into it. That was her introduction to the band’s bluegrass medley: get-down arrangements of “Not Pretty Enough” and “The Captain,” leading into the Bee Gees' “Stayin’ Alive” and Michael Jackson's “Beat It.” This was corny, but it was also a lot of fun, particularly on account of how big and powerful the band sounds when Kasey leads them in harmony.

The set ended with “We’re All Gonna Die Someday” from The Captain, and upon returning to the stage for the encore, she assured us that there was no way she wasn’t going to return for another song or two. We could have already left, she told us, and they’d have been back to sing to the empty room. And then came a highlight of the evening, as the band played a slow, elegiac, mournful version of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” before finishing off the evening’s music with “Barricades and Brickwalls.”

Kasey is in the US through July 16th. See here for tour details. Seek her out, is my advice.

U2 at Soldier Field

2011-07-07T12:27:00.000-07:00

I know that there are some haters out there, so with my apologies to you, let me say that U2 is the best damn band on the planet.

Ellen and I were 110 percent satisfied with their appearance at Soldier Field in Chicago on Tuesday night, which was the reason behind and the last event in a wonderful Fourth of July trip to Chicago.

We pre-gamed the show with a healthy pour of Jameson at Kitty O'Sheas, a bar in the Hilton, up Michigan Avenue from Soldier Field. The place was full of U2 fans, and there was U2 coming off the jukebox. So it was great fun to hear folks reminiscing about The Unforgettable Fire tour and talking about having seen 18 previous U2 shows or to see them jumping up and down a little bit when "Bad" came on. Ellen and I were having a lot of fun reciting our favorite lines from Rattle and Hum, such as B.B. King protesting that he would not be able to play the chords on "When Loves Comes to Town."

We arrived at Soldier Field shortly after Interpol had started their opening set. I had not known who the opening band would be until shortly before the show, and I was super-excited to hear them. But the stadium swallowed them right up. The place was about half-full, and the crowd that was there wasn't terribly excited, and the band seemed to mostly be going through the motions. Certainly, this is the way that most opening acts at a U2 concert go down, but it was disappointing nonetheless.

(By the way, here is my bold -- if ultimately disrespectful -- suggestion for some future U2 opening band. In order to gain maximum notoriety and possibly start a riot, why not take the stage and play a complete set of U2 songs without first getting U2's approval? How unbelievably insolent would that be? Would they bring the sound down? Would the fans storm the stage? It would be a happening at the very minimum.)

In between the acts, we discussed the provocative statistics streaming across the LED screen at some length. Those faded away, and David Bowie's "Space Oddity" ("Ground Control to Major Tom") announced the band's entrance. That recording segued seemlessly into "Even Better Than the Real Thing," and we were off for a little Achtung Baby action to start off the show. "The Fly" was up next. And then "Mysterious Ways" with just a touch of "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World" tagged on. Oh my! Could the Achtung Baby festival continue? It could! "Until the End of the World" was next.

Then they jumped back to Boy for "Out of Control." And then all the way forward to No Line on the Horizon for "Get On Your Boots (Sexy Boots)."

Bono took a moment to elicit some boos from the crowd by talking about Larry Mullen Jr. going to see the White Sox play. And then he also announced that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel had declared Independence Week as an extended celebration of American independence.

With "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," Bono stepped away from the microphone for almost a full verse to let the crowd sing it -- some 70,000 strong. And then he talked about the band recording the songs for Achtung Baby and Zooropa before playing "Stay (Faraway, So Close)."

Bono announced that they would be sending the next song out to Gabby Giffords. It was "Beautiful Day," and Giffords' husband Mark Kelly appeared from the International Space Station during the song. Bono took us out of "Beautiful Day" and back into "Space Oddity" before the band moved on to "Elevation."

Introducing "Pride," Bono waxed a little poetic about the notion of America as an idea and not just a country, and then at the end of the song, the crowd kept the vocal part going for another few rounds.

The reference back to The Passegers' CD with "Miss Sarajevo" seemed to leave a substantial portion of the crowd scratching their heads, but the band came out of that with the more familiar "Zooropa" and then the more recent "City of Blinding Light" and "Vertigo."

Coming back to No Line on the Horizon for the second time of the night, they played a really altered version of "I'll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight" that concluded with a segue into a little bit of "Discotheque" (the only reference to Pop in the show). "Sunday Bloody Sunday" was given a set of graphics referencing the Arab Spring protests in the Middle East, and then "Scarlet" (from October) was dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. As it faded into "Walk On," people holding Amnesty International candles came out and filled up the whole circle around the stage and the pit.

There was then a recorded presentation by Aung San Suu Kyi about freedom and repression in Burma that led the band into "One." Bono used Carole King's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" to lead into the iconic opening arpeggios of "Where the Streets Have No Name." Ellen and I both thought that was totally brilliant.

The obscure "Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me" was followed by "With or Without You."

Bono then hinted at the band wanting to play "One Tree Hill" in honor of the 25th death anniversary of Greg Carroll for whom the song was written. He said that he needed to consult with "the professor," and I was really excited for a brief moment until I realized that he was talking about The Edge.

In order to get everything in place, the band played "Moment of Surrender" (the third entry from the most recent CD). And then Edge had to find the right key and make sure that his fingers could still do it, but the band closed with "One Tree Hill." And what a special moment -- to see those guys have to figure out a song that they hadn't necessarily expected to play after all of the pomp and circumstance of the show, and then to put it all out there and end the night of music.

And so Ellen and I walked out of Soldier Field feeling sated and satisfied.

Elton John Still Wants Some Punch

2011-06-27T18:32:00.000-07:00

Back in February, we reported Elton John's enthusiasm for bluegrass experimentalists Punch Brothers as described to Rolling Stone.

In the 28 April issue (sorry, I was out of the country for a bit), he was back at it:

The Punch Brothers are the best jam band I've ever seen. It's like Miles Davis meets bluegrass. I've already talked to them about working together -- I want to make a record with them that combines the Band and Fairport Convention

Wait, wait... "That combines the Band and Fairport Convention"?

Ok, so I'm obviously psyched that Elton John wants to make something that sounds like Fairport Convention. I'm totally in favor of this.

But it doesn't seem like combining The Band and Fairport Convention would be all that much of a stretch, does it? I mean, Fairport Convention's 1969 album Unhalfbricking includes "Million Dollar Bash" from The Basement Tapes, which features The Band, as well as Dylan's "Percy's Song" and "Si Tu Dois Partir" (the French translation of "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"). And in general, it seems like Fairport and The Band are working a lot of the same musical territory.

So "Miles Davis meets bluegrass," I'll give that one to Sir Elton, but he needs to work a bit harder on who he wants to mash-up with Fairport Convention.

Coen Brothers to Make Dave Van Ronk Film?

2011-06-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the Coen Brothers might make a movie about Dave Van Ronk based on the book The Mayor of MacDougal Street.

Mike Regenstreif spread the news over at Folk Roots / Folk Branches and included some nice memories of his encounters with Van Ronk.

Van Ronk's Going Back to Brooklyn was a signature album for me during my early teenage years. (What 13-year-old wouldn't memorize "The Whores of San Pedro" and then go around singing it at summer camp after all?) I also was a huge fan from an early age of his recording of "Cocaine Blues" to be found on the Blues with a Feeling disc that collected recordings from the Newport Folk Festival. By my late teenage years, I was listening to the classic Vanguard sides that Van Ronk recorded and just learning a whole lot about the blues.

I saw Dave Van Ronk twice -- once at the Old Songs Festival, where he told some risque story that mildly offended my eight-year-old ears and then later on (when I was a bit more equipped to appreciate such things) at the University of New Haven, where Van Ronk sadly struggled to keep his breath on stage.

I can't say that I listen to Van Ronk all that much these days, although interestingly enough, some sort of best-of album became part of the soundtrack for my recent bus ride from Galway to Dublin. I sat there, listening to "Cocaine Blues," and thinking to myself, "Man, if I could just learn to play this song..." Well, maybe that should be a new goal for the summer.

Regenstreif appropriately cites Tom Russell's "Van Ronk" from his album Hotwalker in which Russell gives the rundown on what it was like to hang out at Van Ronk's place. It's a great piece and one that Tom nicely ornaments live, too, although here is the album version for you:

"Shut up and listen!"

Pub Sessions in Galway

2011-06-22T05:12:00.001-07:00

Well, here I am at the Dublin Airport, drinking one last good-tasting Guinness before I fly back to the States. (Or at least, I hope I'm flying back -- it's already been a five-hour delay.)

Following the historic first meeting of the European Political Science Association in Dublin at the Guinness Storehouse, I took the morning train from Dublin to Galway because I had been told that Galway was where to find music in Ireland. Well, no joke.

On my first evening in Galway, I found my way into Taaffes Pub. The session was already going, featuring accordion, fiddle, bouzouki and bodhran. The tunes were good, and it was fun to watch the fiddler listen to the box player and figure out the melody with her fingers before joining in.

I stuck around there for a good bit before heading down to The Quays, which was a little bit less crowded and yet also featured a tighter session with just accordion, bouzouki and bodhran.

The accordion player was John O'Halloran who had a wonderful touch, making the melodies smooth and flowing but adding in nice ornamentation. He had fun with the instrument, too, providing some sound effects as necessary for people walking by or asking questions.

From there, I moved on to Tig Coili. And this was the mother church. I watched a trio of tenor banjo, fiddle and bodhran for a while, and then I asked the gentlemen next to me (who was in fact the bodhran player from the session at Taaffes) if he knew who the musicians were. Well, the bodhran player was Johnny 'Ringo' McDonagh, one of the founding members of De Dannan. The banjo player was Brian McGrath who has played with De Dannan and then on a good number of albums by other Irish musicians. And the fiddler was Mick Conneely.

These three were terrific -- one and all. Mick Conneely's fiddle was completely lyrical with his double-stops adding rich tone and texture to the tunes. Watching Ringo McDonagh was a clinic on how the bodhan can be played -- his skillful use of the left hand to mute the drum and shift the tone as needed. And then Brian McGrath had all of these wonderful trills and other ornamentation on the four-string banjo; he pushed the melody along with a rolling force.

And that was just the first evening!

The next day, I headed off to the Aran Islands for a tour but then found myself back at Tig Coili. And once again found myself in the presence of a great musician or two. And not just in their presence but sitting a mere five feet away! On the Monday-night melodeon, it was Bobby Gardiner. I didn't know it at the time (or else I would have talked Southern Connecticut with him), but Bobby Gardiner had emigrated to New Haven to work on the New Haven Railroad in the early 1960s. During his ten years on the East Coast of the United States, he played with noted Irish musicians like Joe Cooley and Joe Deranne (and also served in the U.S. Army, according to Wikipedia). He was yet another great box player there in Galway and was joined by Brian McGrath on banjo, Anna Faulkner on fiddle and (I think) Richie Cunningham on the bodhran.

You would never know who it was playing unless you asked. These were just the boys down at the pub playing the tunes. And so there I was, armed with a pint of Guinness, and taking in the sounds.

I ended up that second night at the An Pucan Pub, listening to a duo perform a mix of instrumentals, dance tunes (with dancers) and songs. The song selection ranged from Dougie Maclean's "Caledonia" to Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel." Because of amplification, the scene was a little less intimate than at the other pubs, but it was also nice to hear some songs being sung.

On my final day in Galway -- after a tour of Connemara -- I went back again to Tig Coili and found John O'Halloran leading another session. This time he was joined by Liz Hanrahan on the fiddle and by a bones and bodhran player whose name I never caught. And at some point, a local named Willie was egged on to sing a song or two -- he needed a bit of help on some of the lyrics, but the crowd remained enthusiastic and relatively quiet for the unamplified singing. And then I rounded out the evening with some more music at An Pucan, where a band with harp and pipes was playing -- some new instruments to end my journey to Galway!

Punk is Dead; Long Live Punk

2011-06-22T05:06:00.001-07:00

Neil Genzlinger has a nice piece in the New York Times about punk rock history tours being conducted in New York by Jake Szufnarowski (from the band Tragedy -- see here) and John Joseph.

The article only hints at the best stories that are told on these tours:

Mr. Szufnarowski will show you the spot outside Irving Plaza where he was beaten to a pulp after a Warren Zevon concert (an episode he parlayed into free passes to countless other shows there). Mr. Joseph will bring you to the sidewalk where, he says, he was stabbed in a sort of drug-dealer-versus-punk-rocker turf war.

And then I was particularly fond of the following:

[Joseph] won’t use the name “East Village”; he still likes “Alphabet City.” (The avenues, back when he arrived, were ranked thus, he said: “A, you’re adventurous; B, you’re bold; C, you’re crazy; D, you’re dead.”)

Also, referring to the Continental as a "B-level club" strikes me as wrong -- it was a "C-level club," part of the "C circuit" along with Coney Island High and CBGBs (both of which are now-defunct, so maybe The Continental did get an upgrade).

Now You Know: Justin Roth

2011-06-19T18:12:00.000-07:00

Justin Roth is a rare talent--an amazing guitarist, a charming performer and a writer of catchy acoustic songs. Although I periodically get to see him play showcases at Folk Alliance or hear him play a few songs when he is in town for songwriting group, I have not seen him play a full show in a couple years. So it was a rare treat to see his Saturday St. Paul show at the Ginkgo Coffeehouse, celebrating the release of his new CD Now You Know. The new songs are more introspective and moody than his previous work, perhaps due to the fact he wrote and recorded the album while living alone in the Colorado Rockies. Expanding his straight acoustic sound to include more layers of vocals and ambient textures, Justin recorded all the parts himself, including all the additional instrumental parts. I was interested to see how he would approach doing these songs live without any extra musicians or loops or anything. I am happy to say these new songs were just as sweet without the added parts. Here's what he played...

SET 1:
- Trembling Like a Train (been singing this for awhile but it's now finally on an album--one of my faves!)
- Spaghetti Junction (instrumental named after the tangle of highways in downtown St. Paul)
- Out of the Blue
- This Winter (As Justin put it: "This song has lots mini me's singing with me on the record." He joked about cloning himself and then trying to bring all the mini me's on the road with him and trying to figure out how to fit them in his car and not feed or pay them. I think he can forego that because it sounded pretty dang good with just one Justin.)
- Surrender
- She Dances
- Shower With a Friends (hilarious song about conserving water by showering with a friend)
- Fatima's Waltz (a beautiful guitar instrumental he wrote--a fan favorite)

SET 2:
- There and Back Again (his second Hobbit-inspired guitar tune)
- The Siskiyou Line
- Now You Know
- The Last Time
- Forgiveness
- Ones to Hold Onto (Gave a shout-out to his musician friends in the audience, including Brianna Lane, Barb Ryman and me, Mother Banjo. Then he dedicated this song to catching up with old friends. I've always liked this older song of Justin's but the energy and guitar work on this was particularly nice.)
- Dead Horse Trampoline
- Shine

Encore: Love's Not Through With You Yet (a Darrell Scott tune he covers on the the new album)

All in all, a great show. It is no wonder that John Gorka has said: "Now you know-Justin Roth has come into his own."

Real Autotuned Singing: Sarah McQuaid and Martin Sexton

2011-05-09T20:24:00.000-07:00

I saw two solid concerts last week here in Urbana-Champaign. What stood out to me about both of them was the incredible vocal quality of both performers. In this age of autotuned recordings, it is an impressive thing to sit back and soak in the sounds of people who have excellent pitch, great control and well-maintained instruments.

Those characteristics apply to both Sarah McQuaid, who I saw last Tuesday night as part of the Piper's Hut concert series, and Martin Sexton, who played at the Canopy Club in a distressingly early show last Wednesday evening.

Sarah McQuaid at the Independent Media Center

Sarah McQuaid, I had never seen before. Born in Spain, raised in Chicago, 13 years in Ireland and now living in Cornwall, she brings all of those possible influences and more into her music. She opened up with an a capella version of "The Wagoner's Lad," and she had me sold. From that Appalachian classic, she moved onto "The Next Market Day" (a traditional song about going for a roll in the hay) and then "Ya Se Murio El Burro" (a traditional Spanish children's song about a dead donkey).

Her singing was terrific, and her voyages into the (traditional) American song catalogue were highly enjoyable: "In the Pines," "East Virginia" (which she learned from a Joan Baez record that she spun on her Mickey Mouse record player as a child), an instrumental version of "Shady Grove" (on her DADGAD-tuned guitar -- she wrote the book), "West Virginia Boys" (with pink tambourine accompaniment), Bobby Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe" and then Jerry Jeff Walker's "Mr. Bojangles" as an encore.

From the other side of the Atlantic, she gave us "Johnny Lad" (a Robert Burns song that she learned at an Irish festival being held at a German club in Philadelphia), "The Banks of the Lee" (which she called "When Two Lovers Meet") and Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."

Her original compositions were good -- "Only an Emotion" was about disliking the British habit of telling you that you're not allowed to walk around scowling, while "Aqui Me Pinte Yo" was inspired by a Frida Kahlo painting.

Martin Sexton at the Canopy Club

When I was in high school, I used to wear a Martin Sexton pin on my backpack (right next to the huge Nields sticker) -- it was the cover to Black Sheep, his second album. Despite wearing that pin, I actually was not a terribly big fan of his music.

Well maybe I should have been inspired by the pin and listened to that disc a little bit more often...

Because Martin Sexton is awesome. I thought this when I saw him play a magical set at Falcon Ridge back in 2008. And I thought it last Wednesday night.

You want control? He has amazing vocal control. You want pitch? He has it in the low range and the high range. You want a human beatbox? He can do it. You want some bluesy guitar? He's got that covered. You want well-crafted songs? Call Marty. You want a segue into Led Zeppelin's "Since I Been Lovin' You"? He's on it. "Helter Skelter" with some guitar percussion? That's next.

He has his shtick down, but he seems to be enjoying it. He took the stage and started banging away on the guitar and giving us the beatbox, and the crowd started singing along, and we were off on a great ride.

He was having fun. "Living a Lie" was dedicated to "muthaf*ckas working a corporate job who wish they had started an electronica band." Another was for "anybody on their last date -- and I mean it." And then there was a song about meeting his wife in New York: "Aw, isn't that sweet? ... The original version is all dirty sex positions at the end."

"Angeline" and "Gypsy Woman" were highlights, and despite doing a rap about being thankful that he's not one of those performers who has to play the same songs every night, he played both "Glory Bound" and "Black Sheep." (So, um, really, Marty?) But whatever, because it's not like I've been able to take "Glory Bound" off the stereo for the last five days...

For his encore, he brought a new microphone out into the crowd, told the people in back to stop talking and treated us to an intimate number from the floor.

This was his Urbana debut apparently, and I hope that I get the chance to see him here again soon. (It would be great, though, if the show starts after the sun has set, I think... Maybe there would be a few more people in the crowd then, and it wouldn't, for Marty, be "like Cambridge, Mass, back in 1993." But again, whatever... He brought it.)

Here's the performance of "Glory Bound" from Falcon Ridge three years ago -- not the greatest sound quality, but you can find about 50 other YouTube versions if you don't like this one:

The Low Anthem at Jazz Fest

2011-05-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

I returned late last night from a trip to New Orleans that was ostensibly about Jazz Fest but was really more about old stomping grounds, great friends, and amazing food than music. I did, however, manage to make it to Jazz Fest for a few hours before catching my plane back home. We unknowingly walked through the gate on Gentilly to the sounds of the Low Anthem and like moths to a flame, were drawn closer and closer to the stage.

Although the sound at the show didn't do justice to the harmonies, the performance was solid--earnest and intentional and of a well-executed roots rock aesthetic. These were serious musicians clearly putting their accumulated understanding of their songs into a mid-afternoon set. The crowd was enjoying the music, but was also talking. I wondered, as the band helped me ease into the afternoon, whether there was room among the food and beer and multiple stages, for those hushed moments that serious musicians are capable of creating. I wondered this, and then the Low Anthem played an intense, beautiful version of "Bird on a Wire" to close their set. It settled over the crowd slowly, a quieting and calming sound.

The video above is from about a month ago but is similar to the version I heard in New Orleans.

Overtones of Appalachia in Champaign: The Honey Dewdrops at the Champaign Public Library

2011-04-21T19:11:00.001-07:00

Watching Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish step up to the single microphone in the Champaign Public Library's Robeson Pavilion Room, I was prepared to hear some old-time-style tunes; what I wasn't prepared for was the amazing warmth and depth of the sound. I mean, this was just two voices and two guitars, right? But that magical microphone in between them captured all of that sound and made the spacious room shrink down a little smaller; I think that it even struck up the fire in the (non-existent) fireplace. Being so used to full-on, full-sounding bands, I was really pleased that my ears could perk up this way to a duo.

Throughout their set, The Honey Dewdrops sounded close and rich. Laura's singing features that lovely Virginia slur, where the notes blend together, forcing you to follow the song along. Kagey adds in the right harmonies throughout. And the mixing of their stringed instruments below supports the mixing of their vocal instruments above.

"Nobody in This World" is a perfect example of what this band is. It was an original tune that could as easily have been a Carter Family standard. Kagey played mandolin, and we might as well have been on their back porch in Charlottesville.

They mostly played originals over the course of a one-hour set. My favorite was "Amaranth," the lead track on their most recent disc, These Old Roots. Inspired by a Love Lies Bleeding Amaranth in their garden, they wrote the song from the plant's point of view -- a non-fading flower left for a love that has never come.

They also showed their love of the tradition, stringing together a banjo and guitar version of "Going Across the Sea," a take on "Angeline the Baker" that featured just the right amount of rollick in the banjo, and then an a capella version of "Bright Morning Star." Their version of a contemporary song was a mandolin-and-guitar version of The Beatles' "Across the Universe."

And then they did end the set with a song by that Virginian First Family of Country Music, the Carter Family, "Sow 'Em on the Mountain."

They took no encore -- and more power to them for that -- and were a pleasure to chat with after the show.

I'm really glad that I got a chance to see these guys, and I hope that they'll hit your town soon, too.

Robert Browning's Retirement from the World Music Institute

2011-04-19T12:17:00.001-07:00

Catching up on some reading, I've just discovered that Robert Browning is retiring as the head of New York's World Music Institute.

The WMI-sponsored concerts that I attended over the years actually tended to feature artists from the United States -- I remember a great old-time stringband show with the Whitetop Mountain Band and a show with Cajun supergroup Beausoleil -- but I nonetheless always appreciated the diverse series that WMI sponsored.

I also was interested to learn about Browning's role in founding the Alternative Museum:

[Browning] came to New York in 1974, and the next year helped found the Alternative Center for International Arts (later the Alternative Museum), where he began putting on concerts by artists from far-flung places. The World Music Institute — which Mr. Browning operates with his wife, Helene, the organization’s indomitable publicist — has presented more than 1,500 concerts on stages throughout the city and has been behind landmark events like the first American tour by the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Chris Smither and Patty Larkin @ The Latchis Theater, Brattleboro, VT, April 9th, 2011

2011-04-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

Last night, after a long day that included an early morning run, a hike up and down a mountain, and an hour’s worth of walking around Brattleboro, I planted my butt in one of the old, battered seats of the Latchis Theater to listen to Chris Smither and Patty Larkin play their guitars and sing. This was my first time in the Latchis, and it’s a beautiful place. The décor is faux-classical, with columns and murals depicting scenes from antiquity. Sitting in the third row of the theater, front and center, I spent at least a minute simply staring up at the ceiling, which is deep blue with mythical beasts outlined in white.

I saw Chris and Patty play together this past December at the Half the Sky benefit concert in Arlington and, while I’m always happy to see Chris, I was particularly eager to see Patty this time around. Her agile, intricate guitar playing and deep, surprising melodies were a treasure of the Arlington show, and I wanted to see if there was more to it than a single concert. I wasn’t disappointed, although when Chris opened the show, I stopped thinking about her. He was in unusually strong form. From the opening moment, as the foot-tapping and guitar lick announced “Don’t Call Me Stranger” to open the show, he proceeded to own the stage. Song after song bit and held, just like they always do, and his singing was passionate and nuanced. Songs from his latest album preceded “Love You Like a Man,” which I haven’t heard him play in a while now, and “No Love Today,” for which he invited Patty to come onstage and sing harmonies. By that time, I was yearning for a full Chris Smither set.

After Chris left the stage, leaving Patty to a play set of half a dozen songs. She began with “Tango,” which she played at the Arlington show. It’s full of beautiful, intricate picking and strumming and banging, and there wasn’t a dull moment in the song. “The Cranes” was less impressive, but the rest of her set was gold, from “The Book I’m Not Reading” to “Pablo Neruda” to “Dear Heart.” That last one featured the electric guitar and the violin bow and, just as it did the last time I heard her do it, it moved me. It’s a great one. At some point soon, I need to sit down with a CD of hers and give it a good listen, because I’m starting to think I’ve been missing out.

Patty’s set preceded a 20 minute intermission, after which the two musicians returned to the stage to play a set together. Patty, I was pleased to hear, stood toe-to-toe with Chris (figuratively, I mean). Not that it was a competition, but I’m a big Chris Smither fan, and it’s asking a bit much to expect a stagemate of his to play songs the equal of “Can’t Shake These Blues” or “Train Home,” both of which he wowed me with Saturday night. I didn’t know the songs Patty played in her second set, but her guitar playing and singing were enticing and I certainly didn’t tune out.

Their banter during the duo set was cute. “Play me something,” Chris invited Patty, after he finished his first song. A couple of songs later, Patty broke a string and left the stage to take care of her instrument. Chris told her not to worry. “I’ll play a long one,” he assured her, which wound up being “Drive You Home Again,” one of his greatest. “Now I have a crush on you,” he said later on, after Patty played a particularly tender love song. He responded with “Father’s Day.” “And now I have a crush on you,” she said after it was over. There was some talk about their roots. Knowing he was from New Orleans, she asked him when he moved to Cambridge. When the answer came—1966—it elicited a collective murmur from the audience. He talked about how writing songs was something he forced himself to do after he realized that, as a musician, it was the way to make money. He shrugged. “I was going to be an anthropologist.” “Makes sense,” she replied. “How’d you get out of Wisconsin?” he asked her a bit later. “On a bus,” was the answer. Throughout the set, each would occasionally play a little guitar to accompany each other. She contributed some electric guitar to the finale, “Statesboro Blues,” which features some particularly raucous singing. When they came back out for the encore, Patty had a mandolin with her, and her strumming and harmony singing enriched “Leave the Light On,” which Patty said ought to be in everyone’s songbook. And who could disagree?

Scenes from the Songwriters Exchange at Jack Hardy's Apartment

2011-04-05T20:09:00.001-07:00

Here is some footage from a documentary about Suzanne Vega that involves her going to Jack Hardy's apartment for a meeting of the Songwriters Exchange. Jack gives a critique; Suzanne has some trouble opening a Bud Ice -- very cool.

(HT: Steve Winters.)

Tim Robinson at the Postcrypt on April 8th

2011-03-30T19:50:00.001-07:00

I've been talking about Tim Robinson writing and playing a tribute to Jack Hardy.

I've been talking about Tim Robinson playing at the Postcrypt.

And now it turns out that Tim Robinson will be playing at the Postcrypt next Friday night, 8 April. So put it down on your calendars, New Yorkers!

He'll be joined by Chris Fuller and a special guest. The last time I saw Tim play, it was with Jack and Chris Fuller at the Postcrypt: I described that night here.

Ambassador of the Bodhran

2011-03-30T19:44:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have been demanding footage of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren playing Irish music with Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, we are pleased to be able to bring you the following:

(HT: Ben Fishman.)

Flashback: Postcrypt Coffeehouse, 7 October 2000

2011-03-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

In the last post, I referenced the first time that I ever saw the late Jack Hardy play. With not too much effort actually, I was able to come up with my notes from that night. I've been wanting to write some "flashback" posts for a while, reporting on past concerts that stand out in my mind and for which a documentary record exists thanks to my decade of compulsive notetaking at concerts.

So it was Saturday night 7 October 2000 when the great Jack Hardy marked his return to the Postcrypt, thanks to Tim Robinson's initiative; Tim also had arranged for Frank Tedesso, another stalwart of the downtown Fast Folk scene, to be on the bill. My father was up from Connecticut. Postcrypt stalwart Heather Otrando was volunteering behind the bar along with Linda, a graduate student in East Asian Languages and Culture. All the performers were there by the 9:00 p.m. start of the show. (I made note of that since it was a rare thing and the more normal circumstance was me sweating it out, hoping that the next act was going to show up in time.) The audience was small.

Tim Robinson played the first 45 minute set. He opened with what I described in my notes as a "song about singing" and then played "Paris," his great song about "a New Yorker dreaming of Paris." He played "Out on the Edge" and the terrific "St. Jerome." And about halfway through the set, he said, "I saw Hardy out there earlier writing 'legendary' over his name in red pen!" which, as I pointed out in the previous post, had actually been my father.

Frank Tedesso played second. Playing to the Postcrypt home crowd, he opened with "Edgar Allan Poe Is Gettin His Shit Together & He's Looking For Work," which describes New York University knocking down Poe's house and claims that the same thing wouldn't have happened at Columbia. He told the story of a woman dumping him by saying that their energy fields were not aligned: "What could I do? Quantum physics aren't my thing. ... So I got drunk for a couple of weeks and fought with my friends, and then I wrote this song about it..." The song "You Can Learn a Lot from Birds" had a number of impressive lines in it: "You can learn a lot from the French / But not as much as you can learn from birds," and "My hearts in hock to things I can't even name" were the ones I wrote down.

Tedesso concluded his set by encouraging the audience to stick around for Jack's set, saying, "Jack is a great songwriter, but he's really generous, too. And that's hard to find in any endeavor. ... Don't get me wrong -- he's a motherf*cker, too..."

And then when I took the stage to introduce Jack, I apparently -- I have no memory of this, to tell you the truth, but the notebook says so -- introduced him as "a folk-singing motherf*cker."

I guess that got our relationship off to a good start at any rate...

He opened his set with the "Uley Mill Song," which in my notes gets erroneously named "The Tyrants of Bonaparte," but which became an instant favorite of mine. Then he played "Faded Old Rose" and another song that is likely from Bandolier, but which I have described only as "song about horse and old cowboy." I have the next song listed as "The Island," and I am at a loss to figure out what song that might have been. I noted that it had "lovely words."

"The Lady Turned Away" and "The Sword in the Stone" followed next. The latter song contains the verse

She was writing in the corner
A candle and empty chair
With freckles from 'cross the ocean
And strawberry blond hair

and I apparently thought that might refer to one of the evening's Postcrypt volunteers. Not sure if I am confessing my own smittenness to my notebook there or what...

"Singer's Lament" was followed by "Night Train to Paris" (by request); I noted my approval of the line "Take the night train to Paris / You hopelessly romantic fool." "Dún Do Shúile" was followed by "Forget-Me-Not" and then "The Zephyr."

At this point, Michael, the evening's alcohol proctor (the individual tasked by Columbia University with making sure that there was no underage drinking at the Postcrypt) announced to me that the 'Crypt was "the best kept secret on campus!"

"Memphis" and then a song that I have erroneously named "The Calling" in my notes -- "The Hunter" perhaps? (Seems more likely than "The Coyote" or "The Cauldron" as a closer.) Jack noted, "I haven't played this in a while; it should be fun."

Getting called back on stage, Jack said, "The benefit of going last is that you get to do an encore," and by request, he played "The Black Hole."

And that was my live introduction to the great Jack Hardy: a nice selection of songs old-and-new and a relaxed evening of music.

Tim Robinson Tribute to Jack Hardy

2011-03-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

The first time that I met Jack Hardy was when he played the Postcrypt while I was the manager. I had booked Tim Robinson to be part of a bill one night, and Tim suggested that we add Jack to the evening. I jumped at the chance -- I had never seen Jack live, but I knew what an important figure he was in the folk music world. My father came down from Connecticut for the show, and on the board announcing the musicians for the night that we put at the door to the chapel, my father had written "The Legendary Jack Hardy." When Tim showed up, he said, "I see that Jack's been upstairs with a marker..." The evening was as magical as one could have hoped, and I became a bigger fan of the music and a dedicated fan of the man.

Here's a terrific song that Tim has written in memory of Jack.

The wax-covered candle in the foreground looks like it could have been lifted from the Postcrypt (although I believe that the fire marshal has forced the 'Crypt to retire all of those candles now...).

JACK OF HEARTS

I’m okay with numbers
...Chances are I’ll bury you
But not yet – it’s just too early
And there’s lotsa shit to do
There’s the business of the bending
Of the language into song
And the drinking of our sorrows
And the hanging on too long…

To a woman’s raging beauty
To the thunder on the hill
And your body may cry, uncle
But your spirit never will
So here it is, Ash Wednesday
And all things dust to dust
Still I’m begging you to linger
While I’m begging you to trust…

That there’s some kind of forever
Where your brothers wait for you
And a fine roper’s saddle
And that Colorado blue
But that’s all for tomorrow
For today is good enough
To live a little longer
Here in our relentless love…

For you and your wonder
At the stories in our bones
You, laughing so easy
And then driving on alone
As always through some darkness
To where the darkness parts
Back to the beginning
Where the next song starts… Jack of hearts

New Yorkers: check out Tim live on Sunday night (March 20th) at the Rockwood Music Hall.

Jack Hardy, 1947 - 2011

2011-03-11T10:08:00.000-08:00

One of the great songwriters of our time has passed on.

Mark Moss, the editor of Sing Out!, writes the following:

Here's what I've cobbled together since I got a call this morning: Jack was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago, but was adamant that no one was to know, so, beyond family, very few of his friends were even aware he was sick. He finished his first round of chemo yesterday, which left him very weak. He was experiencing discomfort in overnight, they upped his morphine, but he passed in the early hours this morning.

It doesn't yet seem possible to me that a person as full of life and full of swagger as Jack could no longer be among us.

Note: With respect to the commenter who suggests that this post should be taken down in accordance with Mark Moss's admission that he announced the news hastily and without fully taking into account the extent to which Jack's family had been informed, after briefly taking down the post, I have decided to repost it. Jack's Facebook wall has been covered in remembrances; his Wikipedia entry has been updated based on the original blog post; and Steve Ide, Sharon Goldman, Jonathan Byrd and presumably others have begun to share the news in other places. Certainly, I mean no disrespect to Jack's family and only wish to have the post up in tribute to his memory.

Suze Rotolo, 1943-2011

2011-02-28T08:06:00.000-08:00

Suze Rotolo passed away on Friday. J. Hoberman's remembrances on the Village Voice website are worth reading (and not just because he notes that she "listened to jazz on WKCR").

Without knowing that Rotolo had died, I was listening to Another Side of Bob Dylan last night and having my usual semi-aghast reaction to "Ballad in Plain D," the whiny and vitriolic story of her and Dylan's breakup.

As Clinton Heylin recounts in Behind the Shades, Dylan did at least own up to the song's inappropriateness somewhat. In a 1985 interview, he said,

That one I look back at and say, 'I must have been a real schmuck to write that.' I look back at that particular one and say ... maybe I could have left that alone.

Indeed, Bob, indeed.

Live From Memphis: Red House Showcase

2011-02-23T10:25:00.000-08:00

Saturday night I had the distinct pleasure of co-hosting a special broadcast of the Red House Records showcase at the Folk Alliance Conference in Memphis with DJ Mary Sue Twohy. Airing live on XM 15 The Village on Sirius/XM Radio, we got to introduce the acts and chat backstage between sets. Although I hosted a Womenfolk special on The Village a couple years ago, I had never gotten to be on the air live with Mary Sue, and we had a blast as you can see here.

The showcase itself went great with spectacular performances and a great live audience at the Memphis Marriott. Here's what everyone played...

ELIZA GILKYSON with John Inmon on guitar
Playing all new songs from her upcoming album Roses at the End of Time, coming out May 2011.
- Midnight on Raton
- A Place to Fall Apart
- Roses at the End of Time
- Slouching Toward Bethlehem (with Ray Bonneville on harmonica & Carol Young from The Greencards on harmony vocals)

CARRIE ELKIN with Danny Schmidt on harmony vocals
- Landeth By Sea
- Roots & Wings
- Lift Up the Anchor (with Storyhill's John Hermanson also on harmony vocals)

DANNY SCHMIDT with Carrie Elkin on harmony vocals
- Cries of Shadows
- Blue Railroad Train
- Company of Friends

RAY BONNEVILLE
- Blonde of Mine
- Nigh Walker
- Crow John

STORYHILL
- Give Up the Ghost
- Paradise
- Better Angels
- Well of Sorrow

CLIFF EBERHARDT
- Your Face (with Red Molly's Laurie MacAllister on harmony vocals)
- I Love Money
- Land of the Free (with Laurie MacAllister)
- The High Above and the Down Below

The whole thing wrapped up at 1 am, and everyone was beat, it being the last night of the conference. I joined Storyhill for a much needed glass of wine before heading up to participate in a late-night tribute round where we covered our friends' songs--a perfect way to end an amazing four days of music.

Elton John Wants Some Punch

2011-02-17T05:27:00.000-08:00

We've had good things to say about the Punch Brothers here on Sound of Blackbirds (see here and, for notes on Chris Thile in particular, here and here).

Well, Sir Elton John has caught up with us.

From the latest Rolling Stone:

You keep up with new music, and recently said, "Songwriters today are pretty awful." There must be someone out there you like.

I like bands that have made their reputations by playing live. Real bands like Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire and the Black Keys. We played with a band on T Bone's revue, the Punch Brothers, and I want to make a record with them. They're astonishing, the best jam band I've ever seen. It's f*cking brilliant. Jon Brion's production is incredible. They, for me, are the exiting new thing. That's where I want to go.

Wow!

Marshall Crenshaw w/ Frank Manzi @ The Iron Horse, February 11th, 2011

2011-02-13T18:18:00.000-08:00

The last time I saw Marshall Crenshaw was two years ago, in Brooklyn. It was a solo guitar performance, and I wrote about it on my old blog. It was a great show, although something about Marshall Crenshaw’s music always cries out for a band. Of course, that may just be because the recordings of his greatest songs are all with a great, loud rock group backing him, and it’s hard for me to hear the songs any other way. The first time I ever saw him, at the Rodeo Bar in lower Manhattan, he was accompanied by a second guitar player and a drummer. I didn’t know his music that well at the time, but all of his songs resonated with me. In particular, I remember “What Do You Dream Of” and covers of Richard Thompson and Rolling Stones songs. When I bought a ticket to see him at the Iron Horse, I did so in the hope that he was touring with a band this time around; no such luck. His latest album, Jaggedland (2009), is full of fantastic guitar playing, some of the best I’ve ever heard from him.

Frank Manzi, a local performer, played a half and hour’s worth of songs on an acoustic guitar to open the show. I didn’t know his music, but I really enjoyed it. He played and sang with a lot of strength and confidence. Clearly, he’s been doing this for a long time.

Marshall Crenshaw took the stage at around 7:50. By this time, the Iron Horse had filled up quite nicely. Not a sellout crowd, I don’t think, but pretty packed nonetheless. He had two electric guitars onstage, a Guild and a Danelectro, and he alternated between the two of them all night long. My disappointment at not seeing a band vanished within seconds after the performance began. His guitar playing is excellent, very fast and tasty, full of unusual chords and, sometimes, fancy picking. The more intricate guitar parts, it seemed, appeared in his more recent material. When he played songs from his latest album, Jaggedtown, there was always some sharp solos played high up on the guitar neck. Jaggedtown is a very good album, by the way, and the ones he played from it, “Passing Through,” “Right on Time,” “Never Coming Down,” “Long Hard Road,” and “Live and Learn,” were among my favorites of the evening. By the time he finished the opening number, “There She Goes Again,” which is one of his very best songs, I had remembered how easily the solo electric guitar goes down once one’s ears adjust. “Dime a Dozen Guy” and “Fantastic Planet of Love” also had some great instrumental passages.

He didn’t speak too much in between songs. He mentioned his love of Indian food, his love for his daughter, and his love for old rock and roll music. He smiled a lot and looked like he was enjoying himself. After the first couple of songs, he noticed Ray Mason, standing at back of the Iron Horse, the same guy who I saw open for James McMurtry back in December. He introduced Mason as “my friend.” And from there, he went into “What Do You Dream Of,” one of my most favorite songs.

For his encore, he talked about the 30th anniversary of the release of his first album before playing “Something’s Gonna Happen,” and then “Better Back Off,” which has one of his subtlest, most sensitive lyrics. The studio recording of that one is also one of his hardest rocking songs. Live, I paid more attention to the singing and the lyrics, which I truly love. Other highlights included his version of Buddy Holly’s “Crying, Waiting, Hoping” and his own “Not for Me,” which is from his first album. I haven’t heard that album from beginning to end in years, and hearing that song, along with “Cynical Girl” and “Someday Someway” and “Mary Anne,” made me want to find a copy of it and listen to it over and over again.

Another Folk/Contemporary Classical Mash-Up

2011-02-12T17:23:00.001-08:00

In a New York Times review of a concert that heavily featured hot young composer Nico Muhly, Zachary Woolfe writes,

In “Jerusalem,” he and the quietly charismatic folk singer and songwriter Sam Amidon adapted an eerily ecstatic 18th-century hymn. Once or twice Mr. Amidon vocalized on “da” for a few beats instead of singing words, and the accompaniment was jittery and changeable. It was as if singer and players were improvising, about to go off the rails, and it worked perfectly.

[It] was the only piece that felt consistently inspired, truly surprising.

That was a great paragraph because I had no idea how it was going to end -- that last word could have been "perfectly" or "terribly"; I didn't know which way it would go.

Two years ago here on Sound of Blackbirds, we provided a link to a cool Sam Amidon video.

Where Minimalism Meets the Mountain Dulcimer

2011-02-02T15:47:00.000-08:00

Allan Kozinn has a nice piece in the New York Times about Bang on a Can composer Julia Wolfe vis-a-vis her Composer Portrait tomorrow night at Miller Theatre.

With references to her 2004 piece "Cruel Sister," which will be performed at that concert and also will be featured on a new recording, Kozinn traces Wolfe's interactions with folk music from her days in college to the present. "Cruel Sister" is based on the traditional English ballad of the same name (which Wolfe heard on Pentangle's 1970 album that uses it as its title track), although Wolfe, as Kozinn tells us, uses neither the lyrics nor the melody from the ballad but rather draws on it to create an original piece of programmatic music. Apparently, she also composed in 2009 a piece of music called "Steel Hammer," which draws on a variety of "John Henry" variants and was premiered at Carnegie Hall by the awesome Trio Medieval and the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

I had the pleasure of seeing the last Julia Wolfe Composer Portrait at Miller Theatre back in 2003 (where in my post-concert excitement to congratulate her, I, um, perhaps interrupted Steve Reich's conversation with her -- Reich was actually quite gracious about it). And we regularly featured her music and conducted at least one interview with her on the Live from Miller Theatre radio program.

I definitely wish I could be there tomorrow night for the show at Miller.

In the meantime, let's rock out on some of this:

(HT: Steve Winters.)

CD Review: Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen At Edwards Barn

2011-01-29T09:27:00.000-08:00

One of the fixtures in my adult music-going life has been the duo of Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen. I have had the great opportunity to see these guys a number of times in a number of different venues, and there are a set of indelible memories in my head from the various shows.

Seeing them at the Bottom Line with Eric Lane and Paul Getto, we had sat through an amazing show and called them back to stage for an encore. Eric leans inward and says, "Wouldn't it be awesome if they played 'Eight Miles High' now?" A microsecond later, we heard "dum-de-duh-de-duh-duh" from Herb's guitar and went nuts.

In July 2000, they closed out the opening night of the short-lived Winterhawk 2000: Bluegrass and Beyond festival. Capping a day of music that had included Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, the John Cowan Band and Mary Gauthier, the band took the stage and launched into Chris's original "Like a Hurricane" with Chris on guitar, Herb on banjo, Jim Monahan on guitar and Bill Bryson on an acoustic bass guitar -- by the time we got to "Turn, Turn, Turn," Herb had traded in his banjo for a guitar, too, and as the stage lights played off the evening mist, those four guitar-shaped instruments on stage hit us with a wall of great sound.

There also was the time that Andy Bean and I saw them at B.B. King's in New York and someone requested that they play the Burrito Brothers' draft-dodging classic "My Uncle" and "play it for George W.!" To which Hillman responded, "Hey! I voted for him, and I support him." An awkward air descended on the New York crowd -- some of it even escaped with a hissing sound. And the less said about the disastrous final appearance of Rice, Rice, Hillman and Pedersen at the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival (when the band was headlining the Saturday night show and the Rice brothers were mainlining booze) the better, but it certainly was memorable...

With the September 2010 release of At Edwards Barn on Rounder Records, it has become possible to relive many of the great concert memories in the comfort of my own living room. Recorded at their annual benefit for the Orthodox Church of the Annunciation of Santa Maria, California, and the Gobezie-Goshu Home for the Elderly in Adwa, Ethiopia, and featuring Bill Bryson on bass, Larry Park on guitar and David Mansfield on fiddle, this is a solid album from start to finish.

They start the disc off with the Stanley Brothers' "Going Up Home," allowing those Hillman-Pederson harmonies to welcome the listener to the show. The band jumps in on the chorus, but this one's really about the sining. It gives way to the energetic Desert Rose Band classic "Love Reunited," where the lingering harmony of the verse cuts quickly into "Don't walk away!," the opening line of the chorus. Then comes the big hit -- "Turn, Turn, Turn" -- with Hillman picking out the signature opening lick on his mandolin and then taking a nice little solo later on. The energy and singing are solid here, and it's tough to imagine not getting a big grin out of this recording.

"Eight Miles High," which comes later on the disc, is similarly well-executed: bass and guitar provide the well-known riff, a little fiddle flutter and mandolin sparkle eventually yield to the gorgeous harmonies of Hillman and Pedersen. David Mansfield plays some tasteful psychedelic notes on the fiddle here and there, and Hillman's mandolin chop keeps the song moving along.

From the Burritos' catalogue, we get solid versions of both "Wheels" and "Sin City." The Louvin Brothers' "If I Could Only Win Your Love" and Buck Owens' "Together Again" pay tribute to the duo's country progenitors.

One of my all-time favorite songs, Pedersen's "Wait a Minute" is maybe slightly besmirched by Herb getting testy about Chris's tuning while he introduces the song, which is then followed by a false start. I'm not entirely sure if I would have left all of that on the album, but I guess there's some reason to keep the live show together, warts and all. The actual execution of the song is right where I would want it to be though -- all of the beauty, all of the emotion, the great harmonies, the moving swoop on the chorus. The liner notes -- by James Rosen, whose credits for writing the notes are that he is a Fox News correspondnet and the author of The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate -- are maybe slightly besmirched by the description of the song as an "obscure country gem." Obscure? I'm not so sure about that...

The disc wraps up with the lovely "Heaven's Lullaby," sweetly played and sung, leaving the listener contented and looking forward to the next live encounter with Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen, which is now as close at hand as just hitting the play button again.

Two Old-Time Trios and a Whole Lot of Instrument Swapping

2011-01-23T19:51:00.000-08:00

When is a folk festival not a folk festival? When it's also a concert series! And we denizens of Champaign-Urbana are quite lucky that the fine folks who bring us the CU Folk and Roots Festival are also spreading the joy over the course of the entire year with a series of concerts.

Tonight at Urbana's Independent Media Center, it was a Midwestern collision of bicoastal old-time trios. From the West Coast, it was the Foghorn Trio, the current incarnation of Portland's Foghorn Stringband. From the East Coast -- from that northern homeland of the Appalachian diaspora and the diaspora of the ancient race of insane record collectors: Brooklyn -- it was the Dust Busters. These two bands switched instruments around among themselves and then came all together for a barn-burnin' triple fiddle conclusion to the evening's entertainment.

The Foghorn Trio opened up. Caleb Klauder was sporting a mandolin; Stephen 'Sammy' Lind was on fiddle, and Nadine Landry was on guitar. They ripped through a fiddle tune and then into "Greenback Dollar," inviting us to sing-a-long. And then the first instrument shift happened, as Caleb put down the mandolin and picked up the fiddle, so that we could get the real Cajun style going on "Le Sud de la Louisiane." Caleb sang the vocals and played the fiddle on "Liza Jane" (learned from Kyle Creed's recording), while Sammy switched to banjo. For the gospel tune "Little Black Train," Sammy stayed on banjo, while Caleb went back to banjo. Finally, Nadine got into the act, putting down the guitar to play bass on a terrific version of Bill Monroe's "Evening Prayer Blues," which Sammy played guitar on. (You got it? Or no?) Caleb's playing on "Evening Prayer Blues" really was superb -- he had this great little mandolin bounce that seemed just right for the tune.

The band actually stayed the same for a moment -- mandolin, guitar and bass -- in order to play another bluegrass number, "I Want to Be Loved (But Only By You)." And then Caleb switched to a second guitar for the Carter Family's "Hello Central." In order to play a Cajun tune from the Red Stick Ramblers, Sammy needed to get back on the fiddle, and that's where he stayed to play a Missouri fiddle tune from the repertoire of Lonnie Robertson. The Carter Family songbook came back into play with "Let's Be Lovers Again," and then Sammy played a solo "Yew Piney Mountain" that then turned into a rip-roaring "Reuben's Train."

We called the Foghorn Trio back for an encore with no questions asked (and no refusals allowed), and what did they do? They busted out a new instrument! Sammy picked up the accordion with Caleb on fiddle and Nadine on guitar for another Cajun tune.

After a short break, the Dust Busters came out to clean up. New York old-time impresario Eli Smith -- he hosts the Down Home Radio Show, runs the Brooklyn Folk Festival and teaches banjo to aspiring old-time enthusiasts -- was armed with a banjo-mandolin (watch out!); Craig Judelman was sporting a fiddle; and Walker Shepherd had on a guitar. They launched into the tune "Catlettsburg," which Craig punctuated with plenty of "Indian War Whoop"-style hoots and hollers. Eli went from the banjo-mandolin to the sturdy old five-string for the Georgia Yellow Hammers' tune "Kiss Me Quick and Go." But then he switched to harmonica for "Prohibition is a Failure," the Lowe Stokes song and the title track from the Dust Busters most recent disc. "Rich Man, Poor Man" featured the same line-up, but then Eli was on guitar and Walker on banjo-mandolin for "The Ploughboy Hop."

They played a "Meet Me by the Moonlight" variant known as "The Bootlegger's Story" and then switched to twin fiddles for one called "The Old Folks Better Go to Bed." Eli played the Jew's harp and sang a couple of verses of "Turkey in the Straw" without the other two-thirds of the band before Walker sang the lead on George Landers' great, great song "Rolling Mills Are Burning Down." (Walker was playing banjo; Craig fiddle and Eli guitar for that one.) "Stockade Blues" and "Give the Fiddler a Dram" closed up their solo portion of the set.

And then we got the full treat: both bands together: two fiddles, a banjo, a banjo-mandolin, guitar and bass for one tune; then triple fiddles for a no-doubt-firey "Fire on the Mountain."

We demanded more. They had to think about it, but then they complied, giving us a twin fiddle version plus mandolin, banjo and bass version of "John Henry."

A very fine night of old-time music from two young trios.

Could it have been better? Well, the previous night, Bruce Molsky had also joined them on stage, so I venture to say that it could possibly have gotten even better. But I certainly had no complaints as I headed out the door.

David Francey Movie

2011-01-19T07:48:00.000-08:00

The mighty Brian Frizzell called my attention some time ago to the existence of a movie featuring the terrific music of David Francey called Burning Bright.

In the following clip, he amazingly starts to harmonize with himself about three-quarters of the way through:

Paul Cezanne!

2011-01-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

Tom Meltzer, the author of the following song, points out that today is the 172nd anniversary of Paul Cezanne's birth.

This is the best celebration that I can think of:

The song was later released on the 5 Chinese Brothers' brilliant first CD Singer Songwriter Beggarman Thief. That disc is really an incredible collection of songs and well worth hunting down.

Chris Smither @ Ashfield Town Hall in Ashfield, MA, January 15th, 2011

2011-01-16T08:48:00.000-08:00

One of the great privileges of living in Pioneer Valley, as many Sound of Blackbirds readers probably know, is that it is the stomping ground of lots of American “roots” musicians. Singers, songwriters, pickers and players of all instruments, and venues of varying sizes for them to play…they are all over the place in the Valley. There are amateurs and professionals, teachers and students, the locally renowned and the nationally famous, songpoets and musical craftsmen and craftswomen. And then there is Chris Smither. I’ve written at length about Smither in other entries, including some remarks about his latest recording, Time Stands Still (2009), on my old blog, so I will not take the time to extol his virtues again here. But I was thinking last night on my slow, slushy drive up to Ashfield, how amazing it is that I can hop into my car, drive 30 miles or so, and see one of the greatest living professional songwriter-guitarists perform some of greatest material in an intimate setting. As it happens, this performance was in the midst of a four day workshop that Chris Smither was conducting in town, at the Mighty Albert. A couple dozen or more of his students were in the front rows of the audience last night.

Ashfield, MA is about a 1 hour drive from South Hadley. Last night, it was a bit more, due to the light snow and slippery driving conditions. The drive home, after the snow had stopped, was faster. I had never been there before, and I was delighted by the venue. It was the Ashfield town hall, a beautiful old building, very New England, clearly used quite a bit, given the town's frequent use of open town hall meetings to conduct its public business. The lower level was a wide open space, with plenty of nooks set aside to fill out ballots. There were lots of big file cabinets, old law books on bookshelves embedded in beige walls, boxes of paper that were labeled “for shredding,” and even a beautiful old ballot box, labeled “Perfection,” patented in 1905. For this evening, the open space was devoted to selling cookies and cheesecake and tea and coffee. No food or drink was allowed in the concert space, which was several flights of stairs up, on the top floor, in an auditorium that, I imagine, is used for town meetings.

Chris Smither took the stage at about 5 minutes past 8:00, played an hour set, took a 30 minute break, and played for another hour or so. 22 songs in all, by my count. He opened the concert with the song that he’s been using as his opener for about 5 years now: “Open Up.” His foot tapping was in perfect, toneless harmony with his syncopated finger-picking, as usual, and he was in fine voice. I won’t quote the opening lines, which are as perfect a statement of purpose as I’ve ever heard, because the second couplet struck me like never before. I’m so attached to the opening couplet that the second one seems less essential, but it didn’t last night: “I’m still flying blind, hoping I might find / a way to stop my thinking, and open up my mind.” The entire song moves with a generous groove, a bright melody, and words that deal with the dualities that have defined his songwriting for the past 40 years: heart-mind, body-soul, me-you, life-death (although this particular song only hints at the last one). I’m glad he begins with this one. It’s a song that gathers depth each time I hear it, and it’s a perfect concert opener. From there, he moved on to “Link of Chain,” originally recorded for Up on the Lowdown (1995) and perfected for Live As I’ll Ever Be (1999), which sounded as great as it ever has. I note that, in the Chris Smither Songbook, the songwriter’s own commentary on this song begins as follows: “I originally wanted to call this, ‘The Importance of Being Close While Maintaining Identity,” but decided that it showed a lack of commitment, so it remains a sort of impressionistic paean to living in the moment. Nice groove, though.” Amen to that. Chris Smither has a distinctive sound and a distinctive singing and songwriting style. A voice, that is. From a distance, it is easy to hear the songs blend into one another. With a touch of attention, the great universal themes assert themselves, filtered through melodies that recall Mississippi John Hurt (one of Smither’s earliest inspirations) and in thematic sync with the rhythmic foot-tapping. Eventually, every song, whether an original or a cover, takes on a distinct shape, and each one seems like a piece of a greater whole.

The great man played a first set of music that covered highlights from his most recent three albums. His second set dipped back into some of his older albums although, as usual, he did not play any material from his first two albums, I’m a Stranger Too! (1970) and Don’t It Drag On (1972). The second set also featured performances of other people’s songs. I heard him play Dave Carter’s “Crocodile Man” at Falcon Ridge in the summer of 2002, the very first time I heard him live, and it was lovely to hear him recall meeting Dave at a festival some time before that. His slow, measured version of “Sitting on Top of the World” is coldly ethereal, hinting at hurt and grief that are even deeper that the lyrics suggest. The stolid foot-tapping and the weariness in his singing evoke spiritual fortitude. It was, for me, the emotional high point of the concert, bold and beautiful and oracular. You can find his recording of it on his 1984 album It Ain’t Easy. It is the single best version of that song I have ever heard.

There were easily over 300 people in the audience, perhaps over 400. It was an older audience for the most part, although a few folks brought their children. While there were definitely some fans of Smither’s present, I sensed that a lot of attendees were locals who wanted a night out. There were laughs of delight and recognition when the singer hit keys lines. “Origin of Species” and “Surprise, Surprise” always work. Three songs in, folks laughed so hard at “she says the love ain’t cheap, but the pain is free / and I say, ‘but that sounds good to me!’” that a lot of them missed “she’s got hooks to make a fish think twice,” not to mention “if I think at all, I think this feel nice!” That song, “Lola,” was preceded by a story about having to buy a new GPS, which he’s had to do many times, he explained. Now, he names every GPS he buys, Lola. After telling us that he wrote “I Don’t Know” after writing down his little daughter’s questions and observations about the world, he expressed his suspicion that she was starting to understand that she had a role in writing the song: she’s begun asking for her royalty checks. He seemed pretty amused by his own song, “Get a Better One,” which he sang with a big smile. And “Never Needed It More” and “Time Stands Still” are love songs of maturity and experience, eliciting entirely different kinds of smiles. Meanwhile, there’s nothing funny at all about “No Love Today” or “Drive You Home Again” or “Seems So Real.”

For the encore, he treated us to J. J. Cale’s “Magnolia.” He introduced it by explaining that it’s a song he returns to whenever he’s working on his own songwriting. It’s an example, he said, of how the simplest of songs are often the most effective. And I'll be damned if it wasn't the second best moment of the show. What does it mean, I wonder, that this most brilliant of songwriters moved me the most with performances of songs he didn't write? That this most brilliant of songwriters is in complete control of his talents as a singer, a guitarist, and an interpreter, that's what. I will see him again soon, I hope.

Redbird w/ David Wax Museum @ Memorial Hall, Shelburne Falls, January 1st, 2011

2011-01-02T05:16:00.001-08:00

An unexpectedly transcendent few hours of music on New Years' Day, 2011. I drove up to Shelburne Falls expecting a pleasant evening, not a fantastic one, but that's what I got. Jim Olsen was on hand to introduce the performers, the setting was the beautiful old Memorial Hall, and the audience was sold-out...all ingredients that can make live music shine, which it did.

Before Redbird went on, the David Wax Museum played half a dozen songs. I have seen their name on fliers before, but I'd never heard their music, and they damn near stole the show. The applause for each of their songs grew and grew and, when they left the stage, we gave them a standing ovation and called for them to come back. As I learned, these folks--the duo of David Wax and Suz Slezak--won over a Newport Folk Festival audience back in August, and they've been riding high ever since. They've moved to Pioneer Valley, and at least one Valley radio station has picked up one of their songs, "Beatrice," which came third in the set that I heard, and which rang a bell in my head. I'm 98% I've heard it before, if not on the radio, then at some store or other in the Valley. You can listen to it and a couple of others here.

What's the story with them? At first, I thought it was going to be simple pleasures, as in their opening song, "When You are Still," with a lovely melody and a simple, loving lyric. The harmony singing was pretty, and the mood was gentle, and I liked it plenty. But that was no preparation for where the Museum went next. David Wax put down the guitar and picked up a Mexican jarana, and Suz Slezak took up a quijada (donkey jawbone), and they proceeded to play "The Persimmon Tree," whose jaunty rhythm was a tiny miracle. It echoed something that I'm sure has been in my subconscious for years, something that I would have crassly labeled "Mexican music" but has never sounded so good. I've certainly not heard anything like that at a singer-songwriter performance in Pioneer Valley. At least two other songs featured the jarana and jaw bone, and they were magical. I'm not the only one who thought so; the applause was raucous and delighted. There was also a quiet ballad played on the piano, a song called "Jalopy Heart," and some amusing words about the aggressiveness with which they distributed their mailing list to audiences. After that, they proceeded to distribute their mailing list to the audience...rather aggressively, I thought. But it was their revitalization of Mexican folk music that was the real story. I'm checking out the songs I heard Saturday night on iTunes, including "The Persimmon Tree" and "Colas," from their 2009 album Carpenter Bird, and the recordings sound as great as the live performances did, bright, soulful and fun. For an encore, they played the jarana-and-quijada "Yes Maria Yes," a video for which is available on their website. I will keep a lookout for them, and I encourage readers to do the same.

The featured act played as a quartet: Peter Mulvey, Kris Delmhorst, and Jeffrey Foucault, along with David "Goody" Goodrich whose tasty guitar solos generated some heat whenever the mood got a bit too relaxed. They began with Peter Mulvey singing lead on "Lovely as the Day Is Long," a bit of light jazz for which Peter Mulvey's voice is superbly suited. From there, the group played in a kind of round-robin format, with ensemble performances and solo vocals, and occasional harmonies thrown in. There were originals, there were covers, there was even an instrumental, led by Goody, called "Snowed In." The mood was laid-back throughout, but it ranged from laid-back good to laid-back great. At its best, it was either naughty--Jeffrey's "Don't Fuck with My Miller Time," Goody's cover of a Morphine song--or surprising--Kris played a Cars song for an album full of Cars songs she's about to record, and Jeffrey pulled off an excellent version of Tom Waits' "2:19," which I prefer to all the John Prine songs he covers. Kris also did a romantic Ricky Lee Jones song, although I don't know the name of it.

Highlights....I was moved by everything that featured Peter Mulvey, who seems very much in control of his talents. That is, he plays and picks with the confidence of someone comfortable with his place, and his songs are thoughtful and nuanced. He also has excellent stage presence, complete with knowing nods and winks to the audience, and a beautiful smile. His opening vocal on "Lovely as the Day Is Long" was excellent, and so was his new song "Trempealeau." And the the band's second set concluded with his "Sad Sad Sad Sad (and Faraway from Home)," which is studded with great lines. Jeffrey Foucault's best moment was the Tom Waits cover, I thought, but for the encore, they did his "4&20 Blues" from Stripping Cane (2004), and I enjoyed it enough to go back to that album, which I've always thought I ought to like more than I do. And what do you know? I listened to it a couple of nights ago and heard it like never before. The album is very quiet and staid, and it's best listened to late at night, perhaps on long cars rides or when one's waking hours are very nearly over. It's an atmospheric album and, beneath the atmosphere, there are a number of good songs, especially the title track, along with an appropriately downbeat version of John Fogerty's "Lodi." As far as Kris Delmhorst goes, I was happiest with the Cars' song, the Ricky Lee Jones song, and her cello accompaniment with her bandmates' tunes. At one point, after an exchange with Jeffrey, she informed us that there were sometimes arguments as to who gets to sing the Neil Young song. This evening, that was Kris, and the song was "For the Turnstiles, which I heard her and Jeffrey perform at the Iron Horse back in October, as I described here.

Not to take anything away from Kris and Jeffrey--now Shelburne Falls natives who, they mentioned, can see Memorial Hall from their kitchen--but I left thinking most about Peter Mulvey. I saw him open the Saturday afternoon festivities at the Newport Folk Festival in 1997, and I can't really remember the feel of that performance, although I vaguely remember being moved by it. Documentary evidence:

This was around the time an album called Deep Blue was out, and I imagine he was playing songs from it. Maybe it's time to check it out. At any rate, his vocal performances felt very natural and unforced, but still focused. He's really good. Meanwhile, I look forward to Kris' album of Cars covers and to Jeffrey's "Don't Fuck with My Miller Time" recorded with the rocking country band it deserves.

Queen Awards Richard Thompson OBE

2010-12-31T16:09:00.000-08:00

Story here.

(HT: Steve Winters.)

New Phil Ochs Documentary and Thoughts on "Crucifixion"

2010-12-29T22:03:00.000-08:00

Opening at New York's IFC on January 5th will be Kenneth Bowser's new documentary on Phil Ochs.

After a fairly serious obsession with his music while I was in high school, I've fallen away from listening to Ochs. (And I've also stopped scribbling "Phil Ochs Lives" on desks...) But just the description of the documentary made me want to delve back into his repertoire.

Bowser ... began thinking about making a film about Mr. Ochs some 20 years ago. In his vision, the documentary would show how Mr. Ochs had been wrongfully “written out of the history books,” unfair treatment for a man whom Mr. Bowser considers the best protest singer who ever lived — and the most relevant recording artist of the 1960s. A mention of Bob Dylan, whose protest songs disappeared early in his career as he turned his gifts to the surrealistically personal, is an easy way to inflame Mr. Bowser.

Now, I have been thinking a lot about Dylan recently. (In Phil's own words: "'Ochs, wake up, this is God here. Over.' I said, 'You're putting me on, of course, Dylan.'") And you know -- perhaps you need to prepare yourself -- I'm not sure that I would single out any Dylan song as being in the category of serious poetry the way that I would "Crucifixion." Dylan is poetic, but it's so often a poetry of wryness -- a comic poetry -- and then sometimes a poetry of spite (as in "Idiot Wind," for instance). And those things are powerful and meaningful and great art. But "Crucifixion" -- as poetry -- is a lyric that can stand side-by-side with Tennyson, Coleridge, Rimbaud and Whitman, I think: it uses its powerful imagery and internal rhymes in the interest of gravitas. And as much as I love "Stuck inside of Mobile" and could see it being included on a high school English syllabus, I feel less like it needs to be there.

And the night comes again to the circle-studded sky.
The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie.
'Til the universe explodes as a falling star is raised --
The planets are paralyzed; the mountains are amazed,
But they all glow brighter from the brilliance of the blaze
With the speed of insanity, then he dies.

In the green fields a-turnin', a baby is born.
His cries crease the wind and mingle with the morn:
An assault upon the order, the changing of the guard,
Chosen for a challenge that is hopelessly hard,
And the only single sound is the sighing of the stars,
But to the silence of distance, they are sworn.

Ochs wrote the song for John F. Kennedy -- and reduced Robert F. Kennedy to tears with it shortly before his own assassination -- and it describes the birth of a leader heralding a new age who at first "stands on the sea and shouts to the shore, / But the louder that he screams the longer he's ignored." And then "his message gathers meaning and it spreads accross the land / The rewarding of his pain is the following of the man." And we know how this drama ends, but Ochs -- perhaps like Dylan in "Who Killed Davey Moore?" -- points out the complicity of our culture in it all:

The child was created to the slaughterhouse he's led
So good to be alive when the eulogies are read
The climax of emotion, the worship of the dead
And the cycle of sacrifice unwinds.

It's brilliant stuff with lyrics that allow for rediscovery and new discovery each time through, and it's powerfully sung, too.

Maureen Dowd on Patti Smith's Just Kids

2010-12-29T21:57:00.000-08:00

Maureen Dowd dedicated her Christmas Day column to Patti Smith's recent National Book Award-winning memoir.

For anyone who has had a relationship where the puzzle pieces seem perfect but don’t fit — so, all of us — “Just Kids” is achingly beautiful. It’s “La Bohème” at the Chelsea Hotel; a mix, she writes, of “Funny Face” and “Faust,” two hungry artists figuring out whom to love, how to make art and when to part.

It unfolds in that romantic time before we were swallowed by Facebook, flat screens, texts, tweets and Starbucks; when people still talked all night and listened to jukeboxes and LPs and read actual books and drank black coffee.

Smith describes the wondrous odyssey of taking the bus from South Jersey and meeting a curly-haired soul mate who wanted to help her soar, even as the pair painfully grappled over the years with Mapplethorpe’s sexuality and his work’s brutality.

Doyle Lawson Branching Out?

2010-12-29T21:43:00.000-08:00

In the January 6th Rolling Stone, David Browne has a short piece on Paul Simon's new album, which sounds pretty cool -- Simon has stepped away from focusing on rhythm and percussion to get back to thinking melodically and has written songs about Iraq, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and a Vietnam veteran working at a car wash.

According to the article, the album also features "Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver's Indian percussion and Southern-gospel harmonies." Although I suspect that claim is the result of an editing error, if not, I'm looking forward to checking out the former (and I already know that the latter will be exceptional -- as always).

"My Life as Keith Moon"

2010-12-24T12:30:00.000-08:00

I've been catching up on back issues of The New Yorker in between wrapping presents, and I really enjoyed James Wood's "The Fun Stuff: My Life as Keith Moon."

Like anyone interested in music, I've heard Keith Moon praised as one of the great drummers, but I've never really known exactly what that meant -- until Wood's article.

Over the course of a few paragraphs, he lays out the way in which Moon remained a constant innovator within the context of every song rather than a mere beatkeeper.

Drumming is repetition, as is rock music generally, and Moon clearly found repetition dull. So he played the drums like no one else--and not even like himself. No two bars of Moon's playing ever sound the same; he is in recolt against consistency. Everyone else in the band gets to improvise, so why should the drummer be nothing more than a condemned metronome?"

Woods makes good comparisons between Moon and other drummers and also between rock 'n' roll and the classical repertoire that Woods himself was brought up inside of.

He talks about Moon's out-of-controlness, of course -- "I don't give a damn about a Holiday Inn room. There's ten million of them exactly the same," he said after trashing one -- but the memorable parts of the article are those that compare Moon to Glenn Gould and describe his influence on punk music.

Worth reading!

Benefit for Half the Sky @ The Regent Theater, Arlington, MA, December 17th, 2010

2010-12-18T05:24:00.000-08:00

Last night, I drove over an hour and half to Arlington for the Half the Sky benefit concert. Originally, four performers were scheduled to play, but Lucy Kaplansky had a family emergency that drew her away. That left us with Patty Larkin, Chris Smither, and Jorma Kaukonen, all people who have adopted daughters from orphanages in China. The latter two I heard play recently, at the Beacon Theater in NYC. Patty Larkin, on the other hand, I hadn't seen in a couple of summers.

This was my first time at the beautiful Regent Theater, and I loved it. I hope another show comes by that takes me there. It reminded me a little of Town Hall, but folksier, more casual. My only complaint was that the house music was repulsive. It took me about 5 minutes to pay attention long enough to realize how bad it was, but when I did, I realized that it wasn't bad, it was god-awful. Slow, schmaltzy, string-laden renditions of "classic rock" songs. First "White Room." Then, "Touch Me." Then "Like a Rolling Stone." Then I overheard an older gentleman, sitting behind me, mention to his friend that the Doors song "Light My Fire" came out in 1967, when he was a college freshman, and that it got played at every mixer he went to that summer. Then I heard him say...

"Hey, do you know if the band playing this stuff is in the house tonight? I hope so."
Pause.
"So I can eliminate them."

The host for the show was Signature Sounds' Jim Olson, who has popped up at probably half or more of the concerts I've attended since moving to Pioneer Valley. He announced that the show was very nearly sold old out, that this was a good cause, and that his label works with Patty and Chris. I wonder how many attendees didn't know that last bit. Probably more than at most of the shows at which Jim announces it. The audience was more diverse than the Valley norm, which is understandable, since Arlington ain't the Valley, and because this wasn't any old concert. Half the Sky works to help orphaned children in China, and there were plenty of Chinese and Chinese-Americans in the audience, and plenty of adopted Chinese children. Before the show began, I saw Jorma's wife, Vanessa, and their daughter Izzy, who skipped merrily down the aisles, as her mother reached for her hand.

The show itself was lovely. Each performer played four songs, then there was an intermission, and then there was a "round robin" bit, with all performers on stage together. Throughout, but particularly during the second half of the show, each performer took some time to talk about Half the Sky and the pleasure they've taken in adopting children. And, in Jorma's case, the practical dilemmas of the adoption process. "For instance," he told us, "did you know that fingerprints expire?" This led to a story about having to drive to Cincinnati multiple times to watch an intern at the Department of Homeland Security figure out how to use the fingerprinting machine. Patty gave an overview of the history of the organization. And the ever eloquent Chris Smither spoke simply and movingly about how important it was that we were all there.

I don't know that I had a particular favorite moment from the show. I will say that I have never heard Patty Larkin sound better. This is the first time that I have seen her outside of a folk festival and, in the quiet of the theater, with the spotlight on her, she shone. Her guitar playing was superb throughout. The third song of her four song set was "Dear Heart," played on the electric guitar. It featured some delicate, subtle playing that climaxed with her use of a violin bow. I winced when she picked it up, thinking simultaneously of Led Zeppelin and Spinal Tap, but the sounds she produced with it were haunting and beautiful. She mentioned that Jorma really liked the color of that guitar (a sort of bluish, aquamarine), something which she could now mention on her resumé. She talked about the stories her daughter makes up in the car, before playing "The Book I'm Not Reading." Later on, I found her song "Open Arms" quite moving. Given the time and setting to pay attention to her, I made a strong connection with her music for, essentially, the very first time.

I will also say that, as gauged by audience reaction, Chris Smither basically stole the show. The applause after each song, the audience response to resonant lyrics, and his simple but earnest thanks for everyone for supporting a worthy cause...he had us in the palm of his hand. He began his set with Patty still on stage to accompany him on "No Love Today." As they began to play it, I wondered what all the children in the audience would make of it, if they were paying attention to it at all. It reminded me that Maggie Pesce once told me that her three year old daughter really likes that song. Anyhow, after that, he played "Don't Call Me Stranger," which never fails to hook the audience with the way he sings and slyly smiles through the line "I'm not evil / I'm just bad." Then came the song that I knew was coming, "I Don't Know," which is about talking to his child, interacting with the world, and the eternal search. It's one of his greatest lyrics, one of his greatest songs. And the beautiful love song "Time Stands Still" finished up the set.

When Jorma came onstage, it occurred to me that this was the first time I'd ever seen him onstage without Jack Casady there to play bass. Instead, it was just him and Barry Mitterhoff, who has been his stagemate for many years now. Chris stayed onstage for the first song, "Step It Up and Go," which they played together at the Beacon Theater show I saw two weeks ago and which sounded so good that I just searched for it on iTunes, but couldn't find it. After Chris left the stage, Jorma gave us "Izzy's Lullaby," a lovely instrumental piece. After that, there was a pause in the music as Jorma searched for his capo. Upon asking Barry if he had one, Barry helpfully informed him that mandolin players don't need them. "Rub it in, why don't you," Jorma grumbled, before going into "Come Back Baby," which elicited big applause and some tasty mandolin solos from Mr. Mitterhoff. Then, after a stagehand brought him a capo, they treated us to a new song, "Second Chances," which is about time, and "Hesitation Blues," which is too, sort of, to conclude the set.

It was the second half of the show, though, that made Chris Smither seem like the center of attention. He sat, literally, center stage, with Patty to his left and Jorma and Barry to his right. The performers were all attentive to each other during performance. But Patty and Jorma were noticeably impressed by Chris' playing and singing. Jorma also seemed to be very interested in what Patty was doing, probably because he's less familiar with his music, and her guitar playing comes from a different place than Chris' more blues-based stuff. But when Chris launched "Seems So Real" into the Arlington Theater, the propulsion seemed to move the entire theater, with the audience nodding and foot-tapping, and Jorma smiling and bobbing his head a bit. And when he did "Leave the Light On," the applause was the most enthusiastic of the evening, moving Jorma to say "yikes" and called it "a dandy song." Jorma did "River of Time" after that one, which is one of his best originals in recent years, plainspoken and rich. The only moment that made Chris seem less than dominant was when Patty led the assembled musicians in a bluesy version of John Hiatt's "Have a Little Faith in Me," which was her moment to shine and Barry's and Jorma's moments to play some sharp guitar solos. For the encore, it was Jorma's turn to lead everyone in an ensemble performance, this time of an actual blues: "That'll Never Happen No More."

Hot Tuna @ Beacon Theater - December 4, 2010

2010-12-08T10:16:00.000-08:00

Just saw a posting on jambands.com about the Saturday night show, featuring such even more big-name guests like Bob Weir and Steve Earle! You can read about it here or on Jorma's blog.

Hot Tuna @ The Beacon Theater, New York City, December 3rd, 2010

2010-12-04T17:22:00.001-08:00

The key word for last night's Hot Tuna show at the Beacon--the first of two sold-out gigs there--seemed to be "yikes." At least, that was the first word from Jorma Kaukonen's lips after the band took the stage, and he said it at least two more times that I can recall. What could he have been referring to? I can think of a few possibilities: the fact that he was celebrating his 70th birthday with these NYC concerts, the presence of a number of old friends at the show, the extraordinary quality of musicianship on the stage, and/or the huge, adoring crowd that was there to celebrate with him. Most likely, it's all of the above. But I'm just guessing.

I grew up with Hot Tuna, along with the first of Jorma's great bands, the Jefferson Airplane. They were the first rock groups that really felt "mine" when I was a teenager. I felt at the time like I was in the know about something really important, particularly since this was music that was recorded almost entirely before I was born. So whenever I see Tuna, it's always something special for me. Sentiment aside, however, this is one of the truly great rock and blues bands I have ever heard or seen. The material, whether blues numbers transformed into rock and roll or Jorma Kaukonen originals, is high quality, and Jorma and bassist Jack Casady are players without peer. At the moment, those two are playing with a fabulous drummer, Skoota Warner, and the multi-instrumentalist Barry Mitterhoff who, at the last few Tuna shows I've seen, came damn near to stealing the show. And Tuna at the Beacon--where I have now seen them 5 times--is something truly special. The greater NYC area has a whole bunch of Hot Tuna fans, and they pack the Beacon whenever the band comes to town. A number of years ago, Jorma referred to the Beacon as one of the "crown jewels" of gigs and, whenever I see them there, I think I know why.

After that first "yikes," Hot Tuna launched "I See the Light" out into the Beacon as their first offering. This happens to be one of my favorite songs in the Tuna catalog, particularly because of the ensemble playing and the way it builds and builds toward its climax. After that came "Corners Without Exits," a song about overcoming the internal hurdles that otherwise stop you from striding unafraid into the future, that featured some particularly excellent singing. Both of those were originally released on The Phosphorescent Rat (1973). After that, the volume and distortion levels went up a notch with two songs originally released on Hoppkorv (1976), "Talkin' Bout You" and "Can't Get Satisfied." The latter was played maybe a touch slower than I'm used to hearing it, Jorma soloing with particular intensity and Skoota funking it up beautifully.

The first of the special guests then took the stage, Happy Traum, with acoustic guitar in hand. They played "Sportin' Life Blues," a song that I actually associate with Chris Smither (who recorded it for his Small Revelations album). Happy sang it, and he sang it well. "Ode to Billy Dean" from Burgers (1972) and another Phosphorescent Rat song, "Living Just for You" came next, the former slow and bluesy and ominous, the latter fast and upbeat.

The second special guest was the blues singer John Hammond. I didn't know the songs they played, but John was in fine vocal form. In my own humble opinion, his voice has improved with age. It doesn't always work that way, but with him it has. And his cherry-red guitar is gorgeous.

Bill Kirchen from Commander Cody's Lost Planet Airmen and the maestro guitarist and fiddler Larry Campell took the stage next to ponder the crucial question: "Are you talkin' 'bout love, or are you talkin' 'bout chicken?" After that, the great Warren Haynes, from the Allman Brothers Band and from Gov't Mule, joined the assembled cast for a long, searing jam on "Come Back Baby," featuring great solos from every one of the guitarists, to end the first set. That was also the longest jam of the first set, a great way to leave an adoring audience craving a short intermission.

The second set featured some particularly inspired collaborations. It began with "Water Song" and "99 Year Blues," both augmented by bassist Byron House. Of all the collaborations of the night, this one may have been the most ingenious, in terms of matching guest with material. I would never have guessed it, but the second bass took "Water Song" to another level and added a touch of menace to "99 Year Blues." Larry Campbell then joined the boys on "Genesis," playing some Mark Knopfler-esque guitar, which beautifully suited the song (one of my favorite Jorma originals). Warren Haynes came back on stage for "Bowlegged Woman, Knock-kneed Man," one of my favorites of the older, intense electric jams.

The next guest, Bruce Hornsby, treated us to something different. I associate Bruce Hornsby with the piano (and there was a lovely one on stage), but he came onstage with a dulcimer. With Larry Campbell on violin and Jorma on acoustic guitar, Bruce led the band in a performance of "Children of Zion." It was quirky and unusual in this context, but I certainly enjoyed it. After that one, he moved to the piano to join the band on a song that has been in the Tuna repertoire from the beginning, "Know You Rider," with Skoota revving the tempo for the instrumental jam in the middle and everyone playing great solos. This was another example of a good match between guest musician and material; the piano playing was really kicking in that song. After that one, the guests left stage and the core four-piece band played "If This Is Love I Want My Money Back," which they are recording for the new Hot Tuna album. I remembered this one from their Beacon show last year, which I described here, and was happy to hear it again.

One of my other songwriting and guitar-playing heroes came onstage next. It was Chris Smither and, as is his wont, he sat and stomped as he played and picked. The song was "Step It Up and Go," an old Blind Boy Fuller song that Chris and Jorma recorded a few years ago.

The rest of the second set consisted of two long, electric jams, one slow and smoldering, "Rock Me Baby," and the other fast and funky and crazy, "Funky #7." The first was a platform for the guitarists to take off. The second included Bruce Hornsby on piano and, with all the jamming, went on for well over 10 minutes. For the encore, the core band performed "Hit Single #1," with Barry Mitterhoff soloing over Jorma's performance of the climactic instrumental bridge.

This was the longest Hot Tuna show I've ever attended. The band went on about 5 minutes after 8:00 and did not leave for good until 11:45 or so. The variation between acoustic blues, country-rock, and searing electric jams mirrored the various musical styles that Jorma Kaukonen has tapped into throughout his musical career. And Jorma was clearly enjoying himself. "I could get used to this," he enthused at one point, watching his guests get set up for a particular song. His introductions were a combination of affection for his friends and excitement with the event: "yeah, that's right--Bruce Hornsby!" He mentioned that Happy Traum was the one buddy of his who was actually a few older than he was, "and I want to be just like him when I grow up!" When introducing Bill Kirchen, he mentioned having once played in a band called Jefferson Airplane, eliciting big applause. He spoke warmly about having met John Hammond at Antioch College 50 years ago. And I don't think I have ever heard him play better. With all that guitar-playing talent on stage pushing him a bit, his solos and his singing were some of the strongest I can recall hearing from him.

After the show, I met up with Ellen and Red House Records' Eric Peltoniemi to chat and meet with the band. Backstage, people were floating around the rather cramped hallways, where Jorma was greeting folks. Ellen introduced me to him, we shook hands, and I wished him a happy birthday. I suppose it's a sign of emotional growth that I don't experience an emotional freakout when I meet one of my musical heroes. Ellen chatted with Jorma and his wife Vanessa for a few minutes, before we made our wade through the little backstage crowd (which included Happy and Bruce...and I think I spied Michael Falzarano back there too) and out into the night.

One final comment....Hot Tuna is recording a new album for Red House Records. From what Ellen tells me, and from what little I overheard Ellen and Eric and Jorma discuss, the new album is going to be a beauty. Beyond that, I happen to know a little secret, which I am happy to share with all you readers: there is no such thing as a bad Hot Tuna album. They don't exist and I can't imagine that they ever will. So be on the lookout for the new offering this spring and, in the meantime, watch out for the band playing at a venue near you.

James McMurtry w/ Ray Mason @ The Iron Horse, December 1st, 2010

2010-12-01T19:04:00.000-08:00

On a whim, I snapped up a ticket for the James McMurtry show at the Iron Horse this evening. I've been hearing good things about him for years, and "We Can't Make It Here" was not only chosen by Christgau as one of the best songs of 2005, but Bernie Sanders picked it up for his campaign theme. Not bad. Plus, I now see from my archives that I did indeed see him perform once before, back in the summer of 1993, the first time I ever went to the Newport Folk Festival. I'd be lying if I said I remember anything about that performance.

Anyhow, I went into the Iron Horse curious, and I walked out converted. James McMurtry is a meticulous songwriter, packing more details into his songs than almost anyone I can think of, and he picks and strums with amazing precision. He began with a song I later learned is called "Down Across the Delaware," and I was hooked after the first verse, involving "the gods that seem to rule our home," which is a reference to landlords, seemingly in New Jersey, or at least that's what I guess from the line about "the Garden State giving way to the real world." Class and poverty and capitalism are this guy's great themes and, with a few touches of surrealism and a few dashes of local color, they lock in and hold on every single song. Not one thing he played this evening, not one, just lay in the air. Each one felt like either an attack or a defense or a little of both. The second song was one of the two that I recognized upon hearing, "Red Dress." I'll quote the same verse from this song that Matt quoted in an earlier review because it's just too damn good: "Yes I'm drunk but damn you're ugly / Tell you one thing, yes I will / Tomorrow morning I'll be sober / You'll be just as ugly still." Ouch! Later on came "Choctaw Bingo," which I think I first heard on WFUV in New York.

The performance was dominated by the music. The man radiated confidence and authority and, with a few exceptions, he neither spoke or smiled between songs. Instead, he played and played and played; a 12-string guitar for the first half dozen songs, over to a 6-string for a few, and then back to the 12-string for the final half dozen. He introduced "Choctaw Bingo" with the line, "I'd like to play a medley of my hit," which he stole from Crosby, Stills, and Nash. I was pleasantly surprised to hear him follow that line by telling us that he hoped that he didn't scare away anyone who knew where he'd stolen the line from. Well played, I thought. Beyond that, there was hardly any banter from the stage, and I was glad.

As I said, not a single song lacked at least one amazing line, a turn of phrase, a snappy aphorism that sunk its teeth into my brain. There was the blood pressure pill washed down with a Red Bull, the one about Carlos and Ruby, the one with "mama used to roll her hair / back before the central air," and the one that began "she gets a little restless in the spring." I will seek this man out in the future.

The Iron Horse was sold out, or close to it. Plenty of people standing at the bar. There was even someone standing in front of me who, as soon as I realized he was planning on staying there, I had to ask to move. Twice, in fact. The crowd was mostly middle-aged, although I met a Mount Holyoke student (and Valley Advocate writer) there, who was sitting behind me. It was full even for the opening act, Ray Mason, whose most notable attribute was his guitar, a beautiful, beat-up 1965 Sears Silvertone. He introduced it at the same time as he introduced the one cover he performed, a Barbara Mason hit from the same year, "Yes I'm Ready," which I actually recognized. His self-written material was ok, his banter in between songs less so. The peak, however, came at the end, when he played a song from the first of his dozen CDs, "When I Meet You on the Moon," in which he showed off his guitar chops a bit, throwing in licks from "Day Tripper" and at least one other recognizable tune, though I forget which.

I head to the big city on Friday for the first of Hot Tuna's two nights at the Beacon, to celebrate Jorma's 70th birthday. Then, on Saturday, back to the Iron Horse for some Crooked Still. I'll be sure to report on them both....

Alan Jabbour and Ken Perlman in Champaign

2010-11-23T12:58:00.000-08:00

It's been quiet around here lately, huh?

Well, let me take you back to earlier this month -- November 2nd -- when Sarah and I headed over to the Techline furniture showroom, full of sleek home decorating options, to hear some old-time fiddle and banjo tunes from two great masters of the genre: Alan Jabbour and Ken Perlman.

I associate Alan Jabbour with the album American Fiddle Tunes. Originally released in 1971 and drawing on recordings in the Library of Congress' Archive of Folk Songs (of which Jabbour had become director in 1969), Rounder reissued it in 2000 on CD. I immediately started spinning the CD on WKCR's Moonshine Show, pronouncing, "If you like old-time fiddle music, you must go out and buy this CD." Some of my favorites from the compilation were Luther Strong's "The Hog-Eyed Man" and "Cumberland Gap" and W.H. Stepp's "Bonaparte's Retreat," which Aaraon Copland famously used for inspiration for the "Hoe-Down" movement of Rodeo.

I associated Jabbour's name with the collection, and if you had asked me if he was performing, I would not have known the answer.

But now, having seen him play, I am quite pleased to report that he is indeed still performing and would be well worth seeking out to see live.

The two sets of music that the musicians played largely revolved around Jabbour's late-1960s field trips to the home of southwest Virginia fiddler Henry Reed. From the opening tunes -- "Billy in the Lowlands" and "Henry Reed's Breakdown" -- Jabbour walked us through the tunes that he had learned from Henry Reed, remarking on where Reed himself had learned them and what other known tunes they resembled. It was a history lesson of the type that I fear might be disappearing.

Reed's repertoire ranged from early African-American ragtime tunes like "High Yellow" to Tin Pan Alley's adoption of the ragtime sound in "Ragged Bill" to the more standard Virginia fiddle stylings of the "West Virginia Rag" and "West Virginia Gals."

Jabbour and Perlman's fiddle and banjo bounced off and around each other in delightful and complex ways. Although Perlman did not have much to say while Jabbour was telling the stories of Henry Reed and (consequently) his own musical education, his banjo played interlocked melodies with Jabbour's fiddle rather than just chunky chords or simple bass runs.

And Perlman twice stepped to the fore. In the first set, Jabbour talked about Perlman as the inventor of the melodic banjo style -- Bill Keith's name and claim to that to that innovation were not mentioned -- and about his banjo transcriptions of fiddle tunes from Prince Edward Island. From the Prince Edward Island tradition, Perlman played a "Scottish Set" solo, and then Jabbour joined him for "Jack Webster's Reel."

In the second set, one of Jabbour's fiddle strings started to fray, so while he tended to that, Perlman did a set of jigs, talking about New York City Irish sessions and how he would be expected to be quiet on the jigs (since they were not easy to play on the banjo) -- something that he took as a challenge, such that he went home and figured out how to play the jigs on the banjo.

All in all, it was a great night of stories and music. To find out what the "Flying Cloud" is in the "Flying Cloud Cotillion" or why the last tune of the show (before a well-deserved encore) was called "The Fiddler's Drunk, and the Fun's All Over," you'll have to go see them yourself.

Boilen: "Nobody Ruins Dylan Like Dylan"

2010-11-16T08:39:00.000-08:00

Bob Boilen on NPR's All Songs Considered offers up some comments on Bob Dylan's performance at George Washington University that echo mine from Champaign, Illinois.

(HT: Neil Baer.)

Halloween at the Ginkgo: Cliff Eberhardt, Tim Fast & a Banjo

2010-10-31T23:00:00.000-07:00

There was nothing scary at this Halloween gathering at the Ginkgo Coffeehouse. A packed house warmly welcomed Cliff Eberhardt and local opener Tim Fast. Probably the only thing remotely scary to some was my banjo (which made a brief appearance) and the witch hat and wig, which I donned on and off stage.

Tim Fast kicked off the evening with a nice opening set (including an enthusiastic encore), the highlight for me being his song "Get in Line." Then after a short break, Cliff did a long set with Tim sitting in on a bunch of songs and me also coming up for a few. Cliff was in fine form, funny and engaging as ever, feeding into the great energy of the audience. Here's what he played...

- After the Rain Falls
- Missing You
- I Want to Take You Home
- Have a Little Heart
- I Love Money (best version I've ever heard him do of this song)
- Your Face (w/Tim on harmonies)
- The High Above and the Down Below (really nice harmonica by Tim)
- Memphis (Tim on harmonca)
- Whenever I Sing the Blues (Tim on guitar & harmonies--nice energy)
- When the Leaves Begin to Fall (Tim on guitar)
- 500 Miles (me on banjo & harmonies, Tim on harmonica)
- Cryin' Time (the Ray Charles classic with me on harmonies & Tim on guitar)
- Land of the Free (Tim on harmonies & harmonica)
- The Long Road (solo)

Encore: Glory of Love (solo)

Bob Dylan in Champaign, Illinois

2010-10-23T16:06:00.000-07:00

How to assess a Bob Dylan show in 2010?

If one has a certain baseline level of information about where Bob Dylan is at these days, there are some expectations in place. Dylan's voice is going to be rough in patches. He's mostly (or entirely) going to play from the keyboard. He'll play a mix of classic and newer material, but the classic material might be reworked to the point of not being immediately recognizable. There will not be stage banter or a stage show.

To a certain extent, going to see him live is going to pay tribute. He is, after all, the man who penned some -- many? -- of the greatest songs of the 20th century. And I bring with me some curiosity about what the songs will sound like -- how will things be rearranged? And of course, Dylan has good musicians in his traveling band. (If Larry Campbell is playing with Dylan, that is -- without a doubt -- all the more reason to go.)

But the tradeoff is knowing that you are going to see an artist who cannot sing the way that he used to, cannot play the way that he used to and does not have new songs that can stand up to the old ones in a fair fight.

And so despite the foreknowledge about what the show was likely to be like, I left Assembly Hall a little disappointed last night in what the show had been. The expected shortcomings were there, and that's fine, but what disappointed me was that I didn't find any transcendent moments to make up for those shortcomings.

Dylan opened -- as he has frequently on this tour -- with "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat," and the song was perhaps a high point of the set: Dylan was behind the keyboard, but he was playing with energy, and the rest of the band was playing with energy. It looked like the show was off to a good start.

Dylan stepped from behind the keyboard, picked up his guitar and went to center stage. It looked like things would be getting even better. As my brain processed the melody for "It Ain't Me Babe," I got even more excited. But Dylan just could not hit the notes on this one -- the vocals were painfully restricted, a very far cry from the "No, no no!" of 1964. And on the one hand, that's fine: Dylan's vocal chords are 45 years older, and his whole frame is 69. But on the other hand, Mick Jagger can still get "Satisfaction," you know?

I don't recall another moment in the set where Dylan's voice came up so short on him -- once he moved into the more recent blues material like "Rollin' and Tumblin'" and "High Water (for Charley Patton)" and "Ain't Talking," there was no problem -- but having the second song of the set fall so short dimmed the lights somewhat early on.

Dylan's guitar playing actually seemed quite good, and I was disappointed that he didn't return to the instrument again. He picked up the harmonica on the strange near-ska version of "Shelter from the Storm" that they played. (Even after hearing the chorus clearly, I turned to my friend Nate and said, "What song is this?") The crowd kind of ridiculously cheered every time that Dylan successfully blew three notes on the harmonica, although his playing on "Forgetful Heart" helped make that one of the most memorable songs of the night.

The other major shortcoming of the show was Charlie Sexton's lead guitar work. I think that perhaps there was a sound issue here because the guy certainly looked like he was working hard. But there was space for four solos during "Desolation Row," and I didn't hear anything worthy of mention played during those spaces. And during the encore of "Jolene," the hook that makes that song so convincing on Together Through Life -- the "doo-dee-doo-dee-doo-do-do" that comes after each line of the chorus -- was somewhere in the background, not really audible. It's perhaps too much to ask for Robbie Robertson or G.E. Smith, but I was hoping for just a little more juice on the lead guitar.

Donnie Herron's multi-instrumental work, on the other hand, deserves the commendation that it normally receives. On "High Water (for Charley Patton)," he played this great bouncing banjo in the background. And then he followed that with some solid droney fiddle riffs on "Forgetful Heart" that paired up quite nicely with Tony Garnier's bowed bass. The performance was a lot less dark than that found on Together Through Life.

The juice also was lacking on the second song of the encore, "Like a Rolling Stone." (Dylan has ended shows on the 2010 tour with "Thunder on the Mountain" going into "Ballad of a Thin Man" and then an encore of "Jolene" and "Like a Rolling Stone" (and sometimes "All Along the Watchtower" -- we were not so lucky).) Throughout the crowd, raised arms asked, "How does it feeeeel?" but the energy on stage wasn't quite as strong. It was great to hear the song live, but I honestly kept flashing back to singing it around the coffeetable in a cottage in Maine with Sarah and her family, where we were belting out the lyrics and hacking away on a couple of guitars with the gusto that the tune deserves.

I'll see Dylan again in New York in November. I hope that both the band and I will be feeling the energy a bit more at that point.

The complete setlist can be found here at the comprehensive Bob Links site.

For some similarly negative comments on Charlie Sexton's mojo, see the thoughts here about Thursday night's St. Louis show and here about the Nashville show from earlier in the week.

Bob Dylan and Champaign, Illinois

2010-10-21T07:36:00.000-07:00

Bob Dylan is coming to town on Friday night to play at the University of Illinois' Assembly Hall.

A while back, my father called my attention to the song "Champaign, Illinois," co-authored by Bob Dylan and Carl Perkins back in 1969 while Dylan was working on Nashville Skyline -- the two met on the Johnny Cash show. Dylan allegedly had a single verse written, and after Perkins had worked on the song a bit, Dylan told him, "Your song. Take it. Finish it." And so Perkins recorded it for his album On Top.

The lyrics are fairly straightforward blues fare (with a slightly more international perspective):

I got a woman in Morocco,
I got a woman in Spain,
Woman that's done stole my heart,
She lives up in Champaign.

I say Champaign, Champaign, Illinois,
I certainly do enjoy Champaign, Illinois.

Now my friend Nate has called my attention to an Old 97s song also named "Champaign, Illinois" and also co-authored (kind of) with Bob Dylan. The band took the melody from "Desolation Row," kicked the tempo up a notch and took a bit of a different line on the pleasures of Champaign:

Roll on blacktop highway
Circles toward the sun
Springfield's in the distance
And that's the last big one

After that comes judgement
And judgement will be swift
You will be eliminated
But here's a parting gift

If you die fearing God
And painfully employed
You will not go to heaven
You'll go to Champaign, Illinois
No, you will not go to heaven,
You'll go to Champaign, Illinois

So Bob Dylan has co-authorship credit on not one but two songs about Champaign, although I don't think we'll be hearing either of them on Friday night.

ItWasGreat: Rose Cousins & Edie Carey

2010-10-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

For those of you familiar with Rose Cousins and Edie Carey's beautiful EP itsgonnabegreat, you know that they have great musical chemistry. For those of you who have seen them live or read Jess' blog posting, you know that they have a similar charm and self-deprecating sense of humor. So it's no surprise that their double CD release show at the Ginkgo was a treat.

Rose Cousins played the first set with Edie guesting on several songs...

- Lost in the Valley (one of my favorites)
- The Send Off
- White Daisies (w/Edie Carey--really great)
- I Were the Bird (done as a sing-along)
- Go First (new song, played on keyboard)
- Home (w/Edie)
- Celebrate (written for Edie's wedding)
- For the Best (new song)
- All the Time It Takes to Wait (Rose on keyboards & Edie on harmonies--beautiful)

After a nice break where I caught up with Rose and Edie, Edie took the stage, starting with a couple solo songs...

- Come Inside
- The Night
- Red Shoes (she sent this out to me!)
- With You Now (Rose joined her on keyboards and harmonies and stayed up on stage for the rest of the show--yay!)
- I Need You (great version of this old favorite)
- Love (really lovely)
-Easy Now (nice sing-along)
- Enough
- Hollywood Ending
- Falling Slowly (from the EP itsgonnabegreat)

The C-U Folk and Roots Festival, Year Two

2010-10-18T18:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok, ok! So I know that I've been a little delinquent about writing this review, and I want you to know, Sound of Blackbirds readers, that your whole reverse-psychology, we're-not-going-to-complain-about-the-fact-that-you-haven't-posted-yet thing has worked pretty well. The complete silence from you about this lapse has just been intolerable. So at long last, I will meet your unspoken demands and provide a run down of the Second Annual Champaign-Urbana Folk and Roots Festival.

David Llewellyn

The festival started on Thursday 23 September with a 6:00 p.m. performance by Welsh singer-songwriter David Llewellyn. With a strong and pure voice, David sang two sets of mostly original songs. A month later, the two that stick with me most are "Lover's Spoon," about an intricately carved spoon made (as apparently the tradition goes) to give to your beloved, and "Silent Aberfan," about the disastrous collapse in 1966 of a pile of runoff from a coal mine in Wales that covered a school, killing 116 children.

In addition to the Welsh musician, Jan Chandler, the owner of the Heartland Gallery, where the concert was being held, also had acquired some simply magnificent Welsh cheeses -- one with mustard seeds and one with horseradish. Insofar as the gratis cheese and cracker spread became my dinner, I was most grateful.

The Mean Lids, the Duke of Uke and Those Darlins

The rest of Thursday evening took place at the Independent Media Center and featured The Mean Lids, the Duke of Uke and His Novelty Orchestra and Those Darlins.

The Mean Lids are a terrific trio featuring Ben Smith, mostly on fiddle, Matt Turino, mostly on guitar, and Miriam Lawson, on "flute, kazoo and ticky tackys" (and she's not kidding about the ticky tackys). I think that these guys are great. They mash together lots of different folk styles -- there's Matt Turino click-clacking his feet in Quebecois style alongside an Irish-sounding fiddle tune that's actually an original and on which Miriam Larson will play some nose-flute. (Seriously -- that's what it's like.)

The band members take turns singing, and when I walked into the IMC, they were singing John Prine's "Angel from Montgomery," and that's a pretty great song. My favorite moment though -- as was my favorite moment when I had seen them a few weeks earlier at the Iron Post -- was when Ben Smith picked up an electric fiddle that sounds like a cello and laid down this low groove while Matt Turino fiddled away on a more traditional violin: just great stuff played fully in the pocket. Highly recommended.

The Duke of Uke and His Novelty Orchestra put on a solid set of groovin' good time music with uke-man David King sweatin' away while Lorene Anderson alternated between pumpin' tuba and grab-you-by-the-hair vocals with additional help on vocals and tenor sax from Anna Hochhalter.

Those Darlins came out like the Ramones with their blaring brand of cowpunk. I was expecting a little more cow and a little less punk and so wasn't prepared (e.g. no earplugs), so only being able to take so much, I had to make a break for it after a few songs. I hear that the set was killer, and that I missed out on some stage-diving by the band.

Andy Cohen

I was quite excited to see Andy Cohen play. When I was a kid growing up in the dirtpile and muddy streams world of the Old Songs Festival, Andy Cohen was one of those bluesmen who grabbed me by the collar (in a metaphorical way -- he was on stage, and I was in the dirtpile) and said, "Listen, kid, you need to learn about the Rev. Gary Davis." (There were no hyperlinks at the time either.) So he was definitely one of a handful of performers who convinced me to dig out and give some spins to dusty old blues vinyl that I found in the basement box labeled "Blues." (Thanks, Dad, for the good labeling.)

He played some Rev. Gary Davis, and he played his dulceola, and he did a raucous version of "Hard Luck Blues," and he complimented me on my singing-along on "Johnny Booker" over at the cheese and cracker spread. It was great to see him again, and amazing to watch his fingers bounce around that fretboard and great to hear some of the history of the music that he had to share.

Henhouse Prowlers

In 1999, a bluegrass band out of Fort Collins, Colorado, came screeching out onto the national scene. Called Open Road, those guys played the music the way that Jimmy Martin and His Sunny Mountain Boys used to -- blistering tenor harmonies, string-scorching mandolin solos and really sad songs played faster than your momma would allow. Sadly, they stopped touring in 2006.

The Henhouse Prowlers are maybe picking up their torch. They acknowledge the debt -- they played the Open Road original "Mandy Jane." They also acknowledged their country forebearers with a strong version of "Pick Me Up on Your Way Down," the Harlan Howard song that Charlie Walker, Faron Young and Hank Thompson all had hits with. They did a screamin' version of the bluegrass gospel song "I Know How It Feels" (which Larry Cordle and Lonesome Standard Time have a great recording of). During a broken string fix, they pulled out Guy Clark's "Homegrown Tomatoes."

All of those songs were quite strong. The first of two highpoints though was the magnificent transition from the fiddle standard "Back Up and Push" into Townes Van Zandt's "White Freightliner Blues." If I were to say that it was the best version of "White Freightliner Blues," I'd be going up against New Grass Revival, Steve Earle and a ton of other people, but ... it was pretty damn hot. The second was an original by banjo player Ben Wright. Based on his encounter with a 75-year-old man who had just robbed a bank and was waiting for the Metra at the Ravenswood Stop and then his subsequent encounter with several armed police officers, it was called the "Ravenswood Getaway." I'm not sure how I would feel about the tune without the story, but with the story, it was a great ride to go on.

These guys were really solid, and I hope that I get to see them again soon.

Liz Knowles

Over at the Iron Post that night was Irish fiddler Liz Knowles. She was joined by Pat Broaders on bouzouki, and then Johnny Connolly on button accordion and Kieran O’Hare on the uilleann pipes. This set was straight-ahead: one fiddle tune after another, names invented as necessary to keep the crowd on its toes.

The set didn't quite have the intimate energy of Liz Carroll's set from last year, but it was solid. Toes were tapping, people were clapping. The band seemed to be enjoying itself. No complaints.

Hot Club of Cowtown

Wow. I mean, wow. I mean, hot damn wow.

Elana James, Whit Smith and Jake Erwin showed up at the IMC to play, and they near about blew the roof from Urbana to Champaign. Jake Erwin's slap-bass solos are definitely on the list of 100 Things You Need to Hear Live Before You Die -- every time around, he went thumpeta-thumpeta-thumpeta-thumpeta at a whiplash-fast speed, and the crowd went wild. It was pure energy and incredibly skillful.

They got us with "Ida Red"; they got us with "'Deed I Do"; they got us with "Chinatown." It was one after another.

And then -- when they encored -- they got me with "Orange Blossom Special." And that might not seem like much, but I've adopted the reaction to the classic tune that the late Doug Tuchman taught me at a Rhonda Vincent show once: "Grrrrooooaaaaannn... Who wants to hear this one again?" But Elana James fiddled the hell out of it -- playfully, modally, jazzily, swingingly and then just horsehair shreddinly' good. It was a great version -- one of many great tunes that they played over the course of the night. They were having fun; we were having fun; and it felt like it could have just kept going.

So my thanks to the organizers of the festival for another great year. Looking forward to next fall's edition already!

Dylan iTunes Review

2010-10-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

Of Bob Dylan's most recent album, Together Through Life, iTunes user Bobby Deee writes:

When you've finished your eighth bourbon and the cops have left, this is what you want. It's great music to black out to. Everybody in the trailer park complains when I play this, but they all listen to Tesla and Cinderella, this is real music. The kind you want to listen to when your [sic] cutting up pictures from People magazine or playing with matches.

Poets & Songwriters at 20th Anniversary of Sinclair Lewis Writer's Conference

2010-10-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

Last Friday Red House Records artists John Gorka, Meg Hutchinson and Storyhill's John Hermanson joined my alter ego Mother Banjo, former Minnesota Public Radio DJ Dale Connelly and poets Robert Bly and Freya Manfred to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Sinclair Lewis Writer's Conference. The songwriters and poets performed a special concert in the Pulitzer Prize winning author's hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. It was a really lovely evening of great writing and fun collaborations. It was also wonderful to see Dale behind a mic again, and he was in fine form, cracking jokes and providing the witty banter that fans so much miss on the Minnesota airwaves.

Here are photos from the concert taken by Dave Simpkins, the editor of the Sauk Centre Herald...

John Hermanson kicks off the concert

Minnesota Poet Laureate Robert Bly charms the crowd

Sitar player David Whetstone joined Robert Bly

They got a standing ovation after their performance

I followed Robert Bly and was joined by John Hermanson, who sang with me on "Revival Train." He then had to head back to the Twin Cities to perform on A Prairie Home Companion.

After an intermission, Meg Hutchinson plays a set

John Gorka joined Meg on her last two songs--"See Me Now" and "Home"

Freya Manfred made us laugh with her stories and poetry

John Gorka finished off the night in fine form, playing his musical interpretations of the poems "Let Them In" and "Where No Monuments Stand," a William Stafford poem featured in a documentary about the Oregon Poet Laureate and activist. Meg joined him on his last song "Branching Out."

At the writer's conference the next day, storyteller-actor-NPR contributor Kevin Kling delivered a wonderful keynote address, hilarious and moving.

All of us were put up at the historic Palmer House, which is famous, not only for being immortalized in Main Street but also for being one of the most haunted inns in America.

The town that once resented Sinclair Lewis' seminal work Main Street now honors him. We all found the Sauk Centre to be extremely proud of the Sinclair Lewis heritage and very welcoming to writers.

Rock n' Roll Animal (1999)

2010-10-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

Some wonderful soul has posted the entirety of a documentary (that I didn't know even existed) about the great Robert Christgau on youtube. See here.

I love the look of his office.

A Weekend @ The Iron Horse: Kris Delmhorst, Jeffrey Foucault, and Erin McKeown

2010-10-11T06:57:00.001-07:00

The Iron Horse hosted consecutive evenings of fine singer-songwriters this past weekend. All three are folks I’ve seen live at least once each over the past decade, all are artists I first became acquainted with at folk festivals, and all of them have, at one time or another, had an affiliation with Signature Sounds, the wonderful Valley-based recording label.

Friday night, the husband-wife combo of Jeffrey Foucault and Kris Delmhorst played around 90 minutes of music together. They shared the stage for most of the evening, with each taking a turn to play a few songs without his/her partner. The feel of the evening was off-the-cuff, casual, improvised. Kris mentioned that her task had been to think of 3 songs she’d wanted to do, a task which she’d failed to accomplish by the time she hit the stage. Having a two-year old child at home probably had something to do with that. Several times, it was mentioned that they had not rehearsed much at all and that, despite their intimate relationship, they rarely had the opportunity to perform together. I’m sure they were referring solely to live performances. No duo can harmonize so beautifully together without spending plenty of time working out the tunes. And I have to believe that, as a happily married couple, there are multiple levels to their harmonies. Which reminds me, I haven’t listened to Buddy and Julie Miller in a long time….

Anyhow, on to the music. I recognized very few of the songs they played, apart from Kris’ “Hummingbird” and Jeffrey’s “Ghost Repeater.” As it turns out, plenty of the songs they played were new songs, as yet unrecorded. It sounds like Jeffrey Foucault in particular has been doing plenty of writing lately. He has a very rich, warm singing voice, which I recall from the one time I’ve seen him live, at the Green River Festival two summers ago. The one CD of his I own, Stripping Cane (2004), didn’t connect with me at first but, after repeated listening, I’ve discovered some really good melodies and writing on it, not only “Northbound 35” (covered by Richard Shindell) but “Cross of Flowers” and “Doubletree.” Kris Delmhorst I remember from the Postcrypt, back in the fall of 2000, and I think she’s been at Falcon Ridge at least one of the times I attended. The two of them played separate sets at Green River in 2009, and I remember preferring hers to his. After consulting my review, I’m also reminded that the band that backed up Jeffrey really rocked out. If you know any of his albums, you know that “rocking out” is not exactly what they do. At any, the quiet, almost staid sound of his (and some of her) recordings was brought to lovely life on Friday night.

What I remember best were the covers they played. There was Simon and Garfunkle’s “Baby Driver,” and, for their encore, Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain.” While my companion for the evening, the marvelous Maggie Pesce, was out making a phone call, they played Neil Young’s “For the Turnstiles,” a song that I have a fond recollection of having heard at Falcon Ridge 2008, as performed by Jason Spooner and his band. It’s a great one, no doubt.

The crowd was big for that show, but Saturday night’s Erin McKeown concert was sold out. And no wonder: not only does Erin make Northampton her home, but this was part of her special Distillation 10th Anniversary tour. That means that she plays two sets of music on this tour, the first set comprising the entire Distillation album--working her way backwards, starting from “Love in 2 Parts” and ending with “Queen of Quiet”--before a short break. Then, she returns to play requests, along with a couple of new, unrecorded songs. It also means that, while performing the album, she wears the same outfit she wore for the cover photo on the album—-see here.

I’ve said, on a couple of occasions on my old blog (here and here) that Distillation is one of my favorite singer-songwriter albums of the past 10 years or so. I’ve also said that I’d like to write an entire essay about why it’s so great. That hasn’t happened yet. But I’ll say this for now: the writing, singing, arranging, performances, and overall feel of the album mesh in a way that just doesn’t happen very often (at least, not over course of an entire CD worth of music). The “feel” of the album is something truly strange: it’s nervous and vulnerable, while somehow seeming sly and cocky at the same time. There are strange mutterings and whisperings, showtune melodies, folk-pop, and jazz and country songs, with heartbreak that is muted by the music’s sense of fun or ironic twists to the singing or lyrics or both. It does not sound like Ani Difranco. But it sometimes sounds like Randy Newman, and if you know who both of those folks are, then you understand that, in a way, the Newman comparison is a bigger complement.

McKeown’s band for the evening was comprised of Distillation’s producer, the multi-instrumentalist Dave Chalfant alternating between guitars and bass and keyboards, and a drummer whose name I didn’t catch. I’d seen Dave Chalfant wandering around the Iron Horse before the music began, and it made me think that some of the Massachusetts folk music circuit would be hanging around that night. I was right: there was Katrina Nields, there was Dave Olson from Signature Sounds. I overheard Dave greet someone I’d never seen before as Lorne, and I instinctively knew that this was Lorne Entress, drummer for the luminaries of the folkie scene in this part of the world. And I noted that, during Erin’s set, she occasionally shot little looks in particular directions, looks that said “I know you—thanks for coming!”

She hit the stage at a few minutes after 7:00, and launched “Love in 2 Parts” out into the Iron Horse. I hadn’t realized she’d be playing Distillation in reverse, but that was fine by me. It meant that several of the stranger, slower, more emotionally difficult songs from the album would come first. For “How to Open My Heart in 4 Easy Steps,” the harmonist from the album, Katrina Nields, came up onstage to duplicate her harmony part from the recording. After that, Lorne Entress played the drums for one song, “You Mustn’t Kick It Around.” For “The Little Cowboy,” Ben Demerath, the cowboy yodeler, came onstage to recreate his part from the album. And he and Katrina were both onstage to do harmonies for “La Petite Mort.” There was time for plenty of anecdotes and stories, mostly about the recording of the album. She was in college at the time, finishing up her senior year at Brown University. After a Monday-through-Wednesday class schedule, she’d head to Amherst for long weekends at Dave Chalfant’s house to record the album. It was during that time, she noted, that she and Katrina Nields, Dave’s husband, became close friends. This was the luxury of playing a hometown show: all these folks were there to help recreate the album. I felt pretty lucky to be there.

Other notable musical moments….The eeriness of “The Dirt Gardner” was gripping. As she and Dave Chalfant hissed their whispers into their mikes, the drummer was silent, allowing the guitars to curl around the whispers. I’d forgotten how important the harmony part is to “How to Open My Heart in 4 Easy Steps” until hearing Katrina Nields perform it with Erin. In the middle of “Fast as I Can," Erin noted that the bass overdubs sucked on the recording and that they had therefore opted not to reproduce them in concert, a comment which made Dave Chalfant nod and smile. She noted about halfway through the set that “the big guns were coming out,” songs that she had continued to play, with different arrangements, for years after Distillation, even as other songs from the album faded away altogether. But for this tour, she not only was playing the entire album but was reproducing the exact arrangements. That made “The Little Cowboy” a particular treat. I’ll never forget her opening with that one at Southpaw in Brooklyn, many years ago, and playing a punk rock version of it. It was fun, but the original arrangement is priceless. And having Ben Demerath on stage to yodel his part was a lot of fun. She mentioned that “La Petite Mort” is never played in the middle of her sets and that it felt strange not to be playing it at the end of the show. She took care to instruct us not to shout out “oh Estelle!” the first time the refrain came around, so as to be true to the recording. “Didn’t They?” remains one of my favorites, with its muted pain and vulnerability, and “Blackbirds” is another great one, which features her under-appreciated guitar playing. And “Queen of Quiet” rocked. Some of the nervousness you hear on the album, whether simulated or sincere, is gone in performance. But the energy level was so high Saturday night that whatever might have been lost in tone was more than made up for in concert. Really: I got to watch a great singer-songwriter reproduce her first major CD release, an album that is quirky and catchy, eerie, melodious, and strange, not to mention of some sentimental value to me.

After Distillation-in-reverse was over, she took a break and returned for a bunch more songs. After two new ones, she took requests, whispering which ones she’d decided on to her bandmates. There was “White City” and “Aspera” and “You Were Right About Everything” from her wonderful 2005 album, We Will Become Like Birds. There was “Santa Cruz” from her newest album, Hundreds of Lions (2009), which I’ve only heard parts of, but which sounds great. And there was “Cinematic,” “A Better Wife,” “James,” and, for the encore, “Cosmopolitans,” from Grand (2003). That encore was finger-picked on the electric guitar and sounded especially good.

I decided against hanging around to say hi. One of these days, I’d love to get her autograph and find out if she remembers ever meeting me. I was the one and only American in an audience at Café La Java in Paris, about 7 years ago, singing along with all her songs at her first-ever Paris gig. Afterwards I walked up to say hi, but before I could say a word she told me how weird it was to look into a presumable French audience that didn’t know her music and see someone singing along with every single song. Another time….

Peter Ostroushko's Anniversary & CD Release Show

2010-10-02T18:18:00.000-07:00

Playing the second of two sold-out shows at the Open Eye Figure Theatre, Peter Ostroushko began his concert Saturday with a limerick that Garrison Keillor had written for him 35 years ago. This was a hilarious and perfect opener for a night dedicated to his 35-year recording career. It was 35 years since he recorded on Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and 25 since he recorded his first solo album. Also celebrating the release of his new album When the Last Morning Glory Blooms, he played a lot of the new tunes.

First Set:
-"Tecumseh" (great fiddle tune he wrote in Ohio while on tour with A Prairie Home Companion-- old-timey opening)
-"Maycomb, AL" (in celebration of 50th anniversary since publication of To Kill a Mockingbird--written for a production done in Kansas City a couple years ago)
- a funny blues song written by Garrison Keillor (Nice jamming by band and Peter on the mando. My favorite line: "I ain't got no home, got no address/I never knew such happiness." He also had some funny banter afterwards about the blues in Minnesota. "The south has the Delta Blues, but we have the Headwater Blues.")
- Southern Baptist gospel song "Little Bessie" (full of death--Peter said afterwards: "Yeah those souther Baptists really no how to party. But then again I'm Ukrainian. I could be in an orgasmic frenzy right now, and you wouldn't be able to tell.")
- "B & B Waltz" (wriiten on the occasion of Red House Records founder Bob Feldman's wedding to Beth Friend)
- after a hilarious play by play of today's Twins game, he invited 15 year-old fiddler Sedra Bistodeau to play a tune he wrote for her called "Sedra's Waltz"
- fiddle tune featuring Sedra and Peter on mando
- Sedra played solo piece by Novacek

Second Set:
- "Down Where the River Bends" (written for the national park service)
- "The Nine Years Waltz" (he said he first heard this decades ago at the Whole Coffeehouse at the U of M and recorded it for the new album with Norman & Nancy Blake--one of my favorites on the CD)
- medley of "Muddy Creek" and some tune from Moldova
- "A & A Waltz" (also written for a wedding--that of Andra Suchy and Andrew Pierzina)
- fiddle tune featuring Sedra and band
- solo tune by Sedra

This was a great evening of music in a lovely little historic theater, built around 1902. Before Susan Haas and Michael Sommers took it over (and did such a fabulous job of refurbishing it), it was the home of Patrick's Cabaret, and rumor has it, the building was once a mortuary--one of the first African American mortuaries in Minneapolis. That probably explains why the room has such powerful mojo. A very cool space that is worth checking out.

Some Good Reviews

2010-09-27T05:53:00.001-07:00

Catching up on some reading this morning, and I thought the following might be of interest:

1. Rhonda Vincent and the Rage perform on borrowed instruments at Joe's Pub in New York.

2. Anne Thomas Soffee gives the thumbs-up to Rob Sheffield's new memoir, Talking to Girls about Duran Duran.

3. Jazz legend Roy Haynes leads the way at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

4. Booking a music series with big names at a small venue among the redwoods. (This also is probably the only music series to host both Bert Jansch and Arcade Fire.)

White Shoes and Landmark (or, 1982 was a good year)

2010-09-20T17:24:00.000-07:00

Forget what I said here, White Shoes (1982) is Jack Hardy’s best album. It’s hard for me to say now why my first couple of efforts at appreciating it didn’t do the job. It just sounded like a busted extension of Landmark’s (1982) production values to me. But the more I’ve listened to it, the less easy it is for it to fade into the background. The songs are on average better than Landmark’s, the title track is one of his best-ever ballads, and the hooky production combined with some unusually ambitious singing (relative to this period in his career, not to Omens (2000), which contains his greatest vocal performances), and even some rock and roll howling, generates some fantastic heat, especially on the tracks that bookend the CD, “Broken Heart” and “The Subway.” The former is a nasty folk-rock song, hooked around the line “I like you far better with a broken heart” and featuring some beautifully chiming chords and slow rock beat. The latter sounds like one of the Byrds’ (or even the Beatles’) more psychedelic numbers, combined with some Dylanesque fancy and Elvis Costello-ish bile in the lyrics, whose refrain sounds like a mockery of the Arthurian stories whose gentility and courtly romance Hardy has drawn from throughout his career: “get off your high horse / and who the hell knighted you anyway?” In between, there are blues-rock, country, and folk songs that rank among his best.

I compare White Shoes to its predecessor, Landmark, because, as noted above, the production style is quite similar. Never before or since these two albums has Jack Hardy put so much effort into making his songs come to life, or at least that’s the illusion that they invoke. The signature sound of the album is the male harmony singing, which is something that appears now and then on all the early Hardy albums, but never more often or more effectively than on Landmark and White Shoes. Short of the Roches, Jack’s bassist brother Jeff is my favorite Hardy harmonist. On Landmark, in particular, the male harmonies are all over the album, and they give the album a strangely warm feel, like mariners’ hymns, like folk-rock Schooner Fare. The two albums were recorded with a lot of the same musicians, including Jeff Hardy on bass and Frank Christian on lead electric guitar. The drummer on White Shoes isn’t noted, but it sure sounds like Howie Wyeth, who played on Landmark. A lot of the heat on both these records is due in no small part to Wyeth and to Christian, whose lead guitar work, especially on Landmark, sounds a little like Mark Knopfler or maybe Robbie Robertson from The Band. Christian is a great songwriter himself; check out Nanci Griffith’s version of “Three Flights Up” or his own recording of “Where Were You Last Night?” The drumming is some of the best I’ve heard on Jack’s albums. Listen to the way Howie Wyeth’s power drumming, along with some choice guitar playing, works against the slowly sung, harmonized refrain on “Citizens,” a song that argues that, not only are the migrant illegal workers not citizens, but neither are the farmers who employ them and, just maybe, the rest of us aren’t either. I’m not entirely convinced by that, but Wyeth and Christian help him make a pretty strong (musical) case.

Even by this man’s high standards, I think White Shoes is among his best collections of songs; I’d put it in the top 5, maybe top 3. Thematic coherence is provided by a familiar idea—anger, if not outright hostility, toward a member of the opposite sex—turned a few different ways. There are clever turns of phrase, aphoristic snaps and crackles, and some creativity and detail in the one narrative song, “Incident at Ebeneezer Creek.” With its blues-rock stomp and political lyrics, “The Circus” makes me think of Dylan’s “Lonesome Day Blues." “The High Line” is countryish and fun. There’s some great wordplay throughout “Femme Fatale.” As already mentioned, "Broken Heart" and "The Subway" rock. And the title track. Did I mention the title track? I’ve joined audiences at the Postcrypt Coffeehouse to sing quietly along with this song several times, including once a couple of years ago, as mentioned here.

Landmark is real good, maybe my second favorite Hardy album, or third after Omens or Civil Wars (1994). The opening track, “The Inner Man,” inspired by a story about Hardy’s favorite Irish poet, Clarence Mangen, features a hooky acoustic guitar part and solid drumming. “Citizens” comes next and, with its steady, rocking pulse (not something I usually associate with Jack Hardy) and Mark Knopfler-esque lead guitar part, it is reminiscent of early Dire Straits, a band that was pretty popular in the early 1980s. After that comes “Nobody Home,” and it may just be the best thing on the album in terms of how the production works with the song and the singing. The hissing wind that blows through the song sounds hauntingly close to Jack Hardy’s voice, and it echoes the sadness in the words, especially when the harmonies call out, “adieu, mon ami.” Later comes one of the man’s greatest moments, “The Tinker’s Coin,” with its tin whistle melody, slowly strident drumming, and flourishes on the fiddle and electric guitar. And “Wheelbarrow Johnny” tells the story of a 49er who winds up without any gold, but still makes good by building wheelbarrows for the other gold-seekers. There’s a good guitar lick to that one, usually played with the fiddle duplicating the melody, and those male harmonies again.

I just wrote an entire paragraph about a Jack Hardy album that barely touched on the lyrics. With the possible exception of Omens, I don’t think I could do that convincingly about any of his other records. I would pay money to hear Jack Hardy sing his songs in front of an audience in full confidence that I would be moved. But when it comes to listening to his albums, I’m more discriminating. And Landmark and White Shoes are at the top of the stack, with their careful arrangements accenting the great songwriting that, with this guy, is a given. Omens and Civil Wars are close behind those two, along with The Cauldron (1984) and his two most recent ones, Noir (2007) and Rye Grass (2009).

Danny Schmidt at 318 Cafe

2010-09-18T18:38:00.000-07:00

Several weeks back, I went to the 318 Cafe to see Austin artist Danny Schmidt play. (Sound of Blackbirds readers might remember I blogged about a show I did with him in 2009 at this same venue.) One of my favorite listening rooms in the Twin Cities metro, the 318 is a bit of a haul from Minneapolis but totally worth it. And although I play there a lot, I don't go out there often enough to hear music. But the promise of hearing a whole evening of Danny's new songs provided quite the incentive. I enjoyed a lovely evening with friends and ate a delicious meal accompanied by nice wine and incredible music.

Following a brief opening set by local Zachary Scot Johnson, Danny played a full two sets. He played a bunch of songs from his upcoming album Man of Many Moons, his second on Red House Records. Here were the highlights of the evening:

- Better Off Broke
- This Too Shall Pass
- Houses Sing*
- Man of Many Moons*
- Guilty By Association Blues*
- Stained Glass
- Southland Street
- Beggars and Mules
- Stained Glass (don't know how many times I've heard this song but it gets me every time)
- Company of Friends (this one too...damn Danny's great songwriting!)

*coming out on the new album

Becky Schelgel & Brian Fessler Back in MN

2010-09-18T12:15:00.001-07:00

Photo by Elli Rader.

Last night I drove out to St. Paul suburb Maplewood to hear folk/country singer-songwriter Becky Schlegel and banjo player/guitarist Brian Fesler play at the Performing Arts Center. Now in Nashville full-time, they returned to their old stomping grounds in fine form, putting on a lovely 2-set concert. There were a lot of old fans and friends in the audience, including some of Becky's old nursing colleagues from Hennepin County Medical Center. No doubt happy to see her old friends, Becky was more chatty than normal, playing special requests for people. Despite the warm vibe in the room, the audience was extremely quiet--maybe partially due to the slower songs they played in the first set. The second set had a little more energy to it...and a lot more banjo! They were celebrating the release of their new album Dandelion (charting at #1 on the Roots Country Chart) so they played a lot of new songs as well as old favorites. Here are the highlights from the show:

- So Embarrassing
- Red Leaf (probably my favorite autumn song of all time)
- I Never Needed You (the first song that caused Brian to break out his banjo, much to the delight of me and my friend Elli)
- Anna (about her grandmother)
- Underneath the Influence of Merle (a new song, paying tribute to Merle Haggard)
- Cheyenne (a song I requested!)
- No Angel
- Alabama Sun
- Drifter Like Me (a request)
- California Night (a song they played for the banjo fans--whoo!)
- Early (her great cover of the Greg Brown tune)
- Don't Cheat In Our Hometown (Stanley Brothers cover--very nice!)

Playlists: Womenfolk (9/14, 9/7 & 8/31)

2010-09-18T09:21:00.001-07:00

Here are the last few weeks of Womenfolk playlists, including interviews with Anais Mitchell, an in-studio performance by Joanna Jahn and a special show hosted by Liz Olds. As you'll see, this week on Womenfolk we highlighted this weekend's jam-packed Twin Cities Women's Calendar and also gave away tickets to the September 20th Michelle Shocked show at the Dakota and Keri Noble's CD release concert at the Guthrie Theater.

This Tuesday Keri performs as part of my 8th Womenfolk anniversary special. If there's anything you would like to hear on next week's show, email me your requests through the Womenfolk web page.

Thanks for listening and for supporting women's folk/acoustic music!

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WOMENFOLK (September 14, 2010)
Hosted by Ellen Stanley
Fresh Air Community Radio, KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis/106.7 FM St. Paul
Every Tuesday, 2-4 pm
*New Releases
**Womenfolk Theme Song

**Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sounds

Antje Duvekot - Long Way
album: The Near Demise of the Highwire Dancer; label: Black Wolf

*Lucy Wainwright Roche - Early Train
album: Lucy; label: Self (not yet released)

Dar Williams - End of the Summer
album: Out There Live; label: Razor & Tie

*Mindy Smith - Love Lost
album: Stupid Love; label: Vanguard

*Nikki Lang - Feel Better
album: Feel Better; label: Self

Womenfolk Find: Darcie Deaville - Who Needs You
album: Tornado in Slo Mo; label: Redwing Music

*Dawn Landes - Romeo
album: Sweet Heart Rodeo; label: Cooking Vinyl

Keri Noble - Go Proud
album: Keri Noble; label: Telarc

*Anais Mitchell - Flowers (Eurydice's Song)
album: Hadestown; label: Righteous Babe

*Red Horse (featuring Lucy Kaplansky) - Sanctuary
album: Red Horse; label: Red House

Behind Women's Calendar: *Lissa Schneckenburger - Rory O'More/Jamie Allen
album: Dance; label: Footprint Records

Laura MacKenzie - The House on the Corner
album: Evidence; label: Self

*Ellis - Coming Home to You
album: Right on Time; label: Rubberneck Records

Nanci Griffith - Spin on a Red Brick Floor
album: One Fair Summer Evening; label: MCA

Vicky Emerson - Long Ride
album: Long Ride; label: Self

*Becky Schlegel - Anna
album: Dandelion; label: Self

*Meg Hutchinson - Travel In
album: The Living Side; label: Red House

Michelle Shocked - Looks Like Mona Lisa
album: Captain Swing; label: Mercury

Aimee Mann - It's Not
album: Lost in Space; label: SuperEgo

*The Weepies - Please Speak Well of Me
album: Be My Thrill; label: Nettwerk

*Annie Fitzgerald - Hero
album: In Good Time; label: Self

*Mavis Staples - You Are Not Alone
album: You Are Not Alone; label: Anti

**Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sounds

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WOMENFOLK (September 7, 2010)
Hosted by Liz Olds
Fresh Air Community Radio, KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis/106.7 FM St. Paul
Every Tuesday, 2-4 pm
*New Releases
**Womenfolk Theme Song

**Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sound

Mother Maybelle Carter - Storms Are On the Ocean
album: Friends of Old Time Music; label: Smithsonian Folkways

Mother Maybelle Carter - Foggy Mountain Top
album: Friends of Old Time Music; label: Smithsonian Folkways

The Carter Family - Single Girl, Married Girl
album: Can the Circle Be Unbroken; label: Columbia

June Carter Cash - Ring of Fire
album: Press On; label: Risk

June Carter Cash - Wildwood Flower
album: Ring of Fire; label: Dualtone

June Carter Cash - Hold Fast to the Right
album: Ring of Fire; label: Dualtone

Ola Belle Reed - High on a Mountain
album: My Epitaph; label: Folkways

Ola Belle Reed - I've Endured
album: My Epitaph; label: Folkways

Ramona Jones - Whiskey Before Breakfast
album: Wolrd's Greatest Country Fiddlers; label: CMH

Teresa Morrison - Inganess Medly
album: The Art of Traditional Fiddle; label: Rounder

Jean Ritchie - None But One
album: None But One; label: Gateways

Mary Z. Cox - Shenandoah Falls
album: Florida Banjo; label: Self

Molly Tenenbaum - Cotton-Eyed Joe
album: Instead of a Pony; label: Self

Cathy Fink - Cider Mill
album: Banjo Haiku; label: Community Music

Mary Z. Cox - Elzic's Farewell
album: Vibtage Banjo; label: Self

Cathy Fink - Sandy River Belle
album: Banjo Haiku; label: Community Music

Mary Z. Cox - Sandy River Belle
album: Vintage Banjo; label: Self

Vicki Genfan - Atomic Reshuffle
album: Upclose and Personal; label: Harmonic Touch

Rory Block - Guitar Ditty
album: La Guitarra; label: Vanguard

Jennifer Barton - Whammy Damage
album: La Guitarra; label: Vanguard

Elizabeth Cotton - Wilson Rag
album: La Guitarra; label: Vanguard

Wendy Grossman - Kemp's Gigue
album: Women's Guitar Workshop; label: SGGW

Laura Silverstein - All-American Medly
album: Auditory Allusions; label: Self

Jane Rothfield - Rock That Cradle Joe
album: In the Moment; label: Self

Notorious - Whiplash/Greasy Coat
album: Elkins; label: Black Socks

Laurie Lewis - Sleepy-Eyed John/Tom & Jerry
album: The Oak and the Laurel; label: Rounder

Rayna Gellert - Grey Eagle
album: Starch and Iron; label: Self

Rayna Gellert - Fall On My Knees
album: Starch and Iron; label: Self

Heartbeats - Cotton-Eyed Joen
album: Spinning World; label: Green Linnet

Buffalo Gals - Don't Fence Me In
album: Buffalo Moon; label: Self

DitchLillies - Sally In the Garden Sifting Sand/Catnip
album: Drifting; label: Self

*Carolina Choclate Drops - Hit 'Em Up Style
album: Geniune Negro Jig; label: Nonesuch

**Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sound

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WOMENFOLK (August 31, 2010)
Hosted by Ellen Stanley
Fresh Air Community Radio, KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis/106.7 FM St. Paul
Every Tuesday, 2-4 pm
*New Releases
**Womenfolk Theme Song

**Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sound

Rosanne Cash - World Without Sound
album: Black Cadillac; label: Capitol

*Carrie Rodriguez - Big Love
album: Love and Circumstance; label: Ninth Street Opus

Keri Noble - Ooh-Oh
album: Keri Noble; label: Telarc

Eliza Gilkyson - Requiem (live)
album: Requiem (Single); label: Red House

*Sally Spring - Lake Pontchartrain
album: Made of Stars; label: Sniffinpup Records

Womenfolk Find: *The Flyin' A's (featuring Hilary Claire Adamson) - Killing Me
album: 'Til They Shut It Down; label: Flying-A Records (not yet released)

Anais Mitchell - Hades & Persephone
album: The Brightness; label: Righteous Babe

Anais Mitchell - Shenandoah
album: The Brightness; label: Righteous Babe

Anais Mitchell - Phone Interview
album: Live; label: KFAI

*Anais Mitchell - Flowers (Eurydice's Song)
album: Hadestown; label: Righteous Babe

Behind Women's Calendar: *Shannon Heaton - 99 High
album: The Blue Dress; label: Self

Harbor Collective - Till & Sow
album: The Monday EP; label: Super Solar

*Ashleigh Still & Nick Salisbury - Firefly
album: Firefly; label: Self

Joanna Jahn - What You Don't Know
album: Live in the Studio; label: KFAI

Joanna Jahn - Too Old
album: Live in the Studio; label: KFAI

*Chastity Brown - Push You Away
album: High Noon Teeth; label: Self

*Lucy Wainwright Roche - Open Season
album: Lucy; label: Self

Laurie Lewis - Blue Days, Sleepless Nights
album: Seeing Things; label: Rounder

**Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sounds

Griffin House w/ Tyler James @ The Iron Horse, September 16th, 2010

2010-09-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

I hadn't known much about this guy and his band before last night. Only that they sounded a bit like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and that House himself looks a little like I'd imagine Dan Bern to look if he'd spent a couple of weeks living on the street. Looking for something to do that night, I noticed they were playing, and off I went to the ole' Iron Horse for the show, accompanied by my friend Merideth.

The opener was a guy named Tyler James. He played keyboards, guitar, and some trumpet, and he used his pedals to loop some guitar and keyboard parts to conjure a one-man band sound. He was good at it. I was struck my how young he looked and impressed that he went out of his way to joke about it: he's 28 but he looks 15, and that's what he told us. He played around 40 minutes of music altogether and, by the end, I'd become fond of his voice which, when we he really trying, sounded soulful. One song included the line "constance of becoming," which is something I like to think about, and I think my man Chris Smither thinks about too. "All I Got" used the keyboard sound that I associate with Creedence's "Long as I Can See the Light." What could have been his strongest song was a hymn that, after he looped a couple of trumpet parts and sat down at the keyboard, he announced he'd forgotten the words to. We laughed, and he eventually remembered and sang the song. Beyond that, he was basically a slightly above average song-poet. Good love songs well-sung.

Griffin House are a good band. The lead singer does sound a bit like Tom Petty. And he looks how I'd imagine Dan Bern to look after a night of drinking and several nights spent in a ditch. They are basically a country-ish rock band. Their lead guitarist plays simple but effective solos, and the rhythm section is solid. They veered close enough to old-school rockabilly that I was not surprised when they whipped out "I Fought the Law" and "Folsom Prison Blues" and even less surprised that they both sounded great. They also did some quiet ballads, one of which, "The Guy That Says Goodbye," I found genuinely touching. They did a murder ballad, which they have yet to record, that's based on the singer's high school recollection of having his girlfriend stolen by the school's basketball star. Many of their songs reminded me a little of Tyler James' in fact. More so than James, GH relies on simple lyrics, often-repeated, taking on the feel of a mantra.

Rock and Roll Promoter Goes Broadway

2010-09-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned off-handedly back in May, Bono and the Edge have composed music for the new Spider-Man musical that is set to open on Broadway.

The Times has a story today that describes how Bono called in Michael Cohl, who has helped U2 and the Rolling Stones launch some of their huge concert tours, to take over the production duties when it looked like the show might not come to fruition. (Bono and the Edge and Michael Cohl all have apparently chipped in some cash to what has become the most expensive Broadway musical ever, as well.)

The story of Cohl's ascent from high school dropout to all-star producer is, um, inspiring, maybe:

A Toronto native, Mr. Cohl left high school and took jobs as a taxi driver and parking lot manager before becoming a partner in an Ottawa strip club. He developed an early love for playing banjo and folk music, and fell hard for rock ’n’ roll at his first concert, a Grateful Dead-Jefferson Airplane double bill. (He could not remember the year; his memory of long-ago concerts has, not surprisingly, a haze about it.)

His first outing as a rock promoter in 1970 was a big flop: he booked the 17,000-seat Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto for Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, but sold so few tickets that he didn’t have the money to pay the band. As Mr. Cohl recalled, Mr. Owens sat in protest in his dressing room until Mr. Cohl borrowed $25,000 on the spot from the arena’s owner so the act could go on.

An all-night New Year’s Eve concert during that period netted enough money for Mr. Cohl to repay the debt, but the boom-and-bust cycle continued; he once had to borrow $30,000 from his Uncle Murray to keep going. Over time, Mr. Cohl became the pre-eminent Canadian rock promoter, and his involvement in Rolling Stones shows there led to a career breakthrough when he became the chief promoter on the band’s worldwide “Steel Wheels” tour that began in 1989.

Once again, without risk, there is no reward, I guess...

Steve Martin Writes Atheist Hymn

2010-09-10T07:34:00.000-07:00

Steve Martin has been on tour with the Steep Canyon Rangers for a lot of the year. Here is an original tune that he wrote to fill the void in the world of atheist hymns:

(HT: Nick Novia.)

U2 Goalie Mask

2010-09-09T09:35:00.001-07:00

That's Martin Prusek from Dynamo Riga in Russia’s KHL hockey league. From this post.

(HT: Neil Baer.)

Two Man Gentlemen Band Pen "Instant Cannabis Classic"

2010-09-08T20:16:00.000-07:00

So says Toke of the Town.

Bob Dylan on Guitar

2010-09-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

Well, it was 45 years ago this year that Bob Dylan plugged in at Newport (although I recently embarrassed myself by insisting that it had been 1964), but the more noteworthy item is perhaps the fact that Bob is back to picking up the guitar again these days.

The last few years, Dylan has spent his shows behind a keyboard. Whether because he doesn't have the strumming dexterity that he used to have or because it's easier to read the lyrics while standing at a synthesizer, Dylan has been pounding the 88s rather than strumming the six.

According to Andy Greene's review in Rolling Stone of Dylan's August 4th kickoff of his fall U.S. tour in Austin, Texas, he spent half the night either on guitar or else "gripping the mic and prowling the stage Frank Sinatra-style." The keyboard is still his resting place for the other half of the night, but that is still a pretty impressive change.

I did some spot checking over at BobLinks' list of 2010 setlists, and it seems that this trend started much earlier in 2010 -- shows in Japan and Eastern Europe featured Bob on guitar or standing centerstage.

This all sounds very cool to me!

Bonus: Bill Pagel over at BobLinks also has organized a list of what songs were played on what dates -- what fun!

The Savory Collection

2010-08-17T16:25:00.001-07:00

This article from today's New York Times about a treasure trove of jazz recordings recently taken into the collection of the National Jazz Museum is worth a read.

(HT: Steve Winters.)

New Finest Kind CD: For Honour & For Gain

2010-08-16T18:44:00.001-07:00

A few years ago, I put Finest Kind's magnificent recording of "The Banks of the Sweet Primroses" on my New Year's CD, and my friend Claudio e-mailed a thank you note for the disc in which he said, "Finest Kind are the finest kind indeed!"

It's a sentiment that I heartily endorse. This Canadian trio -- Ian Robb, Shelley Posen and Ann Downey -- are three of the best singers that you can find out there, and their songs are filled with wonderful harmonies, arranged to bring out the lyrics and meaning of the songs. Next year, they will start their third decade together as a band.

The e-mail came from Ian Robb last week that a new Finest Kind CD was available, so I sent him the money through my PayPal account and within the week had the hand-packed package from Ian in my mailbox.

The disc is another great one, a mix of traditional English songs, sea shanties, American country music tunes done with an Anglo-Celtic twist and more.

The group opens up with "Bay of Biscay," a song with roots in County Donegal that Ian first learned from Tim Hart and Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span. The song is Finest Kind at their best. About a woman who has waited seven years for her sailor husband to return, when "a knock came to her bedroom door / saying, 'Arise, arise, my dearest Mary / just to earn one glance of your Willy-oh," and there is her dead husband's ghost at the door. The band soars on "arise, arise," and when she "spied young Willy standing." The song is sung in stacked harmony with Shelley's voice occasionally dropping out and then coming back in for emphasis. And they hesitate just right on the last verse -- "If I had all the gold and silver / and all the money in Mexico / I would grant it all to the King of Erin / Just to bring me back my Willy-oh" -- lingering on the second-to-last note before resolving.

"Claudy Banks," a folk classic associated with the Copper Family (indeed the first song ever collected for the English Folk Song Society, back in 1897), "The Lass That Loved a Sailor," collected in Newfoundland, and "By the Green Grove" are similar.

Midway through the album, they bust out the old stalwart "Lowlands Low," also known as "The Golden Vanity" or the "Merry Willow Tree" or about five or six other names. On the first listen, I sort of shrugged at this one, thinking that I would opt for the version that John Roberts and Tony Barrand put on 2003's Twiddlum Twaddlum or Bruce Molsky's treatment on Soon Be Time. (In fact, I thought it was the counterpart to Roberts and Barrand recording Rudyard Kipling's "A Pilgrim's Way," a song that never needs to be recorded again because there is no hope of improving on Finest Kind's version on Lost in a Song.) In particular, I didn't think that the chorus was quite as rousing as it usually is. But the twist in the story in this particular version makes it a worthy and valuable recording to have. It turns out that it's a Canadian version that Shelley learned frmo an Ottawa Valley singer named Loy Gavan.

For a bit of fun, the band has included "John Barleycorn Deconstructed," which is not so much a textual exegesis of the classic song but rather a blow-by-blow account of how Finest Kind arrangements work.

The second track of the disc -- after the classic "Bay of Biscay" opener -- is "She Thinks I Still Care," written by Dickey Lee and associated with George Jones. With Michael Ball on fiddle and Shelley on guitar, the band drives it along, taking it a little faster (and happier) than the Possum does, but it comes off nicely with a soaring vocal ending. The Jimmie Rodgers' song "Why Should I Be Lonely?" comes later in the set.

Ann takes the lead vocals and plays the banjo on "Short Life of Trouble," the Appalachian entry on the disc. Associated with Grayson and Whitter and Burnett and Rutherford -- two groups that recorded the song in the 1920s -- and now with Ralph Stanley and Doc Watson, Finest Kind gives it a nice treatment, again with an emphasis on the harmonies that they weave into the song, capturing the lonesomeness that runs through the song.

The real treasures, though, on the CD are tracks six through eight. First up in this trio is "Bully in the Alley," a "raucous work song" (as the band describes it) that was sung by men loading cotton into boats in the ante bellum South. With the ever-terrific James Stephens on fiddle and Jody Benjamin on triangle, the song has a ton of energy in it, and the singing, under Ian's lead, is right on. It's a favorite of mine, and they get it just as spot-on as I would have hoped. (The other sea shanty on the CD is a modern one -- 1988 vintage -- "From Dover to Calais," about hovercraft that crossed the English Channel.)

From all of that energy, Ian's concertina and James Stephens' fiddle walk us into U. Utah Phillips' "He Comes Like Rain (Like Wind He Goes)." Bruce Phillips wrote this song for the many hobos that he met in his travels. The Finest Kind version makes it more lonesome and heartfelt than even the Phillips original (recorded with guitar and mandolin). It is a great version, and it's a pleasure to find it here.

It is followed by Ian's setting of an 1850s poet written by Chartist Ernest Jones called "Song of the Lower Classes." The following verse is typical:

We’re low —- we’re low —- we’re very very low,
Yet from our fingers glide
The silken flow and the robes that glow
Round the limbs of the sons of pride.
And what we get and what we give
We know, and we know our share:
We’re not too low the cloth to weave,
But too low the cloth to wear!

Back to an a capella setting and again with Ian's lead vocals, the song is powerful. Lest it get you too down, though, Ian has added a slightly more upbeat conclusion to the original poem.

All in all, it's another winner from Finest Kind. If you're a fan of classic English-style folk singing, this disc is a must-have.

The Arcade Fire and Analog Recording

2010-08-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

I was just reading Jon Pareles's article from late July about The Arcade Fire's new album, The Suburbs, which I have enjoyed on a couple of listens but not yet fallen in love with.

He describes the band:

The band is simultaneously a throwback to a more heroic age of rock and a glimmer of hope in a digital era that forces musicians to fend for themselves. It prizes the sounds and methods of a disappearing era: hand-played instruments, analog recording, albums made to be heard as a whole.

(In today's paper, Ben Sisario questions whether they can still be an "indie rock band" if they're hitting #1 on the charts.)

And later, he describes their recording process:

The band took its time recording “The Suburbs,” working and reworking songs for much of a year in homes and studios, using 24-track tape. “I’d hate to take a guess at the budget,” Mr. [Win] Butler [the main singer and lyricist] said, but he added that part of the cost was equipment the band would continue to use, including a 1940s mixing console with vacuum tubes. Each completed song was pressed onto a 12-inch disc, and the vinyl playback was recorded for the final digital master.

“We recorded it on tape, we press it to vinyl, and the digital is the archive of this physical thing that exists in the world,” Mr. Butler said. “We’re preserving it and using digital as a mode of distribution, but ultimately there was something real that was made.”

A few things are interesting here. First, why bother with the vinyl pressing? Why not record the digital straight from the tape? The tape would still be the desired 'physical thing that exists in the world,' and the sound quality would be higher on the digital edition because of one less step in the production process.

Second, what ends up being rather ironic is the fact that the album went to #1 on the Billboard charts because of a special MP3 download deal on Amazon (which is, in fact, how I purchased the album).

At any rate, I do admire their music and their sound, and I -- as I've discussed here, for instance -- am a big believer in the album format: a long-form collection of not-necessarily-long songs. So I appreciate their sentiment on the topic:

The Arcade Fire is determined to maintain the album as an artistic format, a physical object and an emotional experience. On “The Suburbs,” as on the band’s two previous albums, the songs cross-reference and comment on one another, gathering depth and resonance as a whole.

“I’ve been moved by albums a lot more than I’ve been moved by singles, and we’re an album band,” Mr. Butler said.

Problems That White People Have

2010-08-12T18:16:00.000-07:00

Urbana-Champaign's Pygmalion Music Festival -- to be held at the end of September -- posted its schedule today.

The first problem with the festival is that it's the same weekend as the C-U Folk and Roots Festival. Now, I'm guessing that the audience overlap is relatively slight, but this is Champaign-Urbana, so the audience is also relatively slight in general, so it might have been better for someone to catch on to this fact and have these on different weekends.

But more to the point, the Pygmalion Festival has scheduled two of its headliners in opposition with one another. On Wednesday night -- the opening night of the festival, which does not conflict with the C-U Folk and Roots Festival -- Janelle Monae and Of Montreal will be playing at The Canopy Club, while a little ways away, Built to Spill will be playing at the Highdive (where I recently went to a show for the first time).

Down in the comments section of the announcement, an early poster questioned this decision:

Could someone please explain why on earth they would overlap two of the headliners on a f*cking Wednesday?!

To which the next poster replied:

Perhaps their touring schedules only permitted them to play on Wednesday night, and it would be silly to put them on the same bill as they both deserve a headlining spot. It sucks, but this is totally a white person’s problem.

I don't even know what that means, yet I somehow think that he is right.

Earl Scruggs: His Family and Friends (1972)

2010-08-08T20:04:00.000-07:00

I've just finished watching the wonderful 1972 documentary Earl Scruggs: His Family and Friends. The movie follows Earl around as he plays with a variety of different music stars, very much in the vein of The Earl Scruggs Revue shows.

The show opens with Earl, his sons Randy and Gary and Bob Dylan all playing together, first on "East Virginia Blues," which Dylan sings in a fairly straightforward voice and which sounds really good. Then Earl asks to pick "Nashville Skyline Rag," and it's a bit awkward to watch Dylan, who doesn't seem to quite be able to jump into the song the way that Earl and the boys do.

That's not a problem in the next scene, where Earl and Randy are picking in Doc Watson's backyard, along with Merle Watson. Doc says, "Let's do 'John Hardy,'" and everyone just jumps right into it, perfectly in time and ready to burn through their solo when their turn comes up. The level of musicianship just makes my jaw drop in awe!

And then we're in Flint Hill, North Carolina, and Earl has dragged the Morris Brothers, Zeke and Wiley, away from their auto repair shop to play some music with him for the first time in years. They run through their classic "Salty Dog" without a hitch, play along with Earl on "Flint Hill Special" and then bust out a really beautiful version of "On Top of Old Smokey," which Wiley croons in grand fashion.

Things get a little more modern as Earl joins The Byrds for two numbers, the second of which is Dylan's "You Ain't Going Nowhere."

The movie drags a bit in the middle, although high-school-aged Randy plays a terrific version of "Black Mountain Rag" on guitar.

There's then a great scene backstage at the Grand Ole Opry. (You follow Earl to the Opry from his house -- I was surprised to see that the speed limit at the time was 75 mph!) Earl and Randy join Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys, as Monroe spins out a medley of his hits -- without, it seems, having told anyone that it's a medley! Earl has no problem keeping up with the Father of Bluegrass Music though -- he knows these tricks. When Earl, Randy and Gary are on stage at the Opry, Monroe, the MC for the segment, lurks around in the background. (There's also a female piano player in the Opry band -- anyone know who that is?)

The movie concludes with an extended visit with Joan Baez. Her singing is terrific; unlike Bob Dylan, she seems to be able to hang with Earl and Randy; and she even gives us her Bob Dylan impersonation on "It Ain't Me Babe," which she sings with Randy while holding her baby. Joan charmingly talks about having a crush on Earl and describes how the first six times that they met, he would come up to her and say, "Can you sing this one...?" while picking out the opening of "Wildwood Flower." She sings a stunning version of "Love is Just a Four Letter Word."

It's a great film.

You can find nearly all of it on YouTube, it seems. I'll give you this small portion with Spanish subtitles:

Mother Banjo and Vicky Emerson in Chicago

2010-08-06T16:32:00.000-07:00

Two Thursday ago, I made the drive up to Chicago to Uncommon Ground in Wrigleyville -- wearing my St. Louis Cardinals hat as part of an unintentional data-collection effort on the friendliness of Chicagoans. I arrived with a little bit of time to spare before Mother Banjo took the stage.

MoJo played a solid set of music, bringing up Vicky Emerson to play keyboard and sing harmony vocals on a couple of songs. She even debuted a U2 cover that she has added to her repertoire: "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World." Thinking that I would certainly be able to help her out if she missed any of the lyrics, I was surprised to discover how I actually did not know the lyrics without the familiar recording playing!

Vicky Emerson's set was terrific, as well. She opened up -- on guitar -- with her surrealistic "Wheat Fields," a dream of Midwestern crop circles that is relayed with a neat little slide on the bass string and a heavy mute on the strum. It was an appropriate opener for a woman who is originally from Elmwood, Wisconsin, the UFO Capital of Wisconsin. Vicky, sporting a stylish space-alien guitar strap, indeed was once the UFO Queen.

But these days, she lives in New York City, and a good part of her stage patter was from the perspective of a Midwesterner arrived in a land with strange new ways and norms. (I was identifying in reverse.) She described all of her New York friends being single and talked about how aggressive the dating scene was. (Vicky herself is married, and her husband was in the audience.) So what she does in order to get song material is to invite those friends over and give them some wine, and the thematic material just comes pouring out! In this vein, her song "Every Shade of Blue" contained the perfectly sung lyric, "I sit still, / I sip my wine, / And I think about you / 'Cause I got the time."

In another New York-inspired song, Vicky paid tribute to the brand of woman that can be found prowling the bars and knowing exactly what they want from young men -- that's right, cougars. It had a great chorus on it, but I unfortunately did not scribble it down. You'll have to request it!

And she told the story of being ill with morning sickness for days and driving through the Midwest. Upon seeing a brat stand, she screamed out, "Pull over now!" and got herself a hearty Midwestern brat. It set her system and soul aright and stopped the morning sickness for good. But of course, people in New York don't understand this story because they don't know what a brat is! (Oh, how recently I was one of them, my friends!)

Vicky encored -- by request -- with "The Hey Hey Song," written for her husband. A nice end to a solid show.

Music and African Football

2010-08-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

Jessica Hiltout is a photographer who went to Africa and tried to capture the spirit of African soccer as played in the streets and the fields (and not the World Cup stadium).

Her photographs are being published in a coffee table book called AMEN: Grassroots Football.

A number of them have also been set to music in a series of videos. They make for enjoyable listening and interesting watching!

(HT: Aid Watch.)

Hot Tuna Signed to Red House Records

2010-08-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

Just sent out a press release about this so this is breaking news about the legendary Hot Tuna. As you can see here, both Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady are pretty proud of their newly signed contract!

And if you missed it, check out this review of their recent New Haven show with Steve Earle.

===

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Contact: Ellen Stanley, (651) 644-4161, promotions@redhouserecords.com

Red House Records Signs Hot Tuna!

ST. PAUL, MN -- Red House Records is very pleased to announce that they have signed iconic blues-roots band Hot Tuna to the label. Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady formed Hot Tuna in 1969, when taking a break from touring with Jefferson Airplane. Since then the band has been performing their unique mix of acoustic and electric blues, cultivating an extreme fan following. In addition to Jorma and Jack, the band includes mandolin virtuoso Barry Mitterhoff and legendary drummer Skoota Warner. Hot Tuna just wrapped up a tour with Steve Earle and is going into Levon Helm's studio now to record their first studio album of new material in 20 years. Hot Tuna's album is scheduled to be released in early 2011 on Red House.

Founding member Jorma Kaukonen has released two solo albums with Red House and is looking forward to releasing a Hot Tuna album with the Grammy winning indie label. "We are so excited about signing with Red House Records and joining their fine roster of artists," he says. "The label promotes true freedom of expression."

For more information and to set up interviews, please contact Ellen Stanley at (651) 644-4161 or promotions@redhouserecords.com.

Classical Music Sans Anti-Depressents

2010-08-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

Kudos to Vivien Schweitzer for the following description in her review of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen's appearance at the Mostly Mozart Festival:

Schumann, an unstable man who attempted suicide and died in an insane asylum, composed the overture as music for Lord Byron’s dramatic poem about a transcendence-seeking, Faust-like sorcerer.

This was a Xanax-free performance, the music raw and unprettified and its bipolar underpinnings highlighted with sharp contrasts and unexpected accents. The musicians, perched on the edge of their seats, played with enormous energy and illuminated violent mood swings within a single measure.

A Study in Contrasts

2010-08-02T11:32:00.001-07:00

Some marvelous writing from Jon Pareles in today's review of the performance at Radio City Music Hall by Jason Pierce (ne J. Spaceman) and his band Spiritualized of the 1997 album Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space:

The album is cherished as a magnum opus and grand oddity: solitary yearning expressed by a platoon of musicians, derangement mapped with architectural thoroughness, diffidence on a monumental scale.

Playlists: Womenfolk (July 27 & 20, 2010)

2010-07-29T15:41:00.000-07:00

This week on Womenfolk we interviewed legendary British songwriter Joan Armatrading, played tracks from her new album This Charming Life and talked about her show tonight at the Cedar Cultural Center. The week before we enjoyed a live in-studio performance by Billboard-charting songwriter Meg Hutchinson and a conversation with DJ Pam Hill about the recent Minneapolis stop on the Lilith Fair tour. If you missed either of these shows, you can hear both on the Womenfolk web page.

Next Tuesday tune in for a special preview of Red House Barnfest with artist interviews, ticket giveaways and a live in-studio performance by Ruth Moody from The Wailin' Jennys! -efs.

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WOMENFOLK (July 27, 2010)
Hosted by Ellen Stanley
Fresh Air Community Radio, KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis/106.7 FM St. Paul
Every Tuesday, 2-4 pm
*New Releases
**Womenfolk Theme Song

**Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sounds

*Ruth Moody - We Could Pretend
album: The Garden; label: Red House

*Cowboy Junkies - I Cannot Sit Sadly By Your Side
album: The Nomad Series Volume 1: Renmin Park; label: Razor & Tie

Ana Egge - Sitting in the Midday Sun
album: Lazy Days; label: Grace/Parkinsong

Indigo Girls - Shame on You
album: Shaing of the Sun; label: Epic

Suzanne Vega - 99.9 F
album: Retrospective: The Very Best of Suzanne Vega; label: A&M

Womenfolk Find: *The Chapin Sisters - Left All Alone
album: Oh, Hear the Wind Blow; label: Self

Lucy Wainwright Roche - Chicago
album: 8 More; label: Self

Antje Duvekot - Long Way
album: The Near Demise of the Highwire Dancer; label: Black Wolf

Kris Delmhorst - Summer Breeze
album: Appetite; label: Big Bean Music

*Red Horse - Scorpion
album: Red Horse; label: Red House

Harbor Collective - California
album: The Monday EP; label: Super Solar Sounds

Behind Women's Calendar: Alison Brown - The Sound of Summer Running
album: Stolen Moments; label: Compass

*Joan Armatrading - This Charming Life
album: This Charming Life; label: SLG

Catie Curtis - Sweet Life
album: Sweet Life; label: Compass

The Waifs - Sweetness
album: Up All Night; label: Compass

Mary Chapin Carpenter - I Am a Town
album: Live at the Iron Horse; label: Signature Sounds

Joan Armatrading - Phone Interview
album: Live; label: KFAI

*Joan Armatrading - Best Dress On
album: This Charming Life; label: SLG

The Nields - Best Black Dress
album: Live From Northampton; label: Self

Shawn Colvin - Summer Dress
album: These Four Walls; label: Nonesuch

Kristin Andreassen - Heat
album: Kiss Me Hello; label: Self

**Rani Arbo - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sounds

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WOMENFOLK (July 20, 2010)
Hosted by Ellen Stanley
Fresh Air Community Radio, KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis/106.7 FM St. Paul
Every Tuesday, 2-4 pm
*New Releases
**Womenfolk Theme Song

**Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sounds

*Natalie Merchant - The Man in the Wilderness
album: Leave Your Sleep; label: Nonesuch

*Solas - A Sailor's Life
album: The Turning Tide; label: Compass

Dolly Parton - Down From Dover
album: Little Sparrow; label: Sugar Hill

*Megan Dudle - Little Bessie
album: You Are Always In My Dreams; label: Self

*Mary Gauthier - The Foundling
album: The Foundling; label: Razor & Tie

Crooked Still - Orphan Girl
album: Live; label: Self

Womenfolk Find: *The Chapin Sisters - Digging a Hole
album: Oh, Hear the Wind Blow; label: Self

Jonatha Brooke - Digging
album: Steady Pull; label: Bad Dog Records

Meg Hutchinson - Travel In
album: Live in the Studio; label: KFAI

*Meg Hutchinson - Something Else
album: The Living Side; label: Red House

Behind Women's Calendar: Joanie Madden - Flight of the Wild Geese
album: Songs of the Irish Whistle; label: Hearts O' Space

Meg Hutchinson - See Me Now
album: Live in the Studio; label: KFAI

Eliza Gilkyson - Paradise Hotel
album: Paradise Hotel; label: Red House

*Red Horse - Sanctuary
album: Red Horse; label: Red House

*Pieta Brown - Prayer of Roses
album: One and All; label: Red House

*Sasha Mercedes - That's Okay
album: Temporary Monsters; label: Self

*Jennifer Markey and the Tennessee Snowpants - That's What You Get (For Cryin')
album: The Sparta Session; label: Self

*Court Yard Hounds - Ain't No Son
album: Court Yard Hounds; label: Columbia

*Molly Maher - Chicken (live)
album: Cast Your Bread; label: Self

**Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sound

Loudon Wainwright III w/ Rob Morsberger @ The Iron Horse, Northampton, MA, July 24th, 2010

2010-07-24T19:14:00.001-07:00

Last night, I headed up Route 47 and onward to Northampton to meet up with my friend Alison for the great Loudon Wainwright's gig at the Iron Horse, which has come to feel like a proverbial (metaphorical?) summer home for me. I don't think it was a sold out show, but it must have been close. The man draws a crowd. This was my first time seeing him since his opening gig for Hot Tuna this past December. I could scarcely have been happier with last night's show.

The opening act was a singing, songwriting piano player named Rob Morsberger. He opened with something called "The Last Song," a sad, beautiful goodbye, from a husband to a wife. He sang and played with strength and warmth, sounding like a slightly gravelly version of Dan Bern. His 30 minute set went by quickly, and that's a complement. His melodies are very strong, and songs like "Old Jolly Farm" and "Details" are detail-oriented, wise and experiential. And I'm partial to his singing voice. Worth checking out.

On to the featured act. I was amused to see LWIII fumble around a bit, looking for a place to rest his glass of water, a routine that I recall from his last Iron Horse show. He wound up putting it on the piano, before launching into a song from High, Wide, and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project (2009) called "Moving Day," a funny one. From there, the pendulum swung to the other end of the emotional spectrum with "Dead Man." And then all the way back with "The Morgue," a song that combines, as he told us, "shitty love" with "death and decay," the themes that have defined his career. I love that one, myself.

As has been the case with most of the LWIII performances I've seen, the man had us in the palm of his hand almost immediately. His stage presence is amazing, with that expressive face and voice, along with the facial contortions and gesticulations in the middle of songs that signify...all sorts of emotions. Sometimes, they're just plan silly. But he's so mastered all these mannerisms that they transcend mere shtick. In the middle of a couple of songs, including a serious one, "You Can't Fail Me Now," he retuned a guitar string a bit, and he did it while barely breaking his stride, and with a big grin on his face. It barely disturbed the feel of the song at all. He once said in an interview that all his facial ticks were, at the beginning of his career, the expression of very real nervousness and stage fright. Over time, though, he began to realize that he could control all the ticks, and they have since become very much a part of his performance repertoire. In any case, Loudon was in fine form last night, very funny and passionate.

His set focused on newer material, for the most part. He played 3 of the 10 Songs from the New Depression (2010) which, he did not tire of telling us, were his attempt to cash in on the current economic downturn. These included the very best one of those 10, "House," which was a highlight of his performance with Richard Thompson at the Calvin back in October. Along with "Moving Day," he did "High Wide and Handsome" and "Rowena" from the Charlie Poole album. He also played the first three songs from Strange Weirdos (2007), "Gray in L.A.," "You Can't Fail Me Now," and "Daughter," and my favorite two songs from Last Man on Earth, "Surviving Twin" and "White Winos," the latter being a song that always gets requested at the man's shows. Someone at the back of the Iron Horse cried out for it rather forcefully, early in the set, prompting Loudon to very gently explain that perhaps he'd play it a bit later on, that he in fact had been considering playing it later that evening, and that he probably would. "But, in the meantime...SECURITY!"

Family is Loudon's great theme. All of his talents are on full display when he mines this topic, one that few singer-songwriters really address, and no singer-songwriter gets into with the depth that LWIII does. Last night, he played songs about being a father ("A Father and a Son"), a father's son ("Surviving Twin," "Dead Man"), a mother's son ("White Winos"), a grandchild ("Nanny"), and a brand new grandfather (a new song; can't remember the title). After a little recap of his own father's career as a Life Magazine columnist, he played his dad's song "Handful of Dust," which is from the History album (1990). But most moving of all was when he put down the guitar and sat at the piano to play "Another Song in C." That was the most powerful moment of the concert for me, a performance that conjured/elicited/displayed laughter, sadness, anger and regret. It was the greatest moment from the last time I saw him at the Iron Horse, and it was the highlight from last night too.

He played several songs that he has yet to record, including "Another Song in C" and the one inspired by his having become a grandfather. He debuted a powerful anti-drunk driving song that, I imagine, will be called "The Cross." And, much to my delight, he played the song that describes the mishap with his guitar. Check it out.

A couple of other tidbits....About halfway through the set, he introduced his teenage daughter, who was sitting at a table across the room from me. Apparently, they were taking some time during the tour to visit colleges, including Amherst and Williams. He wondered aloud how he was going to pay for it, before giving us (and, probably more to the point, his daughter) a big smile and saying, "we'll figure it out somehow!" Rufus came up a couple of time. First, he introduced "A Father and a Son" by saying that the song was about Rufus and himself, also prompting him to marvel at the fact that the song was over 20 years old. Then, in the middle of "Nanny," he inserted a spoken word interlude in which he described his grandmother's reaction to hearing the name of her first great-grandchild: "Rufus? RUFUS? That's a DOG'S name!" And he showed off his sharpie to us several times, letting us know that he'd be happy to sign the CDs that he had for sale. And he'd even pose for a photo, even from a cell phone "as long as you're under 30 and actually know how to work the damn thing!"

For the two-part encore, he gave us "Tip That Waitress," followed by "Middle of the Night," which is one of the New Depression songs.

I see from his website that he'll be back in New England in March of 2011, for gigs with Shawn Colvin at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, MA and at Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT. I'll be sure to get to one of those. You should too.

Red Horse Art

2010-07-24T15:10:00.001-07:00

In Mike Regenstreif's review of the new Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka, Lucy Kapalansky collaboration, Red Horse, he points out that Tom Russell (see my post here) did the cover art. (And in fact, the cover art is instantly recognizable as a Tom Russell painting if you've seen Tom's other work, which is an impressive thing to be able to say about an artist, I think.)

What Mike did not mention was that the interior photo of the band was taken by ... Ellen! Yay Ellen!

For more on Red Horse, see the Red House Records website.

Hot Tuna w/ Steve Earle @ The Shubert Theater, New Haven CT, July 23rd, 2010

2010-07-23T22:06:00.001-07:00

I took the hour-long drive to New Haven last night to check out electric Hot Tuna. After the powerful experience I had at the sold-out Beacon Theater show last December, I was thirsty for more. At that show, I was sitting a few rows back in the balcony, and the sound was so loud and intense that, last night, by the time I walked into the theater, I was regretting not bringing earplugs. After all, for the New Haven show, I was sitting in the fifth row of the orchestra, dead center. Was I about to suffer ear damage?

The opening act was Steve Earle. I haven’t seen this guy in over a decade. I think the last time I saw him was in Newport, back in 1999. He was playing with a bluegrass band then. It wasn’t Del McCoury, who he recorded the excellent The Mountain (1999) with…..Ok, I just looked it up: he was there with Tim O’Brian and the Bluegrass Dukes. Here’s a pic from my archives:

Anyway, there was no band this time. Just him, his harmonicas, and a few stringed instruments: guitars, mandolins, and a bouzouki—which, he joked later in his set, you can’t call a bouzouki at the airport if you want to stay out of trouble. I don’t know the Steve Earle cannon particularly well, so I was happy that I recognized about half the songs. The high point for me actually came early, as he opened with “Christmas in Washington.” I’m so used to hearing Joan Baez’s version of this song that it took my ears a minute to adjust to Earle’s voice but, when they did, I found myself singing along. Toward the end, he encouraged us all to sing, which a few of us did. After that came “The Devil’s Right Hand,” eliciting big cheers. An excellent one-two punch to begin.

Earle played for about 75 minutes, a long opening set. He sounded great, slurring and moaning and playing some good guitar. He was in a conversational mood, too. He took the time to talk about the deli down the street where he lived in Brooklyn, and the Korean gentleman, Mr. Kim, who took the time to learn fluent Spanish to go along with his Korean and English, in order to get by in the city. A fine introduction to “City of Immigrants,” performed on the aforementioned bouzouki. He talked about Townes van Zandt, whose songs he played exclusively on his latest album, Townes (2009). He compared the task of playing “Pancho and Lefty” to attacking the biggest, toughest guy in your cell block in order to get respect of your fellow prisoners (or something like that). He talked about asking Townes where he learned a different song (that I didn’t know) that led him to ask relatives and friends of relatives, and on down the line to find its origins. He talked about Afghanistan, before giving us “Rich Man’s War.” He talked about the Lewis and Clark expedition before announcing that it had nothing to do with the next song, “You Know the Rest,” other than that they both exposed the b.s. of the doctrine of manifest destiny. He took up the mandolin to play “Dixieland” from The Mountain, which I was happy about. This was Earle the folkie, not Earle the rocker, and he’s good, real good, in this mode. I would go see him again if the opportunity came up. This breaks the streak of Tuna openers whose solo acoustic performances have gotten lost in bigger venues (I’m thinking of Loudon Wainwright back in December and, back in 2002, Chris Smither at the NYC Thanksgiving show).

On to the opening act…Jorma Kaukonen and The Barry Mitterhoffs. Seriously, folks, Jorma seems to really like this guy’s playing. I do too. He gets some very juicy solos, and he plays a variety of electric guitars and mandolins. Not to take anything away from G.E. Smith or Jorma himself, but Barry has the least stage presence of any of the Tuna gang while playing some of the best guitar. Jorma and Jack have staked their claim to history, and now Barry and G.E. have clearly given them new life. And Skoota Warner is my favorite Tuna drummer, with all due respect to Harvey Sorgen and Eric Diaz.

Contrary to my fears, the band did not, to paraphrase Spinal Tap’s “Heavy Duty,” make my eardrums bleed. I guess because the Shubert Performing Arts Center is so much smaller than the Beacon, and the show was noticeably not sold out, the band didn’t feel the need to pump the amps up to 11 (to paraphrase Tap once again). Here’s the setlist with my commentary:

1. Serpent of Dreams—-A most unexpected opener, but a great one. Jorma’s guitar started it off, with Barry on electric guitar too, and pretty soon, the intertwining guitars of Jorma, Barry, and G.E. were filling the theater with the spooky, psychedelic sounds of my favorite song from America’s Choice (1975). When Skoota and Jack burst in, the crowd erupted with applause.

2. I Know You Rider—-The instrumental portion of this one went on and on, with Skoota upping the tempo, and each of the stringmen given room to solo. Guess whose solo knocked my socks off? Barry’s, that’s whose. He was on the mandolin for this one, if I recall correctly.

3. I Wish You Would—-In my mind’s ear and eye, I’ll never forget this one as the opener to the 2009 NYC show that wowed me back in December. It didn’t rip my ears off this time, and thank goodness for that, but it was still the first really raucous moment of the night.

4. Ode To Billy Dean—-As near as I can remember, I haven’t heard this one live since the very first time I saw them, back in 1999. This was Jorma’s moment to shine, and his singing and solos were prime.

5. Long Gone Blues—-a G.E. Smith song with a very simple riff and some great singing from the man. During this one, I decided that I loved what G.E. Smith brings to the group, and I hope he stays.

6. Living Just For You—-one of Tuna’s most upbeat numbers, and one that brings back great memories from high school, listening to The Phosphorescent Rat (1973) on my headset, delighting in this new band I’d discovered, that no one else knew about. Also with a great Barry solo.

7. Hesitation Blues—-a favorite of the Tuna audience, Tuna themselves, and me. After each of the first two verses, there were solos from Barry and G.E. And after the next one, with Jack and Skoota revving the tempo, Jorma took off too. It’s always a thrill to hear this one.

8. Bowlegged Woman, Knock-kneed Man—-The rest of the band stood back at first, letting Jack repeat the funky bass part a number of times over, before joining in. Jorma stood watching him for a few seconds, hands in his pockets. This one also featured G.E.’s best moment as a supporting player, hammering out a great rhythm part, playing big fat chords against Jack’s bass.

9. Talkin’ Bout You—-…thereby completing a two-fer from Hoppkorv (1976). Less funk than the previous song, and more rock. This is a Chuck Berry song which, in its original recording, manages to be both rocking and funky. But then, that’s Chuck Berry for you. Another great one to hear live.

10. Arrowhead—-What a treat to hear Hot Tuna play this one. Yes, this is the Richard Shindell song, here performed by G.E., with an added verse: “Mama, there’s a rope around my neck / They say this is what deserters get / There’s a white horse resting between my knees / A crack of the whip, then I’ll be free / Mama, there’s a rope around my neck.” I’ve heard a rumor that Tuna is recording a new album. I would LOVE to hear them record this song.

11. Funky #7-—I think of this as having become the standard set-closer for electric Hot Tuna. And why not? It’s funky as hell, it features one of Jack’s best post-Jefferson Airplane’s bass licks, the lyrics are cool, it moves from funky rock to hard-driving rock, and it gives everyone, including Skoota, a chance to solo. More kickass playing from all the guitarists, with Barry in particular soaring away. The high point of the jam came when Jack and Skoota played a slow, quiet duet for about a minute, before the other guys joined in, Jack signaling for them to do so by playing the key lick at a high volume. Thus did America's Choice songs begin and end the show.

Prior to the finale, Jack did the stage introductions, with Jorma introducing Jack as “Jack Twinkle-toes Cassady.” No effort to hawk merchandise, and very little banter during the entire show, although, a few songs in, Jorma walked up to the mike and said, “Hot Tuna….Fuck yeah,” and gave the “devil’s horns” sign. Hilarious moment. Everyone, on and off the stage, laughed. Throughout the set, Jorma walked among his bandmates in between songs, having little conversations with each of them, just as I saw him do back at the Beacon. There were definitely a couple of moments where the band members looked a bit distracted and called crew members onto the stage to fix little things having to do with the mikes and the wires....All that aside, the band sounded great. I couldn't help but grin at Barry Mitterhoff, dressed in beige shirt and slacks, with his big glasses, looking very focused as he tore through incredible solo after incredible solo. Occasionally, he'd bop or rock back and forth as he got into things, and he and G.E. would exchange little smiles from time to time. He may not look 100% comfortable rocking out, but he sure as hell sounds comfortable! I read an interview with him in which he talked about how he's never soloed as much in a band-type situation as he has with Tuna. To repeat: he sounds fabulous.

No encore, in spite of some loud demands for one, and some whooping and hollering that extended beyond the lights having gone up. I wondered if this was, like the Beacon, a union hall. I checked Jorma’s website to see if he had anything to say about that…answer: yup.

This was my 8th Hot Tuna concert; four acoustic shows and, as of last night, four electric ones. I’ll be returning for more, of both varieties, and, in the meantime, I hope the rumor of a new album is more than just a rumor.

Varese Lives!

2010-07-22T16:29:00.001-07:00

Allan Kozinn's review of the two-night more-than-complete Varese retrospective at the Lincoln Center Festival is terrific.

He situates Varese well, writing,

Varèse has long been a name to conjure with in new-music circles, and elsewhere too: the rock musician and composer Frank Zappa consistently cited him among his influences and published a touchingly naïve but enthusiastic essay, “Edgard Varèse: The Idol of My Youth,” about his early encounters with his music, and an attempt to meet Varèse himself. The brassy pop band Chicago admired him too, saying that Varèse expanded the group’s ideas about what was possible, and opening its fifth album with a song called “A Hit by Varèse.”

And then he describes the music itself quite articulately:

But one difference between Varèse and other modernists (and particularly Serialists) is that when Varèse’s music is not being assertively noisy it is built of shapely, smoothly flowing melodies rather than the angularity that characterizes so much contemporary music. Yes, these are wildly dissonant works. ... But perhaps audiences tolerate dissonance so long as a work offers melody and structure, and those were elements Varèse never abandoned.

He compliments the New York Philharmonic:

Mr. [Alan] Gilbert and the Philharmonic turned up to show — as it did in Ligeti’s “Grande Macabre” a few weeks ago — what this orchestra can do when it steps away from the 19th-century canon. The rumble, roar and magnificent intricacy of “Ionisation” and “Octandre” (1923) were thrilling for their drive and textural changeability. But the real highlight was “Amériques,” usually a barnstormer — or, really, a tornado that hurls a barn across a field — but here offered as a subtle essay in the distance between brutal volume and gentle delicacy.

And he even cites a Speculum Musicae concert of Varese's music at Miller Theatre from a decade ago.

Wow!

The Two Man Gentlemen Band in Lafayette, Indiana

2010-07-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

I was a little unsure about whether or not I was ready to make the 100-mile (in each direction) drive from Urbana to Lafayette, Indiana, to see The Two Man Gentlemen Band. But after consulting with several of our graduate students, I realized that, of course, I had to go -- when was I going to get to see these guys again?

So I weathered some serious weather on I-74 heading into Indiana, but having forgotten that I would be transitioning from Central to Eastern Time, I couldn't let that get in my way. I had to get to The Black Sparrow. With the lightning still flashing in my rearview mirror, I made my way to what is actually a charming little pub in downtown Lafayette, across the river from Purdue University.

The Gentlemen had not started yet. As I ordered my first Pabst Blue Ribbon beer of the night, they descended from their dressing room, and we had a fond reunion. They were looking dapper. Andy Bean has discovered the magic of hair product and well-manicured sideburns -- he was ready to wheel and deal, to wine and dine, to pay to play...

The crowd was enthusiastic. There was the right amount of energy in the room -- a few people shouting things out to harass the band ("Are we accepting heckles tonight?" Bean asked the Councilman at one point. And at another, he asked, "WTF are you laughing about? I'm making jazz up here!") but not so many that the music suffered. I was seated at a table full of folks who had not seen them before, and they were near instant converts, buying a couple of TMGB discs at the intermission.

The band's playing was terrific. There have been a few changes since last I saw them. Bean has switched from the tenor banjo to a National steel plectrum guitar -- same tuning, but he uses a pick-up and ends up with much more of a jazz guitar sound on it. Although I was hoping that the banjo would make an appearance at some point, I definitely thought that the switch to the tenor guitar was for the better. The sound was crisper and cleaner, and Bean's excellent playing could really come through. He was reminding me of the mighty Matt Munisteri (see my posts here and here) at times -- I was impressed. Bean also has traded in his kazoo for the mouth trumpet, which he played with aplomb. (Have no fear, though: Fuller Condon keeps the kazoo tradition alive.) The Councilman was playing excellent bass throughout, and the energy was just right for the night.

They had just passed their 140,000 mile manniversary in the minivan that afternoon -- "It's so great to find a purely Platonic manfriend to travel around the country with," Bean told us all. A fair amount of the material was from their new CD, Dos Amigos, Una Fiesta.

The setlist went like this:

Let's Make a Sandwich
Me, I Get High on Reefer
Prime Numbers
Big Strong Man - sung by The Councilman
Chocolate Milk - a jazzy spelling song
William Howard Taft - Bean channeled Sam Cooke at one point
Dinah
Leisure Class
Into My Minivan
Drip Dryin'
They Can't Prohibit Love
There's Something in My Trousers
A Gentle Stomp - hot playing
I Like to Party with Girls
The Hindenberg Disaster
My Baby's Off the Market

--Set Break--
Going Into Business
Can't Give You Anything But Love
Rabbit Feet - with new John Cougar Mellencamp ending
Wine, Oh Wine!
There'll Be Time for Lovin'
Yessir, That's My Baby
Stuff Your Ballot Box
Franklin Pierce
Jewel of 45th Avenue
Chinatown, My Chinatown
War of Northern Aggression - different melody
I Can Get Drunk & I Can Sing Songs
Fancy Beer
ENCORE: Folsom Prison Blues - with guest vocals from famed Lafayette producer Dustin
Corn Liquor

There is an impressive about of Two Man music up on YouTube. This one, though, captures the live energy quite well:

Womenfolk's First Few Tuesdays

2010-07-19T18:43:00.000-07:00

As Matt pointed out in his May 23rd blog posting, I've been rather remiss about posting my playlists from my radio show on KFAI. Now that I've gotten settled in my new Tuesday 2-4 pm time slot, I thought I'd catch y'all up on what I've been playing on Womenfolk.

As you'll see in the playlists below, I've been playing some summertime songs and also had a live performance by The Flyin' A's from Austin, TX. Tomorrow Boston songwriter Meg Hutchinson joins me in the studio to talk about her new Billboard-charting album, her upcoming Lilith Fair performance and what inspires her poetic songwriting. Hope you can catch this special in-studio visit by tuning in via the live webstream or the archives here.

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WOMENFOLK: Summertime Special (July 13, 2010)
Hosted by Ellen Stanley
Fresh Air Community Radio, KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis/106.7 FM St. Paul
Every Tuesday, 2-4 pm
*New Releases
**Womenfolk Theme Song

*New Releases
**Womenfolk Theme Song

**Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sounds

Joan Baez - The Lily of the West
album: Ring Them Bells; label: Guardian

Lucy Wainwright Roche - WIld Mountain Thyme
album: 8 Songs; label: Self

Eliza Gilkyson - Wildewood Spring
album: Beautiful World; label: Red House

Red Molly - Summertime
album: Love and Other Tragedies; label: Self

Gillian Welch - Summer Evening
album: Going Driftless; label: Red House

*Sara Watkins - Long Hot Summer Days
album: Sara Watkins; label: Nonesuch

Womenfolk Find: *The Chapin Sisters - Let Me Go
album: Oh, Hear the Wind Blow; label: Self

Kathleen Edwards - Summerlong
album: Back to Me; label: Zoe

Beth Amsel - End of July
album: The Reverie; label: Good Egg Music

Dar Williams - Teen for God
album: My Better Self; label: Razor & Tie

The Nields - Innertube
album: Play; label: Zoe

Maddy Prior - Swimming Song
album: Year; label: Park Records

Behind Women's Calendar: *Lissa Schneckenburger - Fisher's Hornpipe
album: Dance; label: Footprint Records

*Lissa Schneckenburger - Jamie Allen
album: Dance; label: Footprint Records

Janis Joplin - Summertime
album: The Woodstock Experience: Janis Joplin; label: Sony

Lucinda Williams - Fruits of My Labor
album: Live @ The Fillmore; label: Lost Highway

*The Flyin' A's - Ain't That Something
album: Live in the Studio; label: KFAI

*The Flyin' A's - So Long
album: Live in the Studio; label: KFAI

*Court Yard Hounds - The Coast
album: Court Yard Hounds; label: Columbia

The Sacred Shakers - Travelin' Shoes
album: The Sacred Shakers; label: Signature Sounds

*Anne McCue - Motorcycle Dream
album: Broken Promise Land; label: Flying Machine! Records

*Natalie Merchant - Bleezer's Ice Cream
album: Leave Your Sleep; label: Nonesuch

Marcia Ball - Peace, Love & BBQ
album: Peace, Love & BBQ; label: Alligator

**Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Cocktail Swing
album: Cocktail Swing; label: Signature Sounds

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WOMENFOLK (July 6, 2010)
Hosted by Ellen Stanley
Fresh Air Community Radio, KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis/106.7 FM St. Paul
Every Tuesday, 2-4 pm
*New Releases

Sharon Shannon - The Whitestrand Sling
album: Libertango; label: Compass

*The Wailin' Jennys - Summertime
album: Live at the Mauch Chunk Opera House; label: Red House

Annabelle Chvostek - Racing With the Sun
album: Resilience; label: Borealis

Po' Girl - Malaise Days
album: Live; label: Self

Ferron - Where Is Maria?
album: Going Driftless: An Artist's Tribute to Greg Brown; label: Red House

Shawn Colvin - One Cool Remove
album: Cover Girl; label: Columbia

*Mary Chapin Carpenter - We Traveled So Far
album: The Age of Miracles; label: Zoe

Womenfolk Find: *The Chapin Sisters - Bird Song
album: Oh, Hear the Wind Blow; label: Self

The Weepies - Little Bird
album: Hideaway; label: Nettwerk

Alison Krauss - You Will Be My Ain True Love
album: A Hundred Miles or More; label: Rounder

Crooked Still - Ain't No Grave
album: Shaken By a Low Sound; label: Signature Sounds

*Dixie Chicks - Sin Wagon
album: Playlist: The Very Best of Dixie Chicks; label: Sony

Gillian Welch & Alison Krauss - I'll Fly Away
album: Down From the Mountain; label: Lost Highway

Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson - The Devil's Inside My Head
album: Rattlin' Bones; label: Sugar Hill

Behind Women's Calendar: *Jelloslave - Purple Orange
album: Purple Orange; label: Self

*Monroe Crossing - Purple Rain
album: Heart Ache & Stone; label: Self

Dale Ann Bradley - I Won't Back Down
album: Don't Turn Your Back; label: Compass

Lucy Kaplansky - Swimming Song
album: Over the Hills; label: Red House

*Red Horse - I Am a Child
album: Red Horse; label: Red House

Eilen Jewell - Sea of Tears
album: Sea of Tears; label: Signature Sounds

Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog
album: Hound Dog: The Peacock Recordings; label: MCA

Bonnie Raitt - Kokomo Blues
album: Philadelphia Folk Festival 40th Anniversary; label: Sliced Bread Records

*Chastity Brown - By the Train Tracks
album: High Noon Teeth; label: Self

Louise Taylor - Fire Box Coal Train
album: Velvet Town; label: Signature Sounds

Eliza Gilkyson - Runaway Train
album: Beautiful World; label: Red House

Davina & the Vagabonds - Back to Memphis
album: Live @ The Times; label: Self

*Patty Griffin - Move Up
album: Downtown Church; label: Credential Recordings

Chatham County Line Announces Appreciation for New Haven Pizza

2010-07-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

My father reports from the Green River Festival in Greenfield, Massachusetts, that Dave Wilson, the lead singer and guitar swinger from Chatham County Line, announced at the end of their set, "Well, we've gotta get out of here now. We're playing in New Haven later tonight and we have to get there early enough to have pizza at Pepe's Apizza."

Excellent initiative, but one thing, Dave... It's pronounced "Sally's"...

(For more on Chatham County Line, see this post.)

Wild Accompaniment at the MN Zoo

2010-07-16T21:42:00.000-07:00

I've been at the Minnesota Zoo Amphitheater three times in a week, MC-ing for some pretty sweet shows presented by Sue McLean & Associates, including Joan Baez, Greg Brown and Mary Chapin Carpenter with local boys The Pines.

I was contemplating just setting up a cot with the bears, but there was actually plenty of wildlife without adding more excitement to the mix. Here's a log of the animal activity during the shows:

1) No summer show in Minnesota would be complete without our state bird--the mosquito. The afternoon storms brought them out in full force the night of Mary Chapin Carpenter's show. Luckily she came prepared and walked out with a big can of bug spray.

2) During Mary Chapin's set there was a bullfrog that must have been right at the lagoon by the stage, and it went all night long, providing a steady beat--sometimes with the music, sometimes not.

3) Just as everyone was getting used to our friend the bullfrog, a bird let out an awful cry and dive-bombed the audience, just missing our heads before swooping down the stage--at which point, Mary Chapin pulls out the bug spray and gets everyone laughing. I didn't get a good look at the bird, but Jennette who was with me said it was a duck, which seemed crazy to me. I found out later that it was a mamma that got separated from her ducklings. Later the zoo was able to reunite the family--a happy ending.

4) Before Greg Brown got on stage last Friday, I was telling him about the duck incident, and he said that he remembered doing a show at St. Paul's World Theater (now the Fitzgerald Theater) where a bat flew at him. Sure enough, when Greg was in the middle of his set Scott and I spotted a bat flying about. He seemed to leave the band alone, though.

5) When Joan Baez got on stage this Tuesday, she said she heard about the bullfrog from Mary Chapin's show, and she was hoping to hear one during her set. She then proceeded to do the best human imitation of a bullfrog I've ever heard. We never did hear a real bullfrog during her set, but when Emily and I were walking back from scoring free fries from the closing food kiosk, we heard an animal let out some crazy groaning sound that we never did identify. My best guess--a moose.

Monday Nothing

2010-07-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

Peace out to Tuli Kupferberg.