Ever the songwriter for thoughtful songs about people who possibly don’t quite get what they deserve, but try hard one way or the other nevertheless, Slaid Cleaves has written yet another of his beautiful, melancholic songs.
It also shows that , even in 2011 (or 2013 for that matter), you don’t need anything else than an acoustic guitar if your songs are good.
Good band, that.
Steve Earle : The Warner Bros. Years
(2013 Shout Factory)
Steve Earle has been of my favorite songwriters for a very long time – I pretty much own all of his albums, starting with Guitar Town. Funnily, two of the three original albums included in this fine, if slightly pricey, box set weren’t among them – his 1996 album I Feel Alright and its follow-up El Corazon. The third one though, Train A Comin’ has probably been my 2nd favorite Earle album after Copperhead Road. Earle himself claims that El Corazon and Train A Comin’ are better records than Copperhead Road in the short interview printed and opening, the 30+ pages booklet which also includes the lyrics of the studio albums featured here. It also features extensive liner notes by The Wire creator David Simon. Earle acted on a couple of episodes and his song I Feel Alright was used in one episode. His version of Way Down In the Whole was also used as the opening tune in Season 5 (which I wasn’t aware of before, as I am still watching season 4 at the moment). His connection with The Wire is probably befitting his life story, as he was incarcerated on drugs charges and all the material on The Warner Bros Years stems from the period of the first few years after he was released from jail. Also included is a previously unissued live recording from December 1995 on CD, and a DVD with a live concert recorded as part of his parole arrangement (apparently it was recorded for MTV, which shows in the style it’s made).
As I said, Train A Comin’ is very dear to me, so I’ll probably write about that some time in the future, but for now I will start with El Corazon.
El Corazon
(1997)
As I wrote before, for some reason I can’t remember, El Corazon previously passed me by. However, after discovering the lovely video of a live performance by Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris (see my previous post) of Ft. Worth Blues, a song I immediately loved and that was so far unbeknownst to me, I decided to check that out and found out about the recently released box set. Emmylou Harris’ voice is sadly missing from the Ft. Worth Blues version on here (she guests on Taneytown though), but it’s still one of the very best songs he’s ever written and recorded – a lovely, touching ballad and ode to Townes Van Zandt (he also named his son Justin Townes Earle after him). It’s closing the album and the equally wonderful, slow and gentle ballad Christmas In Washington are bookending the album rather nicely, which is also appropriate as the rest of the tracks stray pretty far from that direction musically. Where Ft. Worth Blues is intensely personal, the lyrics of Christmas In Washington are quite a bit more political, they are concerned with the presidential elections in 1996 and a chorus wishing for the return of Woody Guthrie and others fighting for the good in society such as Cisco Houston and Martin Luther King – a hymn for the good in people wherever they live and whatever the circumstances. As hinted at above, the rest of the 12 tracks on the album are stylistically quite different from each other – starting with 2nd track Taneytown, almost possessing Neil Young & Crazy Horse qualities, slow burning and hard rocking at the same time, though not as extreme in length and intensity perhaps. If You Fall is a mid-tempo Country-Rock song, not particularly exciting or one of the best songs on here maybe, but a good song nevertheless.
I Still Carry You Around offers yet another direction, it’s recorded with the Del McCoury band, who were later to accompany him on a whole album, the brilliant The Mountain. So, as you can probably imagine, it’s an up-tempo and good-natured Bluegrass-romp. Telephone Road is a very-catchy Folk/Country-Rock song featuring some nice background vocals by the Fairfield Four and a Saxophone (not that often heard on an Steve Earle album), it’s slightly unusual (for his standards) but highly effective.
Somewhere Out There reminds me a little bit of his earliest work on Guitar Town and Exit O, mixed with some 60’s Power-Pop (the background vocals and the ringing guitars), which I like a lot. You Know The Rest and especially N.Y.C. are the both good time tracks – the first one with a distinctive Country-bent, and the latter featuring the hard-rocking The Supersuckers, a welcome return to the sounds of Copperhead Road – (not-so-clean perhaps) good fun.
Poison Lovers is a, true to the theme of the lyrics, slightly melancholic mid-tempo Folk-Rock song with affecting female vocals courtesy of Earle’s longtime musical partner’s Ray Kennedy’s wife Siobhan Kennedy. The Other Side Of Town is purely old-timey Country complete with 78’-record crackling’ sound and the classic title and lyrics to boot, not many people could do that as convincingly as Steve Earle. Here I Am (featuring his son Justin Townes Earle on guitar) is a short, furious Rock’n’Roll/
Country-Punk track – I love the uhhhh and ahhhh backing vocals. Great stuff.
So, while I might not totally agree with Earle’s statement that El Corazon is the better album compared with Copperhead Road, I have to agree that it’s definitely a return to form, and has to be counted as one of his best, and that’s saying something.
I usually don’t reblog all that much, but this is just too beautiful not to share that with you. You should also check out/follow the U of Music blog – not everything there is to my taste, but more often than not it is.
Straight from the heart and soul of Sara Jarosz comes a tender and very intimate song named “Edge Of A Dream.” Sarah is from Austin, Texas and you can hear the imprint
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In preparation for the review of Carry Me Back I am currently working on, here’s one of the many excellent songs from that album. The review will follow in the next few days.
I can also very much recommend the very good Old Crow Medicine Show entry on Wikipedia – filling in a lot of holes in their background for me with many fascinating stories. A lot of my favorite artists are mentioned on there too, such as Bob Dylan, Gillian Welch (&Dave Rawlings) and Woody Guthrie to name only a few. I love the chapter about the early history of the band best, especially the one about the busking and hoboing experiences. So good to know that people are doing things like that nowadays, I have to admit that I would never have the nerve to even try hoboing. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Crow_Medicine_Show
I love the dancing (starting at 1:15) and the intro: ‘ Well, I guess I’m the best banjo picker I ever heard in my life, mwaehhaehaeh’ and the presenter’s suit!
That’s what this blog is all about, discovering new, great stuff from deep within ‘Merica (just skip the blood Letterman intro – terrible, but the rest is not)
About time I am posting something about Bob Dylan on here. The period covered on here is probably not my favourite one (that would be his first 4 albums), but I guess I will get this anyway and see how I like it.
American music
Bo Ramsey : Fragile
(2008, Bo Ramsey Records)
I wasn’t familiar with Bo Ramsey’s work until seeing him play alongside a Greg Brown on a couple of spirited living room renditions of tracks like Pretty Boy Floyd (and a few live tracks) in Hacklebarney Tunes The Music of Greg Brown – the documentary film about Greg Brown (part of If I had Known, see my review here: …..). Those performances made me decide that he’s my kind of guy and presumably an outstanding guitar player, which it quickly turned out he is, after listening to Fragile, the first of his CD’s I bought (although it most probably won’t be the last). Starting with the atmospheric, dust-colored artwork with a barbed-wire fence as the front cover image – a perfect pointer to what’s on store on the album. Calling the sound ‘dusty’ would by no means be misleading, although a few tracks, mainly the more uptempo Folk-Rock tunes such as Fragile, Same For You and I Wonder actually do sound quite airy too (all three of them remind me very pleasantly of Canadian band The Skydiggers). These 3 tracks are not the norm though, as most tracks on Fragile are firmly on the moody and slightly dark side musically, with From Buffalo To Jericho the most pessimistic-sounding track of the album (it’s excellent too though).
The album is produced exceptionally well (always a plus in my opinion as you will know if you have read any of my reviews before), with a muscular, yet reduced sound, with Ramsey shining repeatedly on a number of different guitars (he seems to have played all of them). His lead guitar tunes actually sound like much more than merely the musical accompaniment to these songs, they almost seem to act as another voice – listen to album opener Can’t Sleep and you hopefully know what I mean. It’s one of the best songs on here – full of moody guitar on a bed of restrained drums and bass guitar with his trademark half-whispered, smoky voice. Pretty much the same could actually be said about the equally brilliant Dreamland too. Tell Me Now and Burn It Down (whose lyrics are a bitter indictment of today’s music download culture) are quite bluesy in sound and feel with the latter maybe being a tad too much of that for me.
Same For You is another strong contender for being the best composition on here in my opinion. I love the feathery acoustic guitar/bass/drums-backing, the upbeat tune and lyrics telling a tale of comradeship. Fragile features some fine organ and is possibly the most rocking song on the album. I am also very fond of the two short instrumental songs Away and Into The Woods, especially the latter is lovely – sounding like a musical meditation in the woods of the title, one can’t help (well I couldn’t) becoming calm and picturing his favorite forest for all of the short 2 and a half minutes it lasts.
The lyrics to album closer I Don’t Know display self-doubt as well as doubts about the world, but in the end he’s finding the strength for the way forward – ‘I don’t know, but I’ll keep on looking’.
His wife, Greg Brown-daughter Pieta Brown, herself an accomplished songwriter, wrote half of the songs together with him on here, and is playing the piano on a number of songs. The other musicians on here are playing very well too, although Ramsey’s guitar is definitely the all-dominant instrument on the album – the sound is homogenous and makes Fragile a well-rounded, taut and utterly convincing album that found its way into me heart quickly and will undoubtedly stay in there for a long time to come.
Back Road Bound 