If all goes according to plan I will see these guys at the Mill in Iowa City in September. You can’t play Bluegrass much better than this, can you. Should be good.
Category Archives: Music
Phosphorescent : Los Angeles
If you are prepared to let yourself fall into this, it will be the best 9 minutes you spent in a long time.
Townes Van Zandt : Waitin’ Around To Die
I was looking for something completely different over on YouTube when I found this. Always time for a good version of one of Townes’ great songs. I really have to watch Heartworn Highways again soon.
Pieta Brown : Mercury
Pieta Brown : Mercury
(2011 Red House Records)
Pieta Brown is Greg Brown’s daughter and married to Bo Ramsey, a longtime musical partner of Greg Brown. So you could say the apple doesn’t fall far from the stem, listening to Mercury. It’s released on Red House Records, the label Greg Brown releases his albums on as well (and that he founded back in 1981) and does feature Bo Ramsey, who delivers his always outstanding and tasteful guitar work throughout the album. In contrast to Ramsey’s fine 2008 album Fragile (see my review here: http://wp.me/p3wknx-4t) he’s accompanied by another guitar player, Richard Bennett, on most/all tracks. Another (rather more prominent) guest on the album is The Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler who is playing another guitar on So Many Miles.
It’s the first album by Pieta Brown I bought (but it won’t be the last) – and I like it a lot. The sound is a bit more contemporary than on either Greg Brown’s or Bo Ramsey’s albums, but that’s of course completely natural, given she does belong to a different generation. It doesn’t mean though that she doesn’t sound like a young women very much informed by her upbringing and (thankfully) possessing none of the hip big city vibes you could expect.
The sound is both modern and rustic at the same time, her voice the most defining characteristic on the album, at once a bit childlike and clear as well as self-assured and a tad raspy, hard to describe for me, but easy to love.
Naturally for me, the tracks with the least musical accompaniment are the ones I like best, namely I Don’t Mind or No Words Now (which isn’t THAT stripped down, but extremely lovely nevertheless). The album starts with the life-affirming and up-tempo Be With You, the next track Butterfly Blues is a fine showcase for Bo Ramsey’s trademark economic, bluesy lead guitar work – but it’s more than that, as it’s also an excellent song. Title song Mercury and the following How Much Of my Love are some of the more dreamy songs very well suited to her voice. I’m Gone and I Want It Back are lyrically, and in the case of I’m Gone musically, some of the more muscular and self-confident songs, the first one a fast(ish) Blues-Rock song and the second a slow, gorgeous Blues-Pop-Waltz song with a lovely string accompaniment.
Night All Day is the only track I find quite hard to like, a bit too bluesy for my taste. Closing Time is somewhat disappointingly not the Tom Waits song (would have loved to hear what they could have made out of that) but it’s a splendid song nevertheless. I rather like Glory to Glory a lot too – its fun, with a number of varied guitar parts, one of it sounding slightly old-timey, and I love the simple drums/percussion work on it too.
Mercury is a brilliant album and Pieta Brown well above most the other female Country-Folk-Pop artists of her generation, both as a songwriter and as a singer if you ask me.
JJ Cale : Miss Ol’ St. Louie
Being new to JJ Cale’s work (I know Cocaine and After Midnight naturally, but didn’t dig any deeper) watching a documentary on TV yesterday made want to get to know his stuff a bit better. Miss Ol’ St. Louie was the track he played in the documentary that I liked best. It’ s just him and his guitar, without any (of the other rather too many for my taste), instruments that he seemed to have with him on stage most of the time.
R.I.P: JJ Cale
Slaid Cleaves : Rust Belt Fields
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.
Old Sledge at The Potomac Centre, Romney, WV
Good band, that.
Steve Earle : The Warner Bros. Years
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.
Old Crow Medicine Show : Half Mile Down
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
Bashful Brother Oswald : Columbus Stockade Blues/Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad
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!
Back Road Bound 