May/Might: She May Call You Up Tonight

The Left Banke: She May Call You Up Tonight 
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When you think of the Left Banke, if you do, you probably think about “Walk Away Renee,” or maybe “Pretty Ballerina.” And maybe, just maybe, you think about “She May Call You Up Tonight.” After that, though, I bet you are drawing a blank. Certainly, those are three great songs that helped to define a style referred to as “baroque rock,” but after that, the Left Banke’s musical output is pretty much unknown.

I’m in the camp of people who know about those three songs, and basically nothing else about the Left Banke. Luckily, though, I have access to the Interwebs. Turns out, the band has one of those stories that is all too familiar. Early success, internal bickering, revolving door membership, even competing versions of the band, and various reunions over the years, with varying lineups. There are even some brushes with future fame—versions of the band included, at times, Michael McKean, better known as an actor, including as David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap, and Bert Sommer, who played Woof in the original Broadway production of Hair in 1969-70 (and whose actual hair was immortalized on the Playbill). A young Steven Tyler sang background vocals on the band’s little-heard second album. But you cannot deny that the Left Banke’s sound was influential well beyond the band’s output or commercial success. You can hear their influence in early Linda Ronstadt, in Eric Carmen, and Belle & Sebastian, among many others.

I’m pretty sure, though, that while I may have heard the original version of “She May Call You Up Tonight” at some point, I really paid attention to it when I heard Richard Thompson do it live, with son Teddy, at the Tarrytown Music Hall. I remember thinking that it sounded familiar, but was totally unable to place it. There’s a recording of it, with Teddy, on 1998’s live album Celtschmerz. There’s also another version on Thompson’s Chrono Show album, featuring performances from his 2004 tour. The Wikipedia article for that album says that Thompson had been doing the song live since the 1970s, and it must have been something that the Fairport Convention crowd was into (Thompson has been quoted about his love for the Left Banke’s debut album)—The Albion Country Band, led by former Fairport member Ashley Hutchings, played it live in 1972 (with a gender change), with Richard and Linda Thompson guesting, Ian Matthews (who left Fairport in 1969) did a cover of it in 1980, and Linda Thompson did the gender-changed version of it on her solo album in 1985, after breaking up with Richard.

FAMILY BANDS : WAINWRIGHT-MCGARRIGLE

Hot, well, lukewarm on the heels of the splendid Thompson piece below, I was about to pen a sorry disclaimer on it being sum sum summertime and that most scribes were maybe elsewhere, before throwing together a few tired tropes about sparring siblings, Don and Phil Everly, Ray and Dave Davies, Noel and Liam Gallagher. But there is clearly only one correct follow-on to J.David's piece, namely to discuss the dynasty above, an extended family "band", convoluted, extended and with a fair side-order of dysfunction and debacle. So where do I start? You could try the family tree, for which I must credit interesting name tending site The Name Station, but, let's face it, it isn't easy to decipher. Where is Pete Frame when you need him?

OK, so we have in the one corner estimable folk troubadour, of the confessional songs and prehensile tongue, who has built a career in humorous and/or poignant self-deprecation, bringing in tales of everyday sadness to make us smile. In the other the youngest McGarrigle sibling, Kate, half of Kate and Anna McGarrigle, doyennes of an anglo french-canadian meeting place of traditionally influenced music. They marry, have children. They break up. Loudon sings songs about his son, Rufus, and his daughter, Martha, as children. Both become, like him, professional musicians. I guess if you had a dad you didn't see so much, to see yourself sung about on stage and TV may be not so great. So here's Martha singing about her dad:

And here's Rufus singing about his dad:

(I think it is probably allowable to comment on the fact that, as chance would have it, Rufus turned out, um, not to be quite the "tit man" his father had jested about.)

Meanwhile, Loudon forms a new relationship, another musician, would you credit it, Suzzy Roche, of quirky NY sister band, the Roches. He has another daughter, Lucy (Wainwright-Roche) and guess what career she chooses, possibly provoked, I wonder, by his song about her, Screaming Issue, annoyingly not on youtube, but the title gives a flavour of its content..... Of course, she's a singer. Her parents separate.

So how is this a family band? They clearly all hate each others guts. Well, no, and this is a number of happy endings. In itself that is at least fortuitous, as you could have the McGarrigles, Loudon, Rufus, Martha and Lucy, all out on their own tours. Inevitably their promoters could find them all in the same country, city, festival or even show. In recent years there seems to have been a warming of relations between the 2 elder children and their father. They have appeared on stage with each other and publicly come to terms with the past. This was perhaps and ironically accelerated by the illness and later death of Kate McGarrigle. Lucy has appeared with her father, opened for her half brother and currently tours, as the Wainwright Sisters, with half-sister Martha. (Check out the lyric of the featured song, potentially referring to their fathers further relationship and their further half sister, Lexie, career as yet unchosen or public.) Here's Loudon's take on his family dynamic, well worth a read.

Eagle eyed will have spotted another famous name in the family tree at the top, namely Cohen. Yes, that Leonard Cohen, whose daughter Lorca is the birth-mother of Rufus' daughter, Viva. I wonder what career path she might take?

Finally I cannot resist adding the interplay between the Thompson and the Wainwright families, as the links come steady and strong, unsurprisingly as the two paterfamilias have regularly shared a stage (often billed as Loud & Rich.) Rufus has worked frequently with Thompson's son Teddy, such as here. But somehow I think the most intriguing link was in the man who took on Kate and her children, post Wainwright, being one Pat Donaldson, frequent bassist for Thompson in his Richard and Linda years. I guess they couldn't help but all be chums.

How do you get a flavour this bloodline in one easy step? You could do a lot worse than with this, which features all of these bar Loudon. For his presence you need this, maybe for the first track alone, which features Loudon, Rufus, Martha, Lucy, Lexie, Suzzy and his current wife, Ritamarie Kelly, with Rufus and Martha each appearing on other songs. Even better still, here's the track in question, good video too:

Family Bands: Thompson Family

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Here we are, halfway through the second week of this theme, we only have one post. I suggested the theme, so it must be a good one. Therefore, I’m going to blame the lack of writing on the fact that it is the summer, and people are on vacation. Also, two of our writers live in a country that just had an abortive coup, and I’ve been busy with work and family obligations.

So, just time for a short piece about an album that came out in late 2014 called Family, from a group simply billed as “Thompson.” It is, overall, a very good album, if not a great album, but well worth checking out. The project began when Teddy Thompson, an excellent singer, songwriter and performer in his own right (when he is paying attention—don’t get me started writing about the time I saw him and he messed up most of his songs.....) reached out to members of his talented extended family to see if there was interest in working on a project. His father, SMM favorite Richard Thompson, and his mother, Richard’s ex-wife and legend in her own right, Linda Thompson, signed on. As did sister Kami and her husband, guitarist James Walbourne (who together make up The Rails). The next generation was also enlisted, including Jack Thompson, Richard’s son from his second marriage, and Zak Hobbs, the son of Richard and Linda’s eldest daughter Muna, who is not a professional musician, but also appears on the album (and drew the cover illustration). There are also contributions from Richard’s daughter-in-law Paulina Lis, Welbourne’s brother Rob and his wife Brooke Gengras.

The songs were, at Teddy’s direction, to be written where each of the writers lived. He gathered the basic tracks, then fleshed them out with overdubs in London and Los Angeles. So not surprisingly, the album jumps around stylistically, although if you listen carefully, there is a certain “Thompson-ness” about the album that somewhat holds it together.

Ultimately, the key song is probably one of the last written, Teddy’s “Family,” that opens the disc and gives it a title. A gentle waltz featuring Teddy, Zak and Linda, it opens:

My father is one of the greats to ever step on the stage,
My mother has the most beautiful voice in the world. 
And I am betwixt and between, Sean Lennon, you know what I mean. 
Born to the manor, never quite clamoring free. 
It’s family, its family. 

My elder sister is pretty than you believe, 
My younger sister is prettier still and can sing. 
And I am the middle child, 
The boy with red hair and no smile, 
Not too secure, very unsure who to be. 
 It’s family, its family. 

Because this is a fairly recent song, I will follow our informal guidelines and not post a downloadable copy of the song. And I can’t find a video just of the song, so the video above is a short “making of” piece about the album, and it does feature some of “Family.”

WHERE I LIVE: LICHFIELD

The British have always, at least in the canon of popular song, been coy about referencing our towns and cities, seeming much happier to fantasise around the US, with a decades long parade of the never traveled singing about Amarillo or somesuch. True, there are exceptions, if one enjoys paeans to the joys of Durham Town., but all pretty thin on the ground, with maybe more Yanks singing about Liverpool than actual Liverpudlians. But the field of folk is different, many of the songs stemming from a time before Uncle Sam was even a glimpse in the telescope of the Plymouth Brethren, and it is here I have had to search.

I live in Lichfield, a very small city, about the size of a market town, population about 35k, based around a cathedral (see above picture) built in between 1195 and 1249 and, yes, it did take that long, making Gaudi seem somehow less of a slouch down in Barcelona. In the English midlands, a 40 minute drive northward from Birmingham, it is close to the centre of the country. I love it and, after 12 years, feel proud to call it my home. So, songs about Lichfield?

Luckily I have one that hits all my spots, as I make no secret of my awe and admiration for the family Thompson. Richard Thompson has had a near half century of muted fame, usually happily ensconced to the side of the radar, preaching to  the converted, a hardcore base of staunch supporters stretching back to his actually only very brief tenure within Fairport Convention, to his duo with erstwhile wife, Linda, and beyond. RT has written many a song about his home country, perhaps most famously a hill in Surrey, and has become ever more English the longer he has lived in L.A. Well, this isn't about him. Nor indeed his son, Teddy, who has carved out a career singing such homegrown fare as this, showing apples don't necessarily always fall closest to the tree. No, this is another family member, daughter of Richard and Linda, sister of Teddy, one Kami Thompson. Her apple is perhaps slap bang right next to the trunk, as what she felt the 2014 world needed more than anything else was a folk-rock duo like, well, the comparisons are inevitable, her ma and pa. And so, with husband, James Walbourne, guitar on hire to many and varied, including Jerry Lee Lewis and Son Volt, the Pogues and the Pretenders, they form the Rails, their debut appearing last year. It is an unwritten rule that SMM avoids lifting music from under a decade old, even in these mp3 light, YouTube heavy days, but I feel I can get away with this, as it comes from an unreleased radio session. (Hell, without it, I would be scuppered for this piece as it so clearly references the city, my home.)



Trivia fans may also be intrigued to know that a frequent member of the larger live Rails band, on 2nd guitar, is one Zak Hobbs, Kami's nephew and, yes, RT's grandson. Here he is with grandpa.......

Of course, and there is always an of course with trad.arr., a slight problem is that many versions of the same song abound, each with a varied memory of who said what, living tradition and all that malarkey. So here, in memory of where my brother used to live, or, at least, relatively nearby, here's another version, by the seemingly now lost in action great folk hope of 2000, Bill Jones. Curiously, although she was born in Staffordshire, the county within which is Lichfield, her version talks of Southampton............

Buy the studio version by the Rails.
Or, for the full Thompson,  try THIS

SISTERS: SISTERS by RICHARD & LINDA THOMPSON

Sisters : Richard and Linda Thompson

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Phew, I was worried I wouldn't get back on-line in time for this submission, the instantaneous thought that came to me, on reading about the theme from afar. Few can now claim to be unaware of the name Richard Thompson, the eternal critics favourite undiscovered artist, finally, finally seeming to get the attention due him, even if he is still hardly household. Indeed, he remains very much a marmite artist, to use the current british vernacular, marmite being a yeast based spread that advertises itself on the basis that you can only either love or hate it, with no middle ground. (I love it!) Elderly readers will remember him as the precocious guitar-slinger in Fairport Convention, doe-eyed and shaggy, effortlessly tossing off skewed and twisted lines, seeming to offer no links to the then received canon of blues and rock, with echoes of a deep folk mysticism, and hints of an eastern symbolism later more widely embraced. Indeed Fairport probably invented the european school of folk-rock, with their epochal album, Liege and Lief, from where this clip comes.
Following on from his exit from FP and an astoundingly unsuccessful solo LP, he teamed up with his then wife, Linda, herself already a well respected singer on the session circuit, producing 5 or so LPs, even managing a minor hit with this. During this period the couple embraced islam, even giving up the music business for a while, living on a sufi commune. The song I lead this piece with stems from this later period, which Thompson himself seems to think little of himself, it remaining resolutely unavailable on CD, re-mixed and added to or otherwise.(My purchase link comes from a later compilation of his oevre.)
They famously split up around their final LP, then experiencing an enormously vitriolic tour together to promote it.
Since then Richard has maintained a low profile permanent presence in the best of lists, whether as guitarist, songwriter or, less often, singer. Indeed, it his voice that tends to keep him away from any real chance of crossover, appealing mainly to bearded men of a certain age, perhaps explaining his place in the heart of so many music writers. Linda sort of fell by the wayside, having become prone to dysphonia, making singing live impossible. Fortunately, largely with the assistance and support of son, Teddy, she has again started to appear and perform again, and has just put out the 3rd of an occasional series of new songs. Which, full circle, includes her ex accompanying her on one track.
"Sisters" has a typically acerbic lyric, with bittersweet words of a distressed regret, fitting perfectly with the bleak vocal, and the typical spiky guitar underpinnings. A song, as are most of theirs, to listen to, to pick up all the words, all the instrumental nuances, to feel the pain and the pleasure of that pain, before committing it to fond memory for recall. Heart, head and soul music. Wonderful stuff.

Leonard Cohen covers: The Future

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I'll jump on the SMM bandwagon with the other weekly posters: I love Leonard Cohen covers but I don't particularly care for the originals. As a songwriter, he's pretty unparalleled, though. Here, Teddy Thompson, son of British folk-rockers Richard and Linda Thompson, turns Cohen's look into the future into an upbeat ode to dystopia. This horn- and chorus-filled live version was released on the 2006 tribute album "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man."

Tobacco: King Of The Road

Roger Miller: King of the Road

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When I announced this week's theme on our little collaborative's backchannel listserv, I noted that smoking and tobacco references often function as signifiers of class or social status, and as earlier entries have demonstrated aptly, it's true - though of course, as times evolve and smoking goes underground, old songs can take on new meanings, too, changing one-time rebels into more pitiful social outcasts in the eyes of the beholder. But smoking and its references can also signify mood - of post-sexual or post-prandial satisfaction, of nervousness or nerve, and of a dozen more connotive, memetic associations, that live in culture like spores, familiar to us all.

Nowhere do these several functions come together more sharply and effectively than in the dual references to tobacco found in King of the Road, Roger Miller's 1964 country celebration of the free-traveling underclass. First, the notation that our narrator "ain't got no cigarettes", coming as it does at the end of a litany of housing and other household signs which are absent in the life of the titular hobo, casts sharp relief upon the unpinned lifestyle, combining as it does the constant requests to "bum" a smoke we've all experienced in the wild, and the sheer triviality of owning so little that cigarettes themselves fall into the "too heavy to carry" category. And second, the subsequent verse's beginning, with its potent imagery of smoking "old stogies" that the narrator has found, reveals deep truths about the hobo's sense of inner worth incarnate - a king indeed, smoking such high-class rolls, even if his royal trappings are scavenged.

Teddy Thompson & Rufus Wainwright: King of the Road

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The Proclaimers: King of the Road

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As a homecoming - I've been away for the past few weeks, and just returned home today - I've included two favorite versions of the oft-covered song. Teddy and Rufus slow the thing down, and it just sounds good, especially when placed in the context of its origin in the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack. And The Proclaimers' 1990 cover is a bonus I couldn't resist - delightfully accented, proving primarily, to American ears at least, that the sentiment is more universal than you might think.

The Aristocrats: King of the Road

Teddy Thompson & Rufus Wainwright: King of the Road

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No week full of kings and queens would be complete without the "King of the Road". Unfortunately, at the moment the Roger Miller original eludes me, but this cover is pretty great, and it definitely fills the void.

This version of the song was featured on the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack, and you can't go wrong with such a classic song when you get artists like Rufus and Teddy with their excellent music pedigrees (Teddy being the son of Richard and Linda Thompson, and Rufus being the son of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle) to give their own take on such a great song. This song, the original and the cover, always makes me smile.