JAZZ COVER: BILL FRISELL

The suggestion offered from above was to look at covers of jazz standards, you know the sort of thing, bluegrass Brubeck, country Coltrane and math-rock Miles. (OK, I may have struggled with the last, but you catch my drift.) Me, I immediately thought of the current glut of polyglot artists, nominally 'file under jazz', but equally at home cross piste. I'm thinking the likes of Brad Mehldau, Herbie Hancock and, most of all, the extraordinary guitar of Bill Frisell.

Tired of Waiting For You/Guitar in the Space Age: Bill Frisell (2014)

Frisell is an unlikely looking axe-hero, but axe-hero he is, and, whilst always thought primarily a jazzman, you may be surprised how far he crosses over and how many records by artists in the fields he has appeared on. Far more, say, than Pat Metheny, who is a name often dropped into great guitarist lists, yet seldom strays from his niche, give or take a sole dalliance with Queen and being the subject, loosely, of a Richard Thompson song. Yet, ironically, it is to Metheny he owes his place, depping for Metheny when Metheny unavailable for a session, he suggesting the bright eyed novice with tousled hair to take his place.  This was for the icy wastes of ECM, the sometimes seemingly dour Nordic label that is the go-to for glacial instrumental jazz, instantly identifiable by their 'postcards of the tundra' album covers. A number of albums with them, ahead of hooking up with John Zorn on the New York scene, all avant garde and spiky composition. But being an in-demand musician for other muses and producing like-minded material wasn't enough. So, on a move to Seattle, Frisell started cooking up something new, investigating, variously, other native musical forms: americana, rock, pop even.

This century he has spent flitting relentlessly between projects: a torrent of his own composition, further expeditions into idiosyncratically exploring and totally revising the music of others and, most delightfully, beginning to pop up in the mainstream, alongside artists such as Elvis Costello and Norah Jones. At the time of writing he has 39 recordings in his own name or as an integral part of the billing, 22 since the year 2000. Add in a series of live recordings and it another 22, plus a truly ridiculous number of collaborations, guest appearances and cameos. Check out his web page. (Bet you wouldn't expect him to have ever worked with Richard Hell and the Voidoids!)

For want of any other methodology, here are a few of his covers, whether coming from his own records, from collaborations or any other source, all displaying his maverick control of the fretboard, approaching melody always from its polar opposite, yet always finding it, often unexpectedly. A beautiful tone, this is sweet music: no atonal skronking here to frighten those with terror of the J word.

You Only Live Twice/When You Wish Upon a Star: Bill Frisell (2016)

Across the Universe/All We Are Saying: Bill Frisell (2011)

Cold Cold Heart/The Willies: Bill Frisell (2002)

I Heard It Through the Grapevine/East,West: Bill Frisell (2005)

Magnolia/Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone: w. Lucinda Williams (2014)

Standing in the Doorway/Slipstream: w. Bonnie Raitt (2012)

As Tears Go By/Slipstream: w. Marianne Faithfull (1987)

And spot the great man, playing, in the video above.

More, here....

LEFTOVERS: MAR* SONGS: MARCH RAIN

Curiously, this has almost the same title as the last song I wrote about in this theme, albeit in translation, confirming, if ever needed, that March is one wet mother. It is also my birthday month and my unreliable and unravelling neurones told me I had celebrated last year by attending one Michael Chapman in concert. O, so wrong, it was 5 months later, but it is raining today so that's as much link as I need.

Michael Chapman is a remarkable fella, and one who is experiencing a bit of a late bloom, courtesy some heavy duty patronage from americans half and less his age. The fact that his style of guitar play is back in vogue hinders no little, the likes of (the late) Jack Rose and William Tyler taking the template and twisting it both back and forward. OK, it was earlier visionaries like John Fahey who first feted this structure, the confusingly to me entitled American Primitive, but it took, IMHO, bluff yorkshireman Chapman to give it song. Literally.

He has been around and on the road forever. Like so many musicians from the 60s UK, he was a product of Art School, actually teaching for a while before the lure of a penurious existence on the fringes of popular culture became too strong. The story goes that he was too broke to pay the entrance fee into a Cornwall Folk Club, offering instead to play, staying then for the entire season. A record contract materialised and he came to the ear of the iconic John Peel, tastemaker DJ to decades of pale young men. His first records were produced by Elton John producer, Gus Dudgeon, with the exquisite  orchestral arrangements, as here above, of Paul Buckmaster, who perhaps deserves a leftover himself.  
Early records tended toward the pastoral, primarily acoustic guitar to the forefront, with his never more z sibilant style of singing s's, as here on his 'greatest hit', 1970s Postcards of Scarborough.

Like the electric guitar? Sort of familiar? It's Mick Ronson, prior to Bowie, with erstwhile Steeleye Span stalwart Rick Kemp on bass. Following this early taste of success, he later pursued a rockier road, albeit often revisiting his earlier material, like Wrecked Again. Less satisfactory to my ears than the earlier studio version, he was nonetheless popular on the college gig circuit until a massive heart attack in 1990 seemed to beckon the end of his career. Having continued to be a guitar tutor alongside his playing, it was to this he retreated. His catalogue contains a number of discs for the budding virtuoso to brush up their licks, but he was also slowly, very slowly, climbing back onto the performance ladder.

It was probably galling to have Sonic Youth turn up at one such low-key performance, especially as they credited him with having inspired their own ouevre of feedback frenzy. Millstone Grit, from 1971, particularly inspired Thurston Moore, with the middle and last sections of New York Ladies giving the clue, say from about 4.50 onward, and again, more powerfully, at 7.49. Here's an interview between the two of them.

Now, as an elder statesman of guitar music, connecting John Fahey, with whom he has played and Steve Gunn, who has played with him, he has had the accolade of all-star tribute album, featuring both old friends from his past like Kemp and Kemp's ex, Maddy Prior, to Lucinda Williams, by way of the aforementioned Moore and Tyler, and the mercurial talent of Hiss Golden Messenger. I commend it. But even more I commend 50, his last release. A mix of new and of re-interpretations, this is a staggering piece of work. And no, no link, you can find the songs yourself. But I will leave you with an instrumental version of March Rain from 2015's Fish, together with his own version of many of the events skimmed over above.

March Rain 1970 and 2015

Incompetent/Can't: Can't Let Go

Purchase: Lucinda Williams' "Can't Let Go", from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Print: "Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road", from Church of Type, by artist Kevin Bradley, "...one of America's most prolific letterpress printmakers." According to his amazing website, "The Church of Type is a full-custom art and design studio working exclusively in the sweet science of authentic handset letterpress."  

I've got my credit card in hand as I write this--really amazing stuff.

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick has a strange distinction of being the book that all English majors can talk about while not having actually read it. The book is a titan of American Literature, one of the springs from which all that followed it had to flow. Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is a bit like Moby Dick—everyone’s heard of it, but few have actually read (or in this case, listened to) it. In the world of Alternative-Country music, Car Wheels is cited as a seminal influence by more singer/songwriters than I can name here and cracked the top 300 of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It’s bonafides are bonafide; it’s accolades too many to count. Yet, for the casual listener, I wonder how many have given it more than a casual listen?

I’ve listened to the album many times, and chose to write about it for this post not because I am one of it’s true believing praise singers, but because I’ve never quite gotten my head around it.

It’s good, do get me wrong. What am I saying? It’s great. Amazing. 

I’ve just never been able to figure it out: in plain terms, I’m not sure what it is supposed to be. Every track is different, and while it won a Grammy in 1998 for Best Folk Album, it is far from just a folk album. As a collection of songs, it defies definition—it has traces of folk, to be sure, but it dives into country, rock, blues—a sonic landscape as varied and wide-ranging as the subject matter of Williams’ poignant and elegiac prose-poem lyrics. Like many great albums, it marries genres. And like a great marriage, the music comes across as effortless, even when painful and challenging. 

And that’s a good word to describe Car Wheels: a challenge. What to make of such a vast and wide-ranging collection? The songs range from cracking, bar room boogie, to traditional, gospel-tinged Nashville of country music’s heritage days. The moods are myriad, as are the producers (Rick Rubin, Roy Bittan of the E Street Band), and the players are a hall of fame guest list (Steve Earle, Charlie Sexton, Emmylou Harris). The album took six years to record, and Williams re-recorded it twice from scratch—like any piece of literature worth the paper it’s printed on, good work takes time, and not editing, but whole sale revision.  And the reviews are stellar, on a historical level. Back at its 1998 release, and up until today, as it is such touchstone of an album, that Car Wheels still gets press. Much like how we started with a comparison to literature, Car Wheels garners the same sort of praise and asks for the same kind of critical analysis as a great piece of literature. Any collection of songs that covers as much ground musically, can delve as deeply into imagistic setting and character, deserves the copy. 

The original review in Rolling Stone sang the praises of the album in verbiage befitting a literary masterpiece. Writer Robert Christgau waxes poetic about Car Wheels, but he sums up the thematic substance, the heart of the album, best near the end of the review, when he writes: “Whether it's the interrupted childhood memories of the title track, the imagistic shifts …Williams' cris de coeur and evocations of rural rootlessness — about juke joints, macho guitarists, alcoholic poets, loved ones locked away in prison, loved ones locked away even more irreparably in the past — are always engaging…And they mean even more as a whole, demonstrating not that old ways are best — although that meaningless idea may well appeal to her — but that they're very much with us.”

I suppose in the end, I’ve not been very clear about what ‘troubles’ me about Car Wheels. It’s not if I’m dubious on whether the album is good or not—I used the very lackluster adjective ‘great’ earlier to describe my feelings. That’s a poor, pale word for such an eclectic collection of aural story-telling. This is a collection of songs that, again like a great book, keeps me wondering and guessing at meaning and theme. What was Williams trying to accomplish with Car Wheels, aside from collecting memories, stories, emotions. And, as Christgau writes, Williams was working at capturing a mood of the past, an elusive zeitgeist of old times, grey ghosts on country roads, the voices of the greats rising up from the fog to stake a claim in the present tense that they so clearly can lay ownership upon. She captures moods here, many of them, yet none are so prevalent as to direct the record toward one central feeling. The motifs, the tangible, palpable imagery—all of it combines to tell a novel’s worth of story that never really ends. And that is where the album finally differentiates from the novel: there is no end, not to a song. It might fade out, but a collection as strong as Car Wheels never, ever stops telling its story.

Check out this bluesy snarl of a track, a little back porch stomp, called “Can’t Let Go”, which is about exactly like what it sounds. Williams might be tongue in cheek on the metaphors on this track, but this broken hearted blues lament on not being able to shake even the worst kind of love is raw and gets its hooks into you. Kind of like the man that the character of this song can’t let go of. A fitting track to introduce an album that, much like the song, gets a hook and won’t let go.

Brush With Celebrity: The Wallflowers

The Wallflowers: Reboot The Mission
[purchase]

I’ve been a fan of the Wallflowers since their second album, Bringing Down the Horse, the one that made them famous, the one with “6th Avenue Heartache” and “One Headlight” and “Three Marlenas.” I stuck with them, buying their next few albums, and enjoying them, but I had never seen them live. After the band took a hiatus, I moved on, and when they announced a show at the Tarrytown Music Hall in 2012, my wife and I decided not to get tickets. It was a hard call, but if we went to every show by every band that we liked, we would never be home, and have even less money than we do now.

The show was on a Saturday in September, and when we got back from the gym in the morning, both of us had urgent emails from my college classmate Heather, who lives in California and has many contacts in the music industry. She had mentioned to me at our 30th reunion earlier that year that she was friendly with Rami Jaffee, the keyboard player for the Wallflowers (and, among other bands, the Foo Fighters). The email asked us whether we could loan some bicycles to the band, and supply them with, as a fan of How I Met Your Mother, I will refer to as “sandwiches.” In exchange, we would get house seats.

This was a good deal. We loaned them our bicycles, but were unwilling (read—unable) to find any “sandwiches.” We drove the bicycles over to the theater and gave them to Rami, after which he, guitarist Stuart Mathis (now touring with Lucinda Williams) and opening act Mason Reed joined us for coffee at Coffee Labs.

Contrary to what we expected, they didn’t merely say “thanks,” buy us a cup of (excellent) coffee and send us on their way. Instead, we sat for, I’d say, close to an hour, chatting about this and that, and generally having a nice time. But then, it was time for them to actually use the bicycles before the show. We sat in the fourth row, and they put on a hell of a show. Afterwards, we went back behind the theater with Heather’s brother Harley (who also lives in Tarrytown) to get our bicycles back, and maybe say hi (and maybe meet Jakob Dylan). Apparently, they were surprised by the hilly terrain in our area, and were tired from the ride, but it didn’t affect the show. We didn’t however, meet Mr. Dylan.

“Reboot The Mission,” which owes a debt to The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite, mentions Joe Strummer, features vocals and guitar from Mick Jones,  was a highlight of Glad All Over, the album they were touring in support of, and is wildly catchy. Although it was a good reunion album, and got generally positive reviews, it seems that Glad All Over may have been the band’s last. At least three members, including Rami, left the band in 2013, and although they did tour at least until the end of last year, no tour dates are currently listed on their website, which, along with their Facebook page, continues to promote the 2012 release.

Holiday Blues: Sweet Side

Lucinda Williams: Sweet Side
[purchase]

One of the ways that I consider myself lucky is that I’ve never suffered angst at the holidays. Growing up as a relatively secular Jew in a religiously mixed area, I never felt any tension. I celebrated Hanukkah, and some of my friends, did, too. But other friends celebrated Christmas. I don’t remember having any friends from mixed marriages, where there was a question about which holiday to celebrate, or any Jewish families who had “Hanukkah Bushes.” My family never really spent too much time focusing on the religious aspect of Hanukkah—family, latkes and dreidels were more important than thinking about the theological issues of whether oil lasting longer than expected was a miracle, or just a miscalculation. (Not to mention the question of whether Hanukkah represents the triumph of religious fanatics over more secular Hellenizers, and whether that’s really worth celebrating.) And, of course, as a Jewish kid, we got to act smug because we knew that there was no Santa Claus well before any of our gentile friends.

My family was also flexible about celebrating Hanukkah. By the time my cousins and I started going off to college, for example, we exchanged gifts either at Thanksgiving or during Winter Break, whenever we could easily gather a critical mass of family. I think that this gave me an adaptable approach about the December holidays that later paid off.

When my now wife and I were first living together, I knew that she came from a secular Protestant background, and celebrated Christmas with her family. She bought both a small tree and small menorah for our small apartment, which took me a little while to warm up to. Because my family treated Christmas as just another day off, I didn’t have to worry that spending Christmas with her family would conflict with my celebration, and I found myself really enjoying doing both. As it turned out, her Christmas included a slew of Jews, since her aunt converted when she married her uncle, and her cousins were raised as secular Jews. And it also included much drinking, eating, presents and (mostly) merriment.

A few years ago, circumstances led to a parting of the Christmas celebration in my wife’s family, and eventually we morphed the event again. Now, on Christmas Eve, my Jewish family and my in-laws get together at our house for a feast including lasagna (despite the distinct lack of any Italian in any of our bloodlines) and, often, latkes. Everyone decorates the tree, the menorah is lit, if appropriate, and both Hanukkah and Christmas music plays. The next morning is Christmas, with my nuclear family and my in-laws. We eat my wife’s family’s traditional, and scarily delicious, sausage and egg casserole, open presents, slowly, and we end the day with ham. Not to mention some of the millions of cookies that my wife has baked (10 different kinds this year!). In general, everyone gets along, and it is fun. Often, there is a nap.

So, maybe I’m not the right guy to write about Holiday Blues. But Lucinda Williams is. One of America’s great songwriters, her lyrics cut right to the gut, and the featured song today is no exception. It isn’t really a holiday song, but it does reference Christmas. It’s clearly a love letter of sorts, to someone who was damaged by a tough, mentally and physically abusive childhood and life, someone who puts up a hard veneer, but which the singer has seen through, to the rarely disclosed “Sweet Side.” It is a heartbreaking song, but also a hopeful song, because the singer has committed to sticking by her lover, “through thick and thin/ No matter what kind of shape you're in.” Although it is a situation for which I have no frame of reference, Williams’ lyrics makes it relatable, and that, in part, is what makes it art.

Now, even with the brilliance of the lyrics, Williams has been criticized for the song’s musical style, which verges on rap, but really, it isn’t. If anything, it is closer to a “talking blues” of the kind made popular by Lucinda’s musical forebears Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan (and apparently “invented” by Chris Bouchillon back in the 1920s). But that raises yet another issue about the impossibility of parsing out all of the influences in any given piece of music. Who’s to say that rap music wasn’t also influenced, directly or indirectly, by talking blues? So, “Sweet Side” has elements of country, rock, rap and blues, and probably other stuff, too. Sure, it doesn’t sound exactly like most of the rest of Williams’ music. And while a total stylistic shift by an artist can be jarring, it also can be exciting for listeners, and invigorating for performers. What’s wrong with that?

1988: The Birth of Alt.Country

Steve Earle: Johnny Come Lately

[purchase]

Lucinda Williams: Changed the Locks

[purchase]

Though "alt.country" wouldn't be called that for a few more years, its big bang moment came in 1988, with the release of two of the most significant records the genre ever produced.

In 1988, Steve Earle stood at a career crossroads. He had put out two fairly successful, left-of-center country records, Guitar Town and Exit 0. But, personality clashes and an escalating drug habit left Earle on the outs with his label, MCA. (Legend has it Earle for years refused to get a haircut, just to piss off the MCA suits.) To make peace, he was reassigned to the label's new UNI imprint. His first -- and only -- record for UNI was Copperhead Road. Free of the Nashville label's radio-dependent production ethos, Earle adopted a rock-influenced sound and wrote his strongest set to date. Half the album is about love and family, while the other half is made up of story songs, with a political edge. That includes the great "Johnny Come Lately," on which Earle is backed by the Pogues. Two dozen years after its release, the song still packs a powerful punch, capturing the challenges returning war heroes faced after the Vietnam war and even to this day.

While Earle's career had been steadily building for several years, Lucinda Williams seemed to come out of nowhere. Her 1988 self-titled album was actually her third record. The first two, released on the archival Folkways label, were little noted nor long remembered. Though an accomplished songwriter, Williams had no significant covers of her music. Despite stays in Austin and L.A., she really wasn't part of any music scene. Yet she had already earned a reputation in the music industry as someone who was both extremely good and extremely protective of her artistic vision. Her demos were shopped to major labels for years, but Williams vetoed potential deals. She ended up releasing Lucinda Williams on Rough Trade, a struggling punk indie label. It was an immediate success, garnering glowing reviews and big-name endorsements. Emmylou Harris and Shawn Colvin, among others, sang her praises. Emmylou, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Patty Loveless charted with covers of Lucinda Williams songs. Perhaps the most interesting cover was delivered by Tom Petty, who included the stalker anthem, "I Changed the Locks on My Doors" on the She's the One soundtrack album.

Despite Rough Trade's shaky distribution, Lucinda Williams sold more than 100,000 copies. (Sadly, it's now the only album in the Lucinda Williams catalog that's not available digitally.) Copperhead Road also went gold. Both records inspired a new generation of singer/songwriters, who nestled somewhere between rock and country. Williams' and Earle's paths would eventually cross, when she appeared on his 1997 comeback record, and he produced her 1998 masterpiece, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Those records, like the 1988 records that preceded them, helped define alt.country...whatever that means.

The Kiss: Passionate Kisses / Still I Long For Your Kiss

Lucinda Williams: Passionate Kisses

[purchase]

Lucinda Williams: Still I Long For Your Kiss

[purchase]

There's a ten year difference between Passionate Kisses and Still I Long For Your Kiss, and you can hear it: both contain plenty of pain, and thematically, the two songs are quite similar, but the former, recorded on Williams' self-titled album from the late eighties and later made famous via coverage, is ultimately upbeat and hopeful and empowering, while the latter song, slow and bluesy, drips with the anguish of loss and longing which typifies her breakthrough album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.

Also true: Still I Long is a co-write, which is quite atypical for Lucinda, whose perfectionist's eye, attention to detail, and control of her musical output are notoriously precise. Listen to fellow songwriter Duane Jarvis' 2001 version of the song, learn more about Lucinda Williams' craft and career, and hear 15 other covers of Lucinda songs, including the aforementioned Grammy-winning composition as voiced by Mary Chapin Carpenter, at Cover Lay Down.

Solitude: Side of the Road

Lucinda Williams: Side of the Road

[purchase]

Sometimes, you only need a few moments alone to clear your head. Lucinda William's "Side of the Road" starts out with that premise, but by the last verse, those few moments seem to have stretched on, and a future with her partner seems a lot less sure:

If I stray away too far from you
Don't go and try to find me
It doesn't mean I don't love you
It doesn't mean I won't come back and stay beside you

That may be so, Lucinda, but it doesn't mean you will come back, either. If I were her other half, I'd be worried. Is he still parked on the side of the road, waiting for her return?

Lucinda recorded "Side of the Road" for her self-titled 1988 album, but I prefer this stripped-down, live-on-the-radio version that appeared on her Passionate Kisses+ EP in '92. It can also be found as one of the bonus tracks on the now out-of-print reissued version of Lucinda Williams.

Title Tracks: Essence

Lucinda Williams: Essence

[purchase]

This is one of my favorite Lucinda Williams tracks, but it's also one that I can never play when I'm on the radio due to the potential for massive fines from the FCC should I do so. For that reason, I am more than glad to share it with you here.

Simply put, the song "Essence" is little more than lust given life in the form of a song. When Lucinda cries out for her "Sweet Baby," you can hear the yearning in her voice. Her desperation has overtaken her to the point that she is no longer in control. When she speaks of love as a drug, it's not a hyperbole or figure of speech. She is addicted.

It's a powerful song made even more so by Lucinda's ability to wring every ounce of emotion out of every breathy note she sings.

Cars: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

[purchase]

This is the title track from Lucinda Williams’ absolutely essential album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. It’s a mostly autobiographical song that deals with Lucinda’s youth and tells the tale of a childhood largely spent moving from town to town as her parents moved from job to job. It is a not so fond remembrance of a childhood spent staring out the window of a moving car while heading toward the next unfamiliar destination. When Lucinda played this song for her father for the first time, he apologized to her for the strains her family placed on her as a child.

Submitted by Nelson

Heaven Week: Drunken Angel

Lucinda Williams: Drunken Angel

[purchase]


One of the great things about the music Blogosphere is you get to hear artists radio tends to ignore, like Lucinda Williams. She sings, plays guitar and writes songs that'll bring tears to your eyes. Bob Dylan once said that he never understood any kind of border patrol when it comes to music, listen to Lucinda Williams and hear music without borders. She's been labeled Folk, Country, Rock - best labeling her as good music.

Williams said she wrote Drunken Angel about her friend Blaze Foley, a songwriter who was shot and killed in a bar over an argument. From Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, one of the best albums of the 1990s.