American Songwriter » Rock

Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit, Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto

Bronwyn Coombs — Tue, 24 May 2011 21:04:52 +0000

NEIL DIAMOND: Collaboration Works on “Moon”

Vernell Hackett — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:25:39 +0000

This article was originally published in the May/June 1996 issue of American Songwriter. It's not often that a songwriter gets to write with the person who influenced his being in the music business, but such was the case for several of the songwriters who wrote with Neil Diamond for his latest album, Tennessee Moon. Aside from that, the most often made comment on all sides was how comfortable it was when the people go together to write. "Neil Diamond and James Taylor were the two biggest influences on my music early on," acknowledges Stewart Harris, who is the co-writer on "Open Wide These Prison Doors." He met Neil at a luncheon in Nashville, and as soon as the formalities of the event were over, he went to Neil and said, "I want to get booked with you right away to write...I think it was three weeks from that time (that they wrote). I had some ideas floating around in my head. I didn't want to go in there dry because opportunities like that don't come along every day. I went out to his house...we were just sitting around his kitchen table and it was so comfortable." The two go together again to "dust the lyrics," as Harris puts it. "Even in the studio we looked at the lyrics again before he did the final version. Neil will go back again and again and again until he's certain it's right. As a writer I'm not one for re-writing a lot, but we had a couple of optional lines and we looked at them and were real tickled with the end product." Bob DiPiero and Neil were together in several social situations before they actually sat down to write. "The first day we wrote he came downstairs with this beautiful old classical nylon string guitar, and he said, ‘Why don't you write on it?' After we wrote "Gold Don't Rust" he said ‘I've had that guitar since 1964 and you just wrote a great song on it, why don't you just keep it.' That night I brought the guitar home and showed it to Pam (Tillis, his wife), and told her about it, and we wrote "It's Lonely Out There" on that guitar." DiPiero said he psyched himself up not to be intimidated when writing with Neil. "I was intimidated as much as honored. Like a lot of people. I'm a big fan of many of his songs. Especially when he's sitting there, and you're hearing his voice warming up, and when he started really singing, it's pretty shocking to hear that voice coming across the table from you." DiPiero says the fact that the two didn't really know each other before they sat down to write didn't bother him. "Personally, for me it's not so hard to write with someone that I don't really know. If we both want to do it, it's like a kindred spirit," he explains. "There's always the initial part of kibitzing and shooting the breeze - you're always dancing around the actual mechanics of writing the songs, but somehow you just kind of fall into it. It really helps if the person you are writing with is a nice guy. "I wasn't really sure what he was going for, and I had reservations that he was just jumping on the bandwagon. But writing with Neil Diamond was like writing with any great writer. He's as good as any of the folks I write with, and all in all it was a very natural experience in a very unnatural setting." Bill LaBounty only lived a mile from the house that Neil rented while he was in Nashville, so he went over and picked the singer up one morning and they went to LaBounty's home studio where they wrote "Can Anybody Hear Me." "Writing with Neil I knew would be a learning experience," LaBounty admits. "There are those flashes when you work with a real performing songwriter like Neil - you will see a performance, you see the song being created by this artist, and it was a fun thing. "A lot of times, especially collaboratively, both writers are pensive in their thinking and there's dead air and dead space when people are trying to form their thoughts into words. There was that with Neil, but there were points when you could see him performing the song in his mind. "We started with music that we both liked. I was hesitant at first to say maybe this is the way the lyric ought to go. I really didn't understand what he was doing with the lyric until we had finished the song and he was performing it. He truly is a performing songwriter. From the beginning he was someone I respected, but by the end of it I really became a Neil Diamond fan." Dennis Morgan landed the title cut on the album. He says he had the chorus of the song written the day before their scheduled writing session because he had been thinking about why Neil was in Nashville and about the overall concept of the project. Once they got together, they wrote the song in less than an hour. Neil says the song was very much autobiographical. "The first verse lays it out pretty clearly that I wasn't finding stimulation or the incentive to write in Los Angeles that I had had at one time." "The text of the verse was more his story," Morgan says. "It was a beautiful combination - what a great guy to work with. I know that he's a true songwriter, and true songwriters never quit learning. They're antenna is always up. If you're gonna do it, you've go to keep expanding, and if you get in a slump, others will help you get out of it. I think he was ready to respond to a group of songwriters like he met in Nashville, and he rose to the occasion. I think we all did too; it was a mutual thing." Tom Shapiro says he had the melody for "Marry Me," and Neil says it was an idea he'd had for 15 years but couldn't find the right melody and the right setting for it. "Neil and I got together before we actually sat down to write to just get to know each other. But when I went over for the first writing session I was too nervous to write because he was such a hero of mine. So we just talked about the album and what he was doing, about his life, and then a month later we got together again to write. I'm used to writing with someone I don't know, but in this case he was bigger than life, and I just wasn't prepared. Once we started writing, it was natural - very give and take, very much like any other writing processes. I enjoyed writing with him. He was great to write with - he's a great writer." Though an acknowledged great writer, Neil doesn't take his talent for granted. "First of all, writing is the hardest thing that I do - a lot harder than concerts, a lot harder than recording - and so it's not something that I can take on half-heartedly. You have to throw yourself into it fully," Neil says. Because his last couple of albums didn't require any new songs from him, he says it gave him time to relax and pull back from writing for awhile. "I was able to enter into this project with the enthusiasm for the writing process again. And the fact that I was writing with so many new and talented people kept me on my toes. I think the chemistry of it all worked well." Neil admits that the way he wrote in Nashville, with scheduled writing sessions planned weeks in advance, was a bit different for him. But, he says, "I've written songs everywhere, from the back of limos to hotel rooms and buses and planes. I've written some of my biggest songs knowing that I had to have the lyrics finished when I landed. I started one flight with nothing and landed with "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" - and it's not that long a flight from New York to Memphis, so you have to write pretty quick! "I think one of the reasons this worked out so well was that these writers and I were somehow able to cast aside any fear, which is the first thing you have to cast aside when you're beginning to write and create something, (that) fear of it not being any good. They had enough confidence, and I had enough confidence, to go with our instincts and pretty much in each case there was the beginning idea and eventually a song written between the combination co-writer and myself. Part of that had to do with experience. They were all very experienced writers, with the exception of my son Jesse, which was an interesting experience in itself, and maybe someday I'll write a book about it! "But the methods don't change. There is no method. Any way you can do it, that's how you do it. This way worked this time, and thank God it did because we had no idea whether it would and whether we'd come up with anything worthwhile at all." This was the first time Neil had written with Jesse, and he says any problems the two might have had were "attributable to his newness as a writer and the fact that he had to learn very quickly in writing with me that he had to accept criticism of his work. That is one of the things a writer must do. He must learn to be very critical of his work. I think Jesse learned a little bit about that in his experience of writing with me. "His innocence and his music really inspired this song. He is innocent and pure as a youngster; he's my age when I had "Solitary Man." The combination of father and son - and then you throw in the great depth of love and affection between us - it turned out to be one of the most wonderful experiences in my creative life. I don't know if I can put words to it, but there was something very spiritual about it, some kind of rite of passage, me having the opportunity to pass along my own knowledge and be open about learning from his innocence and his purity and his sensibility. It was a wonderful experience." It was also interesting for Neil to watch how other writers approached their craft. "You can pick up little things from other writers. Every writer has their own little thing, their own little idiosyncrasies. I found it interesting to write with 20 writers over a period of months to see how they approached a song. Harlan Howard came to the session with a bunch of cocktail napkins with bunches of song titles, ideas and verses written on them. "I can't say I picked up any new techniques in writing, but I am a songwriter and have been since I was 17 - I feel a special kinship with other writers - I enjoy the experience of seeing how these other people get this music out of them. It's so individual, there are no rules, you know. You do it any way you can." The reason Neil came to Nashville was the talent and the writers, plus the fact that he has always wanted to experience that city. "Now was the time. I had the year, I had no concert commitments, and I just jumped in with both feet and tried to swim as fast as I could and hope for the best. It was one of the great experiences for me as a writer and as an artist. I learned a lot from these people."

A.A. BONDY: On Track

Edd Hurt — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:44:10 +0000

A.A. Bondy takes it easy throughout his new full-length When the Devil’s Loose, but it’s a subtly tortured record whose religious preoccupations and melancholia seem ingrained. A former rock star who found the pressures and constraints of big-time, big-label life a drag on his muse, Bondy whistles in the dark on When the Devil’s Loose. He seems focused on larger issues of life and death, love and hate, but he doesn't think he's making religious art. On this record, “I don’t think there’s anything that has to do with that,” Bondy says. “Someone could say ‘Jesus’ and it could have nothing do with Jesus. But I don’t know why that is at this point.” On his first solo collection, 2007’s American Hearts, Bondy had quoted “I Just Want to See His Face,” one of the tracks on the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. Bondy’s new music doesn’t have much to do with the Stones and seems like a dim memory of rock and roll. It’s skeletal and doleful—one of the slowest records in recent memory. Now 36, Bondy spent his formative years in New Roads, Louisiana, not far from Baton Rouge and the Mississippi River. At 13 he moved to Birmingham, Alabama. First coming to attention in a Birmingham band called Verbena, Bondy practiced hard in what he says was a fairly indistinct local scene. “I always felt separate from everything that was goin’ on there,” he says about Birmingham. “There wasn’t even like there was a group of bands at any given time that were touring heavily.” Touted as a Southern-fried alternative to Nirvana in the late ‘90s, Verbena released a couple of solid full-length albums; 1999’s Into the Pink, produced by Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl. They were a tight, aggressive band, with Bondy’s classically disaffected rock and roll vocals up front. These days, Bondy looks back on those heady days with some asperity. “Being in that band on a major label was not making music,” he says. “What we should’ve done was just take the money and hidden somewhere and made the records we wanted to make, knowing that they probably wouldn’t have gotten promoted. It’s normal for a young band to reach for the ring, be a big band. But that’s just f***n’ stupid.” Verbena made one more record, 2003’s La Musica Negra, and Bondy went off to reinvent himself. He assumed his birth name, Auguste Arthur, and cut American Hearts by himself in Palenville, New York. (He says he doesn’t live there any more, but isn’t more specific: “I don't know where I go next, really.”) It takes on various forms of bedrock American music—post-grunge mixed with the wayward guitars of Alex Chilton’s depressive masterpiece Like Flies on Sherbert [sic]. When the Devil’s Loose continues the sound, but Bondy says he’s more open and confident as a songwriter these days, and not afraid of going for the unguarded moment. “I started recording with other musicians and singing live in the room at the same time,” he says. About half the tracks on When the Devil’s Loose were recorded in this fashion, but the record feels sparsely populated even when there’s a full band charging along. Bondy believes his songwriting has changed over the years. “I don’t think it’s so much about craft as it is whatever it takes to get to arrange things until they feel right,” he says. “The less time I spend on things, the better I feel about them—I don’t like to torture things. I attempt to talk about it, but I can’t speak as to why one day you get a good song and one day you don’t.” The record is full of country, blues and gospel music. “To the Morning” works out its 6/8 gospel feel and finds it way in the dark. The songs are minimalist and sleepy, as if Bondy woke up out of an afternoon nap to perform them. He doesn’t seem to sing his songs so much as visit them, and doesn’t offer any easy explanations for what he's doing. As he says, “I don't know what I’m into.” You believe him. AGE: 36 HOMETOWN: NEW ROADS, LOUISIANA Favorite singer/songwriters: Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Michael Hurley, Charley Patton, Nina Simone. He also digs Australian band the Dirty Three and Godspeed You Black Emperor. “It’s weird—I tend to like things that don’t involve singing.”

DAVID BAZAN: Carry On

Dustin Allen — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:06:21 +0000

David Bazan, alone and forsaken.

If ever there was a spokesman for those suffering from the God-sick blues, David Bazan is it. As the frontman behind Pedro the Lion for nearly a decade, Bazan has created a virtual trademark on doubt-ridden lyrics, sketching characters constantly slipping to-and-fro on a moral slope, or candidly confessing his own ambivalence toward God and his own faith.

Now that Bazan has dropped that moniker following the band’s split in 2005—a schism that was shared rather openly on the Fewer Moving Parts EP a year later—and released Curse Your Branches, his first full-length under his given name, the ever-dubious songwriter is yet again at the crossroads. Maybe it was the two solid weeks of tending to his newborn son. Maybe it was his newfound sobriety and spearheading a fresh career path. But when American Songwriter caught up with Bazan in his Seattle home over the phone, the man was almost eerily at ease. “I am a lot healthier and more content than I was,” says Bazan. “For me, stepping away from Pedro the Lion was stepping away from a process, a mode of doing things. I was definitely a drunk and a string of my buddies had been hurt and frustrated, and I didn’t want to continue that way. I needed some distance.” After a short-lived stint with side project Headphones, teaming with the Undertow Orchestra—a live collaboration with fellow under-the-radar songsmiths Vic Chestnutt, Mark Eitzel and Will Johnson—and rebranding himself as a solo artist, it might be natural to suspect that Bazan was poised for a push toward greater exposure. But even a cursory listen to Curse Your Branches’ modest 10 tracks is proof enough that he’s hardly looking to reinvent himself or reclaim his piece of the indie underground. If anything, Bazan has become more comfortable in his own skin, writing music the only way he knows how—assuredly neg-head, yes, but brutally honest and aware of its own limitations. “I got to a certain point with this record where I thought, ‘You want to be a big deal and these songs that you’re writing kind of ensure that you’re not going to be,’” says Bazan. Opener “Hard to Be” recalls the Headphones’ Moog-heavy tones, but then gently reverts to Bazan’s uneven croon and sad insights about how it is “hard to be a decent human being.” From there, however, the album tilts slightly upward with “Bless This Mess,” easily one of the more lighthearted songs he's ever written, even going so far as to feature a few friends for a semi-gospel choir and wry church organ interlude. Following that is “Please, Baby, Please” that, for all its mopey lyrics, chugs along with a crisp acoustic strum, lithe percussion and soft vocal coos. To top it off, “When We Fell,” a track that was originally conceived as a laborious, slow-moving dirge flips right-side up by way of trad-rock riffs and a few scattered chimes mid-song. A string of low-key tour stops last year—organized by fans at limited-admittance locales with only minimal publicity—may also be responsible for Bazan recruiting about a dozen other musicians to pull off this slight but noticeable shift in tone. “I really dislike the singer/songwriter tag, and when I was just out playing with an acoustic, that’s what I was,” says Bazan. “Not to mention [these songs were] basically autobiographical confessionals about religion. I realized what I was doing and I was horrified.” Still, what’s kept most Bazan fans coming back over the years is his knack for cutting to the quick, the sheer nerve of his perpetual spiritual limbo and how potently he conveys that through song. Whatever personal progress he's made recently, Bazan said those parts of him won’t likely dissolve any time soon. “I gave up trying to do anything sunny years ago,” says Bazan. “For better or worse, it really is the state of my psyche at any given time and is the stuff I grapple with. Ultimately, I really love these songs and if the record doesn’t sell well because of it, I’m fine with that.” Age: 33 Hometown: Seattle Early music influences: Lennon-McCartney, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen

DRUG RUG > Paint the Fence Invisible

Dustin Allen — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:30:15 +0000

Paint the Fence Invisible" src="http://www.americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/paint-the-fence-cover-282x300.jpg" alt="DRUG RUG > Paint the Fence Invisible" width="188" height="200" />
This album is hardly the tossed-off valentine their reputation might suggest. DRUG RUG Paint the Fence Invisible (BLACK & GREENE) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Berated unfairly as little more than a cutesy duo harmonizing to death glassy-eyed pop songs about young love on their ‘07 debut, Drug Rug nevertheless seem undaunted on their follow-up Paint the Fence Invisible. Offering much of the same trad-rock touchstones with a psych twist as tour mates Dr. Dog, this Cambridge, Massachusetts, couple may be sweet and drenched in sunshine, but this album is hardly the tossed-off valentine their reputation might suggest.

THE FEATURES: On the Horizon

William Hooker — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:17:08 +0000

Songs are not always what they seem; never confidently infer meanings of a lyric from a band's bio. . . .

Songs are not always what they seem; never confidently infer meanings of a lyric from a band's bio. For instance, on the sensitively swinging boogie "Off Track," the 12th song on Nashville band The Features' Some Kind of Salvation, vocalist and primary songwriter Matt Pelham sings "we've been told/that we've been close/that all is won/but mostly lost." Salvation is the first release since their abrupt separation with Atlantic Records, and Pelham's words seem mindful of being off-label, but also hopeful, when he sings: "We gotta get back in line/We're off-track again." Explaining the song's significance, Pelham tells us, "It's definitely not about the record label at all... it's more of a relationship thing." Whether or not being with a label can resemble the wavy, peak-trough pattern commonly marked by a romantic relationship, Pelham admits, "I suppose...with any type of relationship, one with a label can be as trying as one with a girlfriend." Pelham validates my question politely and I understand clearly that Some Kind of Salvation is no poison dart aimed at label chiefs. Not that there's no danger in his songs, the menace is just not in one precise direction; "Foundation's Cracked," "G.M.F," and "Temporary Blues" rock diffusely, power pop that neither exploits nor hides their Southern, rural roots. Asked whether or not the band might venture into darker, more experimental directions in the future, Pelham informs me that "most of these songs are five- to six- years old and when making the record we just wanted the songs to fit together... ultimately it comes down to being cohesive."

Another six-year-old track, "Temporary Blues," recalls Pelham's soul-crushing experience as a Pillsbury factory worker; on it he sings, "An occupation... they say it should be something you like/But hard times don't allow a poor boy to choose how he provides." Asked whether or not ex-co-workers might be listening to the new record now, Pelham suspects not: "I highly doubt any of them have ever heard it; when I left I kind of never looked back... although I imagine the feelings on the song were mutual for lots of the workers."

Pelham's focus on how he provides stems from his family. Despite living near Nashville, seeing local shows is not a priority. "I've always kind of wanted to get out more and see a lot of local bands and support the scene but I'm always extremely busy with work [as a printmaker], our band, my wife and two kids. It's always a juggling act to go out and see bands or even a movie for that matter; it's not easy."

Despite the hard work evident on Salvation, it's often light-hearted and summer-appropriate due in part to Pelham's falsetto-prone voice. This style, evident on the sunny chorus of "Lions," Pelham "developed over the years from what I enjoyed listening to; when I was really young I liked John Lennon vocals so much... and he was imitating Little Richard so when I was younger I would overdo it, and do it all the time. Hopefully now I keep control of it."

Another song on Salvation, "Baby's Hammer" is a soft ditty that compares a destructive tool to "a significant other's displeasure... trying to please someone and never quite doing that; the hammer is her temper for not making it to church or not making enough money." Could this hammer possibly contain providence? "I definitely think it's good to have someone to keep you in line, it's not a bad thing."

Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee

Matthew Pelham Age 34 Favorite songwriter albums: John Prine, Sweet Revenge, Bob Dylan, Desire

Rollum Haas, Age 29 Enjoys Randy Newman's songs, particularly "Sail Away" & "Good Old Boys"

Mark Bond, Age 28 Favorite Songwriters: Elvis Costello and Brian Wilson

Roger Dabbs, Age 34 His Favorite Songwriting Duos: Rod Argent/Chris White of The Zombies and Dave Clark/Mike Smith of the Dave Clark 5

Sonic Youth @ The War Memorial – Nashville, TN – 7/11/09

Drew Litowitz — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:32:56 +0000

Thurston Moore cares, he’d just like you to think he doesn’t. At the wise age of 50, he retains the stage presence of a teenage slacker. Though he’s been crafting dissonant post-punk with Sonic Youth for nearly 30 years, the guy could seriously pass for a college student. As he effortlessly throws himself around the stage, frequently collapsing to the floor, guitar in hand, he perfectly balances enthusiasm and nonchalance. But if he wasn’t passionate about what he does, he wouldn’t attack his guitar so feverishly. He cares a lot more than he lets on, even as he dryly apologizes for the falsely started “Poison Arrow,” pointing to the amp head: “I’m so tall that I couldn’t read my tuner. I was tuning to a D, but I tuned to a D sharp,” and again stating the song’s title to start his second attempt “ . . . ‘Poison Arrow’.” Though he stands opposite stage from guitarist Lee Ranaldo, the two intertwine their coarse tones to make paradoxically melodic art like they are looking into each other’s eyes. When you are a member of Sonic Youth, you don’t just play your guitar, you use it as a means of getting from point A to point B, whether that entails scratching the strings with a metal rod, sliding a broken drum stick across the bridge, or turning knobs and pushing numerous pedals to get it done. Sonic Youth have a wide range of song styles. Watching them perform live is almost like witnessing multiple bands take the stage, only the five players never change. After a more than impressive showing from openers the Entrance Band—a California three-piece that displayed their own blend of tight, progressive sludge rock (think Dinosaur Jr. meets the Allman Bothers), the noisy flourish of Sonic Youth filled the War Memorial Auditorium. The sheer fury of songs like Sister’s “White Cross” juxtaposed with the mellow, acoustic wanderings of “Massage the History” created a perfect equilibrium of noise and open space. Playing 2009's The Eternal almost in its entirety, the show was certainly not a hit parade. But, should we expect that from a group so notoriously inaccessible? I think not. The songs on the Eternal, however, draw from the Youth’s entire discography, pulling splinters and shards from the massive array of noises once used, and combining them to craft new material. If you missed one of your favorites Saturday night, there was probably a hint of it found in one of the newer tracks. But that's not to say that they didn’t please die-hards with some back catalog gems, either. The beautiful “Shadow of a Doubt” had Kim Gordon whispering into the microphone over Moore’s pleasantly stinging harmonics, and “Silver Rocket” brought punk drums, thrashed chords, and Thurston’s snarl to the table. The set, however, did seem pretty heavy on Kim lead vocal spots. Ranaldo, Gordon, and Moore all shared the role throughout the 17 songs, but it seemed that the missus was holding the night’s golden mic. Most of the older tunes were Kim-lead ones, which contributed to a lack of some decades-old favorites such as “Teenage Riot,” “Tom Violence,” or “Catholic Block,” songs which have been played previously on the tour. But the spectacle of seeing any Sonic Youth song performed live never really disappoints. Watching a catchy tune cave in on itself into a sea of haze and distortion, unsure of exactly what it will become, is pretty spine tingling. Ranaldo, equipped with pedals and knobs galore, more than aptly lent his sonic visions to these dark explorations. If he wasn’t holding one of his custom boxes, he was banging unorthodoxly on his strings. Ranaldo even roped in some classic rock radio waves with his “Antennabox” to open Eternal’s gorgeous “Antenna” (Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” played at the song’s start before cutting out). Former Pavement bassist Mark Ibold chugged along as drummer Steve Shelley rotated between soft mallets and hard sticks, and Gordon switched between bass and guitar per usual. Though a show abundant in noises, I will say that it wasn’t as loud as one would expect from Sonic Youth. All the distortion and fuzz was there, but it didn’t leave any ears bleeding. I guess this could be considered a plus, but sometimes a little ringing in your ears is just what you’re looking for. Nevertheless, after almost thirty years of flooding tape with fuzz, the band stays pretty truthful to their name. Gordon, at 56, looks no older than 40, and the rest of the guys retain a youthful charm. As for the Sonic, well, you’d have to be deaf not to hear why that’s a good descriptor. Ending the second and final encore with the ancient thrash of “Death Valley ’69,” they graciously left the stage reminding us all that they’re not growing up any time soon. -Drew Litowitz Set List: 1. Sacred Trickster 2. No Way 3. Calming the Snake 4. Silver Rocket 5. Antenna 6. Leaky Lifeboat 7. Malibu Gas Station 8. The Sprawl 9. Anti-Orgasm 10. Walkin Blue 11. Poison Arrow 12. Massage the History 13. White Cross Encore: 14. Shadow Of A Doubt 15. Pacific Coast Highway Encore 2: 16. What We Know 17. Death Valley '69

BEN HARPER: Role Models

Holly Gleason — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:00:47 +0000

With White Lies for Dark Times, Ben Harper finds his genre-defying hybrid taking root in rockier plains—and that musical immediacy creates a tension that ratchets up his always on-point lyrics. Working with Relentless7—the latest incarnation of a Cinderella moment with a promoter’s runner Harper met in Austin, Texas—the impact isn’t just immediate in terms of attack, but also in grounding his always far-flung folk/Hendrix/world/jazz/beat-box songs.

"Keep It Together (So I Can Fall Apart)," “Lay There and Hate Me” and “Why Must You Always Dress In Black” bristle with an urgency that captures the ear with their razor-wire electricity, while the halting “The Word Suicide” is a meditation stretched taut over doubt and minimalism. It’s that how-now arranging, the leanness and the thrust that gives this far-flung collection a new kind of cohesion from the man who seems comfortable so many places he defies categories. Can you quantify music’s role in your life? My life without a soundtrack is stripped bare. To me, music’s not to be trivialized. Do not try to minimize or commoditize it. How does that give you a [creative] foundation? It’s never about anyone or anything… it’s really more a psychological or emotional necessity. [As a songwriter] you work from instinct, intuition and reaction. The songs will tell you: “Burn To Shine” has to be a rock song. So you let the songs tell you… What’s unique is the diversity of the songs, but it can also be my Achilles’ heel. You know, you’re not handing the record company 10 of one kind of song that they could market. So I’ll see mohawks, piercings, tattoos and yuppies… I’ll see the gentleman who signed me’s 80-something-year-old father, who’s a real old school Santa Monica nonconformist. Sounds tricky. Going hand-to-hand, ticket-by-ticket, show-to-show has given me a real appreciation of how you find your fans… I am loyal to my creative process, and you realize the music we love, when we put it on, something else enters the room. How does that reflect your working with Relentless7 and the evolution from the Innocent Criminals? In some ways, it’s a reckless abandonment of my past… but I’ve never landed in my past, as my fans know, I toured Both Sides of the Gun with the Innocent Criminals, we wrote Lifeline; but Relentless7 represent something I’ve been trying to do my whole life. It’s a scary place to be, and yet… how can I not [go there]? In those times when I’ve not done that—and tried to chase commercial connection—the business has always given me such a consistent smackdown, I can’t help but notice. Lessons like that, it doesn’t take an ass-whupping to figure out. Can you explain the change? Well, it feels like I’ve been trying to write these songs my whole life, and the evolution of a lot of it is connecting with Relentless7. I’ve never been satisfied with my own work, never felt comfortable with a creative arrival… What do I do with an exterior reality that gets me there? And you heard the previous band’s demo tape on a ride from a hotel to the gig in 1998? Yeah, I didn’t want to be the guy who says “No, I won’t listen,” even though to get onstage in front of 5,000, you need to be in a certain place. But when he puts it in, I’m floored: it’s the best rock record I’ve heard—and it stuck with me. I kept thinking back to ?uestlove and John Paul Jones… that experience kept coming back to Serve Your Soul. So I trusted it. We just played Austin City Limits and the fact they heard this record and wanted us the day they heard it was such a musical high. The things they get, the way they put it together—I knew we’d connected. More concretely, what about lyrics? I’m really trimming the fat now. You don’t do that unless someone’s over your shoulder at a younger age. You grow into it. I can feel the change aesthetically, genetically. If our species changes over time, it’s happening while we’re alive and making music. For me, it’s sparer. Can you explain? When John Prine writes “bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down… and won,” it’s simple. It is. Or it is not. You can’t negotiate a color, a moment, a feeling. John Prine is so good at that. He’s my Leonard Cohen. How do you apply it? We start breaking it down: like autobiography or journalism. It gets tricky, because it’s not always about something that happened, but the moment you sing it, you have to own it. Take it on. Are there things you always use as you make this kaleidoscopic music? Fearlessness, absolutely. Discipline. You also need open-minded creativeness that lets everything in. You never want to lose a word or a phrase, yet every one should count. Always the best language possible. And, finally, knowing when to leave it alone. Stop when it’s done. Ben Harper and Relentless7’s White Lies for Dark Times is out now on Virgin Records.

JOHN VANDERSLICE: On Track

Matt Fink — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:04:41 +0000

Though it had a good run-from the whimsy of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to the harsh isolation of Pink Floyd's The Wall and the rock opera reprisal of Green Day's American Idiot-the concept album has largely faded out of usage, left as a punch line to be hung around moribund musicians who are too pretentious to realize that they've run out of ideas. But while few songwriters are eager to join the list of artists who have tried and failed to carry out a project with such weighty ambitions, the concept album lives on in the less grandiose visions of indie rock auteurs Colin Meloy (The Decemberists), John Darnielle (Mountain Goats) and John Vanderslice. The last of those, the restlessly imaginative and analog-equipment obsessed Vanderslice, has written no fewer than five conceptually-themed narrative albums, proving his mastery at sustained album-length drama by stranding his imaginary brother on an icebound observation station on 2002's Time Travel is Lonely and crafting post-911 vignettes on 2005's Pixel Revolt. But on Romanian Names, Vanderslice's latest and most inward-looking release, he has narrowed his focus considerably. "I set out wanting to write songs that were definitely not connected and definitely not in any way narrative or with an arched storyline," he explains, having just finished ordering parts for his vintage Neve console. "I love telling stories, and I love third and first person narratives, but I wanted to write a different album. Every song that I did, with only a couple of exceptions, was much faster than what I'd usually default to, and it actually made me write different lyrics," he says excitedly. "So in some ways, I think it allowed me to write shorter verses and write less lyrics. I think that it led to more impressionistic content, because I didn't have these really long verse forms to fill up with a story, and it ended up making the record more abstract. In some ways, there is a refreshing lack of specific information, which is against my judgment," he laughs. "I like to be really specific." That's not to say that Vanderslice paints only in broad strokes. There's a track about being stalked by a snow leopard ("Tremble and Tear"), and another about an Eastern Bloc gymnast escaping the control of her minders and falling in love at the Olympics ("Romanian Names"). There's a story about cross-dressing at summer camp ("Summer Stock"), and one about a self-absorbed man who only cares about how his lover's selflessly altruistic deeds reflect on him ("C&O Canal"). Long influenced by the storytelling methods of his favorite filmmakers, Vanderslice remains the director behind the actors in his songs, even if he's increasingly comfortable letting the listener imagine the scenes. "If you're going to be a songwriter, you have to believe that every minuscule slight has importance," he says. "You have to believe that every little loss that you've had is meaningful and can, therefore, be broadcast out in the world and be exaggerated and amplified into a song. There's a trick there at work, and once you recognize it, you can either use it or it can also end your writing career. I've seen people lose their ego. They've become much more mature and developed as humans and are unable to write from a first-person perspective. For me, I've long realized that any individual is about as important as an ant colony on a hill in West Texas," he laughs. "I didn't have a problem with my ego dissolving over time, as it naturally should," he says with a comic pause, "unless you're a sociopath or a megalomaniac." HOMETOWN: San Francisco, California AGE: 42 HIS FAVORITE FILM OF THE MOMENT: Synecdoche, New York, It really helped me to see it over and over. I think I saw it four times in about a week, so I really got to dig into it. I'm getting into the same kind of movies, what I call "puzzle movies." I don't think they work if you casually watch them. I think you have to believe in them and believe that it's important to dig into them. I think that in all art, there has to be a level of sympathy, no matter what it is.

LEVON HELM > Electric Dirt

Michael Gallucci — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:37:34 +0000

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The latest solo album by the Band's drummer and singer is a lot like his last one, 2007's Grammy-winning Dirt Farmer. Like its predecessor, Electric Dirt is filled with such Americana-approved subjects as trains, family and working the land with your bare hands.

LEVON HELM Electric Dirt (DIRT FARMER/VANGUARD) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars The latest solo album by the Band's drummer and singer is a lot like his last one, 2007's Grammy-winning Dirt Farmer. Like its predecessor, Electric Dirt is filled with such Americana-approved subjects as trains, family and working the land with your bare hands. The music is rustic and dusty and sounds like it was made by a bunch of friends hanging out on the porch after supper. The album starts with a rollicking cover of the Grateful Dead's "Tennessee Jed," which kicks up a bluesy swing and twang, but it soon settles into a sort of musical complacency, tapping age-old themes and Helm's still sturdy voice for inspiration.