American Songwriter » March/April 2012

Sarah Jarosz’s String Garden

Rick Moore — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:11:37 +0000

Just when things are lookin’ down/And everybody’s wearing frowns/The king went and misplaced his crown/But it’ll come around, sings Sarah Jarosz on “Come Around,” from her second Sugar Hill album, Follow Me Down. Not yet legally old enough to drink, Jarosz, who is gaining a following in Americana and modern bluegrass circles alike, shows an uncommon, perhaps Dylan-like maturity in her songwriting. But someone hearing Jarosz sing for the first time might not be immediately aware of her instrumental prowess on just about anything with strings, an ability that has long been known to many in her native Texas. Jarosz is the kind of multi-instrumentalist who only gets better with time. A mandolinist since grade school, Jarosz also plays octave mandolin, guitars and clawhammer banjo as well as keyboards (her first instrument) on her albums, and has been known to play upright bass or pick up a fiddle, though she will claim neither as a serious pursuit. The fact that she’s accompanied on her albums by such legends of the progressive bluegrass and Americana communities as banjoist Bela Fleck and resonator guitar master Jerry Douglas speaks of the respect and support she has garnered. “Those are all ‘pinch me’ moments when people like them come in (to the studio),” she says, “that such amazing people have been my mentors over the years and are so generous with their time. But the coolest thing has been the open, encouraging feeling that is part of this whole music community, that they all treat you like you’re just one of the gang.” Even though Jarosz has all the makings of a successful career with a recording contract and plenty of bookings, she’s taking things a step further, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in music at the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music, in Boston. “It’s been great for me to go to school,” she says, “to push me out of my comfort zone musically, and to just get the college experience in general.” She isn’t working much on her third album at the moment, but Jarosz tours frequently in her own trio, which includes fiddle player Alex Hargreaves and cellist Nathaniel Smith, the three carrying on the traditions of acoustic music for the next generation. Jarosz also has performed with bassist Sam Grisman, son of “dawg music” icon David Grisman. And as she makes her name as a songwriter, Jarosz also recognizes the greatness of writers of several genres and generations, covering Dylan, Tom Waits, Radiohead and others on her albums and in concert. Jarosz says she’s deeply grateful for the support she’s gotten from so many of the people she grew up listening to. “People like Tim O’Brien or Bela or Chris Thile, they’ve all been so encouraging and supportive of what I’m trying to do with my music and it means the world to me,” she says. “Anytime I’m fortunate enough to spend a little bit of time with any of those people it just makes me want to get that much better.”

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Behind The Song: “Satisfaction”

Andrew Leahey — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 15:35:53 +0000

It was a spring morning in 1965, several weeks before the start of the Rolling Stones’ third North American tour, when Keith Richards rolled out of bed and noticed something strange. The Philips cassette player that he kept in his London bedroom appeared to be broken. He’d put a new tape into the machine one day earlier, but now the cassette was at the end of its spool, having somehow wound its way through 45 minutes of useable tape. Curious, he rewound the cassette and pushed play. A three-note guitar riff came blasting out of the speakers, followed by some basic chords and a simple refrain. “I can’t get no satisfaction,” went the melody, sung by Richards in a sleepy, half-conscious voice. After several repetitions, the music faded out and gave way to 40 minutes of snoring. Richards had apparently woken up with a melody in his head, recorded it with his acoustic guitar and then fallen back asleep. Who knows what sort of sordid, oddball stuff Keith Richards dreams about? Some things are better left unsaid. Whatever the subject matter, something made Richards angry enough to clamber out of bed and scream his satisfaction into a tape recorder. Out of that frustration arose the Rolling Stones’ biggest single to date, not to mention one of the most enduring rock songs of all time. Like most Rolling Stones classics, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was a team effort, with Mick Jagger adding his own contributions on May 6, 1965. The Stones were supposed to be playing a show in Clearwater, Florida, but their fans had rioted after the first four songs and the concert was cut short. To prevent further chaos, the musicians were told to go back to the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel and stay put. Frustrated, Jagger headed down to the outdoor pool and fleshed out the lyrics that Richards had already started. Ten years later, the Church of Scientology would buy the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel and start hosting religious retreats by that very same pool. There was nothing holy about Jagger’s lyrics, though, which attacked the modern world – its commercialism, its obsession with consumer culture, its inability to excite a 22 year-old man who’d grown tired of the status quo – with fierce, sexual language. The “tryin’ to make some girl” line was the most risqué part, at least according to the producers of Shindig!, who censored the Stones’ on-air performance of “Satisfaction” later that year by cutting out the entire line and splicing the remaining halves together. What the producers failed to notice was the reason Jagger couldn’t “make some girl,” which was actually a slang-filled reference to menstruation. “Baby, better come back later this week,” the girl explains to Jagger, “‘cause you see, I’m on a losing streak.” That line stayed in, presumably bringing a blush to the cheek of any female who understood Jagger’s lingo. This was raunchy stuff, especially for 1965, but that didn’t stop “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” from becoming the Rolling Stones’ first number one hit in America. Oddly enough, Keith Richards hadn’t planned on releasing the song, at least not the version we all know. The guys recorded it twice – first at Chess Studios on May 10, then again at RCA Hollywood Studios on May 12 – but neither version included horns. Richards always assumed a horn section would play the song’s signature riff, even going so far as to use a Gibson Fuzz Box at RCA Studios to mimic the sounds of a saxophone. It was supposed to be a placeholder part, a scratch track, but the Fuzz Box gave the song a frantic, buzzing energy that everyone else seemed to prefer. Despite Richards’ objections, the guitar riff remained, the song was released less than four weeks after it was recorded, and horns stayed out of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” until Otis Redding recorded his own version later that year. “The fuzz tone had never been heard before anywhere, and that’s the sound that caught everybody’s imagination,” Richards wrote in his 2010 autobiography, Life. “As far as I was concerned, that was just the dub. [But] ten days on the road and it’s number one nationally! The record of the summer of ’65 ... I learned that lesson – sometimes you can overwork things. Not everything’s designed for your taste and your taste alone.” Even in their early 20s, the Rolling Stones showed impeccable taste in music, and “Satisfaction” was a melting pot of their wide-ranging influences. The guitar riff modeled itself after the horn arrangement from Martha & the Vandellas’ “Nowhere to Run” – had Richards succeeded in adding brass to the song, it would’ve sounded even more similar – and the lyrics took a page from Chuck Berry’s “30 Days” (sample lyric: “If I don’t get no satisfaction from a judge”) and Muddy Waters’ “I Be’s Troubled” (“I’m never bein’ satisfied, and I just can’t keep from cryin’”). The Rolling Stones started off as a cover band, after all, and their own compositions showed off the band’s roots, from Motown to blues to seedy rock and roll. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” has enjoyed a near-infinite shelf life, immortalized by decades of radio airplay and generations of aspiring guitarists who tackle the single-string riff after learning the intro to “Smoke On The Water.” Other artists have taken their own stab at the song, from Otis Redding’s brassy rendition to Britney Spears’ ill-fated cover. Tom Waits even incoporated its lyrical theme on “Satisfied,” a song from his latest album. But there’s something about the original version that can’t seem to be replicated. “It had all the ingredients,” Mick Jagger explained to Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner in 1995. “It has a very catchy title. It has a very catchy guitar riff and a great guitar sound, which was original at that time. And it encapsulated the feeling of the times, which was alienation. A sexual kind of alienation. Alienation’s not quite the right word, but it’s one word that will do.”

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Sharon Van Etten: Tramps Like Us

Max Blau — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 15:06:49 +0000

(PHOTO: Dusdin Condren) Making cathartic music can be a tricky business. When it’s done right, a songwriter can transform heartbreak, melancholy and depression into a stunning record rooted in a singular vision. But for a musician whose breakthrough album traffics in such terrain, it can be a nearly impossible act to recreate. This was the case for Sharon Van Etten. As impressive as the New Jersey native sounded on her sophomore record, epic, she’s now largely departed the emotional turmoil that defined her early work. By shedding a part of her musical skin, Van Etten has allowed herself to blossom into a better artist. Her latest record Tramp captures that process. “I think a big thing for me in the past year has been learning to move on and learning how to move on,” Van Etten explains. “You don’t have to forget … but you can’t keep living in that space.” Her first two albums (Because I Was In Love and epic) were stunning, stripped down expressions of her inner-pain – intimately documenting her broken relationships, emotional toil and self-doubt. Tramp offers a glimpse into her life following her first two records, in which she grew both personally and professionally. “I want people to hear the songs for what they are,” Van Etten says. “I think these songs [represent] the strongest that I’ve ever been as a writer and as a singer.” While Van Etten’s introspective songwriting earned her critical raves, she’s stepped outside her creative comfort zone with her third album, expanding her musical and lyrical boundaries. To help flesh out her sound, she recruited a talented cast of friends, including members of The National, Beirut, The Walkmen, Wye Oak, Antony and the Johnsons and Doveman. While most of the album’s guests have track records more established than Van Etten’s, she refuses to tout any of those names as a selling point for the album. For this budding singer-songwriter, who moved to Brooklyn in 2005, it’s a record made with her friends, not by her friends. “People may think, ‘They got this star-studded cast,’” she says. “But what it boils down to is that they’re friends that wanted to participate on this record.” Van Etten is no stranger to collaboration, having initially met some of these musicians while helping out as a guest vocalist on their respective albums. She contributed to Beirut’s 2011 album The Rip Tide after working at the group’s former label Ba Da Bing Records, where she worked and released epic. “We met through mutual contacts in the Brooklyn scene; she was actually doing some work with the label I was on,” Beirut frontman Zach Condon recalls. “But when I heard her voice I was pretty immediately drawn to it.”

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Role Models: The Little Willies

Evan Schlansky — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:58:33 +0000

The Little Willies are back with For The Good Times, a new album of country covers which rivals their first for pure listening pleasure. Longtime friends Norah Jones, Richard Julian and Lee Alexander (who all hail from New York City) give us the rundown. Roots Run Deep Norah: I grew up in Texas, and would visit my grandparents in Oklahoma. Country music was pretty much all they listened to. My grandpa loved Red Headed Stranger and “Blue Eyes Cryin’ In The Rain.” He died when I was very young, and whenever I heard it I would always think about him. Richard: My mom was a farm girl from North Carolina and she stayed in touch with her roots. I grew up listening to all that stuff for as long as I can remember. What’s In A Name? Norah: I thought it would be funny because we wanted to be a Willie Nelson cover band as a joke and then we ended up adding other songs. I just thought Little Willies was a funny name because it kind of has that double meaning and it’s kind of silly. The guys are good sports about it. Lee: I’m more comfortable with it now than I was with it initially. It is pretty funny. Especially in England; they went crazy over it the first time because it is pretty literal over there with their slang. Picking Favorites Lee: Some of the songs on this record we’ve been trying to get versions of since the very beginning of the band. “Jolene,” in particular. I swear we’ve tried that for years and years, and never really got it. And when we got this version, we all just looked at each other and said, “Yeah, that’s it. Finally.” Norah: I love how “Fist City” and “Jolene” are two very different takes on the same kind of situation: “another woman stealing my man.” Dolly Parton’s begging her not to do it, and Loretta Lynn is telling her she is going to get her ass beat if she does. Richard: “Permanently Lonely” is as good a song as you can write. It has a really beautiful chord structure. I found it more difficult to learn than I had anticipated. It sounds so natural when you hear Willie do it, and then when you actually pick out what’s going on it has almost a classical music structure, with a lot of major/minor shifting. Lee: Willie’s version is a lot more up-tempo than ours. I kind of feel like we got the dark side of that tune, which was important for me. Leave That Twang Alone: Richard: For Norah and I, what we really love about country music is the songs. To us, we’re putting across story lines and emotions – you know, whatever’s required. You don’t have to have a twang to feel those sentiments. Norah: I remember when we started, I noticed Richard’s accent started getting really thick on this one song, and my Texas accent started coming out. Then we recorded it and I remembered thinking, “Ugh, this just sounds ridiculous. It just sounds like we’re playing a part, and not a good one. Let’s try not to let that happen.” So, yeah, I think it’s just better to sing the way we sing. Y’all Come Back Now Norah: We played down in Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry – it was a hoot. I didn’t really know how we would go over down there. I didn’t know if they would just think we were a bunch of New York City imposters or what. I think they just sort of took it for what it was, which was us loving these songs and doing them with a lot of respect. Richard: I don’t follow country music. It’s a strange thing. I like Kris Kristofferson the same way I like Bob Dylan or the same way I like Johnny Mercer. To me all the stuff we’re doing – with the exception of a few of the kind of snarkier numbers – are just a part of the American songbook. It’s no different than covering a standard by George Gershwin to me. You’re just expressing the same sentiment, with some harmony and melody. And in our case, we have Jim playing the Telecaster, with a lot of bends, so it has a lot of that flavoring. But really, when we do the gigs, it seems more like a rock band than anything else. But a rock band who really listens to each other.

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Ben Kweller: On Record

Andrew Leahey — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:15:00 +0000

Ben Kweller has always been ahead of the curve, writing his first song at the age of eight, and signing his first record deal before he could legally drive. Now 30 years old, the Texas-based troubadour splits his time between running his own record label, raising his two sons and blending his favorite genres – including indie folk, Americana, pop and heartland rock and roll – into albums like Go Fly A Kite. We caught up with Kweller to talk about songwriting, vintage recording equipment and life as a record exec. Things have been a little busy in the Kweller camp, haven’t they? It’s been crazy around here, with the new album coming out. My deal with ATO Records was up after Changing Horses, so I started a label called the Noise Company. We’re putting out this album ourselves. It’s super fantastic, but at the same time, it’s so much work. You signed your first record deal as a 15 year old. After working with other record companies for years, releasing an album on your own label must feel different. Totally. As the years went on with ATO, though, I got more and more hands-on with the process of releasing my music. I was lucky to be with that label for so long. I did as much as I could when it came to making sure that my physical releases had awesome packaging and artwork, and those guys were always supportive of my creative ideas ... although for a few years, we were under the confines of a major label through RCA Records, and big companies like that have a lot of rules. Like, “a CD can’t cost more than $0.98 to manufacture, so if you wanna have crazy glitter artwork or something, and that’s gonna cost $1.10 per unit, then you can’t do that.” So many rules. It was the age-old fight between the artist and the label. Now you get to make your own rules. So bring on the glitter, right? Well, for Go Fly A Kite, we pulled off this incredible thing with the packaging. It folds out. You basically construct your own diorama box. It’s like 7th grade science class, when you’d experiment with creating shadow boxes and stuff. You also created “The Golden Laminate,” which allows one lucky person free admission to all Ben Kweller shows for life. Yeah, dude! The Golden Laminate! Totally. That’s just another one of those brainstorm ideas I had, when I was thinking, “God, what would I have loved Sonic Youth to do back in 1997?” It would’ve been a golden laminate. Basically, you pre-order the album and every name that comes through will be put into a hat, and we’ll do the drawing sometime after record release. The person who wins will be able to see as many of my shows as they want. The whole thing sounds very “Willy Wonka.” Yep. I love that. Since you began releasing music in the mid-‘90s, the methods of engaging an audience have changed so much. You’ve probably gone from Napster to MySpace to Facebook ... To Twitter! Right. It’s been a crazy evolution. Back in the early days, before the Internet took off, it was all about printing up black and white flyers and going around town with your staple gun, stapling them onto telephone poles. That was the extent of your promotion. I was in a band called Radish, and I still have a floppy disk of our original mailing list, which was full of snail-mail addresses instead of e-mail addresses. We used to do physical mailings. Then everything changed. It’s been really fun to watch it all. So you’re happy with the way technology has changed the music business? I really do love technology, although when it comes to physically recording my music, I don’t utilize a lot of it. I still record on tape with old tube mics and a lot of equipment that was state-of-the-art in the 1960s. I remember going to my first recording session with Radish. I must have been 14 years old, and I’d been calling record stores and guitar shops around my small town of Greenville, Texas, asking if anyone knew of a recording studio in the area. I got a recommendation for a guy up in Dallas, so we saved up some money and went there for a weekend and recorded three songs. That was before computers really entered the recording studio, so it was all on quarter inch tape. So I started recording that way, and I still record music that way. I’m more comfortable hearing the music as opposed to seeing the music, you know? It freaks me out a little when you go into a studio and there’s a big flatscreen monitor right by the console. You can actually see the sound waves. It freaks me out! The drummer’s like, “Wait, the bass drum – I can see that it’s not lining up perfectly with the bass guitar at this specific point.” It’s like, can’t we just use our ears? Your albums tend to jump between genres. When you started writing songs for Go Fly A Kite, did you make an effort to choose a more singular direction? Sometimes, you can’t really control what the hell kind of song comes down from outer space to you. For me, it might be a rock song or a piano ballad or a country song, and on my earlier records, I’d just put the entire strange collection of songs together. There was this constant process of jumping from one genre to the next. The first album that wasn’t a complete mixture of everything I can do was Changing Horses, which was more of an Americana/country project. I knew that Kite was going to be the rock record that followed Changing Horses, but it’s a mixture of things, too. There are a few folk songs, a sad piano ballad or two ... but the overall feel of it is uptempo. It’s heavy on the electric guitar, heavy on the harmonies and full of the quirky pop thing that I do, you know? I like the quirky pop thing. I do, too, man! I can’t help it.

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Justin Townes Earle: Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now

Stephen Deusner — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:55:53 +0000

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Justin Townes Earle Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now (Bloodshot) [Rating: 3.5 stars] Justin Townes Earle is a ramblin’ man. The son of a hard-touring musician who’s become a hard-touring musician himself, he’s moved from Nashville up to New York, and from there to London, with countless stops and shows in between. But his heart and soul remain rooted in Tennessee and its many musical forms: old-school country, hardscrabble Appalachian folk, rowdy rockabilly, and sturdy rural blues. For his fourth solo album, he traveled – spiritually if not physically – down I-40 to Memphis, to absorb some of the Bluff City’s soul. Many artists have made the pilgrimage before him, but most – including Sheryl Crow, Cyndi Lauper, and Huey Lewis – hew either too closely to local sounds or not closely enough. Earle didn’t hire local soul legends, as Cat Power did for her excellent 2006 album The Greatest, but he does add some slow-burn horns borrowed from Stax and some Beale Street rhythms inspired by W.C. Handy. It’s all grafted onto Earle’s trad-country sound, which hearkens back to a previous era in Tennessee without really leaving the here and now. Perhaps the most obvious shout-out to the city is “Memphis In The Rain,” an upbeat number that thrums with determined energy, thanks to that rippling organ and jumpy horns. Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now doesn’t sound like Memphis, but it does feel like Memphis, which shows some admirable restraint as well as a deep understanding of the city as a crossroads between so many disparate musicians and traditions. And yet, especially for such a restless musician, this collection sounds strangely slight and inert, lacking the impact of 2010’s Harlem River Blues. Earle himself sounds ragged and tired, as if he’s singing after a few sleepless nights. Too often the tempos lag and the music plods uncharacteristically, despite so many compelling musical flourishes: the muted trumpet solo on “Down On The Lower East Side,” the spiky guitar riffs on “Movin’ On,” and especially Bryn Davies’ rambunctious basslines, which sound like horn charts played on an upright. They can’t quite revive “Unfortunately, Anna,” which sounds as lifeless and condescending as a Counting Crows track, and the album ends abruptly with “Movin’ On,” which is not quite the valedictory its title might suggest. But Earle is a frank and careful songwriter, and even when the album drifts, his unflinchingly self-assessing lyrics command attention. Bad behavior has always been a subject in rock and country, yet few artists today are writing with such awareness of the consequences: estrangement from family and friends, creative and professional missed opportunities, romances that are over before they begin, and a generally fatalistic outlook on life. On “Am I That Lonely?” as the horns swell and fade like a sympathetic friend, he hears his father’s music on the radio and wonders if he’d actually welcome a call from his old man. On “Look The Other Way,” he promises a woman – either his actual mother or a lover he refers to as “mama” – that he can change, even though he knows she’s long past caring. Earle knows enough to write about his own demons in terms broad enough that anyone can relate. So when he sings, “Maybe I broke myself a promise that I never intended to keep,” on “Won’t Be The Last Time,” perhaps he intends it as a comment on his recent troubles – the botched show, assault charges, and rehab stint in late 2010 – and perhaps he trusts his listener to grasp the implications of such a confession. Somehow, Earle never comes across as self-absorbed or self-loathing; he neither makes excuses nor judges himself too harshly. What makes Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now such a harrowing, albeit minor, addition to his catalog is how matter-of-factly Earle presents himself. Wherever he goes, he’s both his own worst enemy, but that defiant honesty remains his most compelling trait.

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Crosby, Stills and Nash: Crosby, Stills and Nash

Peter Gerstenzang — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:55:51 +0000

Crosby, Stills and Nash Crosby, Stills and Nash (Audio Fidelity) [Rating: 5 stars] Very few records from that mythic period known as “the ‘60s” have the unique ability to be both time capsule and timeless. The newly-remastered debut disc from Crosby, Stills and Nash, is, unquestionably, one of these rare birds. On one hand there’s the background scenery of the record, on which are painted the main conflicts of that polarized time: the ‘freaks’ versus the ‘straights;’ long hair versus short; who’s ‘holding,’ who isn’t. And why won’t those materialistic, “silver people on the shoreline,” just leave us alone, man. But this 1969 release is also simply one of the most intricately-played, staggeringly-musical rock albums you’ll ever hear. To paraphrase a character in the film Almost Famous, this disc makes you want to shout, ‘Does anyone remember beauty?’ C, S & N’s debut will remind you. Although Crosby and Nash sing here like coke-stoked seraphim, the album belongs to Stephen Stills. With his gorgeously muted electric guitar licks, (as immediately identifiable as Miles Davis’s trumpet playing), his sitar-style acoustic-picking, his burbling bass and Floyd Cramer-style keyboards, Stills is the aural architect of this album. And his songwriting sings; from the rangy, digressive beauty of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” to the country-soul of “49 Bye Byes,” the breadth of musical accomplishment by this former Buffalo Springfield member will simply astonish you. Crosby, Stills, and Nash is heartbreaking for two reasons. Most importantly, for the honest, uncontrived and openhearted sense of purpose that these three future superstars bring to the project. Having left (or been booted out of) their famous, if constricting, bands, Nash and Crosby bring the loosest, jazziest music of their lives to these sessions. Just listen to Graham and David ‘do-do’ their way through Nash’s “Lady of the Island,” like a counter-culture Jobim and Gilberto. And Crosby, a former Byrd, never composed anything as unearthly as “Guinevere,” replete with such spare, eerie imagery, and tunings so full, it sounded like he was playing three 12 string guitars. The other painful aspect of the album is its success and that of its follow-up (Deja Vu), which brought with it enough money, celebrity and drugs to doom the band to ego trips, in-fighting and, mostly inferior, shadow versions of these tunes on future records. This album may have come out in May of ’69. But considering what lay ahead of these guys? Fall – in every sense – was not so very far away. Regardless, Crosby, Stills and Nash emotionally and sonically wipes away all the bad memories and later affectations of its creators; time and the sad changes it brings gets washed away with one listen to this masterpiece. As Croz casually croons a snippet of Robert Johnson in between “Long Time Coming” and “49 Bye Byes,” Stills backs him effortlessly on about six instruments, and Graham tosses in all of his Hollies-like sweetness. Anything seemed possible for these denim-clad hippies back in the 1960s. And even if that didn’t prove to be true, well, that’s okay. To paraphrase a great American writer who spoke for his generation in the 1920s: “It sure was pretty to think so.”

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Jonathan Wilson Feels The Spirit

Davis Inman — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:55:32 +0000

Jonathan Wilson’s studio is on one of those impossibly steep streets in Los Angeles. From the street level, you descend into a tree house-like fortress that seems entirely unconcerned with the modern world. The rooms are full of vintage instruments and analog recording equipment and Wilson, 37 and tall and serene with long brown hair, more inhabits than occupies the space. In the music industry, rarely does success come later in life, but in this and many other things, Wilson seems to be an anomaly. Wilson is the guy behind many of Los Angeles County’s revered modern day jam sessions, a sort of eminence grise of the folk-rock revival sound, whose baby face may be Dawes (Wilson recorded and produced both their albums), but whose legacy includes the now-mythical busts of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young. Originally from North Carolina, Wilson first came to L.A. at age nineteen. He was playing drums in a band, but even then he says his shtick was recording and playing all the instruments. “I’m that dude. I can do an album without anyone else,” he says. After his first West Coast foray, Wilson went back to the South, started a band, and moved into an apartment in a recording studio. Soon the studio’s owner realized that Wilson could play all the instruments for the karaoke backing tracks that the studio did and he didn’t need to hire a full band. “I had a deal with my band and Warner Brothers, but at the same time, my job was to play these songs – we’re talking Bon Jovi, Oasis, John Cougar Mellencamp. At the time I was so bummed about it. But in hindsight, that was the best thing I could be doing, because I learned hundreds of songs — having to dissect them.” Fast forward back to the present. Wilson has finally released his first solo album, Gentle Spirit. Today the L.A. light is pouring into his studio’s wood-paneled, vaulted-ceilinged live room. A stained-glass window behind the drums sends little reflected patterns of light across the room. Wilson leads upstairs to the studio’s control room, where he has the fabled console from Leon Russell’s Shelter Records. On the table in front of us sits a faded Buffy Sainte-Marie songbook. Wilson disappears into another room to find a shirt to wear for a photographer. He sits back down in a chair to discuss his songs. “They are always coming from deeper times of concentration,” he says. “I can’t be in the middle of a day where there’s things happening – phone calls and emails. It’s always done without anyone here. Because once there’s one human factor, it’s not the same. It changes and I can’t be fully immersed in the sound. My personality is always that I’m conscious that someone is downstairs” – like making sure his guests have something to drink, a trait that underscores his compassionate nature. Though he’s rumored to have great stores of unreleased material – including 2007’s Frankie Ray, which was scheduled for release but pulled at the last second – Gentle Spirit is clearly Wilson’s magnum opus. It’s permeated by nature and magic but its message also seems to be about being alone in life. In “Woe Is Me,” he sings, “It took awhile but I finally found that I am on my own.” In another song, he begs a wild woman not to give her heart to a rambler, a theme that seems to recur on the album. The most beautiful moments show Wilson’s close feeling for the natural world. He seems to be a part of the world he describes in “Ballad Of The Pines,” when he sings, “That was the moment when the breeze dashed across the wicked seas and came back as the ballad of the pines.” For a while, though, it seemed Wilson might just be content to sing his songs and let the music industry pass him by. The last song on Gentle Spirit is “Valley Of The Silver Moon,” a tune that features Vetiver’s Andy Cabic and Otto Hauser, and unfolds like a Neil Young slow-burner. It’s about Wilson’s reticence to do what he calls the “peacock ego thing” of being a band frontman. “I’m writing you now from the valley of the nothing moon,” he sings. “I get on pretty well here but I just sit around and hum my tunes.” In 2009, a book came out about Laurel Canyon’s famous musical history, called Canyon Of Dreams. The book closed a chapter for Wilson. Not long after its release, he moved his studio to L.A. and honed in on Gentle Spirit. Wilson says quitting smoking gave him more confidence to sing harmony alongside elder statesmen like Jackson Browne and David Crosby and finally to do his own thing. “It was a cool honor to, not only be in the book, but there’s like a picture of ‘The Cros,’ and Graham, and then I’m there,” Wilson says, gratefully. “But when that came out, I told myself it’s time to go now. It’s not time to be that guy forever – ‘That’s the guy who jams,’” he says, half-laughing. “Well, great, the guy who jams. I want to play some concerts.”

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Dierks Bentley: Home

Jewly Hight — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:55:00 +0000

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Dierks Bentley Home Capitol Nashville [Rating: 3.5 stars] It’s probably best to go on and get this out of the way up front. The type of people who enjoy reading reviews in publications devoted to the art and craft of songwriting – and I’ll lump those of us who do the writing of them in with this group – might find themselves approaching a back-to-mainstream-country Dierks Bentley album that comes on the heels of an artistic-freedom-flaunting Dierks Bentley album with a bit of trepidation. After all, 2010’s Up On The Ridge was an admirable risk, a modern country singer-songwriter’s heady exploration of progressive bluegrass and other acoustic territory, while Home, Bentley’s sixth album in just under a decade, has been framed as his return to radio-friendly music-making – and we connoisseurs do tend to reserve more skepticism for the pursuit of hits than virtually anything else done in the name of art. The thing to keep in mind is that Bentley is among the cream of his generation’s crop when it comes to aiming high artistically and maintaining a connection to country’s past within the present country mainstream. After all, his catalog contains albums like his 2003 self-titled debut, 2005’s Modern Day Drifter and 2006’s Long Trip Alone, albums that presented songs of substance with a distinctly live band feel and actually sold well. We’re used to Bentley’s name appearing in the writing credits for almost all of his songs, including the hits, but he co-wrote just six of the dozen tracks on Home. It’s worth noting how close that is to the songwriting ratio on The Ridge; the most outside-the-box album of his career to date was also the first on which he had a hand in writing slightly less than half the songs. On Bentley’s latest, the writing credits are generously spread around. The two strongest outside songs came from writers who themselves know a thing or two about straddling rootsy and commercial worlds: the wry, durable honky-tonk number “Diamonds Make Babies” (Chris Stapleton was a co-writer on that) and the cozy country-soul-pop duet “When You Gonna Come Around” (by Jamie Hartford and Gary Nicholson). Bentley performs the latter with the dusky-voiced Karen Fairchild of Little Big Town. When it comes to his own songwriting, too, this time the best tracks are the ballads, like “Breath You In” – an expression of all-consuming, almost spiritual sensuality – and the title cut, which he co-wrote with Dan Wilson and longtime collaborator-producer Brett Beavers following last year’s jarring Arizona shootings. There are moments during both when Bentley closes the distance between himself and the listener with a blend of boyish toughness and vulnerability. To be sure, the album also has its share of upbeat songs – pop-rock flavored numbers powered by bright guitar and vocal hooks that have plenty to offer radio, but considerably less to sink your teeth into upon sustained listening, “In My Head” and “Gonna Die Young” to name two. In the past, Bentley’s been known for singing about rambling (a la Waylon), but that’s not what he’s up to here. On this album, it seems he’s begun to wrestle with, but not necessarily succumb to, the settling-down part of male adulthood: discovering that your friends no longer want to go out and party with you like they used to; facing what you’re giving up along with what you’re getting when that engagement ring goes on her finger. So it’ll be interesting to see where he takes it from here. Most telling, though, is “Home,” an important entry in post-post-9/11 country songwriting. Patriotism is a subject closely associated with country music and it’s often been tackled ham-handedly, with all the depth and complexity of a bumper sticker slogan. This song of Bentley’s is a notable exception. Employing symbolism that’s meaningful yet malleable, simple yet eloquent, set to a spacious, billowing melody, he embraces the possibility that many different kinds of people can claim heartfelt ownership of our history-scarred nation. And as it happens, at the time of this writing, the song is climbing Billboard’s Country Songs chart. That’s the kind of broad resonance Bentley is capable of.

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The Doors: L.A. Woman 40th Anniversary Edition

Ryan Reed — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:55:00 +0000

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The Doors L.A. Woman 40th Anniversary Edition (Rhino) [Rating: 4.5 stars] With L.A. Woman, their sixth and final album with mythic frontman Jim Morrison, The Doors submerged almost entirely into a bleary-eyed blues-rock swamp. Their previous effort, 1970’s Morrison Hotel, saw the group steering cautiously toward those waters, but L.A. Woman is downright raw – Ray Manzerek’s colorful, signature Hammond organ is pushed way back in the mix, making more space for Robby Krieger’s drunken slide guitar rave-ups and the beastly thump of newly implanted studio bassist Jerry Scheff. Meanwhile, Morrison sounds grizzly: completely fried, bloated with drugs and ego – like Elvis floundering on-stage in his fat days. Needless to say, L.A. Woman is the most perplexing album in The Doors’ far-too-small discography – certainly not their most tuneful, clearly their least psychedelic, but filled with way more compelling energy and unabashed power than anything else they ever released. And, of course, there are exceptions to all those rules: Though this album is certainly not a hits package, there’s no denying the melodic wonder of “Love Her Madly,” with Morrison’s surprising and subtly shaded vocal and Manzarek’s lounge-y tack piano and Vox organ. “Riders On The Storm” is the album’s lone toe-dip into spacey texture, allowing Manzarek a chance to stretch his legs with his fierce Fender Rhodes arrangement and Morrison with his compelling lyrical imagery. And the surging title track (along with bass-fueled opener “The Changeling” and the oddly compelling “The WASP”) easily earn their place in the classic-rock pantheon with fiery performances and production (courtesy of Bruce Botnick) that frames every sound perfectly. The Doors ended their classic period deeply entrenched in bluesy texture, gazing in the rear-view rather than cruising forward, but with the strength of those previously mentioned tracks, they managed to scrape together another near-classic before Morrison’s untimely death only a few months later. Still, diehards may argue, but there's no overlooking the filler: “Cars Hiss By My Window” gives the album a nice laid-back breather, but the standard blues progression feels second-hand, and Morrison’s living room observations fall flat straight out of the gate; “Been Down So Long” features some nice counter-riffing from Krieger and studio guitarist Marc Benno – and not much else. But The Doors were never strangers to filler, and at least this batch features top-notch playing (There’s truly no underselling Scheff’s deft bass touch). Though this remastered 40th Anniversary Edition tightens and polishes every tone, L.A. Woman isn’t exactly a studio marvel. Morrison’s vocals still feel poorly mixed, fluctuating in volume and clipping into the red on hoarse-voiced screams (like on the title track’s infamous “Mojo Risin’” climax). But regardless, the music’s never sounded better, and the second disc of alternate takes (complete with charming control room banter) is often jaw-dropping, particularly the bouncier alternate “L.A. Woman” (which might actually feature a better Morrison vocal) and “Riders On The Storm,” which shows the band grooving at its most unhinged, with louder storm sound effects and Morrison curiously referencing the theme from Rawhide. It’s both hilarious and sad – the thrilling sound of a band imploding at the hands of its fearless leader.

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