Odds and ends

It's been a month or so since I last posted, so here are some Sunday evening reflections (music-related, of course)....

I've been listening to Tracy Grammer's Book of Sparrows a lot lately. It connected with me for the first time in a powerful way this past March, while Denise and I were in the car, on the way to New Jersey. The scaled-down arrangement of Dave Carter's "Gypsy Rose" is the highlight, a definite improvement on the version she recorded for Flower of Avalon. The unreleased Dave Carter song "Lord of the Buffalo" is a gem. And, on our drive from the outer banks of North Carolina to Norfolk, Virginia, I found myself tearing up at Tracy's version of Jackson Browne's "In the Shape of a Heart." The CD is 7 songs long, about 30 minutes of music; those three songs, plus Tom Russell's "Blue Wing" and Simon and Garfunkle's "April, Come She Will" are all great. There's also a song called "Travis John," which is (a bit obliquely) about a boy killed in war on foreign soil. I think Tracy Grammer has become a better and better singer over time, or maybe it's just me. I've never disliked her, but I've never liked her as much as I do now. She'll be playing Falcon Ridge this year, and I can hardly wait.

What else? Some of the greats have new material out. The new Neil Young album is very good. It's full of loud, toneless crunch, and there are at least three really good songs, two of which bookend the CD. I'm not sure it's quite at the level of Living with War, although Christgau disagrees with me. I like it better than the new Dylan album, which has some great hooks here and there (like on "Jolene") but doesn't connect with me as well as Modern Times or "Love and Theft" or Time Out of Mind.

I recently bought a used copy of John Hiatt's Crossing Muddy Waters, parts of which I heard for the first time on WFUV in New York. The opening three songs are all excellent, and so is "Gone," about halfway through the record. Still trying to listen to the other songs to see what's there. Also bought a used Flatlanders CD, but I haven't listened to it yet.

I've been thinking a lot about Jack Hardy lately. I'll be sure to write more about his stuff in the weeks to come. Excited to see that Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright will be playing some shows together on the east coast this fall. I've already got tickets for their show at the Calvin Theater in Northampton.

What your favorite Grateful Dead song says about you

Also on the topic of the Grateful Dead:

http://www.slate.com/id/2217149/

Ani Difranco @ The Colonial Theater, Pittsfield, MA, April 21st, 2009

For most of the beautiful drive to Pittsfield, up in the Berkshires, I listened to a Grateful Dead channel on the satellite radio that came with my rental car. One of the things that I learned about the Dead when I was in high school was that, from night to night, their sets changed. They would play different songs from night to night, and they would play the same songs in different ways. I can remember rifling through the pages of Relix magazine, looking for anything Jefferson Airplane or Neil Young related and, instead, looking through Grateful Dead setlists, marveling at how many different songs the same six people knew how to play together. And they seemed to be touring constantly! Over the years, I learned about various band personnel changes and, now that the Dead are touring again, I have been reading stories in the New York Times about the degree of Deadhead sophistication when it comes to understanding what different periods in the history of the band reveal about changes in the band’s music.

A quick perusal of www.onherown.net reveals many of the same things about Ani Difranco. Her sets don’t vary quite as much as the Dead’s—whose do?—but she and her band mix things up quite a bit. And her sound, like the Dead’s, has somehow managed to simultaneously change while still being unmistakably Ani. Since she and her bands haven’t jammed with the same degree of improvisatory abstraction as the Grateful Dead—the Dead were never, ever as tight as an Ani band at its loosest—there isn’t as much variation between performances as you’d hear in Dead recordings. Ani Difranco, after all, cares too much about songs to mess with them too much; for the Dead, the songs were simply an excuse to jam. But for the faithful, the small details with which Ani and her bandmates infuse performances of familiar material are little treasures, adding new shades of meaning or, for me, eliciting joyous smiles at the band’s musicality. Oh, and one more thing…both the Dead and Ani’s various bands are anchored by a singer-guitarist of enormous power and charisma. The late Jerry Garcia, I am told, interacted less and less with audiences as the years went by. Ani Difranco, on the other hand, is conversational and informal.

I was thinking about the Dead and Difranco together for the entire ride to Pittsfield, and then the performance verified everything I had been thinking. After greeting us, Mr. Difranco played the opening lick to “Shy,” and the four-piece band made the song sound both different from the versions on Not a Pretty Girl (1995) and Living in Clip (1997) and the various other live recordings I own, and somehow the same. It occurred to me in the middle of the second song, “78%H2O,” that this is my favorite band in Ani’s history. Perhaps that has more to do with me than with her, but Allison Miller and Mike Dillon and Todd Sickafoose make her music jump and groove and careen forward with a very cool mixture of tightness and lively energy that makes every single song raise the levels on my internal emotional thermometer. Even when I found myself listening more to the music than to the words, I found immense satisfaction in everything. And there was, of course, the charismatic stage presence. Ani talked about all the new songs she’d be playing for us. After we cheered, she told us that “this isn’t one of them,” before ripping into “Manhole,” to our collective delight. It was most satisfying night of live music I’ve experienced in months.

Last night, Ani’s set was focused on newer material. There were four or five songs that have yet to be recorded, including “Promiscuity,” which she told us that she’d written after compiling the material for the Cannon (2007) anthology, which revealed to her, she said, how much she’d lied to herself over the years. There was also a wedding song, performed on solo guitar, and a song about appreciating one’s own life, set to a very danceable Latin rhythm. There was “Here for Now,” a great song from Evolve (2003) that I’d forgotten about, until I felt it shake my hand hello from the stage. She talked about Katrina and New Orleans before and after “Red Letter Year,” atomic energy before and after “The Atom,” and Barack Obama before and after the unrecorded “November 4th, 2008.” There was also “Good Luck” and “Smiling Underneath” from Red Letter Year (2008), both songs sounding better in front of an audience than they do on record.

While picking out a particular high point from the show is tough, there was a definitely a pivotal moment in the second half of the set. Ani announced that she had been invited to attend Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday party at Madison Square Garden, before performing the song that she had been asked to perform at the party: “Which Side Are You On?” She updated the lyrics a bit, and the band piped in to harmonize. She also invited us to sing along, reminding us that, after all, this was folk music. And from there, she dedicated an intense version of “Alla This” to Utah Philips. And finally, after telling us that we’d warmed up our singing voices, she pulled out one of the warmest of Difranco oldies (what she would call “a crusty old one”), “Both Hands,” to end the set.

We screamed for more, of course, and we got more: the percussion-heavy arrangement of “Every State Line,” plus the biggest sing-along moment of the show, “Gravel,” and, finally, a gentle “Hypnotized” to send us home.

I listened to more of the Grateful Dead on the way home. Heard a version of “Sugar Magnolia” that rocked. It went on for about 15 or 20 minutes. Hmm. Anybody ready for a half hour jam on “Shamless”…? Thought not.

Odds and Ends

I've got another Ani Difranco show coming up in a couple of days at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, MA. That's about an hour's drive away. I'm pretty excited about it. I've yet to be disappointed by one of Mr. Difranco's performances: over the years, they've ranged from pretty good to fantastic.

I recently discovered--by accident, while surfing the net looking for something else--that Neil Young's newest album came out. Of course, I shelled out the bucks for it. This is probably the one and only popular recording artist whose product I'll pay for, sight unseen and sound unheard. That said, I'll probably pass on the Neil Young Archives. Much as I love the guy's music, this seems like overexpensive overkill to me. Anyway, the new one is called Fork in the Road. It's a rocker, but without Crazy Horse...more like Living with War than Greendale or Broken Arrow. It was recorded with the rhythm section of Rick Rosas and Chad Cromwell. They are more of a straight-up rock band than Crazy Horse, but the crude, offhand crunch of the guitars sounds a lot like Neil and the Horse. Pay attention to the rhythm to hear the difference. I've only listened to it a couple of times but, so far, I like it. I'll post something more substantial about it sometime soon.

The Two Man Gentleman Band @ The Iron Horse, March 13th, 2009

The original plan was to stay late at the Iron Horse this evening for their free concert: The Two Man Gentleman Band (2MGB hereafter, www.thetwogentlemen.com) and The Primate Fiasco (www.primatefiasco.com). But about 24 hours ago, I decided to drive down to NYC on Saturday, which nearly moved me to abandon the whole night. Then I decided to go after all, and the schedule cooperated: I really only wanted to see 2MGB anyway, and they wound up opening. It turns out that The Primate Fiasco is a local group, and they like to bring outsiders into town for gigs like this one. And if I weren't going to drive to the city, I would have stuck around to hear their whole set--they are a kind of psychedelic, dixieland jazz ensemble (that actually sounds pretty appealing), with drums, clarinet, banjo, guitar, and tuba. I listened to their first song, a jam on "Sweet Georgia Brown," and split.

But, before then, the 2MGB worked their magic. At around 10:15, they hit the stage with a sign reading "Free Kazoos." True to their word, their lead singer, Andy Bean placed a box full of the things at the foot of the stage and, before you knew it, the entire place was armed and ready. By the way, I have never seen the Iron Horse so packed as it was this evening. Amazing the number of people who will attend a free show! I'm surprised it wasn't a fire hazard. I mean really: the staff had pushed or taken away all the tables to clear the floor for dancing and the crowd, mostly college-aged, filled the space and was seen still jiggling around by the time I left the establishment.

So, on to business. I know of the 2MGB by way of Matt Winters, who put a song of theirs, "The War of Northern Aggression" on one of his New Years CDs (see here for a video of a performance of that one). They are--yes, you guessed it--a duo of male musicians. Their shtick is that of the conservative, depression-era gentlemen. They are anti-prohibition, they praise the fat man, William Howard Taft, and they compare a breakup to the War of Northern Aggression. Beyond that, they get pretty silly, as the Iron Horse audience quickly learned. The opening number was a saucy little thing called "When Your Lips Are Playing My Kazoo." Songs like "Prime Numbers" and "Fancy Beer" yielded some raucous singalongs, and lead man Andy Bean encouraged us to play our kazoos. Which we didn't do very often. People were much more interested in dancing, although lots of the dancers--the women in particular--picked up on the gleefully filthy lyrics and found themselves laughing pretty hard as they shook and shimmied.

What else? There was "The Rabbit Foot Stomp" from their newest album, Drip Dryin’ with The Two Man Gentlemen Band (2009), about making meat out of your pet rabbit. "Drip Dryin'," about the newest dancing sensation, which Andy Bean demonstrated for us in the middle of the song. There was "Sloppy Drunk," very danceable, and "I've Been Drinking," which featured the other Gentleman, "The Councilman" Fuller Condon. In between songs, the rapport between the two consisted of quietly homoerotic gestures by way of Mr. Bean, who would reach out and stroke The Councilman's bass and touch his fingers, as he spoke affectionately of his bandmate and their life on the road together. The Councilman responded by looking nervous. The 2G were dressed in lovely suits and hats, and The Council wore a spiffy bowtie.

The 2MGB played for about 40 minutes. Andy Bean played 4-string banjo and a little guitar, along with a Jesse Fuller-style set-up, including cowbell, cymbals, horn, and so forth. "The Councilman" Fuller Condon played stand-up bass and sang harmonies. Andy played lead kazoo and The Councilman played back-up kazoo ("tenor kazoo," he protested, when Andy Bean introduced him, prompting him to make the correction).

I had wanted to say hello to the gentlemen after the show and maybe offer them a lift back to Queens tomorrow, but I lost them in the crowd. It turns out that they are making their way to Boston tomorrow, anyway.

Martin Sexton @ Town Hall, NYC, February 14th, 2009

Denise and I arrived at Town Hall a little after 9:00 for the second of Martin Sexton’s two nights at the venue. Good vibes were in the air; at the restaurant we ate at before the show, we encountered a couple half of whom told us that she had been to see Martin Sexton fifteen times—whoa! While I was in the restroom, she proceeded to ask Denise if I was a big fan…and was I obsessed? You know, like all the Martin Sexton fans?

Well, I wouldn’t say that. But I saw him in Newport once or twice. And I shelled out the money to see him at Irving Plaza on a cold night toward the end of 2001, thinking I’d meet up with a certain young woman there (didn’t work out). And this past summer, his performance was the perfect nightcap to Saturday night at Falcon Ridge, the best part of a day of performances that included Chris Smither, Dar Williams, Eddie from Ohio, and a startlingly fun set from The Nields.

Why so great? Martin Sexton is a man not of songs or arrangements or guitar pyrotechnics, but of voice. His natural instrument is a wonder to behold, an enormously gritty, elastic, soulful thing that bounced and soared around Town Hall Saturday night like lightning in a bottle. He roared and moaned and scatted and crooned and whispered and shouted and hollered and generally raised the roof with his voice. And it was clear from the opening song, “Diner” from the Black Sheep (1996) album, that he could play the jazzy guitar parts to set his voice off just right. That song was relatively tame. But “Hallelujah” (of no relation to the Leonard Cohen song of the same name) enabled the man to flex his pipes, and his voice let off enormous torrents of sound, much to the delight of an audience that cheered and clapped and, when the performer asked for it, echoed his hollering.

It would be unfair to say that he isn’t much of a songwriter but, I’ve got to say, a number of songs suffered from the sound in the room. Maybe it wasn’t the room, but there was a lot of reverberation in the vocals, which made it difficult to make out what he was singing on a number of occasions. I noticed that when he stepped back from the microphone, the problem vanished. Anyway, that was too bad. “In the Journey” is a great song, one of several great road songs Marty has written (the others being “Glory Bound” and “Freedom of the Road”). “Hallelujah” is a good one, and so is “13 Step Boogie.” “The Beast in Me” is funky and sexy. The set concluded with “Gypsy Woman,” not one of my favorites on record, but it sounded great from where I was sitting.

Denise marveled at the voice too. Or, as she pointed out, the several voices, since it really sounded like he had multiple singing (and speaking) voices. She also pointed out his musicality and his soul and his coolness vis-à-vis the audience. It sometimes seemed that he was really singing for himself. I recently read a review of one of his albums on iTunes that made that point too. True: at times, the audience participation moments seemed mechanical, as if the performer didn’t really care whether they happened or not.

I learned from listening to WFUV a few years ago that Marty had also performed with the band Assembly of Dust from time to time, and I heard an in-studio performance from them that was pretty good. Among other things, they played Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” with Martin on vocals. And I seem to recall hearing, either during the following interview or in some other context, that he was raised on classic rock. So it was cool, but unsurprising, to hear Marty intersperse themes and lyrics from old rockers, both canonical (U2’s “With or Without You” and, played in its entirety, The Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends”) and non (Led Zep’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You” and “That’s the Way”), along with a classic blues ballad (B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone”).

The stage was austerely decorated. Just an amplifier (with a lava lamp on top), two microphones, all on a plain-looking carpet. No band, no pretensions of any kind, although one of the two mikes was, Sexton told us, about 55 years (“or 65? Something like that.”). He used that second mike for some distortion effects, which were used to particularly impressive effect on “With a Little Help from My Friends.”
He sent us out into the night with a short medley comprising the opening verses of “Amazing Grace” and “America the Beautiful.” It was like a lullaby, or the gentle breeze that seems so especially welcome after the raging storm.

The Demolition String Band @ The Rodeo Bar, January 25th, 2009

Up until yesterday, my acquaintance with The Demolition String Band was limited to their honky-tonk cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” Also, Matt Winters once introduced me to Boo, their lead guitar and banjo player. In fact, that introduction also took place at the Rodeo Bar, a small, fun bar with a tiny space for live music in the back and free peanuts available up front. Matt, a few of his friends, and I had been there to catch Marshall Crenshaw a couple of years ago, and we bumped into Boo on the way out.

Denise, her son Julián, and I saw that the Demolition Band were going to play a special Sunday afternoon show at The Rodeo Bar, and we decided that morning that we would attend. We arrived at about quarter after 3:00; a bit late, although I discovered that the band had actually begun a bit late, so I doubt we missed any more than 10 minutes, maximum, of the performance. The (advertised) theme of the program, aside from its child-friendliness, was Americana music, by the great American songwriters in what we now call the folk and country music traditions: Woody Guthrie, Stephen Foster, Leadbelly, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and so forth. Given that this was an afternoon out with Julián, his enjoyment (or at least contentment) was crucial. Fortunately, he was into it.

And so was I. First and foremost, the song selection was choice. “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain When She Comes,” “I’ll Fly Away,” “Cotton Fields” (introduced as a Leadbelly song; I hadn’t known that, although I did know that it hadn’t originated with Creedence Clearwater Revival, whose version of the song I was most familiar with), Johnny and June Carter’s “Jackson” (one of my personal favorite moments of the show), “Lovebug,” “I Come from Alabama with my banjo on my knee,” and some others that I’ve forgotten. I was particularly delighted with the Woody Guthrie selections: “Union Maid,” one of his two greatest union-themed songs (the other being the much gloomier, not very family-oriented “1913 Massacre”), “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You” (probably the best-known of his “Dust Bowl Ballads”), and “This is Your Land” (inspired by the recent performance on Capitol Hill, led by the venerable Pete Seeger, and featuring the verses about private property and exclusion that are not taught in school).

An interesting moment came approximately half way into the performance when the band’s frontwoman, Elena, called a special guest to the stage: Hank Williams. A voice-over announced his appearance on a radio show, and the great country singer walked to the stage and greeted the audience as if he were performing on the radio circa 1950, complete with a medicine advertisement. After the greeting, he launched into a medley of his hits, beginning with “Jambalaya” and “Hey Good Lookin’,” before moving through “Move It on Over,” “Why Don’t You Love Me,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” and a few others that I can’t remember. After the medley, he did “Lovesick Blues,” took a bow, and left. It turns out that this was the actor who plays Hank Williams in the off-Broadway show Lost Highway, based on the life of Hank Williams.

The band was sharp. Basically, the set-up was four-piece bluegrass, with Boo doubling on guitar and banjo and Elena on guitar and mandolin, with a turn on banjo too (clawhammer, though; she left the more traditional picking to Boo). The fiddler soloed sweetly and often. The bass player was content to go unnoticed (although Denise pointed out his resemblance to Columbia sociologist Herbert Gans).

I wish I had caught the name of the waiter at the Rodeo Bar who was serving the patrons in the little section of the place where the music was happening. He was clearly very busy, and he did his job with a smile. When I asked if they had hot chocolate, he assured me that they did with a tone of reassurance mixed with pride, and I could not help but smile back at him. He served drinks to the band, he covered the couple of dozen parents and kids in attendance, and he bashfully pumped his fist when the band recognized his good work.

I was happy to see a nice turnout for the show. We arrived not long before the performance area had filled up a bit; not to capacity, but a nice bunch nevertheless. We sat very close to the band’s fiddle player’s wife and seven week old daughter; Denise shared a few words with her. I chatted with her a bit as well, as Denise and Julián made their way up to the stage after the show to take a closer look at the instruments. A few children were a bit rambunctious; at one point, a couple of boys sitting not far behind us were screaming about something, at another point, a boy approached the stage with a peanut launcher for no other reason than to shoot a few peanuts onto the stage.