i bought this on the strength of buddy miller’s name, plus the line up of artists he put together. i briefly remember some mention in the description about being recorded on a ship, but it wasn’t until i opened up the liner notes did i truly appreciate the story behind the creation of this recording. unbeknownst to me, there is a cruise ship that sets sail every year featuring a plethora of americana artists on a week long excursion into the caribbean.
apparently buddy has been involved for a while, and in the last two years has taken over one of the lounges and turned it into a studio to record material and broadcast to his sirius xm outlaw country program. here we have 11 tracks featuring recent cruise attendees. we have shawn colvin doing ‘wild horses’, lucinda williams doing gram parson’s ‘hickory wind’, and kris kristofferson doing his own ‘sunday morning coming down’. brandi carlisle and the lone bellow do prine’s ‘angel from montgomery’, kacey musgraves puts her own spin on buck owen’s ‘love’s gonna live here’, and richard thompson covers ‘wedding bells’. buddy duets on almost all of them, and the back up musicians are stellar. the next ship sails in january, and i put myself on the mailing list.
this is a greatly anticipated release from the group. it has been a favorite of the collectors for quite some time, but for whatever reason has never made it on the dave’s or dick’s picks release choices. perhaps because it is partially flawed on a couple of levels. the first clue is the mixing issues on the opening song, ‘bertha’. all issues were cleared up about two thirds through the song, and by the time they got to the second song (mexicali blues), they had it right. this is a story of a show in the middle of the ‘wall of sound’ 1974 tour, when the band was at a creative peak but also struggling with the pressure of their fame.there was also the additional stress of managing the massive crew that was necessary to put together the immense structure of their cutting edge sound system.
the recording quality is solid. phil was probably the member most enamored with the ‘wall of sound’, and he is on top of his game here. he is simply on fire for the whole show. to a large degree the same could be said for keith. they are both up in the mix, and rightly so. the first set, other than the previously mentioned bertha, is fairly flawless. the ‘deal’, highlighted below, is a good taste of the overall feel. an early ‘scarlet begonias’ has a garcia solo that is on another level. it ends with a long ‘playing in the band’ (maybe five minutes too long).
phil comes on with ned lagin in the intermission for an interesting ‘sea stones’.
and then we head to the second set, where it really starts to get special. it opens with a good batch of standards – ‘brown eyed women’, ‘me and my uncle’, jack straw’, and then eventually goes to another level heading into ‘weather report suite’. halfway through the latter, and while they segue into ‘spanish jam’, you will hear some of the more inspired dead improvisations. they are all admittedly jazz fans, and this showcases their trends towards that genre. one can hear chick corea laced jazz fusion elements, and bill’s drum work during this set is a keen example of why i have always believed he is one of the most underrated drummers, period. they string this over into’ eyes of the world’, and then bring it to a crashing halt for an exquisite’china doll’. the ballad is so stripped down that you can hear a beer bottle roll across the floor at the 3:30 mark. ‘one more saturday night’ ends the show.
good stuff. great show. not perfect, but then none of their shows are. it just goes with the territory with this band.
update: hat tip to boot for the heads up on the rolling beer bottle. please see the comments section below for his thoughts on this release, specifically the ‘spanish jam’ section.
i just love this album. do me a favor. order this. when you get it, put aside some time and get yourself a good bottle of bourbon. pour a healthy bit of that bourbon over ice in a tumbler, and then slip this album on in a room where you can listen up good. this girl can sing, and her band knows how to get behind her in a simplified but organically country way. there is not a mediocre cut on this album. check out ‘needle and thread’ below. i first got turned on to her stuff when i got her 2011 release ‘queen of the minor key’, and then quickly picked up her 2010 tribute to loretta lynn, ‘butcher holler’. she is coming to my favorite venue here on her current tour of this release, and i plan on being there.
“Needle and Thread” is about the mountain town where I spent a lot of time as a child: Idaho City, Idaho. It boasts a population of about 450 these days, though some maps list it as a ghost town.” “My family has some land up there. It’s mostly timber, dirt and rocks. Both Idaho City and the land around it have certainly seen better days. It was once the capitol of the Northwest — during the Gold Rush — but the miners took most of the gold out of it, and then it burned down twice. We love it though.
it was about this time two years ago that derek trucks announced that he would no longer be playing with the allman brothers, presumably to concentrate his efforts on his own band. legend has it that his name is one of the inspirations for the band name derek and the dominoes (his uncle is a drummer for the allman brothers). his wife susan is simply one of the flat out best blues singers around today. this is their most recent effort. if you are already a fan of the band, then this is an easy decision. it is worth the pickup. spend the extra to get the bonus version, as it has an extra disc that is worth it for the three live songs at the end – specifically the tribute back to the ‘layla’ album he is named after. david hidalgo from los lobos joins the band for a ripping version of ‘keep on growing’ .
it has almost been a year since i first launched redeyegin. it has been fun, and i truly appreciate all the people who have been following, commenting, and sharing. it was well past time to revisit the structure of the site and improve a number of issues i had been having. my primary objective was to enhance the experience for the visitor, and above all, make it easy to follow the site and my postings. that is the purpose, after all- to share my findings in the music world with people who hopefully find it interesting – and i felt that aspect of the site was not going well as i had hoped. the links to follow – email, facebook and twitter – were not easy to find. donna witter is a friend of mine who does web consulting, and she has done a great job fixing my issues and getting it to be exactly what i currently envision. please take it for a test drive and give any feedback in the new suggestion box. if you do like the site, please consider sharing it with a few friends. again, that is the whole point of my little endeavor. enjoy.
redeyegin 