the last act that john prine signed to his ‘oh boy’ record label before he died was a fellow by the name of arlo mckinley. arlo, a native of cincinnati, is a veteran of the kentucky/ohio/west virginia music scene, much like a few of the recent success stories like tyler childers, sturgill simpson, and a fellow i wrote about recently – ian noe.
he released his first album in 2014, and has been working on his second one here for a few years. recorded in the legendary sam phillips studio in memphis, produced by matt-ross spang (prine, isbell, margo price, etc.), and surrounded by some of nashville’s best studio musicians, arlo delivers one of my favorite albums of the year so far.
he comfortably distills country and folk to use as his palette to reflect on good times and bad times, broken relationships, and tales of addiction in the underbelly of the midwest.
when prine saw him for the first time during a showcase event at a small venue in nashville, he performed ‘bag of pills’, a song that had been in his repertoire for a few years. this song, as well as a few others on this collection, remind me of isbell’s work on the same topic. one of my favorites is a little honky tonk nugget called ‘she’s always around’, and it took me a couple times through it to realize that ‘she’ was not actually a woman, but rather a narcotic that was always there when he was vulnerable (much like neil young’s ‘old laughing lady’ wasn’t a woman either).
the whole album just has a natural feel to it, as if you had known some of these songs all your life. he has a distinctive voice, the songs are expertly crafted, and the production is supportive and impeccable.
if you are a fan of any of the artists i have mentioned above, then i am going to ask you to trust me on this one and just buy it. this is a really tough time to make your national debut, and i think this guy deserves a shot.
we lost one of my favorite singer songwriters over the weekend. i think the first album i ever got of his was 2010’s ‘harlem river blues’, and i have been hooked ever since. unfortunately i never got to see him live. some say that in order to be a good blues singer you have to live the blues. i don’t necessarily believe that, but it could possibly be true of justin. he certainly led a troubled life, and we may eventually find out that it led to his early demise. i hope that turns out not to be true. regardless, he was a great story teller, and he attached all types of musical styles to that prose – blues, swing, country, folk, you name it. i have pretty much everything he ever released, and they were always well done and enduring. he grew up in his father’s shadow, but, as i have said here before, i think he is a better songwriter than the old man. if you are not familiar with his work, i think last year’s release, ‘saint of lost causes’ was some of his best, but the aforementioned ‘harlem river blues’ is also a good launching point.
just another bullet point to add to this already shitty year. he was such a huge talent. it is a tremendous loss to his family and the musical community. the family suggested on his instagram post that we listen to his ‘looking for a place to land’ today, in his memory.
yes, this is jason isbell playing in his band on the letterman show:
‘troubled days are behind me now and i know they’re gonna let me in’
i was having a cocktail with a friend of mine the other day and the subject of non satellite commercial radio came up and the lack of good quality music there these days. my comment in reply to her was something like, ‘that is not measure of whether there is actually great music out there, but rather the nature of the radio business these days’. my contention is that things have never been better in regards to musical choices. you just have to seek it out. along those lines, here are 6 albums i picked up in the last few weeks.
lilly hiatt – ‘walking proof’
source – outlaw country sirius xm
one of my favorite songwriters of all time is john hiatt. here we have a great album by one of his daughters, lilly. this has actually been out for a while now, and i knew it was out there, but i can’t give you a good explanation of why i delayed. if you consider taking a flyer on any of these selections today, i would ask you to strongly consider this one. it would be unfair to compare her songwriting to her father, but i think she holds her own. i am sure if you were to ask him he would be damn proud. and she has a great voice.
pretenders – ‘hate for sale’
source – american songwriter magazine
this ageless band has put together a great new addition to their collection. chrissie has never written or sounded better, and martin chambers still brings it on drums. i first saw her when she returned to her hometown at blossom music center in cuyahoga falls in 1981 right before i went off to college. loved her then, still do.
margo price – ‘that’s how rumors get started’
source – pitchfork magazine
i was an early adopter on margo, and i posted on her first album before she became well known. i wasn’t nearly as enamored of her second album, as i think her success and political posturing got to her head. on this one she steers away somewhat from her nashville roots and gets a little seventies rock on us. sturgill simpson produces, and the songs are well done and varied in styles. i have seen a number of reviews give comparisons to latter era fleetwood mac and stevie nicks, and there is some merit to that. however, i think margo is a better singer. she easily tackles all the material here vocally
gillian welch and dave rawlings – ‘all the good times’
source – reader dave c. from jersey
somewhat of a quarantine session, gillian and dave set up an old reel to reel in their house and laid down ten cover tracks of some of their favorite songs by artists such as prine, dylan, norman blake and a few others. the version of prine’s ‘hello in there’ might be the best i have ever heard. here we have elizabeth cotton’s classic ‘oh babe it ain’t no lie’.
jerry garcia and john kahn – ‘garcialive, volume 14’
source – jerrygarcia.com
tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of jerry’s untimely passing. i am sure i will get in a retrospective mood sometime soon this weekend, and this may be part of my soundtrack. here jerry and his longtime garcia band bassist john kahn present a short acoustic set in a small venue in the heart of new york city. the crowd is part of the show here, up in the mix and egging these guys on. billy strings does the liner notes and goes into great length on how he first got turned on to jerry by listening to his bluegrass work with david grisman, and then gives great descriptions of the twelve songs presented here. i really miss jerry. the world would be a better place if he were still around.
the texas gentleman – ‘floor it!!!’
source – american songwriter magazine
as they used to say in monty python, ‘and now for something completely different’. a bunch of texas studio musicians who have also been part of backup bands for country artists like kris kristofferson and george strait, among many others, these guys just put out their second studio album, and it is highly interesting. if that description gives you a notion of what kind of music they would bring, you would likely be totally wrong. often when i have trouble explaining or categorizing an artist’s sound, i usually find it to be worth the time. and that has never been more true than with this hour long tribute to the pop and rock bands of the seventies. you will here glimpses of little feat, steely dan, the meters, solo mccartney, randy newman, leon russell and so on. not for everyone, but if that sounds interesting to you, give it a spin.
as i have been saying for months now, it has never been more important to support our musicians out there. try out a few of these.
this month marks the fiftieth anniversary of what could arguably be considered the grateful dead’s most important and popular studio album, ‘workingman’s dead’. of course, ‘american beauty’, also released later in 1970, was maybe as important and certainly as popular. but after listening to both all the way through back to back like i did yesterday, for the first time in a long time, i will make two points. the first is that you could almost consider them to be a double album that just happened to be released individually, the second being that the argument as to which is better is like asking me which one of my twin daughters is more beautiful. it is a question that does not need an answer.
but there is no question that ‘workingman’s dead’ is a demarcation point for the band both commercially and artistically. i also think that it is one of the albums that was at the forefront of the burgeoning movement to what gram parson’s called ‘cosmic american music’, and would lead to what we would eventually reference as ‘americana’. with neil young and bob dylan integrating country influences in their recordings, and the band going even further than that, the dead were also finding their calling in this regard. bob weir had been a huge student of the bakersfield sound and had been incorporating country classics into the set lists. but more importantly, the songwriting duo of garcia/hunter were becoming obsessively productive in this period and lent their own twist to the country influences.
to say that this is a departure from their previous studio offering, ‘aoxomoxoa’, would be an understatement. the psychedelic underpinnings of that session are now entirely absent, the focus now being on songwriting, craftsmanship, and stacked vocal harmonies. it has often been observed that it is not a coincidence that the detail paid to harmonies was happening at the same time they were doing some session work with david crosby. there is likely some truth to that, but crosby himself, not one who tends to be humble in his opinions, contends that they mostly took it upon themselves to add that element to their new sound. it was very much a mutual admiration thing. i follow crosby on twitter, and someone once asked him ‘of all the people who are gone, who do you miss the most?’. his one word answer was ‘garcia’.
of the eight songs, seven of them were in the set list rotation for the rest of their career, the exception being pigpen’s ‘easy wind’. a great song, but it was distinctively his own and when he left the band two years later, i don’t think they ever tried it again.
so what is special about the 50th anniversary edition? in regards to the original album, nothing substantial, in my opinion. they simply remastered the original tracks but there are no ‘alternate takes’ or unissued material. ‘mason’s children’ was recorded during these sessions, and they played it live quite a bit in this period, but we get nothing here.
what is of substantial interest is that they tacked on a complete show from 2/21/71 at the capitol theatre in port chester ny. as a few friends will know, when i first heard about this i had mixed emotions. i was happy as i wanted to hear more of this rather legendary six night run at this venue, but disappointed because i had been hoping for a few years now that they might release the whole run as a box set. most of the shows had been considered lost until they came back into the band’s archives with the return of the ‘betty boards’ about 4-5 years back. the second night (2/19/71) was released by the band in 2007 as ‘three from the vault’, but the rest of the tapes were missing. this run is significant for a number of reasons, most notably that mickey left the band abruptly after the first show, never to come back for years. you can hear bobby address this fact in his comments in the second set when someone in the crowd asks about his whereabouts. kreutzmann adjusts quite well, and really doesn’t miss a beat (pun partially intended). a great example of this is his work on the aforementioned ‘easy wind’. on the album version, the two drummers turn in quite possibly one of their best dual efforts in the studio, but here billy tackles it all on his own, and nails it.
the other significant aspect is that the show features favorites from both ‘workingman’s’ and ‘american beauty’, as well as new material from bobby and jerry’s new solo records. we also get ‘me and bobby mcgee’, just a few weeks after janis joplin’s cover of kris kristofferson’s classic had hit the airwaves. it was on her album ‘pearl’, which was released posthumously after her untimely death. they were all great friends, and i have always contended that this was one of the best duos that jerry and bobby ever did together (although this might not be the best version), and you can hear the ache in their voices. jerry also turns in a great ‘bird song’, which is robert hunter’s tribute to janis (‘all i know is that she sang a little while and then flew on’).
so, in a nutshell, get this only if you have an interest in the live show. i contend that it is worth the price for that. but you may not. i will likely have more to say on this subject when they do the 50th package for ‘american beauty’, but until then, a little pig:
as we head towards the midpoint of the summer, here are a few things that i have been listening to that may potentially be suitable to sonically adorn any post solstice activities you may be contemplating.
ray lamontagne – ‘monovision
his best release in years, this one takes him back to the strengths that drew me to him in the first place – organic, soulful songs that pay homage to some artists we like in common. ‘misty morning rain’ has an ‘astral weeks’ feel to it, and the opening to ‘rocky mountain healin’ will remind listeners of neil young’s ‘long may you run’. ray produced, engineered, wrote and played everything. at first i felt it might have limited the spontaneity of it, but repeated listenings have changed my mind.
blackberry smoke – ‘live from capricorn studios’
the legendary capricorn studios in macon georgia were recently totally restored to it’s original configuration. at one point in the mid seventies nearly every important southern rock band laid some tracks down there, including a local band that made it big, the allman brothers. here blackberry smoke pays tribute to some of them by covering six tracks with some guests. also comes with a dvd. all proceeds go to a covid fund that benefits musicians and venues. here is a classic from wet willie, with jimmie hall on lead vocals:
corb lund – ‘agricultural tragic’
i first heard of this guy when hayes carll played one of their cowritten songs at the last show i saw of him. outstanding songwriter – clever, authentic, and often quite humorous.
sarah jarosz – ‘world on the ground’
if you follow modern bluegrass at all, you likely know of sarah. she is an extremely talented multi instrumentalist, one of the best clawhammer banjo players on the planet. she also happens to be an extremely good songwriter, and it is the latter that is on display here. legendary producer and musician jon leventhal collaborates with her on this one, and what we get is a ten song cycle of character sketches, most of them slower paced. this goes well with a glass of wine at the end of a quiet evening.
neil young – ‘homegrown’
another one of neil’s ‘lost’ albums, this one was mostly recorded in 1974, and was supposed to follow ‘on the beach’. but much of the material was about his relationship with actress carrie snodgrass, and that was deteriorating at the time. neil reportedly found it too painful to finish the project and released ‘tonight’s the night’ instead. neil fans will recognize ‘love is a rose’ and ‘star of bethlehem’, which were eventually issued on his ‘decades’ greatest hits album. they may also recognize ‘white line’ by the crazy horse version off of ‘ragged glory’. here it is presented as a duet with robbie robertson. there are a couple of clunkers in here, but the serious neil fan will want to check this out.
jerry garcia band – ‘garcialive volume 13’
when the e street band wasn’t touring, clarence clemons would often hang out on the west coast and jam around. he played a few times with the dead, and he and jerry struck up a friendship, not only musically but personally. in 1989 jerry convinced him to tour with his band, and here we have a complete sample of that tour. the unlikely pairing clearly enjoy the format, and they push each other to the limit. i can’t point to a song from this show that approaches mediocrity. the soloing gets a little over the top sometimes as the try to outdo each other. but most of the time there is magic, and the interplay near the end of ‘dear prudence’ is just simply beautiful. a good choice for the saturday afternoon cornhole session.
redeyegin 