i have been building up a lot of things i want to bring to your attention, and have been postponing this so i can do most of them proper justice. but the reality is i have failed to do that for a while now, so i am going to do a blast with more or less short introductions and comments and you can do your own exploring if any of these sound remotely interesting to you.
again, these are in no particular order.
buddy miller – self titled
this is buddy’s first solo album in something like fifteen years, and it stayed in my rotation for quite some time. he is a legend in the americana scene and has his fingerprints on a lot of artists’ work. the ‘buddy and jim show’ (with jim lauderdale) on the sirius outlaw country station is must listening.
elizabeth cook – ‘great television’
continuing in the vein of outlaw country references, elizabeth is likely best known for her dj spot on this station, but she is a very competent artist in her own right, and this is her new release, and it is rock solid. great songwriter, and catchy melodies.
the jayhawks – ‘sanctuary park’
their first release in forever. if you are a jayhawks fan (and if you are not, you should be), then this will sound great to you – their vocal harmonies have all aged well, and this one also stayed in my rotation for a good run.
i saw three live shows in the last 2 months or so:
rush played here on their fifty something tour, and they did not disappoint. i had not seen them since the early eighties, so i had to refresh my memories. they also had a new drummer, annika nilles, and she absolutely crushed it.
mrs redeyegin is a fan of st. paul and the broken bones, and we caught them at a local club. i have to say i do like their studio stuff, but i found them lacking in a live setting, at least this time.
john hiatt played an acoustic solo set at one of my favorite local venues. obviously his voice has lost a bit with the progress of time, but i thought he nailed it and had a nice mix of oldies and new stuff, and sprinkled in some great stories. go see him if you can.
‘learning to live together’
a documentary and concert put together by the tedeschi trucks band to honor the legendary mad dogs and englishmen tour.
they released their first studio album since 2022’s ‘i am the moon’ just last friday, and i have already gotten through it at least 4 times (shocking, i know). in many ways i can hear colors and rhythms from that release – a major 4 part opus that was essentially a tribute and artistic extension of derek and the dominoes ‘layla’ masterpiece.
the songs on this one are more concise with tighter arrangements – all clock in at under five minutes i think. songwriting credits are shared by many in the band and there is a pretty diverse mix of musical styles/genres. susan is on top of her game vocally, and derek’s guitar solos are sometimes incendiary but compact and powerful.
if you are already a fan of the band, this is an obvious purchase. my guess is that at least half of these songs will be on their set lists this summer. i have heard good reviews so far, and i will be seeing them in new orleans in about a month. as i have said a million times, this is one of the best bands in the land, and catch them while you can.
bonus feature:
i am pretty sure i did not reference this anywhere last year, but they had a solid release in the summer – ‘mad dogs and englishmen revisited: live at lockn’.
originally recorded in 2015, the band set out to recreate the original classic joe cocker live album that was a compilation of songs of the legendary tour of the same name. in addition to their whole band, they invited many of the surviving members of the original band from that tour (joe cocker had passed just the year before), plus a few special guests. this is also well worth your investment. the arrangement of the boxtops’ ‘the letter’ is one of my favorite of all time. it is probably a good thing we don’t have a camera in our kitchen as i was making soup one day with that on at a high decibel level, and i might have been doing a joe cocker/john belushi imitation.
i have been listening to some new music, but not as much lately. the winter has been pretty brutal here this year, and i have spent a lot of time hibernating in the redeyegin man cave and devouring some books. my last post on books was well received and i was given quite a few suggestions – most of which i read and are included below. so here they are, again in no particular order:
‘sound man’ – glyn johns
his fifty year career as either an engineer or producer of some of the most iconic albums of all time is legendary. this is his story of working with groups and artists such as the rolling stones, beatles, the who, led zeppelin, csn, steve miller, emmylou harris. i could go on and on. he does a very good job of staying away from the sex and drugs parts and focuses on the rock and roll. very enjoyable read. really couldn’t put it down.
‘petty’ – warren zanes
authorized biography of the artist. tom reached out to him after reading some of warren’s writings (zanes also did the book that the recent springsteen movie was based on. he was also a founding member of the del fuegos in the eighties). honest and thorough. a lot of history here, and you get a real sense of tom and the heartbreakers long road to eventual stardom, and then the toll that the road took on all of them. you will learn a lot.
‘southern man’ – alan walden
i had never heard of this guy until reading this book. but he and his brother phil were big music producers out of macon, georgia and had a huge influence on the music that made its way out of the south. they challenged the system and were two white guys promoting some of the bigger r&b names like otis redding, percy sledge, sam and dave and many, many others. more than just promoters though, alan and otis were best of friends and alan was usually on tour with him. alan was also instrumental in getting lynyrd skynyrd and boz scaggs to market. chock full of great stories, tales of heartbreak, and occasional success. thanks, peter.
‘cruel to be kind’ – will birch
i was reading a short novel on the making of elvis costello’s masterpiece ‘armed forces’ (more on this later), and the author kept referencing nick lowe. now, i am somewhat familiar with his work over the years, but i had no idea how prolific he was – as a musician, yes – but the amount of bands he was involved with as a producer and promoter was astounding. if you are in any way a fan of seventies and eighties english rock (and even if you are not), this book is full of inside baseball on that whole scene – both good and bad. it is jokingly referred to as a somewhat authorized biography in the book. but will birch and nick are long time pals going back some forty years.
‘the uncool’ – cameron crowe
you may know cameron from one or two ways. if you were a regular reader of rolling stone in the seventies, he was one of their more famous writers – either doing interviews with artists or reviewing new releases. he is also a pretty famous movie producer and is best known for his work on ‘almost famous’, ‘jerry maguire’, and ‘fast times at ridgemont high’. he wrote the screenplay for ‘almost famous’, for which he won an oscar. it is a fictionalized but somewhat autobiographical account of his early life breaking into the music journalism business. ‘uncool’ is his actual autobiography, basically intertwining his career from the beginning with the tale of his family and upbringing. you will hear stories about legendary tours he was asked to join like the allman brothers and led zeppelin in their heyday, to other close relationships he had with bowie, csny, the eagles, fleetwood mac and so many others. most of this before he turned 22. his family life was a bit of a mess, but he is open on how it helped him and shaped him. one of the better books in the music genre i have read in a long time. my friend dave c. recommended this to me and said at one point – part of why it is good is because it is really well written, which you would come to expect from someone who writes for a living.
‘a life in the wings’ – david spero
another recommendation from dave c., because he knows like him i grew up in cleveland in the seventies. spero is not a household name, but he is very well known in the music industry with a career that goes back to the early sixties. he started his career in local media and eventually became one of the dj’s at a local fm station here – wmms. they were a local powerhouse with a very innovative approach to breaking in artists struggling to make it nationally – bruce springsteen and rush are two examples. they were voted best fm station nationally by rolling stone 7 years in a row. david then went into managing artists and has had significant relationships with artists such as joe walsh, ringo starr, the eagles, cat stevens, michael stanley, and dozens of others. he still lives here in town and works in various capacities at the rock hall of fame. again, lots of stories, but maybe too long. it is a big book, and written in a bit of a quirky style that could have used some editing.
‘insomnia’ – robbie robertson
i am almost done with this one, but i have seen enough already to include it here. this autobiography is obviously posthumous, as it just came out, but focuses on the period after the band broke up and he started a lifelong relationship with the director martin scorsese. i am almost 75% into it and so far we are only about two years into their friendship and professional dealings. scorsese directed their masterpiece ‘ the last waltz’. robbie had recently been divorced and at some point he moves in with martin in his hollywood home and the party begins. the two are working in post production and getting it to market, which was not easy. and martin is starting to see things in robbie that would lead them to be tied at the hip for much of martin’s film career over the next forty years. this is likely one of the more troubling periods in robbie’s life, and he is brutally honest with himself and the reader. can’t wait to get back to it.
‘exile on main street’ – bill janovitz
kevin m. recommended the previously mentioned book on springsteen that i reviewed along with the film in an earlier post. he had also mentioned a small novel zanes had written about dusty springfield’s ‘dusty in memphis’. the latter is in a series of books i was soon to discover from a series referred to as ’33 1/3′. they are all small books – maybe about a 100 pages each, that act as liner notes on steroids for some of the more iconic albums of all time. i really started going down that rabbit hole (there are i think over 150 of them). the ones i have got and read so far are the aforementioned ‘dusty in memphis’, ‘murmur’, ‘pet sounds’, ‘armed forces’, ‘music from big pink’, ‘harvest’, and ‘exile on main street’. i have taken a break from this rabbit hole for now because i have found that some are better than others, and some are just weird. but this is one of the best – a true dedication to one of the greatest rock albums ever made, and why that is. if you like this one, get ‘pet sounds’ next. do not get ‘big pink’.
next up on my reading list:
‘hardcore troubadour, the life and near death of steve earle’ – lauren st. john, ‘what do you do when you’re lonesome, the authorized biography of justin townes earle’ – jonathan bernstein, ‘tonight in jungleland, the making of born to run’ – peter ames carlin
chaser: paul mccartney’s new documentary came out on amazon prime last week. mrs. redeyegin and i screened it last night in the redeyegin studio. it focuses on the period right after the beatles break up and his solo career up until and including ‘band on the run’. learned a lot, and will likely watch again.
as i have probably mentioned before, my process for vetting new music is thus: once i have found something i think i may like and have burned it to my collection, i will listen to it all the way through at least once, usually in my drive to and from work. one round trip usually takes care of the length of most new releases these days. if it intrigues me (or if i am too lazy to find something else), i usually give most a second chance. i then start to ponder whether this is something i want to write about and share. i would say less than 20% ever make it to a full post.
but every once in a while there will be a new offering that i just find damn near impossible to get out of the rotation and out of my head.
this is one of them.
so if you are a regular reader of mine then we likely move in the same musical circles and i feel confident that it may have the same effect on you. just get it.
now, a fair warning is due. if you are familiar with marcus, then you are probably thinking this will be a blues guitar dominated collection, with meaty guitar licks throughout. but you really don’t get that here.
what you do get is a tremendous variety of genres and vocal styles, and some really catchy lyrics and harmonies. all fourteen songs are completely different. i can’t say i have a favorite, but i can tell you that there isn’t one that i can point to and say maybe that should have been left off.
he has a few friends help out, including jamey johnson, kaitlin butts, billy strings and noah cyrus.
for a little background, he has conquered some demons that had threatened his life and career, and there are numerous references to that throughout. he has also found a new true love and several songs seem to be inspired by that. ‘darling blue’ refers to the blue ridge mountains where he is from, and so that is also a common theme.
i have added a few sample videos below, just to give you a flavor of the variety.
this next one reminds me a bit of jason isbell.
mrs. redeyegin also loves this album, and we both like the motown sounding ‘carolina honey’. that video is well done but maybe not suitable for a family audience. just sayin’.
this is the book that the current movie by the same name showing in theaters around the country is based on. the movie looked interesting and my friend who suggested the book to me only a week or two before the movie was debuting assured me that it was a pretty quick but very good read. he was right on both accounts.
the premise of the book is to do a deep dive into the making of his album ‘nebraska’. it doesn’t spend a great deal of ink on the rest of his career – there are plenty of other books that can help you there. the author is of the impression that this is his most important work in many ways, and makes a very good case throughout the book. bruce had just had his biggest commercial success so far in 1980 with ‘the river’, and was under some pressure after the tour promoting the album to follow up with another release.
but as the book and the movie make clear, bruce was exhausted from the tour, and on top of that was beginning to deal with some inner demons. he rented a place in a small town in new jersey with the idea that he would buckle down and start writing some songs. his roadie set him up with a fairly new tape machine that could add four track recording onto a standard cassette tape you could buy in a drug store at the time.
the solitude led to an outpouring of creativity but also a wellspring of emotions revolving around his troubled childhood in freehold, new jersey, which was just down the road. i will let the book and the movie flesh out more of the details here, but the songs that he was writing here were starting to break down into two categories – a handful of tunes that were more on the possible commercial side (and many would eventually show up on the the ‘born in the u.s.a’ album), but then at least a dozen that were much darker in material and characters.
it is this latter batch of songs that would eventually be the basis for the ‘nebraska’ album. and the album would eventually use the tracks he made on that cassette tape in the bedroom of that rental, crude as they were. against great market pressure, bruce was adamant to release it as is with no marketing, tour, or press.
i am not the biggest bruce fan around – i was into him quite a bit early on, but started to lose interest in the late eighties. but i do think that ‘nebraska’ is certainly one of my favorites, and so the story was very compelling to me.
i finished the book this morning, and went to see the movie in the local theater this afternoon. i was glad i read the book first, but also glad to see the movie. i think that it also helped that i relistened to the album all the way through about three times while reading the book. the book helped to prepare me for a lot of the material and topics in the movie. i think that the movie was well done – emotional and well acted. obviously there is a lot in the book that did not make it to the big screen, and there are parts in the movie that are not in the book (probably the biggest one being a focus on his relationship to a local waitress at a diner in town). i don’t think you need to read the book to appreciate the movie. but if you enjoy the latter, maybe you might be interested enough to circle back on the book.
