this year’s box set release from the vast archives of the grateful dead features five complete shows from june of 1976 – two from boston, two from nyc, and the fifth from passaic, nj. this was an interesting period for the band for a number of reasons. most importantly, they were just coming back from the longest touring hiatus of their career – having not been out on the road since october of 1974. of secondary importance was the return of drummer mickey hart to the fold. he had left the band in february of 1971. in addition to this, they also had a wealth of new songs to perform from recent studio albums. many dead fans don’t pay a lot of attention to this period, and my guess is that it may be due to two reasons. first and foremost could be the fact that 1976 lurks in the shadow of 1977, long considered to be one of their greatest years ever. the second could be that there is less material to work from – they didn’t start their return to touring till right before these shows, and ended in mid october. i know that i did not have a lot in my collection from this era.
that has now changed for me. part of the reason they had never been released from the vault before was because all of these shows were part of the wealth of tapes made by legendary engineer betty cantor jackson that found their way back to the group’s archives a few years ago. as such the recording quality is of the highest order – clean and warm at the same time. the other impression i had from listening to all of the shows was how tight this band was at the time. although it is closer in time to the renowned spring of ’77 tour, it has a feel more akin to 1974, with it’s precision and jazz leanings. everybody is at the top of their game (donna has never sounded better) and the return of the two drummer system is better than what could be expected so soon. kreutzmann himself admits that he was bitter about hart’s return. he had gotten quite used to being the only drummer for over five years. if you listen closely, you can tell that billy is still in charge here, with mickey doing basically fill on some of the larger songs. this would all change substantially by the time we get to the next year, but i think it works very well here.
one of the possible complaints of the box set (or this period) is that the song rotation is not as expansive as other periods. of the five shows presented here, there is a lot of overlap. but keep in mind that they hadn’t been on the road for quite a while, they had a new member they were reintroducing, and they had new material from ‘blues for allah’ they wanted to flaunt. if i had known ahead of time that they would play the cover of martha and the vandellas’ ‘dancing in the street’ on all five shows, i would have been skeptical. but, true to their nature, all five are really good and really different.
another possible issue is the price tag, which is around $150. but keep in mind these are five complete grateful dead shows, which means they are long. around fourteen hours of music. three cds per show, for a total of 15, or about ten bucks each.
if you are interested, you should probably grab one fast. they only made a limited edition of this, and once it sells out it is gone.
speaking of 1977, you might want to also check out this year’s first installment of dave’s picks, volume 33. this is another ‘betty board’ featuring the show on october 29, 1977 at dekalb, illinois. the first disc contains one of the highest energy first sets i have ever heard. an excellent recording of the band in peak form.
dave’s picks 34 comes out next week – a 1974 ‘wall of sound’ show from miami, and garcia live 13 comes out friday, a jgb show in 1989 at poplar creek music theater featuring clarence clemons on saxophone.
spring is finally here in the midwest, and it is time to update your music libraries with some new music. in this post i will share with you some things that came out this year, and a couple others from last year that deserve a second look. again, these are in no particular order.
brandy clark, ‘your life is a record’ – this came out about two weeks past, and it is really growing on me. when the producer took a look at the songs she had brought to the table, he said ‘this is a breakup album’, and he was right. she had recently ended a relationship, and she had some things to say about it. don’t let that turn you off. if you like kasey musgraves, you will love this. i think this is better than kasey’s last one.
john moreland ‘lp5’ – his fifth album, once again showing that he is one of the most talented songwriters in america. as i have mentioned before when i reviewed his last album, his voice comes across as a hybrid of tom waits and ‘nebraska’ era springsteen. never one for a lot of instrumentation, this one is stripped down even more.
aubrie sellers, ‘far from home’ – this is her second album, and the songs are diverse in styles. she swings from southwestern americana to a few songs she labels as garage country. coming from a musical family (her mother is lee ann womack), singing and songwriting seems to be in her genes. keep an eye on this young talent.
drive by truckers, ‘the unraveling’ – another good outing from one of the better rock bands in the country. as with their last album, this has plenty of political commentary, but the songs are good and the playing is great. they do not try to hide the fact that they consider themselves to be at the forefront of the musical ‘resistance’. i will have more to say about that when jason isbell’s album comes out next month.
blackberry smoke, ‘homecoming’ – recorded live in atlanta after a european tour, they seem really at home with the crowd, and vice versa. they play a lot of their road tested standards, plus a few covers. a good introduction to the band if you are not familiar with them.
nathaniel ratliffe, ‘and it’s still alright’ – a solo album from him, without most of the ‘night sweats’. the songs are mostly melancholy in nature, due in large part to the end of a divorce and losing one of his close friends recently. if you are expecting more of ‘sob, give me a drink’, you won’t get that here. but there are a few really good songs on the album.
allison moorer, ‘blood’ – this came out last year, as did the book she wrote that accompanies it. actually the book came first, and then she thought there was some good song material. the topic of the book is not a pleasant one. she and her sister (country artist shelby lynne) were orphaned at an early age when her father and mother died in a murder suicide incident in their front yard. again, don’t let the subject matter turn you off. both the book and the album were her way of dealing with emotions she had pent up all her life, and at the end of the day it is really a message of hope. one track – ‘i’m the one to blame’ – uses lyrics of her father that she found in an old briefcase and put it to music with her sister. i had the opportunity to see her do much of the material live about a month ago, before she had to suspend the tour she was doing with her husband, hayes carll. it just happened to be the day after the tornadoes in nashville, where they live. it was a rather emotional show.
with most of their tours suspended right now, these folks need your help more then ever right now. go out and buy some music.
billy strings has been on the outside of my peripheral vision for about 6 months or so, but i hadn’t taken the time to explore his work very much, until now. as i have mentioned before, i get tips on new music from lots of places. when i had four different people send me something about him in the last two weeks, i figured it was time to devote more time to this young phenom.
my first glimpses of him were when i would see him sitting in with other bluegrass musicians i was following, and often it would be dead cover songs. he has cut his teeth on the jam band festival scene, and has gradually built up his following by offering two set marathon sessions where he and his band will rotate covers of bluegrass icons like bill monroe, the stanley brothers and doc watson, to jam band heroes like the dead and phish, to unconventional bluegrass treatments of artists like the stones and jimmy cliff.
billy (born william apostol) grew up in northern michigan, where his stepfather was a local bluegrass musician and taught him the instrument at a very early age. he turned to heavy metal at one point, but that changed one day when he ‘borrowed’ his mom’s 72 chevelle and went for a ride in the country with a bottle of vodka. he was curious about a tape that he saw in her tape deck and put it in. ‘rank stranger’ by the stanley brothers started to play, and he just pulled over and listened to the song. soon he was getting back with his stepfather and returning to the genre.
his guitar prowess soon started getting the attention of people like del mccoury and david grisman, and he started opening shows for fellow michigan residents greensky bluegrass.
his latest was released in september and it features all original music. i got it the other day and listened to it on a recent roadtrip (to michigan, no less). it is solid, all the way through – and not just the music, as his songwriting is also great. much of the material draws on his experiences, both bad and good, growing up in small towns in the midwest. ‘enough to leave’ is about losing two high school friends to heroin overdoses within a week of each other.
quite a talent, and worth putting on your radar. he will be opening for jason isbell this summer. check him out.
instead of the usual ‘best of’ articles we usually get around this time, i am going to go down a different route and give a list of albums that were released this year that i found interesting, but for whatever reason, i never got around to posting on. and instead of waiting till the last week of the year, i thought i would get this out before xmas so that maybe you could add a few to your wish list. all of these were worthy of a full rendering, but as most of you know, this blog is a side gig for me, and life and work just get in the way sometimes. so, here they are, in no particular order.
professor longhair, ‘live on the queen mary’
i found this in a great record store in new orleans during jazzfest. it is a recording of a private party on the queen mary, put on by paul and linda mccartney on march 24, 1975. it captures him in his prime, and the recording, produced by tom wilson, is very good. a good introduction to him, if you are not familiar with the legendary pianist. there was no one like him.
kelsey waldon, ‘white noise/white lines’
debut album from this west kentuckian, the first new artist signed to john prine’s oh boy record label in over a decade. much like margo price’s first album, the songs are in large part an autobiographical picture of growing up poor in a small rural town. she is quite a talent, and someone to keep your eye on.
marvin gaye, ‘you’re the man’
this was the follow up to his groundbreaking album, ‘what’s going on’. the single of ‘you’re the man’ hit the charts, but the album was never was released. the extensive liner notes tell the whole story, but essentially it came down to political and artistic freedom disagreements with his label. here we have the entire album, plus quite a few bonus tracks, including some christmas music. i actually think it would have been a more profound historical release if they had just packaged it without the extra tracks, as some of them are either corny or over produced. but the first nine tracks are some of the finest work from one of the most important artists to ever come out of the motown scene.
justin townes earle, ‘the saint of lost causes’
another solid release from this guy – i don’t think he has put out anything better (and i have all of it). one of the better singer/songwriters out there. and, as i have mentioned before, i think he may be more talented than his father, steve.
bob dylan, ‘the rolling thunder revue, the 1975 live recordings’
released in conjunction with martin scorcese’s documentary of the same name, this box set presents five of the concerts from this tour showcasing the then recently released ‘desire’ album, plus a few extra discs with outtakes from rehearsals and other shows. if you are a big bob fan, then this is interesting. if you want to get a full flavor of the power and quality of these shows without dropping $75 on this, get his bootleg volume five (‘bob dylan live 1975’) instead.
‘the highwomen’
this is a side project of four individual artists – brandi carlisle, amanda shires, maren morris and natalie hemby. presumably a take on the ‘highwaymen’ super group of the eighties (willie, waylon, johnny, and kris), these women share the singing and songwriting throughout. many times compilations like this underperform, but this one exceeded my expectations.
neil young and the stray gators, ‘tuscaloosa’
another release from his ‘archive’ series, this one is a selection of cuts from a performance in february of 1973 at the university of alabama. he was touring on the recently released ‘harvest’ album with the musicians who did most of the recordings in nashville. most of this tour was a disaster, but this show finds the band in fine form, and the recording is crystal clear. maybe the strongest song is ‘alabama’. even though it was a gutsy selection to be playing in front of this crowd, they gave it all they had. play it loud.
sturgill simpson, ‘sound and fury’
this was not what i was expecting. i very much have enjoyed his last few albums, and i was looking forward to this. i was given hints on a radio station that this was a small divergence from his previous work, so i should have been warned. but this is just a total left turn. it almost has more in common with ‘eliminator’ era zz top or synth pop from the eighties, with some ‘dark side of the moon’ nods as well. plus it was released with its very own anime movie:
very good, but not really my cup of tea. but he gets points for poking his finger in the eye of the music industry and not really caring what they think. he is on record saying that his next record will be blue grass covers of his wife’s favorite classic rock songs.
the mavericks, ‘play the hits’
first saw this band on a small stage on the last day of jazzfest, and i was highly impressed. one of my favorite shows of the year. this just came out about a month ago. they did a whole album of cover songs by artists that had influenced them during their thirty years as a group. a few of them, like ‘swingin’ and ‘are you sure hank done it this way’, are uptempo rockers more indicative of their live shows. but just as many are ballads that sometimes are more laid back than the originals. a good introduction to the band if you are not familiar with them. plus, this a damn funny video:
van morrison, ‘three chords and the truth’
this dude just keeps pumping them out. all new original material, revisiting many of his usual themes – musings on the unfairness of the music industry, fondness for the early days of rock and roll, and odes to celtic mysticism. the various musicians include jay berliner, who played on ‘astral weeks’ with him. there really isn’t a bad cut on this one. one of those that just seems to get better the more you listen to it.
ryan bingham, ‘american love song’
speaking of repeated listenings, i think i gave up on this one too soon. for whatever reason, i only gave it one shot, and didn’t come back to it for awhile. a couple of these tracks (‘jingle and go’ and ‘pontiac’) are still getting heavy play on the ‘outlaw country’ station, and they keep sounding good. produced by charlie sexton, there are some nods to the stones and zeppelin, but mostly this is just a good alt country rocker with some blues thrown in. one of his best.
grateful dead, ‘the warfield’
released by the dead as their contribution to april’s ‘record store day’, this is a little hard to find but well worth it. if you know their ‘reckoning’ album, then this will sound familiar, as it is taken from the same set of acoustic shows at the warfield in san francisco in the fall of 1980. i will be doing a post in a few weeks highlighting the entire output from the dead archivists and the garcia family this year (which has been substantial), but i thought i would throw this in here anyways.
calixeco/iron and wine, ‘years to burn’
i love both of these artists (hard to call them ‘bands), and their collaborations seem to be productive, even though their styles are quite different. this is certainly a good version of their teamwork, and i wish i had been able to catch them on tour this summer.
robbie robertson, ‘sinematic’
his first album of new material in years, this is a guy who continues to push the envelope and doesn’t rest on his laurels. i wasn’t entirely smitten with this one, but there is a decent chance that was in my head and not necessarily fair to the material and production. i love his first two solo albums, and i want to compare it to them, but that really isn’t the right thing to do. the first cut is a duet with van morrison, ‘i hear you paint houses’, which is the name of the book that is the basis for scorcese’s current movie ‘the irishman”. the second cut is ‘once were brothers’, which is about the rest of the guys from the band. many of the songs are rather lush and the backup vocals are fantastic. writing this post has convinced me i should probably give this one a few more tries.
hopefully you found something here that you find interesting and go out and give it a try. thanks to all of you for following this little project of mine, and please consider sharing with others.
the fifteenth edition of bob’s usually great bootleg series focuses on two things – his flirtation with the nashville sound, and his relationship with johnny cash. both of these subjects are pretty well documented, and although there is nothing here that wasn’t known by dedicated dylan fans, this is a nice package that doesn’t get too much in the weeds. it is broken down into three discs, the first being outtakes from the two albums he made there during this period, ‘john wesley harding’ and ‘nashville skyline’. the selections are well played and produced, but offer only slight variations from the tracks that were eventually chosen for release. ‘as i went out one morning’ is presented as a waltz tempo, and many of the ‘skyline’ tracks have a bit of an edge to them(‘country pie’ gets funky with charlie daniels on guitar).
the second track focuses on an impromptu session put together around the ‘skyline’ sessions with johnny cash. bootlegs of this have been going around for years (indeed, my good friend dave c. sent me a copy of this just this summer), but it is offered here from the original tapes. it is interesting the first few times you hear it, and it certainly has historical significance. carl perkins was recording in an adjacent studio, and joins the gang for a few tracks. but overall it is a little rough and unrehearsed, and the suits decided that is wasn’t good enough to issue as an album.
the third disc has more from those sessions, then three songs he did on the ‘johnny cash show’ that may. following that are three johnny cash tunes he covered for the ‘self portrait’ album, and then four songs recorded at a house in 1970 with the legendary banjo player, earl scruggs.
once again the liner notes are extensive and informative, and even a bob nut like me learned quite a few things. this video below does a good job of providing more background:
redeyegin 