legend has it that david crosby (fresh off of getting fired from the byrds) and stephen stills (reeling from buffalo springfield falling apart) were working on a song over at joni mitchell’s house. graham nash was in town for a hollies tour, and stopped by the party. when he joined in on the second chorus, adding a high harmony on top of their voices, the room went silent. the chemistry of the trio seemed like manna from heaven. and the rest is history.
i can imagine that a similar thing may have happened when these three chanteuses happened to join in on a song somewhere. each of them are established artists on their own, but their genres are similar enough that there have been plenty of chances to cross each others paths either in the studios or on the road. this was essentially a side project a year or two ago, and i only recently saw the video of them doing the great john hiatt’s ‘crossing muddy waters’. if you are not familiar with sara watkins, sarah jarosz, or aoife o’donovan, then this is a good introduction to their work. their vocal blendings are just divine.
each of them has also released solo material in the last year. my favorite of the three is sarah jarosz, but they are all worth a venture. sarah’s is a solid offering of a hybrid of bluegrass and slow blues. sara watkins’ release is more eclectic, with a few more edgy pieces and occasional darker lyrics – i get the impression she is going through some tough times. o’donovan’s record has more of a contemporary feel, with some celtic shadings.
the stones haven’t released a studio album since 2005’s ‘a bigger bang’, and they entered mark knopfler’s british grove studios in west london in december of 2015 with the intent of laying down some tracks for a new one. struggling with the room and hitting a dead end on a particular track, keith decided to take a break and had the boys rip out a version of little walter’s ‘blue and lonesome’. they did one more take and asked legendary producer don was if they recorded it. luckily the answer was yes. they so much enjoyed the playback that they tried a few more old blues covers before calling it a day. mick went home and compiled a wish list of more standards that night. they then returned a month later, finishing the rest of the tracks in two days, keeping the same theme going. eric clapton, who was also recording an album in the room next door, joined them on two of the numbers.
the end result was a collection of tributes to the genre and artists that had inspired their music so long ago. no originals and no overdubs, just a bunch of flat out grungy tracks by a bunch of crusty veterans. they are all in fine form here, especially mick. in a rolling stone interview, keith said this might be mick’s best album. not sure about that, but the comment might be partly driven by the fact that mick plays a ton of blues-harp on this one, and keith has always been a big fan of his playing. apart from clapton, the band is rounded out by darryl jones on bass and chuck leavell on piano. they never got around to finishing the album of originals (at least not yet), and so they decided to release this one for the time being. twelve tracks, in varying blues styles, all very good.
one of the most copied bootlegs in music history is the legendary royal albert hall concert from dylan’s legendary 1966 spring tour of australia and europe. there was only one small problem – the show that was so widely disseminated is actually a show a few days earlier at the manchester free trade hall – the show that is documented in dylan’s bootleg series volume 4.
as part of his ever evolving project of releasing his vast archives, he recently put out a 36 disk set of the entire tour, but also added this release of probably the most famous concert of all of them – the tour finale at royal albert hall from may 1966.
one of the more compelling features of this tour was bob’s decision to hire a bunch of relative unknowns to accompany him on the second set of each night, the ‘electric’ portion. known then as ‘the hawks’, they eventually become known to the world as ‘the band’. most of the world was not ready for the electric dylan, and he was summarily booed in every show on that tour. for the most part the musicians handled it well, but it did wear on them (in fact, levon helm quit right before they left for australia). if you have ever seen d.a. pennebaker’s documentary of this tour – ‘don’t look back’ – you will also be aware that bob’s health was steadily deteriorating throughout. robbie robertson and his manager albert grossman found him in his hotel room after the final show nearly unconscious and delirious from exhaustion. two months later he would be critically injured on his motorcycle, forcing the cancellation of the next leg of the tour. in fact he would not tour again till 1974. essentially this was the demarcation point for the next direction he would take in his career, holing up in woodstock with the band and creating ‘the basement tapes’ and the songs that would show up on ‘john wesley harding’.
this release is two discs of unreleased material (except for ‘visions of johanna’ which appears on ‘biograph’). the first is the acoustic set, and the second is the electric set with the hawks. considering the technical issues they were having with equipment, the cumulative effects of a world wide tour, the animosity of the crowd, and the fact that many of britain’s musical royalty were in attendance (including the beatles), the performance here is just stunning. having released three of the most important albums in rock history in the previous 18 months (‘bringing it all back home’, highway 61 revisited’. and ‘blonde on blonde’), this is a fitting capstone to one of the most productive bursts of creativity in modern musical history.
for the first time, gillian welch and dave rawlings have reached back into their archives and released older material. the first one is focused on their initial collaboration, ‘revival’. that album essentially put them on the map, at least as far as the burgeoning americana movement was concerned. they had a met a few years before at the berklee college of music in boston, where they discovered they had a mutual adoration for early bluegrass and country music, specifically the carter family and the stanley brothers. after leaving berklee, they headed west to nashville where they did odd jobs and worked the night club circuit, trying to establish a name for themselves. opening for the likes of emmylou harris, townes van zandt, and lucinda williams, they soon caught the eye of a publisher, who liked their simple and sparse songwriting style. gillian was soon signed to write songs for other artists, and then soon thereafter landed a record contract. she was whisked away to los angeles with about thirty songs in her pocket. produced by t bone burnett, the arrangements were a little different than what she envisioned. dave rawlings at that time was considered just the boyfriend who came to play guitar on some of the tracks. dave and t bone clashed a bit, but they backed off, conceding this was their first foray into the record business. and in the end, what they came up with is one of the groundbreaking albums of the americana era. indeed, it would be t bone burnett who would use much of the knowledge he had learned from these recording sessions to develop the soundtrack for ‘o brother where art thou’, on which gillian was prominently featured.
what struck me when i first heard them was how ancient their duets were, steeped in appalachia and naturally evoking the high lonesome sound first popularized by bill monroe and his gang. they were truly students of the genre, and it just sounded so genuine. and they really haven’t strayed from that for twenty years. since they recorded this album, dave has of course become more of a force on the records, and his guitar work is in high demand on like minded artists’ works. interestingly, the guitar that he is most associated with – the epiphone archtop – was first played on ‘revival’. he had found it in an old guitar shop, and had it cleaned up with new strings. he allegedly only played one chord on it before putting it in a guitar case and shipping it to the california studios. his usual guitar wasn’t cutting through the t bone mix, and so he switched, never looking back.
the bootleg release has some great alternate takes, but more importantly there are about 6-7 outtakes that never made the cut. some really good material that would be first class songs on any album from this period. this pair is well known for taking their sweet time in releasing new material. and so for now, consider this retrospection of their classic debut.
i struggled with this one a bit. i read a lot of reviews of this album before i finally pulled the trigger on it. i have nearly everything this band has ever recorded, and i have always been appreciative of their depiction of the south from which they hail – distinctive from the cliche of the southern rock bands they are always compared to. but i was warned that they had gone up front politically on this one, as they felt that it was time to voice their concerns more explicitly. they are getting a lot of blow back from fans, and their response is that they really don’t care. they have pointed out that they have always had an element of political undertones to their work, and if you haven’t noticed, then you weren’t really listening. and i would agree with that. on this release, they have taken it to a whole new level. eleven tracks -patterson hood wrote six, mike cooley the other five. i could probably do a whole blog post on this, but my musical wanderings tend to require a checklist of criteria to qualify as good, and ‘agreeing with the songwriter politically’ is not high on that list. in other words, if you get your political guidance from musicians and other celebrities, you probably need to expand your source material. but i think we are in a time when we need to listen to each other more than we need to shut each other out, so i bought it. and i am glad i did. at the end of the day, this is just a really solid and inspired album. patterson mentions that they have always been fans of the clash, and he wonders if this one is essentially ‘london calling’ meets marty robbins. there is something to that, although i also hear songs that would fit on neil young’s ‘ragged glory’. i may not agree with the premise of some of their material, but there is no doubt that they have a sincere passion for their beliefs, and it comes through in every cut on this album.
and not every cut has a political bent. in fact, in my opinion, most of the best songs do not. ‘ever south’ is a song about relocating to oregon, and ‘baggage’ is about robin williams and dealing with depression. cooley’s’ramon casiano’ is a song about a controversial episode in a past nra president’s youth, and the ‘guns of umpqua’ is an intertwined story of the fatal shootings in a college near patterson’s home and a camping trip he took in the canyons nearby. it may be the best song on the album. maybe the worst song is ‘what it means’, which seems to be getting the most attention. musically, it is wonderful – catchy song structure, solid playing by the band, and an impassioned rendering of the lyrics. but to me this is one of patterson’s worst songwriting concoctions. essentially a diatribe about the black lives matter movement, he gets many of the facts wrong about some of the events he uses to build his case, then goes off on some tangent about scientific achievements, fox news, prejudice, and rapists. he ends the song with the line ‘but don’t look to me for answers cuz i don’t know what it means’. i think he could have done better on this one. if you are trying to bring attention to an issue through your song, it might be good to get your facts straight and not call your opponents racists (there are a number of references to racial prejudices throughout the album). as the late great democratic ny senator daniel moynihan once said, ‘you are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts’. as i recently told my daughters, if i am in a discussion about political issues, and the person i am debating starts throwing down the race card, then i know that i have a real good chance of winning the argument. if you insult my intelligence and just insist that my motivations can only be driven by hatred, i will be less likely to listen to your argument. learn to understand and appreciate why they might think differently than you. it is in this spirit that i listened to this release all the way through at least ten times before sitting down to write this. patterson hood writes some of the best liner notes, period, and on this one he tries to lay out his arguments as to why they went a little more provocative than before. buy the album. read his notes first, listen with an open mind, then take in one of the great rock and roll albums of the year. one of their best.
