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sturgill simpson and the 2017 grammys

here are the current nominees for ‘album of the year’ for the grammys sunday night:

Album of the Year

Adele – “25”
Beyonce – “Lemonade”
Drake – “Views”
Justin Bieber – “Purpose”
Sturgill Simpson – “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth”

what, never heard of sturgill simpson?

that’s ok, neither have a lot of people. he is not expected to win, but maybe he should. it was a solid release, and one that i didn’t write about at the time, but certainly listened to a few times early last year. it is a very good album. if i had one album to select to get the token ‘americana’ slot, it wouldn’t have been my first choice. but now that the powers that be have put him on the list, i think it is worth some time to shed some light on ol’ sturgill and plead his case.

hailing from lexington kentucky, this is his third solo release, and the first on a major label. he is a student of ‘outlaw country’, and he is often compared to waylon jennings, at least in regards to his vocals. he is also up for best country album, and he is much more likely to win that, although i don’t really consider it to be in the country category. sure, there is an underlying current of traditional nashville sounds, but sturgill also stirs in philosophical lyrics, psychedelic flourishes, strings and other effects that leave it overall hard to categorize. his previous recording – ‘metamodern sounds in country music’ – is just as good, in my opinion.

http://www.sturgillsimpson.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-guide-to-grammy-nominee-sturgill-simpson_us_589ce3d8e4b0ab2d2b138d93

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/feb/09/grammy-predictions-country-americana-categories

van morrison ‘keep me singing’

brand new stuff from van the man. as i have mentioned previously, he really doesn’t make mediocre records. everything he does is written and performed well, and this one is no exception. when listening to this i often envision myself in a tony night club nursing a manhattan, watching the master spin his tales in front of a crack back up lounge band. it has a real comfortable feel to it, and his voice has aged well. at 71, this is his 36th album, and he shows no sign of letting up. my favorite cut may be ‘in tiburon’, which is a reflection of his time residing in san francisco in the mid sixties. i had a difficult time finding a good reason to take this out of the car cd player. it got better with each listen.

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/09/27/van-morrison-keep-me-singing-ew-review

dear jerry

i got this in the mail last week. by coincidence, i had a road trip planned to see my daughter for dad’s weekend, which involved a three hour trip through the foothills of the appalachian mountains. it was a crisp late autumn morning, sunny skies, plenty of fall foliage, and a few patches of fog. got very close to finishing the whole thing by the time i pulled into her small college town. it basically set the tone for a nearly perfect day.

this is a chronicle of a show that was put together last spring to pay tribute to the life and music of jerry garcia. all surviving members of the original grateful dead were there (the ‘core four’), and were prominently featured throughout. it is a two cd collection, and a dvd of the show. all of the performances are at least worth a three star, and some are just downright righteous. highlights for me include buddy miller tackling ‘deal’, jimmy cliff doing his own ‘harder they come’, and then delivering a killer ‘fire on the mountain’. bill kreutzmann and billie and the kids do ‘help on the way/slipknot/franklin’s tower’, then are joined on stage by disco biscuit and deliver a stunning ‘scarlet begonias/ i know you rider’. and that is just the first disc.

back up band for many of the artists includes buddy miller, don was, and sam bush. grand finale with the entire cast doing ‘ripple’. if you like jerry, you will like this.

also arriving last week was the most recent dave’s picks, volume 20. recorded at the university of colorado in december of 1981, it is a particularly energetic show. there are really only two flaws throughout, one due to the band and the other in the recording. jack straw is the second song, and weir just totally blows the lyrics about halfway through and kills the momentum of the song (in fairness, jerry seems to have gotten off track before this, which may have in turn confused weir). half way through the first set the overall recording has a completely different sound to it (the band is a little muted and the crowd is much more up front), and so i expect that there is a gap in the original seven inch reel to reel tapes, and they spliced it with a high quality taper source. but again, i quibble. ‘bird song’, ‘candyman’, and ‘cassidy’ on the first disc are great. the first set closer starts the second disc, a solid ‘china/rider’, which would basically set the tone for the epic second set.

‘scarlet begonias/fire on the mountain/estimated prophet to start, a nearly perfect ‘stella blue’, and then close out with ‘around and around/good lovin’/us blues/satisfaction’.

ernest ranglin, below the bassline

i find it hard to believe that this guy has fallen under my radar for this long. one of the things i like about pandora is that it often exposes me to things i haven’t heard of. last sunday i was on my back deck chillin’ to my reggae station there (breddabushrat), when on comes this tune that sounded like a cross between the wailers and dave brubeck. i liked it so much i got off my adirondack and went in and found it on amazon and ordered it. if you are of a reggae mind but also dig bebop era jazz, then you should hop on this.

ernest is a veteran of the jamaican music scene. he cut his teeth in his teens in the fifties with big bands in jamaica emulating the ellington/goodman sound. he then started his own bands, incorporating the more contemporary influences of charlie parker and thelonius monk with the burgeoning rhythms emanating from the local sound systems on the island. chris blackwell discovered him in a hotel lounge in ocho rios, and he became the first signing at island records – a label that was to become ultimately pivotal in bringing the reggae sound worldwide. ernest became the house arranger for the label, and is a session musician on many of the records there, as well as being a key innovator in the ska movement in england. joe strummer cites him as one of his major influences.

this album was recorded in 1996, and features monty alexander on piano. monty also hails from jamaica, but became famous on a different route – moving to nyc and getting discovered by sinatra in a jazz dive in 1961. he is a very accomplished jazz pianist, but also stays true to his roots and has made numerous recordings of reggae influenced pieces, most notably with the legendary rhythm sections of sly and robbie. the overall album is a mix of rangling originals and covers of some reggae standards (’54-46 was my number’ from toots and the maytals, for instance).

just a treat to listen to.