I waited to watch the Showtime special Another Time, Another
Day until after I had seen the movie that motivated the concert, Inside Llewin
Davis so I would not be disappointed (as in reading a book after seeing the
movie). I should not have waited. The movie pales compared to the concert put
together in New York City to promote the film
and showcase the era.
The concert was fresh and uplifting with energetic
performances. The movie was dour and plodding seemed an endless loop of
struggling young artists in the early 1960s. The concert showcased the timeless
virtue of classic songs like, “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” “Midnight
Special,” and “Which Side Are You On?” The movie used a cat and couch hopping
for a plot. It’s hard to believe both were produced by the Coen brothers. Maybe the difference was T Bone Burnett
who clearly ran the music show.
As in the old stock broker commercial, when T Bone talks,
everybody listens (and shows up for the gig). When one of The Milk Carton Kids
explains that if Burnett calls, it’s a no-brainer to come quickly, the other
pipes up, “Yeah and I am going over to mow his lawn next week.”
The television show was taped over several days in a knotty
pine recording studio, before an audience
at New York’s Town Hall and in the basement of the concert hall where
the artists warmed up in the tunnels or did on camera interviews. Burnett
wandered around the rehearsals like an eminence grise, saying little and
carrying what looks like a fat stick of burning incense. Like the Archbishop
from Avignon, he occasionally blesses a group’s choice of song or instrument.
The behind the scenes takes offer some fun and insights and
evoke the early sixties sense of community. As Chris Thile of the Punch Brothers put it, “we wanted to
create an experience that could be found around a campfire and for the folk
movement in the 60s, downtown New
York was America’s campfire.”
Some minor moments are memorable. Jack Ashford doing an
all-too-short riff on his tambourine.
Marcus Mumford taping a Kleenex box to a wooden stool, which he played
with drum brushes for a song with Joan Baez. (“I had never heard of the song
when she asked but she’s f---- Joan Baez). It seems every group had a member playing upright bass,
including a chrome-plated one in Jack White’s group.
Of course there were flaws. Lots of big names did not make
the final cut for Showtime, perhaps to give more time to younger, more bankable
groups like Mumford & Sons, Punch Brothers and the Avets. And although it
was fun to see the songs segue seamlessly from rehearsal to stage, often the
rougher practice sessions got more airtime than the polished show.
Still there were plenty of nice suprises...David Rawlings,
Willie Watson and Gillian Welch on “Midnight Special.” A Boston pop group called Lake Street
Dive. Oscar Isaac (without the long hair) doing a very sharp solo of “Green,
Green Rocky Road.” And the Punch Brothers (with Marcus Mumford) doing some
great a capella songs, including a version of “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” that sent
me to the basement in search of my Sons of the Pioneers album.
