Neil Young By The Book

   

  

News of Farm Aid’s annual concert this weekend prompted another look at Neil Young’s autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace,  and its collection of musical insights, shout outs to his friends and progress reports on his various causes. It’s got a wealth of anecdotes about his collaborations, his family and friends.

Young’s musical Mt. Rushmore status gives him literary license to write (and ramble) all he wants. It’s also given him the wealth to own ranches, yachts, model trains and vintage Cadillacs and to support causes from The Bridge School to electric cars.

All of which led me back to an old Kris Kristofferson song, "The Pilgrim—Chapter 33:"

He’s a walking contradiction

Partly truth and partly fiction

Then sometimes it is best to stop trying to figure out what makes very creative people tick and just enjoy their insights (and music).

For example, in talking about his friendship with Bruce and Bob, he notes that they don’t talk very often, but notes, “It is a silent fraternity of sorts, occupying this space in people’s souls with our music.”

“Dylan’s words are part of the landscape, like country names on a map.”

On musicians writing memoirs: “Writing is very convenient, has a low expense and is a

great way to pass the time. I highly recommend it to any old rocker who is out of cash and doesn’t know what to do next.”

On saving the album as an art form: “I think it has a future and a past. The album cover and liner notes reached out to the music lover, filling them with images and helping to illuminate the story behind the music, the feeling from the artist.”

“Rock and roll is no cakewalk. It was and is a shrewd and unforgiving business if you made some bad decisions about our representation when you were young.”

For the most part, Neil has avoided most of those traps although his creative control battles have become their own legends. The stories of how his best and worst albums were created will send you deep into your vinyl archives.

And back to the words of the Pilgrim:

He’s a poet…He’s a prophet…He’s a pilgrim…He’s a preacher…

Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home.

For a good time: Call The Neverly Brothers

Eric Brace, singer, songwriter and founder of Last Train Home came to his old stomping grounds this month during an acoustic tour with partner Peter Cooper and  guitarist Thomm Jutz.

Their sound might be called New Nashville: a little bit country, a little bit bluegrass, a rocking beat and head-snapping lyrics. Whether they are mourning the loss of love, the twist of bad fortune or mocking stuffed shirts, they are sharing intimate moments. The tiny Jammin Java café in Vienna, Virginia was the perfect place to share that kind of music.

Mostly they were just having a good time poking fun at each other, their years of laboring in relative obscurity in Nashville (hence the nickname of “Neverly Brothers”)  and about making music, especially with the old masters.

Here are some excerpts from The Comeback Album:

(Ponzi Scheme)

Lost my sunbeam in a ponzi scheme

Don’t ask me how that works

Should have read the fine print

Devil’s in the details

I’m really not a fine print guy

She’s the one in the wrong here

I got the run around

Took my love and everything that wasn’t bolted down

Rust and rubber, hard concrete, that ‘s the view from under the bus.

(She Can’t Be Herself)

She’s unabashed and unconcerned and needing to be free

And she can’t be herself when she’s with me

(Nobody Knows)

The best laid plans are a stick in the craw

You pledge allegiance to whatever you allege

I pledge allegiance to the luck of the draw…

All I know is nobody knows

Nobody, nobody knows.

Throughout the evening, as I listened to their ditties about mundane events and ordinary people (who offered big lessons in life) on songs like Grandma’s Batman Tattoo or Big Steve, I was reminded of Steve Goodman and Arlo Guthrie.

As Cooper and Brace carve their own musical paths, they pay tribute to their influences, doing strong covers of Tom T. Hall’s I Flew Over Our House, The Seldom Scene’s signature take on Herb Pedersen’s Wait A Minute and Johnny Cash’s Lay Me Down.

Cooper’s tenor and Brace’s baritone match beautifully and Jutz’s guitar mastery, amplified through an exterior mike, completed the effect of having a studio full of musicians.

On the CD itself, Jutz is joined by pedal steel legend, Lloyd Green, session man supreme who has played on 115 number one hits.  Green’s magical music is also showcased on Brace & Cooper’s “Master Sessions” CD which also features the late dobro virtuoso Mike Auldridge.

Red Beet Records is Brace and Cooper’s label in East Nashville and one hopes it will help grow their music business to the point of a new nickname: Foreverly Brothers.

(Boxcars)

Every dream is a boxcar

I’ve got a freight train

Every wish is an open road

And I’ll drive forever.

Crosby, Stills & Nash: Still Teaching

The Marrakesh Express stopped in Northern Virginia last night and a sold-out crowd at Wolf Trap got on board for a ride back to the sweet music spots of the 1960’s and 70’s.

Graham Nash established a tone of intimacy with his anecdotes about Joni Mitchell and the lyrics from I Used To Be A King:

It’s all right. I’m okay now. How are you?...

Someone is going to take my heart

But no one’s going to break my heart again.

Nash was the master of ceremonies, presiding in bare feet on an oriental carpet, introducing songs, extolling his band mates and announcing that his son had twin boys earlier that day.

Stephen Stills was the jokester, noting how the song, Tree Top Flyer, about the brave men who delivered medical supplies from Mexico to California, had been dated by the changes in Colorado law. “There are probably so many lobbyists in this audience,” he added, “We should set a lobster trap.”

And the silver-maned David Crosby said that while many people thought the group at this stage, “should be creeping off to die, we just didn’t feel like it.”

Despite the passage of time, CSN, can still deliver their timeless lyrics and mesmerizing harmonies. Graham and David had the crowd holding its breath as they performed Guinevere and Helplessly Hoping.  Stephen Stills brought it to its feet with some whip-cracking guitar solos on Southern Cross and Bluebird.

There were a couple of pleasant surprises. Nash’s new songs that paid tribute to Levon Helm (Back Home) and a protest rant against China’s oppression in Tibet (Burning for the Buddha) were as good as his classics. And they have not lost a step when it comes to political passion with I Don’t Want Lies, and Military Madness.

The backing musicians could deliver a wall of sound on cue and second guitarist (and co-lyricist) Shane Fontayne was a standout.  But the charm of this evening was the feel of a living room concert in (Our House), thumbing through the music sheets in guitar cases to find songs everyone knew and liked.

And we shook the windows as we sang word-for-word on For What It’s Worth and Love the One You’re With.

The third surprise was how many young people were on hand (much more than for the usual favorite boomer bands) and how many were with parents.  Then it dawned on me: This was the Teach Your Children Tour, which was why they saved that for the encore.

Four decades later, Crosby Stills and Nash still get it: The past is just a good bye.

And they continue to feed us on their dreams.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2014

Finally found a few hours to watch the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction show on HBO and saw the usual mix of moments we expect from high end awards shows: touching tributes, reminders of history and some controversy. Of course the icing on the cake is a lot of great music.

One of the surprises of the night was the high quality of the presenters. Each of them had insightful and heartfelt remembrances of how the performers had influenced them, the music world and our lives. Glenn Frey on how Linda Ronstadt created “country rock” and gave The Eagles their start.  Tom Morello on how KISS was more than just theatrics. Art Garfunkel on how Cat Stevens’ songs were “a fascinating creation of an evolving identity.”  Quest Love on how if you owned a radio in the 1970s and 80s “you got a full dose of Hall & Oates.” Bruce Springsteen offering chapter and verse about how The E Street Band was created: “The real bands are made from the neighborhoods, from a real time and a real place.” Michael Stipe on how Nirvana captured lightning in a bottle and set off a “howl” of protest for all the outsiders. Each one of these is worth reading or watching.

The music highlights began with the opening tribute for Linda Ronstadt which required a five-female salute to do her justice. As good as Carrie Underwood, Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow and Stevie Nicks covering Blue Bayou, It’s So Easy and When Will  I Be Loved, you were reminded that Linda made that magic all by herself.

Cat Stevens had the audience in the palm of his hand as he reprised his sweet ballads and one of the all-time break-up songs, “Wild World.”  At the other end of that love-sick spectrum came the still rocking Daryl Hall and John Oates, whose “She’s Gone” may be the most played song ever to hit top 40 radio.

Bruce, inducted 16 years ago, was pleased to even things up for the E-Streeters, “who told a story that was and is bigger than I ever could have told on my own.” They went  way back to perform Tenth Ave Freeze Out, E Street Shuffle and Kitty’s Back in Town.

David Grohl and Krist Novoselic were joined by Joan Jett for Smells Like Teen Spirit as part of the Nirvana set.

The controversy for the Cleveland-based Hall is over who gets in and who doesn’t (and when it happens). KISS has been the poster child for this unfairness after 40 years, 100 million albums and 28 gold records in the U.S. Linda was long overdue and Daryl Hall asked why they are the first and only Philly musicians to be inducted. “Why not Chubby Checker?” he asked, “The Twist is the biggest selling record of all time.” Novoselic asked why Jett was still not in.

Beside the In Memoriam segment, the sad notes came when family members were there to accept the awards for Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici and Curt Cobain.

The overstuffed telecast had its rewarding moments. Linda Ronstadt on Johnny Carson saying if she weren’t singing she would be milking cows or selling hot dogs because “I don’t know how to do anything else.”

Steve Van Zandt’s acceptance speech: “For those of us whose religion is rock and roll, this is the one day a year we get to say Thanks.”

And finally the irony of the line that Cat Stevens wrote back in the early 70’s:
“Look at me. I am old. But I am happy.”

Fresh Breath of Bluegrass: Rebecca Frazier

We started the summer concert season with bit of history. The venue was a Naval Hospital on Capitol Hill built during the Civil War (and now restored as a community arts  facility called The Hill Center). The performer was a southern belle from Richmond who had just arrived from the bluegrass festival at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and the result was an exhilarating afternoon of roots and bluegrass music.

Rebecca Frazier is back on the road to support a CD released last year, When We Fall, which marked a return to performing after a break for child rearing and a personal tragedy, the loss of a son.  While that dark period inspired many of the  new songs including the title track, there is nothing mournful about her live show.

Frazier’s band, Hit & Run Bluegrass had been a fixture on the summer festival circuit, winning awards and fans, and earning her the distinction of being the first woman featured on the cover of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine. The current version of Hit & Run dresses like bank tellers but is as tight a bluegrass band as you can find. This is despite the addition of a mandolin player (Jared Walker) who graduated from college a week ago and fiddle player Christian Porter. Bass player Royal Masat and banjo player Kyle Tuttle were with the original band along with John Frazier, her husband, who is now off touring with his own group.

They could bring it with gusto on traditional songs, like “Mule Skinner Blues” or Rebecca’s hot rag, “40 Blues” and they handed the solos back and forth seamlessly. If there was a fault to be found, she often subsumed rather showcased her guitar work.

She can’t hide her song writing gifts behind the band, however, and her lyrics can move from thought provoking to haunting.

In my time I ain’t seen much

Try to walk soft but my feet still touch

God gave gravity to keep me down

Put an apple on the tree to turn my head around

Can you look past your sins

Can you win back your friends

Mirror, mirror on the wall, does it break when we fall

Her poignant ballads about loss and moving on (“I won’t darken your doorway any longer”) were leavened with up beat tunes that would have made Doc Watson and Earl and Bill take notice. Her publicity photos convey a mysterious, almost ghostly look. In person, she was more the friendly girl next door, looking for some folks to jam with.

Jesse Winchester

An old friend and I have been exchanging newspaper articles and notes about the passing of Jesse Winchester, whose career had mostly escaped me but whose songs have been deeply imprinted in my memory for years. Now that he is gone, at such a relatively young age, I regret not having gone looking for his albums and concert dates more assiduously. And it frustrates me that his life was altered, like so many of the Vietnam era generation, because of that tragic misadventure. Although he had said that fleeing to Canada in 1967 was what created him as a musician, it must have been difficult not to be able to return to his native South or perform and record with peers in the United States until President Carter’s pardon in 1977.

Like so many others, I knew his music long before I knew him.  It was Joan Baez who introduced me to "Brand New Tennessee Waltz" on her 1971 double-album classic, Blessed Are. It is hard to believe (as Elvis Costello said on the Sundance channel) that this was his first song.

I’ve a sadness too sad to be true

But I left Tennessee in a hurry dear

The same way that I’m leaving you.

Then it was Ian Matthews who covered "Biloxi" on his 1974 album, Some Days You Eat The Bear, which I heard long before Jimmy Buffet’s hit version.

Stars can see Biloxi

Stars can find their faces in the sea

We are walking down beside the ocean

We are splashing naked in the water

And the sky is red from off toward New Orleans

Four years later, Emmy Lou Harris got me with "Defying Gravity" on Quarter Moon in Ten Cent Town.

I live on a big round ball

I never do dream that I’ll fall

But even the day that I do

I jump off and smile back at you

While it is tempting to think that Jesse was more song writer than singer, how many people would have done this gospel number a capella with Bonnie Raitt and Emmy Lou singing backup? Bonnie posted on it her Facebook page as a tribute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvKEuhcTz6w

I am sure there are more covers to be found in my collection and I am off to the record store in search of Jesse’s albums to hear his take on his songs.  It seems as if he wrote his epitaph at the beginning.

At the brand new Tennessee Waltz

You’re literally waltzing on air;

At the brand new Tennessee Waltz

There ain’t no telling who will be there.

New Takes on Old Songs

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.