Music Notes

Obviously, the big news of the week is the death of Nanci Griffith. I’ve never been the biggest fan, though I certainly like some of her songs. In fact, I was investing in some archival album pickups this week, before I heard about her death, and realized I presently didn’t own any of her albums, so I grabbed Once in a Very Blue Moon. Then after I heard, I picked up Storms too. The most definitive account of Griffith I know is this excellent Texas Monthly profile from 1999, which gets at both her talent and her massive insecurity as an artist that led her to think everyone hated her and lash out at the media. It’s also clear from the article that some of the people who didn’t like her did so from a sexist position. I also discovered reading this that she had dealt with cancer on and off for a very long time.

In the second half of our podcast on the new Drive-By Truckers book, Farley mentioned the 9 shows he attended. I’ve seen DBT a mere 17 times, with 4 more scheduled shows before the end of the year. For context, second on this list would be James McMurtry, with probably 11 or so shows. So as per Farley, here’s my shows with the relevant setlists:

1. 4/30/06—El Rey, Albuquerque, NM (no known setlist exists)
2. 5/4/07—Lensic Theatre, Santa Fe, NM
3. 9/25/08—House of Blues, Dallas, TX
4. 10/29/09—Stubb’s, Austin, TX
5. 12/31/10—Terminal 5, New York, NY
6. 1/26/13—Billy Bob’s, Fort Worth, TX
7. 3/15/13—Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY
8. 3/21/14—House of Blues, Boston, MA
9. 10/21/14—The Met, Pawtucket, RI
10. 3/9/16—Columbus Theatre, Providence, RI
11. 2/11/17—Webster Hall, New York, NY
12. 7/22/17—Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH
13. 4/2/18—State Theatre, State College, PA
14. 6/25/19—The Cabot, Beverly, MA
15. 2/22/20—Somerville Theatre, Somerville, MA
16. 2/25/20—College Street Music Hall, New Haven, CT
17. 7/25/21—Newport Folk Festival, Newport, RI (as Dimmer Twins)

When you’ve seen a band this many times, things happen. Here’s my top 5 DBT live moments:

1. The 12/31/10 show in New York was the best show I’ve ever attended. “The Flying Wallendas” is not a strong song, but when they play with The Flying Wallendas performing overhead before the set break, then one of them does sword swallowing during the break, well then. Plus they played 37 songs, Cooley covered “Delta Dawn,” Patterson Hood’s dad David came out to play on some of the Muscle Shoals hits he played on, and a bunch of other stuff. That was something. The show ended at nearly 3 in the morning and then we walked through the detritus of Times Square on New Year’s Eve to get back to where we needed to be. That in itself was kind of surreal. Can’t say I’ve spent a lot of nights like that.
2. The 10/21/14 show in Pawtucket salvaged an epically awful day for me, because I had come home earlier in the day after a visit to the New Bedford Whaling Museum to find my house was robbed. That was…not cool (the robbery, as the museum is kind of great). I was a mess. But seeing DBT in a tiny club on a night they were clearly playing anywhere just so they wouldn’t lose money was actually a really special experience, both personally and being able to stand next to the stage and rock out loud on a shitty day.
3. The 3/9/16 show in Providence wasn’t actually that great because Hood’s voice was completely shot. He gave it his best. He’s a professional. But it was ragged. However, that show was the first time they pulled out a Black Lives Matter sign (this was not announced as the first time that night, but I read it later in an interview with Hood) and given that was the moment DBT became a full-fledged protest band, using that sign while Hood played “What It Means,” it’s an important moment in band history.
4. The 5/9/07 show in Santa Fe was on “The Dirt Underneath” tour that was the trial run to keep the band together after the Jason Isbell debacle nearly broke up the whole thing. It was cool to see them acoustic, but I really wanted to see them rock out electric. However, the reason this show is mentioned here is that the great Spooner Oldham played with them that night on keyboards and that was awesome. He was actually supposed to play with them on the 7/22/17 show in Cleveland but he wasn’t feeling well and is of course very old.
5. It’s hard to pick a 5th show because there’s a lot of just really good shows here that I don’t want to downplay. But I guess I’d go with the 6/25/19 show in Beverly, which was not only my 8th wedding anniversary, but also a show where they pulled out old nuggets like “Wednesday,” “After the Scene Dies,” and “Self-Destructive Zones” that are rarely played these days.

Anyway, DBT, yeah, kind of rocks!

Jason Isbell is really leading among musicians to require vaccination proof in order to attend his shows. Isbell has enough weight that he can push clubs into doing this and in fact he moved his Austin show to Billy Bob’s when the initial venue wouldn’t play along. Lot of cities are starting to do this in clubs generally, such as Seattle.

I still don’t understand NFT’s but record companies are worried about them.

On Dolly Parton’s first major move toward pop music.

Biopics are almost always boring and it sounds like the Aretha version is also boring.

As I mentioned earlier, I went all in with some back catalog pickups this week. So here is the list of new albums I have:

• Johnny Paycheck, The Lovin’ Machine
• Ike & Tina Turner, Her Man His Woman
• Nanci Griffith, Storms
• Joseph Jarman, Song for 1966
• Art Ensemble of Chicago, Nice Guys
• The Libertines, Up the Bracket
• Jane Weaver, Modern Kosmology
• Jerry Lee Lewis, Live at the Star Club, Hamburg 1964
• Nanci Griffith, Once in a Very Blue Moon
• Funkadelic, Cosmic Slop
• Luis Kalaff, Lo Ultimo de Luis Kalaff
• Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, King and Queen
• Chet Atkins, The Guitar Genius
• Marvin Rainwater, Gonna Find Me a Bluebird
• Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Derroll Adams, The Rambling Boys
• Sonny Boy Williamson, The Chess Masters
• MC Lyte, Lyte as a Rock
• Douglas Germano, Golpe de Vista
• Digable Planets, Blowout Comb
• Tim Berne, Fractured Fairy Tales
• Mal Waldron with the Steve Lacy Quintet
• Screaming Females, Baby Teeth
• Jerry Lee Lewis, Country Songs for City Folks
• Imarhan, Temet

That should keep me going for awhile.

Album Reviews:

Lina and Raul Refree, Lina_Raul Refree

This is an interesting but I think mostly failed experiment to rethink the fado tradition in Portugal. One of the finest and most unique musical traditions in the world, one might certainly argue that it has become a bit staid due to the conventions of the genre that can’t be messed with much without outrage (see bluegrass as another example of this). Lina is a young singer in the fado tradition, though not exclusively. Raul Refree is a Spanish producer. The two of them rethink what fado can be and do up a bunch of Amalia Rodrigues fados in new ways. Part of what makes fado work is the guitar. Replacing those guitars with piano, which is most of what this album does, can often lead to a less interesting music, in part because it ends up sounding like chamber music and can get kind of boring. I do like the use of the synths here, which are more interesting and add useful texture to the music. But it’s a little hard to see why I’d listen to this instead of traditional fado.

B-

Boldy James & Sterling Toles, Manger on McNichols

Folk music on the realities of Black life in Detroit. Musically more interesting than many hip hop albums, with lush flute and cello underneath the rhymes and beats, accentuating some stories but not all, making the instrumentals mean more on the tracks they are on. Deindustrialization, drugs, single mothers, violence, these are hardly unknown topics in hip-hop, but much of this feels like a monologue about just how tough life in the former auto center. Very fine work.

A-

David Olney, This Side or the Other

Olney was one of the great songwriters and died the way a lot of these guys would like to go–a heart attack on stage. This might be his last album, from 2018. It’s a solid performance in a career of solid performance. I’ve found his catalog to be a bit uneven. A lot of people really like Real Lies, but I don’t care for that album at all. On the other hand, his Live from Holland album is really fantastic. This set is in the middle of those two songs–solid if not spectacular. Olney’s not really a political songwriter, but he touches on immigration on a couple of songs here quite usefully, one of which is a re-recording of his Real Lies song “Border Town.” Mostly, this is just a good album by a good songwriter.

B

Methodist Hospital, Giants

Fun rock album from this Chicago pair of guys who combine your traditional guitar/bass/drums riffs with some electronics and just a generally classic approach to it. Catchy, loud, good. What else do you want?

A-

Rhett Miller, The Messenger

Old 97s is one of my favorite all time bands. But I’ve never been super into Rhett Miller’s solo albums. The thing about Miller is that he’s not that introspective of a guy. This is fine–when he sings rock and roll, who needs to be. He’s a smart guy, don’t get me wrong. But his songs basically revolve around the sole topic of love (occasionally also about whiskey). Also fine. What it requires though is either next level lyricism or the music to take it over. And this is where his solo albums have always fallen just a bit short. Without his band, Miller is just a pretty good songwriter singing basically fine but not exceptional songs. There are exceptions here, especially “The Human Condition” and “Total Disaster,” both of which are really good songs.

B

The High Water Marks, Ecstasy Rhymes

A nice, if not exceptional, indie pop album with both male and female singers that keep the tempo moving ahead pretty quickly. Very indie rock, lot of wearing of emotions on the sleeve, a rather intentional attempt to be extra positive about the world. Nothing wrong with that. Or with this album.

B

As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and definitely 100% none things politics or disease.