Music Notes
By 
This week’s musical highlight for me was seeing a recording of Mountain Stage, the legendary West Virginia-based public radio music program. But I wasn’t in West Virginia. They did it at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. There were two acts I was excited to see and two I didn’t know very well.
The first act was Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway. I had heard of Tuttle, but couldn’t say much more than that. She was really good. A very fine bluegrass band here and a quite young one at that. Three women and two men, which is nice to see too. Pretty sure one of the guys is Tuttle’s brother. Anyway, some pretty hot playing with what seemed to me to be good songwriting on first listen. Real badass fiddle player. A cover of Townes’ “White Freightliner Blues.” Good stuff. Incidentally, Tuttle has a powerful story about living with her alopecia, which I didn’t know about either. She wears wigs most of the time, for understandable reasons.
The second act was a real exciting one for me–Loudon Wainwright III. I’d never seen him before and kind of wondered if I ever would. It’s not that I haven’t had my chances. It’s just that, although I’ve listened to at least his earlier albums forever, he always ranked as someone I liked more than loved and so never put up the money to do it. So I’m glad it finally happened, if someone unintentionally, as he was not on the bill yet when I bought the tickets. He did not disappoint. He may have only had a half-hour, but he was still really fun. He spent some of it reading out of his new book on what he wanted his funeral to look like, which was typically hilarious, lacerating, and sometimes cruel, just like his music. He did a few newer songs, mostly about being old as fuck. He then did his classic “Swimming Song,” which I was super excited to hear. Couldn’t beat that.
The third act was Ali McGuirk, who I did not know and who was fine. I have a real limited patience with white girls trying to sing like Aretha, mostly because they can’t do it and somewhat because they aren’t singing their own way. But it worked OK.
Finally, there was Rosanne Cash, the show’s headliner. I feel about Cash like I do Loudon, like but maybe not love. But I knew my wife would want to see her and I was happy to as well. I had seen her once before, at a festival in maybe 2005 or so. That was pretty good and so was this. She has so many good songs by this time, just decades of solid material. She played from across her career in a seven-song set that included a cover of Rev. Gary Davis’ “Tryin’ to Get Home.” She routinely does a bunch of covers in her full sets, but just this one in a short set. Anyway, the whole thing was a ton of fun.
Oh, also Kathy Mattea is now the host of Mountain Stage, which meant I got to hear her sing a song too. She chose “Ode to Billie Joe,” which is an amusing cover. Incidentally, this is also one of Cash’s frequent covers. Anyway, this was also the second time I’ve seen Mattea, as I saw her when I went to the Grand Ole Opry back in 2018.
I am entering what looks to be a relatively lengthy drought in live shows–two months until the next thing I have scheduled. But the spring is starting to develop as a lot of my favorites and a couple of new bands for me too.
If you haven’t read the profile of the musical and extremely photogenic couple Katie Crutchfield and Kevin Morby at The Bitter Southerner, it’s worth your time.
Co-opting Latino identity in modern music
We lost Stax co-founder Jim Stewart this week. We also lost Clean drummer Hamish Kilgour.
If I had been dumb enough to name my band Slaves, I’d change it too.
I suspect some of you get a lot more excited about album reissues than I do; mostly I think of “bonus tracks” as rejected tracks that I probably don’t need to hear. But here’s a list of the 20 best album reissues of 2022.
I’m a little light on collecting music news this week, as I’ve been deathly sick for the last few days and in fact haven’t left the house since Wednesday. Not Covid. Am slowly recovering. But yuck.
This week’s playlist
- John Hartford, Mark Twang
- Del Reeves, Before Goodbye
- Willis Alan Ramsey, self-titled
- Duke Ellington, The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse
- Fontaines D.C., Skinty Fia
- Tom T. Hall, Country Is
- Wussy, Strawberry
- Yo La Tengo, Stuff Like That There
- Chris Stapleton, Traveller
- Greg Brown, Milk of the Moon
- Amanda Shires, Take It Like a Man
- Buck Owens, The Complete Capitol Singles, 1967-1970
- Billy Joe Shaver, Old Five and Dimers Like Me
- Guy Clark, Old No. 1
- Buddy Miller, Cruel Moon
- Merle Haggard, A Portrait of Merle Haggard
- Snail Mail, Lush
- Fairport Convention, Unhalfbricking
- Run the Jewels, RTJ3
- aya, Im Hole
- Amyl & The Sniffers, Comfort to Me
- Nigeria 70: The Definitive Story of 1970s Funky Lagos
- Richard Thompson, Front Parlour Ballads
- The Rough Guide to Cumbia
- Sarah Jarosz, World on the Ground
- B.B. King, Best of
- Palace, Arise Therefore
- Nick Drake, Bryter Layter
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Theory of Ice
- Mitski, Puberty 2
- Frank Ocean, Channel Orange
- The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
- Freddie Hubbard, Breaking Point
- The Waco Brothers, Resist
- Courtney Barnett, Double EP
- Dirtmusic, Bu Bir Ruya
- Richard Thompson, Mock Tudor
- Drive By Truckers, The Dirty South
- William Parker, Mayor of Punkville, disc 2
- Palace Music, Viva Last Blues
- Willie Nelson, Shotgun Willie
- John Moreland, Birds in the Ceiling
- Flying Burrito Brothers, Gilded Palace of Sin
- The Band, self-titled
- George Jones, Live in Texas, 1965
- Wussy, Ghosts
- Don Edwards, Songs of the Trail
- Miles Davis, Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet
- Miles Davis, Black Beauty, disc 2
- Edgard Varese, Complete Works, disc 2
- Ray Price, Invitation to the Blues: Live, 1957-1964
- John Coltrane, Coltrane’s Sound
- Blake/Taylor/Bush/Robbins/Clements/Holland/Burns, self-titled
- Khan Jamal, Drumdance to the Motherland
- Waylon Jennings, Waylon Live, disc 1
- Deux Filles, Silence & Wisdom
Album Reviews:
Takuya Kuroda, Fly Moon Die Soon
Interesting album that combines fairly straight-forward jazz with 70s funk and disco and quite a bit of electronica in some of the vocals. Overall, I’d say this works pretty well as an accessible and fun contemporary jazz album. “Sweet Sticky Thing” is the kind of earworm that disco could bring so well and the kind of earworm that you probably don’t want to have in your head as you, say, walk into your class for the morning. Speaking of a friend of course.
B+
Sleeping Witch & Saturn, The Divine Madness of Spring
A mixed bag rock album, with some songs being pretty heavy and some reminding me of The Mountain Goats. I probably prefer the former style more than the latter here. The band describes this album as “the relationship between spirituality and mental illness through the lens of the occult,” and uh, OK. The occult stuff is the worst part of the album. It’s just kinda dumb. But overall, the album does work alright if you don’t pay too much attention to that stuff.
B-
Brandon Lopez, Ingrid Laubrock, and Tom Rainey, No Es La Playa
Good stuff here. Laubrock and Rainey are married and recorded together for many years in all sorts of different groups. This time they connect with the bassist Brandon Lopez and he really steals the show here. That’s to take nothing away from either Laubrock or Rainey, who are both great, but Lopez is just amazing on this album. That’s in part because they placed him front and center. These all are sensitive players who aren’t looking for some kind of blowout where each tries to up the other. No, they give each other all the space they need and if you want to prioritize the bassist, this is a good way to go as the sonic realities of the bass can mean it being moved into the background, even if unintentionally. No worry about that here!
A-
The Roches, self-titled
Went into the Wayback Machine for a band I had never actually heard before. This is a weird kind of folk album from 1979. If Kate & Anna McGarrigle were odder people, they might be The Roches. This band rarely had any kind of commercial success, but were hugely popular with other artists such as Paul Simon (who really went out of his way to promote them) and Linda Ronstadt. I’m hardly surprised to find out that one of the sisters had a relationship with Loudon Wainwright and is the mother of Lucy Wainwright Roche. Loudon and these women have a similar sensibility, though they are less lacerating than he (who isn’t). I can see why–they are such oddballs. “Hammond Song” is evidently considered to be something of a classic and I can see why. One of the real remarkable things about these sisters is that their voices are all just so different, not only in how they sing but in pitch. They end up covering about all the range three women can cover here. Just a fascinating listen from a time that’s now pretty long ago. Worth more attention in the future.
A-
Julieta Eugenio, Jump
Eugenio is a relatively young Argentine saxophonist based in New York for several years now. This is her first album. She has a great tone on the sax. Can’t say that I found her compositions overly exciting though. I will definitely be curious to hear more from her and see if she continues to grow.
B
Rachel Brooke, The Loneliness in Me
Solid though not exceptional debut country album from this Michigan-based artist. Fits pretty squarely in the pretty common women in Americana using mid-20th century vocal stylings, somewhat filtered through the outlaw tradition of the 70s. Decent songs, pretty good atmosphere. Perhaps not enough of a unique voice–either the pipes or in vision–to really hit home, but certainly a solid entry into the genre.
B
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.