Brian Arsenault Takes On: A Guitar Tour of the World, the Phony Hipness of Country Muzak, the Tastelessness of Network News and Free Music from Moscow

By Brian Arsenault

Annalisa Ewald

Live at the factory underground (Dionysian Media)

Annalisa Ewald is a classical guitarist of significant reputation. But don’t let that stop you from her performance live at the factory underground recorded last year in Norwalk, Connecticut.  Even if you’re like me and equate great guitar with Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend you’ll find much to like as she brings us to Brazil and Argentina and Renaissance Europe; happy little tunes, melancholy melodies and tangos and gypsy flamencos.

She reminds us that these “classical” pieces sprang from the soil, the seamier parts of town and scandalous, sometimes illegal rhythms and dances.  Her brief comments throughout the album are good natured and inviting, sometimes self deprecating, and never pedantic.  And the playing seems faultless even though she can joke about jarring misplayed notes (by someone else).

And whatever your tastes in music you’ll occasionally hear snatches of “tunes” that you know from cultural experiences ranging from  movies to old Bugs Bunny cartoons. All in all, a delight.

Some of the proceeds from sales of the album, release date April 23, will be donated to the John DeCamp Fund “helping veterans heal through music and caring.”

The ACM Awards

The Grand Ol’ Opry was at least genuine. Genuine hillbilly and unhip maybe, but music that came down from the hill country and back roads.  What so-called country music has now become is a bunch of over-age prom queens and dorks in designer cowboy hats playing the kind of vapid pop crap that in one guise or another has been around for six decades or so.

The biggest news from the Academy of Country Music “awards” show seems to be that everyone’s ex, Taylor Twitt, didn’t win anything. So who cares?  Name me a significant artist who did win anything.  Nice dresses and hair though.

They trotted out Stevie Wonder for some incomprehensible reason.  Who’s advising him these days anyway?

They did do a nice little tribute to Dick Clark which the equally vapid Grammys couldn’t manage.  So I guess we should be grateful for that, though I can’t imagine anyone watching long enough to catch it. Dick brought kids all over America a taste of real rock at times but he could never distinguish it from the slop pop that he also promoted with equal enthusiasm.

The same holds true here.

The Foulness of Network “Entertainment” News

Annette Funicello

One of the first child stars of television, Annette Funicello, passed away on Monday, April 8.  She was the Mouseketeer that eleven year old boys first squirmed at watching her begin to fill out her modest sweater. And of course she sang and danced. All the Mousketeers did.

She went on to make those dreadful beach blanket movies with Frankie Avalon crooning to her against the California surf. Still, she has always seemed a kind presence, even while suffering from the debilitating Multiple Sclerosis that forced her to retire from public life fifteen years ago.

Her husband and caretaker, Glen Holt, authorized a video of Annettte in her current condition, supporting research in Multiple Sclerosis treatment via the Annette Funicello Research Fund for Neurological Diseases.  In the video, we get the obligatory shots from the Mickey Mouse Club, the beach movies and her getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, accompanied by Mickey of course.  But the slimy TV programmers who bring us their own slants on “news” couldn’t restrain from emphasizing the photos of her late in life that were unfortunate and won’t be described here.  If he were around today, Dante would put those shapers of popular culture in the lowest circle of Hell.

Gregg Robins

 Snowing in April

As someone who lives where it sometimes snows in April, how could I pass up Greg Robins downloadable album of Demos — Snowing in April.  And I’m glad I didn’t.

Let me go right to the last song which truly touches the heart.  “Believe”  sings of a father’s advice to his oldest daughter and what makes it so striking is that Robins sings it with his then 15 year old Casey.

Casey’s voice will never again be exactly as it was when she sang on this recording.  She will never again be exactly the same.  That is the bittersweetness of growing children and grandchildren.  They can’t wait for the next age and parents want to hold on to the current one just a little longer.

“Believe in your dreams. They can always come true.”

The passage of time pops up a number of times on this warm album from a New Yorker now living in cold Moscow. (Moscow!!?) “The Middle of the Show” isn’t about a stage show.

“Middle age is all the rage.”

In “Where Were You?” where Robins is joined on vocal by Remy Sepetoski, at 35 “I knew where I was, where were you?”

But the album’s not maudlin about fleeting time. It just urges us to not miss “How Lucky” we are just to be here. Robins is sometimes a bit off-key singing but he hits mostly right notes writing neat songs.

You can listen to the album at Robins” website for free.  Must be the old Soviet socialist share the wealth spirit at work, if it ever was.

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Short Takes: Of Christmas Music Four Ways

By Brian Arsenault

Tis the season, as they say, and there’s music aplenty for those who celebrate Christmas.  It’s just a matter of how you likes yours served.

Will Scruggs Jazz Fellowship

Song of Simeon: A Christmas Journey (Willis I Music)

Some of the greatest art of ages past and sometimes present has been faith based — much classical music, once nearly all painting and sculpture.  That sometimes makes us uncomfortable to discuss or even mention in this secular age but it’s true enough. There have also been more than a few great jazz artists who were strong in their faith.  That maybe also makes us just a little leery to say, but it’s true enough as well.

This wonderful jazz album seems strongly Christian in the best sense of love for humankind and gratefulness for life and salvation.  But it is no less accomplished jazz for that. From Will Scruggs’ sax work to Brian Hogan’s fine piano to the rhythm section of Tommy Sauter and Marlon Patton, this recording is as complex and pleasing as it is deeply felt.

The musicianship is superb. The Angel Gabriel arrives with a fanfare to shake the knees of all us sinners on “The Annunciation,” and the “Song of Mary” shows why she is the favorite of so many of the faithful, including a recent Pope or two.

But all is not imposing here. The album’s “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is as joyous as the title shout out. “Go Down Moses” rings of its African American origins and Dixieland playing. (Interestingly, here and elsewhere we are presented in the album’s booklet with the lyrics to all songs, but the recording is all instrumental.)

If you never thought “We Three Kings” was a fine jazz composition, you will change your mind.  And if you haven’t felt the elevated state of these musicians at their work before we get there, you can’t miss it on the closing “Joy to the World.”  Particularly when the terrific horn ensemble kicks in to fortify the core quintet.

As the story goes, God promised Simeon he would see the Savior before he died. I can only promise you really, really good jazz.

Jason Paul Curtis (with Swinglab and Swing Machine)

Lovers Holiday (Jason Paul Curtis)

If you prefer your Christmas music a bit more mainstream, but think we need a few new Christmas songs, Lovers Holiday” may be for you.

In fact, the true Christmas songs are largely Curtis compositions: “Our Time of Year,“ “Lovers Holiday,” “Good This Year.”

Some  of the standards on the album — “Let it Snow,” Cole Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” and “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm” are “winter” tunes but not truly Christmas songs. But they work.

Sometimes the sound is jazz quartet — Swinglab.  Other times it is big band backing a singer – Swing Machine.  Think Doc Severinson.

It is always upbeat.  It may remind you of your parents’ Christmas parties if you are over 40.  Definitely if you are over 50.

Great fun.

Drew Paralic

Wintertime Tunes of Drew Paralic (CDBY)

This little album came out a while ago but its winter theme and vaguely Christmas sensibility makes it worth citing.  Just six songs but an extremely tight bit of work.

Paralic plays piano but not here.  Instead, he wrote, arranged and produced the CD.  He says he prefers that because he started playing piano too late to be as masterful as Bill Evans.  To which I say, who is?

His arranging skills need no apology “(On the Occasion of) Wet Snow” is so melodic that I can see snow falling in the woods behind my house.  And I know something of snow.

Throughout the album, Mike McGinnis’ fine tenor sax (“Down in Soho”) and clarinet  intermingles flawlessly with the piano work of James Newman and David Pearl.  There are no loose ends or weak moments here.  Just wish it had been longer.

Various Artists

A Very Special Christmas – 25 Years (Big Machine Records for the Special Olympics)

Finally, for those who like their Christmas albums big and bold and country tinged there is a chance to help the Special Olympics with A Very Special Christmas — 25 Years.

Train kicks the album off with a “Joy to the World” that will awaken any Christmas morning sleepyhead.

Michael Buble provides a rendition of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” that might have been Binged or Franked.

The country lineup, largely in the middle of the album, includes Rascal Flatts, Vice Gill, Martina McBride and Amy Grant.  Some of us are thankful that there’s also a Cheap Trick reworking of “I Want You to Want Me” (“I Want You for Christmas”).  And Dave Matthews Band chips in a live version of its uniquely Christmasy “Christmas Song.”

I kind of dreaded the approach of the last song on the album, “Oh Holy Night” by Christina Aguilera.   Would she just murder it and make tenors throughout the world cry?  Instead, she almost pulls it off, but in the middle gratuitously interjects a narration of The Lord’s Prayer and then ends with a Madonna funk-out including a chorus.

Maybe she thought she couldn’t manage the range and drama of the closing notes, but she was almost there.  Oh well.

Merry Christmas to all.

To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

CD Review: Punch Brothers

Punch Brothers

Who’s Feeling Young Now (Nonesuch)

By Brian Arsenault

Punch Brothers’ new album, Who’s Feeling Young Now?, starts so strong. Poetic intelligent lyrics, deeply felt but restrained feelings in the vocals, especially strong fiddle playing by Gabe Witcher. In a time of computer beeps and annoying bongs and chirps of everything from coffee makers to cars to hip hop, there is a purity of rounded sound here that is as comfortable as old sneakers and jeans.

Punch Brothers

“Movement and Location” opens the album with all the fine qualities mentioned above.  “This Girl” follows with an electric pace carried by stringed instruments. The song’s a prayer for love and favor, or the favor of love.  Who does that? Asks for it, yes, but prays for it? Today? Not many in popular music outside of the Christian genre.

The song says “Gods ought to know how little to expect of people,” but the gods and me expected a lot of this band.

And I kept expecting a great deal right through “No Concern of Yours,” where the poetry is up to a Paul Simon standard:

“A word can break as easy as it’s spoken, snarled or sworn.”

And Jimmy Paige could play guitar on an electric cover of the title song, “Who’s Feeling Young Now?”

But then I began to consider that maybe these guys just lost their amps.  But no, they are a self proclaimed bluegrass band.  And just as I have felt at every bluegrass concert I have ever attended, no matter the quality of the musicians, it’s just . . . well . . . like the amazing Gary Oldman character in The Professional says of his idol Beethoven — that after those amazing beginnings, he does tend to get just a little bit boring. Or words to that effect.

It could be it’s nothing more than my need for percussion, somewhere, somehow.  I admit it’s a prejudice but it’s a good one, don’t you think?  Even a snare drum. Just a little.  But this is bluegrass, so maybe I don’t have a legitimate complaint.

The songs  seem to sound a lot alike musically and lyrically. And I can only take so much “can’t find love” stuff. Or is it that they can’t sustain love? Or a relationship.  Is this a Woody Allen movie?

By the time we get to “Flippen (The Flip)” I appreciate the break.  A pure Ozarks instrumental that does a funky little acid rock thing in the middle — not many can do that with acoustic instruments — and then flashes back to pure West Virginny to finish up.

It’s not that most of the songs don’t stay good.  “Hundred Dollars” beefs up the emotional impact of the album with the anger and force of emotion missing elsewhere. “Soon or Never” has a wonderful melancholy, amplified by the fiddle solo at the end.

It’s just that by now I feel like I have heard it all once, twice, three times. Enough.  Surely some other dynamic of life could come into play. I’m certainly not feeling young and I haven’t smiled once.

Photo courtesy of Punch Brothers.

CD Review: EG Kight’s “Lip Service”

EG Kight

Lip Service  (Vizzitone)

By Brian Arsenault

When this album started my first reaction was, “If Bonnie Raitt was Southern, this is what she’d sound like.”  But that may just be my Yankee self talking, because what you really feel when you’re moving through Lip Service, E G Kight’s latest CD, is that you just walked into a small club sort of by chance and they had this kickass band playing with a great chick singer out front.

EG Kight

But you’d either have to be in Georgia or some place where an Allman Brothers kind of band was playing its way up North before they got famous.  Kight’s songs move from country to blues and back again with an ease that’s mostly only found in Southern artists. She still lives on long time family land in Georgia.

Maybe that’s the proof that traditional country — not that contemporary junk country which is the new pop light — and the blues are not that far apart. White and black Southerners have been living together for a long time and it hasn’t all been Bull Connor and fire hoses.  They listened to each other and what came out is among the best of American music.

I’ll start with the last track because in this case the best of the songs – almost all written by Kight — was saved for last. “I’m Happy With The One I Got Now” is maybe the most traditional blues song on the album. Kight’s oh so clear, clever, teasing voice is supported by great acoustic guitar work by Tommy Talton.  Talton is perhaps the most notable of an excellent collection of sidemen playing on Lip Service.

The title song, with its nearly naughty lyrics and road house rock sound, could be recorded by the Rolling Stones in their bluesiest mood.  In fact, drummer Bill Stewart reminds me more than once of Charlie Watts at his best.

The album kicks off with “Sugar Daddy” which brings a smile while talking about hard times. You know it’s hard times when the sugar daddies are giving pearls instead of diamonds.  Of course, some of the best blues are about good times during bad times.

There’s also a Koko Taylor tribute in “Koko’s Song, and “Savannah” is a song about various kinds of “Georgia heat.”  Phew, I thought only girls of color could pull off such sensuality in music — except for Janis.

Speaking of the great Joplin, in the opening bars of “That’s How A Woman Loves” I stopped breathing for a moment because I thought Janis lives again. But the vocal warps into a little Patsy Cline too.

Versatility is another Kight strength.  Paul Hornsby’s “It’s Gonna Rain All Night” is a jazz song, a torch song in the best meaning of the phrase.  Kight could do a whole album of songs like this and it would win Album of the Year in a couple categories at least.

And if the Stones could cover a couple of the songs on Lip Service, it made me sad that Otis Redding isn’t still around to cover “Somewhere Down Deep.”  And when I mention Otis, it’s the highest praise I could offer for this recording.

More than a little production credit goes to Paul Hornsby.  You know the standard phrases: “legendary producer” and the less effusive “veteran producer.”  Instead, let me put it this way. Hornsby has produced a lot of terrific music by a lot of fine artists for a long time.

As I wrap up, I feel like maybe I haven’t said enough about E G Kight’s singing, which is so clear and so capable of irony, humor, pathos and just deep, deep feeling. But you really can’t just write about such good stuff. You have to hear it

Photo courtesy of E G Kight.  Photo copyright by egkight.com 

To read more reviews and posts by Brian Arsenault click HERE. 

CD Review: A Celebration of Woody Guthrie

Note of Hope, A Celebration of Woody Guthrie (429 Records)

By Brian Arsenault

So what do you do when reviewing the words of an icon set to music and recorded by other icons, legends and even Studs Terkel?  Well, first of all you wonder why a major recording of Woody’s words — and Woody was all about words even more than music — begins with an instrumental piece and a rather boring one at that.

The piece that should have begun the CD is “There’s a Feeling in the Music” if for no other reason that it’s principally by Pete Seeger, Woody’s contemporary and pal.  But there’s an even bigger reason.

Woody Guthrie

It’s probably the most poetic piece of music on the album, a reflection on “feeling” by an artist who hadn’t been corrupted by the notion that feeling is suspect in art. And it’s an ode to music in a way that is self defining by Woody’s words and sung with just the right feeling by Seeger, even if I do hate his banjo playing and all banjo playing.

There’s a lot more on this album to like.

Madeleine Peyroux

Madeleine Peyroux is of course terrific with a what everybody wants anthem “Wild Card in the Hole.”  Her smooth, smooth voice with Rob Wasserman’s bass perfect underneath.  And thematically there’s that wonderful dichotomy of despair and hopefulness that typifies Woody Guthrie’s work.

Lou Reed’s “The Debt I Owe” knows that most of us are in hock to life. This is a short story set to music about owing much more than you can ever pay back while wishing the debt was only about money.

Ani DiFranco

“Voice,” wonderfully sung/spoken by Ani DiFranco, is about alienation from popular culture wherein Woody’s words are about not being able to hear authentic voices in the movies or on the radio.  Imagine his horror today.  Woody is able to say “This is my language” only after talking to a waitress in a deli and listening to a customer.  At a higher level, this song poem is about an artist striving for what is true. More good Wasserman.

Studs is cast perfectly as the voice of a petty theft who just isn’t enjoying stealing as much as he used to, hoping that he will again “when this damn war is over.”  World War II is the setting here but pick a war, any war.  And for accusations you just can’t top “your a damn fool for being with a damn fool.”

And there’s more:

“Peace Pin Boogie” is a hilarious send up of political correctness in all its silly forms. “Boogie for Peace” may be an even more relevant line in terms of the ‘60s and certainly today than it was in Woody’s 1940s and ‘50s America.

Even St. Peter won’t let you in Heaven without your “peace pin on.”  Good stuff. And the converse is true too.  Remember when the Prez said you didn’t need an American Flag pin to be patriotic and shortly thereafter started wearing one.

The late Chris Whitley’s “On the High Lonesome” explores Woody’s notion of the nasty edges couples can take each other to when they “toss shit back and forth.” Gritty and insightful and Whitley delivers the goods like he’s lived them.

Jackson Browne

 

The CD closes with that comforting voice of Jackson Brown rising to sing “You Know the Night” about when Woody first met his second wife.  The first marriage evidently didn’t inspire him to such levels of poetry.  And poetry there is, with the yearning for someone who “hopes like I hope, sees the same kind of dreams I see.”

But 15 minutes? Really? Hey, Jackson, even with all the beautiful words here it just can’t help but get a little boring.  You know, kind of like that song you did about the roadies closing up after the show.  Didn’t that ever hit you?

They’re doing a four minute edit of “You Know the Night” for the radio and that’s probably a good idea.

The publicity release says Woody’s daughter, Nora Guthrie, conceived the project based on writings from Woody during his New York Period from 1942-1954 and asked Wasserman to lead the task. She chose well.  His ear and eye for the right artists for the pieces that match their skills was unerring. The accompanying musicians are fine throughout.

Our sense of Woody Guthrie is enriched and renewed. Good enough.

To read more reviews by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

CD Review: James Lee Stanley and Cliff Eberhardt, “All Wood and Doors”

James Lee Stanley and Cliff Eberhardt

All Wood and Doors (Beachwood Recordings)

By Brian Arsenault

In my imagination, two old folkies walk into a bar and after a bucket of beers one of them says: “You know, we ought to record a CD of Doors songs.  They still got lots of fans, you know.”

The other one says: “You know, that’s a pretty good idea”.

The only problem is they apparently didn’t wake up sober the next day and go back to their usual stuff.  All Wood and Doors ensued.

I considered a one line review:

It’s just not right.

 But then I thought there might be some readers who wouldn’t get it, although I knew many fans of The Doors — which is a way of saying fans of Jim Morrison — would get it without even giving the album a listen. To replace the deep velvet tones of despair and dementia that no one else in rock could equal with the twang of country/folk sincerity just never had a chance.

 It’s just not right.

 Oh, the acoustic guitar playing is fine, at times even masterful, but you wouldn’t have Loretta Lynn sing Billie Holiday. Nothing wrong with Loretta if you like that sort of thing, but she’s not up to Billie.

I once heard a story  that Tony Bennett was encouraged to do an album of Janis Joplin songs. His terse reply was: “You do it.”  Now I’m a big fan of both Mr. Bennett and Janis but Tony had it right. There are some chasms you don’t attempt to leap across either on a motorcycle or an acoustic guitar.

Ok, ok, consider this, the lights go down, the guitar intro concludes and what ensues is a long slow country styled version of “Break on Through,” the CD’s first track.  Does it hurt to even think about? Then don’t listen. The pain meant I couldn’t get all the way through this song or many others on the CD although I tried them all.

“Light My Fire” is surprisingly pleasant but it’s a lot closer to Jose Feliciano’s version than Morrison’s. And let’s face it, Jose’s was silly enough.

It’s the concluding tracks, though, that really define the miss that is this CD.  When you hear this version of “People Are Strange”, and I hope you won’t, you think, no they’re not.  “Riders on the Storm” lacks any semblance of the menace and melancholy of Morrison’s version. But the true terror comes with “The End,” that apocalyptic song of pain and despair that Coppola knew was perfect for his movie. This version is like The Crew Cuts doing Simon and Garfunkel, or maybe the other way around.

In a way, “The End” is the perfect ending (gratefully) for this CD but not as the artists intended.

I’m not saying that Doors songs can never be done by another, but he (or she) would need to be as soulful at Otis Redding or as melodic as Sam Cook.  I know, I know, they’re both gone too, but Al Green is still working.

A couple of The Doors play on this CD, which maybe says something about where their careers and taste have gone.

So does Peter Tork and maybe that is enough warning right there.

To read more of Brian Arsenault’s reviews click HERE.