Record Rack: Little Lonely, Michael and The Lonesome Playboys

LA Saves Country

 By Brian Arsenault

Who would have thought that some offbeat, funky musicians based in the City of Angels would save heartland American Country Music?  Really.  Pop crap slid over from rock ‘n roll and migrated to Country in recent years. Someone needed to save it.

I’m aware of the current nomenclature of Americana/Roots music but it’s inadequate.

I see the word Americana and I think of old paintings lacking perspective and stuff that got good seemingly for just getting old. Roots? That implies the early stuff in the hill country and down in the bayou.

No, no, no. What’s going on is better than just a yearning for the past.  It’s unique artists living in this world, right now, seeing it through clear eyes or at least eyes fogged by their own vision, pain and maybe substance abuse.  But it’s here. Today.

If it’s a lot like something last week or last century it’s because time rolls on but people don’t change.  Human nature’s the same. Even lonesomeness in the era of “social” media. Maybe especially now.

Little Lonely (Julie Cain, formerly performing as Bitsy Lee)

 Little Lonely  (Release on June 25 but you can hear it online now.)

The sounds of US 40 close this album.  That’s right. The actual hum of a road and the weather, thunder sometimes. It’s a good metaphor for Little Lonely’s Little Lonely.

There are roads that run through the outskirts of towns you never see. There are beauty parlors where we go “to feel a whole lot better when we’re new” but we never do.

There are country carnivals that are sad behind the bright lights but it’s even sadder when they leave town.  Just like that “pointless fling” that’s passed.

There’s a strangeness “to living between point A and point B.“ Or maybe beyond points where “truth is always a railroad.”

There are songs of betrayal when he “wouldn’t dare” take her to the room you share.  “I swear she’ll never get past the top stair.”

There’s an artist here who knows what a rich metaphor “stairs” are and uses it twice. There’s a thinker who wonders if Jesus is out by the pool then “who is gonna be your God?”  Nobody?  Good luck with that.

There’s a musical sense that employs throbbing electric guitars riffs in places, soft mandolin in others and sometimes together, brassy horns, mournful pedal steel guitar, twelve-string and, in one place, an absolutely spooky organ.

There’s this unique little voice that is somehow powerful.  What can I compare it to, or whom? Do I even want to? She’s worth hearing without suggestion.  But since critics are supposed to do stuff like that: wait for just a trace of Dolly Parton at her softest, a smidgen of Cyndi Lauper.

Nah, like them she’s her own self.

She can sing about the “burial ground of feeling” but she hasn’t stopped feeling. She’s unsparing –  maybe when you get old you’re just “a slower version of yourself”  — but she’ll give you a smile just as quickly.  “Accidents happen, they do.” Ok, it’s dark humor but it’s funny.

So “Tell me again. I got all night.”

Michael and the Lonesome Playboys

Bottle Cap Sky (bLACKWATER rECORDS)

I wonder if Michael Ubaldini was thinking about what’s happened to country music when he wrote “end times are here, they’ve already begun” on his Texas swing number “Moondog Mad.”  He’s been quoted at saying that country music has “devolved not evolved,” but he’s “Walking Through Fire” to bring it back to where it belongs.

Ubaldini.

What kind of name is that for a country singer?  Just right, I guess, since he can move from rockabilly to bluesy to cowboy lamentations with ease.

And the lyrics: whether sad or funny, regretful or ironic, honky tonk or Dylanesque, they always get right to the heart of the matter.

“I’m better off without you, still I can’t bear to be alone.”

But “a moment without you is a moment too long.”

Still “ at least do me wrong with some style.”

Lest I become “. . . “a beggar at the gate weeping for salvation”

There are some just standout tunes.

“Sweet Ole Riddle” is one, though I doubt a song which talks about being held “by the short hairs” will get much pop country radio play.

A number of years ago Ubaldini’s star-crossed love song “Two Wrongs Like Us (Don’t Make A Right)” could have been a big hit on the country charts.  Pray to the ghost of what the Grand Ol’ Opry was that it can be again.

As with all true country greats — think Hank Williams — he knows that country and blues are separated only by a little geography and sometimes color.  His blues harmonica on “Someone Should Put You On Trial” would work on any Howlin’ Wolf record.  In fact, so would the whole song.

Now, as to real country lost love tunes, I can almost hear George Jones intoning “. . . this place don’t feel like home, only a heart full of tears.”

The playing on the album is unadorned, largely undubbed and generally superb. Gary Brandin knows just how to support the singer on pedal steel guitar. You almost feel like you’re having a shot while Michael and the band play in a small club.

As with Little Lonesome, the road plays a large role on the album. That’s very American to the core. After all,  Kerouac’s On the Road is one of the half dozen greatest American novels and moondog mad is about the best definition I’ve ever read of Dean Moriarty/Neil Cassidy, when I think of it.

The sounds of “Old US 40” closes Little Lonely’s album and “Interstate ‘5’ “ closes Michael’s. We can’t escape the road that so defines America and Americana (so I used that term, so what).

Railroads are here too, whether in Ubaldini’s “Steel Train” or in Little Lonely’s “Lament.” If it “takes a train to cry,” you know “truth is always a railroad.”  Maybe real country can join railroads in making a comeback.

The album  will be available pre-official release at two shows: THE GRAND OLE ECHO Sunday June 9th in Echo Park,L.A. And  THE SWALLOWS in San Juan Capistrano(OC) Friday night JUNE 7th.

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

Blues CD Review: “True Blues” by Various Artists

True Blues (Telarc)

 By Devon Wendell

In a time when most practicing blues artists pay more attention to the overly guitar driven indulgences of late 60s blues-rock and, for the most part, have lost sight of the music’s richest traditions and subtleties, it’s refreshing to hear a compilation dedicated to the true originating masters of the blues.

True Blues celebrates the history of the blues and its rich musical heritage by assembling several of the music’s most prominent and powerful artists of the day, such as Corey Harris, Taj Mahal, Shemekia Copeland, Guy Davis, Phil Wiggins, and Alvin Youngblood Hart.

The compilation consists of live material recorded at various venues in the U.S., including Jazz At Lincoln Center, The House Of Blues in Los Angeles CA, The Howard Theatre in Washington DC, and Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis, MD.

Guy Davis

The set opens with a raw and pure rendition of Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man,” live at Jazz At Lincoln Center in NYC, performed by Guy Davis, Corey Harris, and Alvin Youngblood Hart, all trading verses, with Phil Wiggins on harmonica. Aside from the stellar sound quality, all of these men sound as if they’re being recorded on a plantation in Mississippi by The Library of Congress in the ‘40s.  Davis, Harris, And Hart all have distinctive, gut-wrenching vocal styles with bare bones Delta blues guitar playing. This is pure blues with no flash or unneeded pyrotechnics.  Wiggins’ blues harp style is reminiscent of the late Sonny Boy Williamson and Sonny Terry.

Alvin Youngblood Hart

Alvin Youngblood Hart takes the Reverend Blind Willie Johnson’s “Motherless Children Have A Hard Time” and transforms it into the later Mississippi post-war style of John Lee Hooker and Robert Petway, finger picking on an electric guitar or an acoustic guitar with an active pickup. Though literally thousands of artists have covered this 1927 classic, this performance (recorded at The Howard Theatre In Washington, DC) is one of the most spine tingling and chilling in its intimacy and in the dynamics of Hart’s vocals and guitar.

A true highlight of the album is Corey Harris’ version of Sleepy John Estes’ “Everybody Got To Change Sometime,” recorded at The House Of Blues in Los Angeles.  Harris’ vocal timbre is already very close to that of the late Estes, and it sounds as if Harris has studied and mastered every vocal nuance of the original recording from 1938, even capturing Estes’ sparsely primitive but rhythmic acoustic guitar style.

Taj Mahal

The elder statesman of the bunch, Taj Mahal knows blues tradition like no one else and proves it on his electrifying take of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Done Changed My Way Of Living,” performed at Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis, MD.  Taj Mahal comes off like a mix between a Baptist preacher, Houston Stackhouse, and Howlin’ Wolf.  Mahal still has that fantastic ability to channel the blues masters from many different regions and genres and the Annapolis crowd responds to this electrifying performance.

Shemekia Copeland

Next, Shemekia Copeland (along with Davis, Hart, Harris, and Wiggins at Jazz At Lincoln Center) pays tribute to her late father, the great Texas six-stringer Johnny “Clyde” Copeland on “Bring Your Fine Self Home,” a track the late Copeland recorded with another great, the late Albert Collins, in 1984.  It’s a terrific departure to hear Copeland in a stripped-down acoustic blues setting. She mercilessly belts out the blues that not only sounds as if her voice shook the NYC stage, but also made her father very proud.

After a somewhat lackluster and clumsy performance of Leadbelly’s “Roberta” by Guy Davis, Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Phil Wiggins, Harris lays down a warm, heartfelt rendition of Blind Blake’s “C C Pill Blues.” As fine as Davis and Hart are vocally, Harris is truly the star on this performance and throughout the album. There’s a pained yearning to Harris’ vocals and a delicate touch to his guitar playing that you don’t hear much of in the blues these days. Hart is a close second with his masterfully rhythmic version of Leadbelly’s “Gallows Pole.” Hopefully this will educate people that Led Zeppelin didn’t write this song once and for all.

The problem with this tribute to the blues is a lack of originals by these great artists. The blues is as personal as one’s fingerprints.  “Gonna Move Up The Country (Paint My Mailbox Blue)” demonstrates what a brilliant guitarist and songwriter Taj Mahal still is.  Mahal sings along with each note of his staccato guitar solo. The strings on Mahal’s guitar sound so thick that they could cut through railroad iron. And his playful stage antics and attitude are a reminder that the blues is fun music.

Ending the CD are Copeland, Davis, Harris, Hart, and Wiggins, doing yet another version of Robert Johnson’s “Ramblin’ On My Mind.” This feels forced, possibly to win over the live audience’s limited knowledge of the blues. Too many versions of this song have been recorded and it feels unnecessary here in comparison to the carefully selected more obscure and underappreciated material.

True Blues sets out to pay homage to the blues that gave birth to jazz, funk, and rock n’ roll and it does just that, especially in terms of historically significant songs that are timeless. Although some more original tribute material would have made this project more interesting, all the performers demonstrate their knowledge and love of the blues.  And, more importantly, it’s evident that all are having a good time doing so.

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Devon Wendell click HERE.

Record Rack: The Rolling Stones

Three from the Stones in White Vinyl

 Reissues of:

“Let It Bleed” “Beggars Banquet” and “Hot Rocks 1964-1971″ (ABKCO Music and Records))

By  Brian Arsenault

I almost don’t have to listen to any of these records.  Oh, not because I haven’t heard any of this — just a few tune titles stumped me for a moment — but  because they are all branded into my brain for years, nay, decades.  But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t or I won’t. I’m listening to “Factory Girls” right now.

First of all , the albums are reissued in glorious vinyl and sound like records, not sterile digital unfeeling CDs.  And it’s a clear vinyl to boot,  kinda weird when handling but just as good sound quality as the black vinyl version.  It’s just that the black vinyl always had that air of mystery, a dangerous black box about to be opened to the mind.

But enough of that, these are the Stones, man, long before they became geezers, back when their fans argued endlessly about which was the best of their many albums.

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The press piece announcing the release of the albums on May 28 says that “many,”  whoever they are, consider Let It Bleed the best of all.  Well, it does include the soaring “Gimme Shelter,” the deeply felt tribute song “Love In Vain” and the ever dangerous “Midnight Rambler,” which seems scarier today in these scarier times.

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Yet would you overlook Beggers Banquet with the slyly demonic “Sympathy for the Devil” — another song that seems somehow more fitting for the current era — along with the scorching “Street Fighting Man?”  It was also the last full album with the late Brian Jones.

Jones has long since fallen out of favor in the Stones’ legend, but he was the guy who ran the ad that led to the band’s formation and he could play just about any instrument given 15 minutes or so to learn it.  No, he couldn’t step back for Jagger’s prominence, but even longtime pal Keith Richards, especially Keith, knows what a pain Mick can be.

And I don’t want to argue too much about which album is best.  But for me it’s Exile on Main Street that is the most coherent object d’art. And Get Yer Ya Yas out is one fine “live” album.

Anyway, the third album of the trio about to be re-released, Hot Rocks 1964-1971, is a fine sampler of Stones stuff from early recordings up through Let It Bleed selections and a bit beyond.  The uninitiated and the young may benefit most from this compilation. Or, you could buy them all if coin of the realm isn’t in short supply these days. It’s all good.

Listening to much younger Stones on these albums almost makes me wish they’d stop touring.  That scary picture on the new Rolling Stone Magazine kinda tells you why.  Except every time I’ve seen them in concert in recent years, in person or on film, I’m struck by how good Keith and Charlie especially still are.

Mick jumping about is just a bit geriatric but he’s earned it, hasn’t he?  And he doesn’t have to use a walker yet.

Hey, as my son Kurt says, Richards was always an old guy, wasn’t he?  He seems better that way, even though we’re all rather surprised he made it this far.  Bet he is too.

Anyway, they didn’t end up like Elton playing night after night in Vegas.  Didn’t you always  figure that‘s where “Tiny Dancer“ was bound?

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

CD Review: George Benson “Inspiration: A Tribute to Nat King Cole”

Inspiration: A Tribute To Nat King Cole (Concord Records)

By Brian Arsenault

Two versions of “Mona Lisa,” perhaps Nat King Cole’s most famous song, frame Inspiration: A Tribute to Nat King Cole.

The first, opening the album, was recorded by “Lil” George Benson in 1951 after he won a singing contest at the age of 8.  It seems a prophetic recording now that six decades later he has issued this remarkable tribute album, closing it out with an uncannily Nat-like version of the tune.

George Benson

Benson’s phrasing at the start of “new” version of “Mona Lisa” can’t be an accident.  It’s the highest tribute he could give to King Cole.  But there’s brilliance everywhere on the album.

Start with the big band sound of the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra crashing us into Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things.” Wow factor very high.

Follow on with Wynton Marsalis leading us into “Unforgettable” wherein Benson accompanies his remarkable vocal with his equally distinctive guitar work.

And oh yeah, the late Nelson Riddle’s arrangements are all over this album.  Somewhere Ol’ Blue Eyes is smiling.

Want more?  Idina Menzel of Rent and Wicked fame joins Benson for an outstanding duet on “When I Fall in Love” and we’re only five songs into the album. This is the heart breaker/ tear jerker of the CD and Benson’s guitar is just right, as good as his harmonizing with Menzel.

Later, Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile” may also bring a tear and Till Bronner’s trumpet is as perfect as Marsalis’ on “Unforgettable.” After tears, there’s a smile waiting on the album’s version of Cole’s own “Straighten Up and Fly Right” with its wry swing era arrangement.  Benson has his longest guitar solo here and I wouldn’t have minded more of that throughout but there’s nothing really to complain about.

Nat King Cole, like Louis Armstrong, understood that in the 1950s and ‘60s a black artist had to be absolutely non-threatening to fully appeal to white audiences.  But neither sacrificed artistry on that altar.  They just gave a smile and made America love ‘em.

And why not.  The version here of “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” has the orchestra playing just so good behind Benson’s smooth, smooth vocal. If it doesn’t bring a smile, you are probably terminally depressed. Benson’s gentle and accomplished approach makes him the perfect guy to do a tribute to Cole.

Riddle’s arrangements are perfect for the orchestra. The soloists like Marsalis and Bronner absolutely get it and fit like a well tailored suit.

There’s an ironic similarity between the career of Cole and Benson.  Cole first came to prominence as a jazz pianist and Benson as a jazz guitarist.  Their stunning vocal skills were hidden for a while but then the world received even greater gifts.

Any song not mentioned in this review is just as good as those that are.  The album’s as close to perfect as humans get.

Still, what I’ll carry with me forever is “Lil” George Benson singing his heart out it 1951.  Thank the musical gods the recording survived.  And that Benson stayed on the planet to give us this as he hit 70.

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Here’s an added  wrinkle:  Benson will be on QVC this evening (Tuesday, May 21)  at 10 p.m. (ET) to introduce the album and make a special offer.

Benson photo by Nanni Zedda courtesy of George Benson.

Record Rack: Susanne Abbuehl, bree

Oceans Apart

 By Brian Arsenault

The following albums and their artists couldn’t be more different.  That’s part of the fun.  It’s a wide musical world with all kinds of room or, in the broad thinker Jesus’ terms, “there are many rooms in my Father’s house.”  In this case I think it would have to be Mother’s house, though.  This will become clear below. Or maybe not.

 Susanne Abbuehl

 The Gift (ECM Records)

The great strength of this album of sung poetry, mostly from Emily Dickenson, is that gifted Swiss-Dutch singer Susanne Abbuehl lets the rhythm, the music if you will, of the words set the songs.  It may also be the album’s great weakness, if it has one, because in its own terms it is beautiful  throughout.

The whole feel of The Gift is gentle like Dickinson and the two other featured poets, Emily Bronte and Sara Teasdale, three giants of poetry a century and a half ago.  Gentle but not soft or saccharine, also like Dickinson, and like Abbuehl’s wondrous voice.

Sometimes Abbuehl’s voice is more spoken than sung but then she finds a melody and the poetry becomes so seductive (in a nonsalacious way, of course, it’s Dickinson remember).

Dickinson saw infinity in a clover. She wasn’t wrong. Abbuehl and her understated band are true to that minimalism.

Matthieu Michael’s flugelhorn is the other star of the album, even taking the lead at times and always with the right tonality for Abbuehl’s voice.  Wolfert Bederode provides marvelous accompaniment on piano and Olavi Louhivuori’s percussion is a match for the musicianship of the others.

Matching poetry and music is as old as the individual forms. In the earliest days, there probably wasn’t any difference.  It is said that the Odyssey was sung by blind Homer as he journeyed from royal house to royal house.

Still, it is here that I think Abbuehl and crew could have pushed the form a bit harder.

On “By Day, By Night,” a Teasdale poem, I grew excited as the music almost takes off.  Let it go, Sue (may I call you Sue?) I muttered.  But they didn’t. Not quite. Not here or anywhere on the album. She is always the cultured Susanne.

With a bit more jazz, the combo might have shaped the words in new and different forms with the music.  But here it was always the other way round, perhaps out of respect for the poetry.  But I can’t help but wonder if they would have found/created new meaning.

That may yet remain to be done. Yet we are left with something fine in an increasingly crude world.

 bree

bree  (Werewolf Tunes)

To paraphrase, Pete Townshend is reported to have once said that Keith Moon wasn’t a rock drummer, he was rock in the flesh.  While I certainly hope she lasts a lot longer than Moony, there is something of that in bree on her self titled album.  The Nashville rocker doesn’t seem so much to play the music form as to explode out of it.

She says she isn’t retro and I’ll take her at her word.  But this is rock as it should be; stripped down — “watch me rip my clothes off” — rolling, bouncing, roadhouse, r&b rooted, Joplin polished, stay up all night stuff.

A little power trio led by bree’s singing and Gibson Flying V guitar. Stand up bass and pounding drums complete the picture.

As always when the music is special, Boones the Cat came in the room and stared at me.  Who’s this? She wanted to know.  Someone who could become a legend, I replied.  Boones stayed until the album was over and then went into the next room and napped. Nothing more to hear.

But while the music played, they could probably hear it all the way to the religious commune where she was abused property until being kicked out at 17 for having a boyfriend.  Probably another one of those communes where the old guys want all the young stuff for themselves.  When are we gonna castrate those creeps or at least close them down?

Somehow bree kept self and soul alive to rock n roll and “not have time to be saved.”

There’s another Who connection, the guys who “don’t need to be forgiven.”  She’s clearly been to the streets.  “When you don’t drink whisky, you’re cold . . . You can’t resist me when you drink . . .” Those are hard rock lyrics; out there, real, raw.

She gives new maybe truer meaning to “All American Girl” who wants to “Dance All Nite (With my finger in the air). She’s tough but not mean, she’s seen enough of that.  You just have to “love me the way I am.” I do.

She’s a real rocker in another overproduced era of pop music. This is who Jagger should jam with while on tour, not the manufactured pre-packaged Katy Perry.

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Interestingly, both these albums have a piece entitled “Forbidden Fruit.”  bree’s is very different from Abbuehl’s/Dickinson’s — but maybe not . . .

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

Jazz CD Review: The Daniel Bennett Group

The Daniel Bennett Group

Clockhead Goes to Camp (Manhattan Daylight Media Group)

 By Brian Arsenault

When Clockhead Goes to Camp this summer, you should go with him. Like summer, this album is irrepressible.

I was reminded recently that Charles Mingus said “Making the simple awesomely simple . . . That’s creativity.“ The Daniel Bennett Group takes us to a whimsical place where the simplicity and sensibility of children has not been lost.  Rather, it has been found in this music.

The Daniel Bennett Group

I will soon be giving this album to a near one-year-old not because it is a children’s album — I generally hate the sing songy drek that is passed off as kids’ music — but because it is beautiful enough to delight a child. Or the child in you.

Oh yeah, the song titles.  They’re all like that:  the title song, “An Elephant Buys a New Car,”  “The Old Muskrat Welcomes Us,” even a scary one — “Cabin 12 Escapes into the Night.“

In fact, I was so pleased — nay, delighted — by the album’s whimsy that it wasn’t until the fourth track, “Dr. Duck’s Beautiful New Kitchen” that I went, hey, this is a jazz album. And that it is.

The title song is a remarkable piece full of nuance.  Bennett is as adept on flute and clarinet as he is on alto saxophone. On this tune, you may not always know where the instrument changes occur. At least I wasn’t.

Daniel Bennett

Tyson Stubelek’s percussion work is outstanding throughout; rhythmic from here to Brazil and on to Africa. Peter Brendler is one of those bassists whose playing you aren’t constantly aware of because he lays it so naturally underneath; self effacing for the player but deeply satisfying for the listener.

What I have to say about guitarist Mark Cocheo can’t be separated from Bennett, not because he isn’t excellent in his own right but because the two seem like brothers musically, picking up from each other seamlessly.

Two great examples of that connection come on “Whatever it Might Be” — with an imbedded poem by Rimas Uzgiris that is hardly childlike — and “Paint the Fence.”

On “Paint the Fence,” the acoustic guitar and flute are partnered, not simply played together. On this loveliest piece of the album you may envision Tom Sawyer on a great spring morning carrying the paint pail he intends someone else to labor with.

Bennett’s flute on “Nine Piglets” is like a warm breeze through the trees.  Cocheo’s guitar smoothly picks up the freedom of the melody.

“Sandpaper is Necessary” (more great song titling), gives us Bennett playing his sax alone. But he’s not really alone.  His notes dance along as Charlie Parker might have played them.  Bennett has listened to them all — Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins come to mind as well as Bird. I flatter myself that I recognize a tribute to them all in the fleeting two and a half minutes here.

On “John Lizard and Mr. Pug” near the end of the CD, we return to the gentleness of the opening songs as Cocheo’s guitar counterpoints Bennett’s alto saxophone. Lizard and Pug walk down a country lane.  I wonder if “Pressed Rat and Warthog” were ever this happy.

The “Ten Piglets” and Coceho’s guitar lead us out of the album‘s magic. Regretfully. A bit like leaving childhood, at least if your childhood included lots of very fine music.

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

Record Rack: Steven Casper & Cowboy Angst; Noah Preminger and Terri Lyne Carrington

Of Americana Rock, American Tenor Sax and American Genius Reprised

 By Brian Arsenault

The range of great American music never ceases to amaze me.  When they’re writing about our civilization, such as it is, a number of centuries hence I am quite sure it will be our music that is most treasured and remembered.  Unless the whole grid collapses, of course.

 Steven Casper & Cowboy Angst

Trouble (Silent City Records)

There is just no disputing the good time of bad times this EP (not LP) provides the listener.  Five tunes, one done twice, to take you deep into the heart of American music done road house bounce — blues, r&b, zydeco, Tex-Mex, Looziana all tied up in a just dazzling display.  In other words, rock and roll to delight the soul.

What Casper and his new Cowboy Angst lineup understand is that it’s all connected.  From the hills of West Virginia to the Delta. From Nashville to New York. At its best, it’s all American music. The Band knew that and so does Casper.

“Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” opens the proceedings and rightly so; a nasty tasty blues/gospel tune you won’t hear in church, with two McCrary sisters singing backup to Casper’s lead vocal.  In this version, it’s the guy who’s the cat.

Then here comes “Soul Deep”. Real nice lap steel guitar by John Groover McDuffie. Tom Petty would probably have a hit with this.

“I know where you end is the start of me.”

The title song is pure Louisiana  barroom rock.  How can trouble make you feel so good.

“I don’t go looking for trouble. Trouble comes looking for me.”

But the absolute gem of the album is “How Can I Miss You When You’re Not Gone?” Keeps the Cajun going and the irony can’t be missed.. The song is repeated as a “front porch” instrumental with banjo and fiddle to finish out the album.  But the first version will make you dance alone if there’s no one to dance with.

“Hey Marie” reaches way back to the 1950s to what Don and Phil Everly might have cut with Chuck Berry if songs could have been so damn bad back then without being censored or masqueraded. Chuck knew how to do that.

Marie writes on the wall: “Had a real good time. Don’t bother to call.”  Years later he sees their history “while standing in the grocery line.”

This little album is so good we might not deserve it. But it’s here this summer.

Noah Preminger

Haymaker (Palmetto Records)

Something special your way comes on May 14.

Noah Preminger, like Hemingway, boxes.  And like Hemingway he’s clear and concise.  He wants you to get it without the merely decorative and overly descriptive.  Here, here it is. Hear it.

On Haymaker, his tenor sax is moody and reflective at times — think Hawkins — as on the opening tune “Morgantown.”  Lovely and cool at other times — as on “Tomorrow,” whether you liked the musical Annie or not.

All saxophones played well are great to me, but tenor is the most satisfying; expressive and deeply touching. It’s why Kerouac called players of the instrument “tenorman.” They were special. Still are.

There are good songs all over the place. Preminger can’t remember what girl he wrote “My Blues for You” for, so it’s for all the girls you’ve loved.  Ben Mondor’s guitar solo picks up Preminger’s mood but it almost hurts when his horn breaks off.

Monder steps out front in the intro to his composition “Animal Planet.” Real smooth. Then Preminger comes in with such melodic lines.  A real favorite of mine.

On “Stir My Soul” and elsewhere, drummer Colin Stranahan sometimes annoys with his insistent pounding.  Oh, he’s good but he doesn’t need to fill every available space.  More Charlie Watts, less Keith Moon, please. Or listen to the next album (see below).

Still, he’s fine on the Dave Matthews song “Don’t Drink the Water.” The band makes you feel so good here as they start real smooth, go off into space and then return to the song’s melody.

“Motif Attractif” is a sweet little sendoff to close the album.

Preminger’s playing — ascending, descending, roaming, retuning — is just so sensitive to tonality, melody, timing and the other musicians that he is special to hear.

A haymaker in boxing can produce a knockout all on its own.

 Terri Lyne Carrington

Money Jungle Provocative in Blue (Concord Blue)

Shoot for the top.  Can’t hurt and it might work.

Drummer supreme Terri Lyne Carrington does just that with a reworking of Duke Ellington’s remarkable trio recording Money Jungle with Charles Mingus and Max Roach.  She gathers up the superb piano of Gerald Clayton and bassist Christian McBride with a few others and nails it.

I’m kinda late reviewing this album that came out during the winter but it got buried in the stack and just has to be paid homage to the way she pays homage to Ellington.

Even when she throws in a few of her own songs she seems true to the Duke.  I think he would have liked them. A lot.  And Clayton gets his own cut, “Cut Off,” which also resonates as a true Ellington descendant.

But the Ellington tunes, oh yeah.  A money hating downer narrative leading us into the album is overridden by the joyousness of the music that follows.  Clayton’s piano complemented just perfectly by Carrington’s drumming. She understands that the spaces are as important as the hits.

The only jarring note in the tune “Money Jungle” is the music being interspersed with speech clips from various politicians.  Doesn’t do much for me.  Money may be the enemy of art, but try paying the rent without the coin from gigs and recordings.  Politicians don’t do anything for art or anyone.  They don’t make things better for anybody but themselves.

But back to Ellington’s music.  “Fleurette Africain” demonstrates beautifully Mingus’ quote in the liner notes about simplicity.

“Anybody can play weird; that’s easy (and) making the simple complicated is commonplace.  What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach.  Making the simple, awesomely simple… That’s creativity.”

You’ll get it when you hear it.  Simple. Note to note. Chord to chord. Builds, weaves but always simple.  You hear every bit of it.

Same with “Backward Country Boy Blues,” with “Switch Blade,” with all of the Ellington compositions so lovingly handled here.

The wrap comes with “Rem Blues/Music” and the recitation of an Ellington poem within.

“Music is a woman . ..

When you think what you think,

She already knows”

Terri Lyne knows.

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

Record Rack: Spin Doctors, Bracher Brown and Quattro

            Sometimes a Reviewer’s Just Lucky

            Three Very Different Albums Connected Only by Their Excellence

 By Brian Arsenault

 Spin Doctors

If the River Was Whiskey (Rufus Records)

If you’re a ‘90’s kid, chances are you can still remember the words to Spin Doctors’ “Pocket Full of Kryptonite” and that favorite guy anthem to the hated former girl friend/bitch, “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong.”  I mean was there ever a nastier tune on hit radio and was a band bigger than Spin Doctors in the era?

So 25 years down the road, what is a listener to expect? Maybe not expected, but one sizzling blues album is what you get.

Hey, you can’t be a teen band forever, but these guys can do this till they’ve been around a half century.

“If the River Was Whiskey, (you’d) have no trouble drowning me.”  Hell of a lyric, hell of a song.

Chris Barron’s voice is deeper than in the early days. Whiskey? Cigs? Or just the passage of time. It works.

And Eric Schenkman’s guitar can flash it like he’s playing for Billy Boy Arnold, or do the slow hand. The rhythm section of Aaron Comess on drums and Mark White on bass are tight as can be.

The whole band is.

There’s some Howlin’ Wolf (title song) here and some Allman Brothers feel (“Scotch and Water Blues”)  as well.  Yet the Spin Doctors are their own self.

On tunes like “What My Love?” it’s real hard to sit still. “Scotch and Water Blues” just builds and builds and “About a Train” has a nice Delta flavor suitable for roadhouses.

The album makes you ache a bit for smoky bars smelling of beer and less savory stuff.  But the playing is real clean.

Bracher Brown

Broken Glass and Railroad Tracks (Rock Ridge Music, digital only)

A tough old businessman of Irish heritage that I knew and valued until his death said that one of the worst prejudices was that a young person couldn’t do a good job, maybe better.

So here comes Bracher Brown who makes you think that if the Beatles had been born in America under 20 years ago, this is what they might have sounded like.  Intelligent lyrics about the start of love, the end of love, the desire for love. Rhythms that we used to call infectious.  Seductive guitar licks.

“Singing songs about what life was supposed to be.”

Young but not untested in the furnace of life.

 “Haven’t slept in days but I’m all right.”

Even acquainted with absence that may be death –

“living with your ghost.”

And a love song — “Loving You” — that rings true; a song about what he knows about life at 18 that’s not to be patronized.  After all, we may never know more, we may just shut down and call it experience.

He’s not shut down at all. Thank goodness.

Quattro

Poppzzical  (Quattro Sound)

Ok, so you know there are four of them on Poppzzical. Mixed gender (two of each), mixed ethnicity, mixed musical backgrounds.  So, of course, all American in all our splendid, confusing mishmash of cultures that often produces remarkable music.

There’s a violin, often gypsy-like (Lisa Dondlinger). She can play for Pavarotti or Dancing with the Stars.

There’s a cello, also an amazing Latin influenced voice (Giovanna Moraga Clayton). Uh, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, New West Symphony).

Are you starting to get the picture?  They can match the exuberance of their own crafted “Good Day” — “try to bring me down will be time wasted” — with some Vivaldi done as classical sound with jazz shifts.

There’s a guitar which can lead and support, strum and sing (Kay-Ta Matsuno) who can play for Baby Face or Natalie Cole and a whole bunch of other folks too numerous to name here.

Finally there’s percussion work born in Tijuana, Mexico (Jorge Villanueva) who’s played on movie scores, in Latino bands and co-owns a film and TV scoring company.

So, as you can imagine, there’s a lot going on in this album they’ve made.

“Silky” is happy and melancholy at the same time.  There’s a guitar solo that resembles a violin piece.  Or is that a violin with cello as bass. Or both.  Ha, I don’t care. It’s music that’s unique.  I can’t think of any assemblage that sounds like Quattro.

Their Spanish language soul and Latino dance music.  If I could samba I would have on “Mi Conguero.“  That may even be the wrong dance but it’s the right feeling.

The album closes with “Hana Bi” and the guitar and violin take flight together.  The cello soars after them.

And maybe that’s it: flying, soaring, breaking free of forms while paying homage to them. In a musical world of too much sameness, the individuality and creativity of this young group is not to be missed.

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

Record Rack: The Rolling Stones and the Animals (Reissues)

Not Fade Away After Half a Century

 By Brian Arsenault

Vinylphiles rejoice.  If you still have a vinyl player that turns at 45 revolutions per minute, ABKCO has a very special treat indeed for you in honor of Record Store Day this Saturday (April 20).  Remarkably, there are 700 independent record stores still around in the USA and most still sell vinyl as well as CDs. On Saturday, you can pick up some Rolling Stones and Animals recordings previously issued only in the UK in 1964 and ‘65.

I wonder how many people alive today have never even seen a 45 let alone listened to one. I’m betting most under 50 – 55.  And an extended play (EP) mono 45? Extraordinary.

But even if the recording arcana bores ya, the music won’t, especially the Stones early work.

 The Rolling Stones

Five by Five (Reissue by ABKCO Music and Records)

How genuine these kids played, working to stay true to the rhythm and blues of their idols.  This was before the Stones became “the world’s greatest rock n roll band,” before Brian Jones died after alienating just about everybody else in the group, long ahead of Bill Wyman getting bored with the whole thing and retiring.

Five songs by the five guys (plus one abused “member”) recorded at the famed Chess Records in Chicago during their first American tour.  Richards recently said that bands should record in the midst of tours when they’re “hot.”

There’s heat here from the jumping version of Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” to the bouncing instrumental “2120 South Michigan Avenue” led by the fine organ work of Ian Stewart who was bounced out of the band for the wrong look and “six was too many.”

Until his death in 1985, Stewart is all over Stones’ recordings and concerts but was never accorded band member status.  Pete Best wasn’t the only casualty of the marketing of these early “British Invasion Bands” and Oldham was as big a jerk and control freak as Epstein.

But back to the music.

Jagger drags and drawls his way distinctively through “If You Need Me,” written by the truly wonderful and under appreciated Wilson Pickett. “Confessin the Blues” can now be played along black blues classics without a bit of hesitation.  It’s that good.

The album makes you ache for stuff this true to the form.  Maybe on their new world tour they could tuck Five by Five into the middle of the set somewhere and do all five.  Of course, they’re only four now because the bass player doesn’t get to be a real member. Ah, show biz.

 The Animals

 the animals is here

the animals are back (both reissues by ABKCO Music and Records)

In the same 1964-65 period that the Stones did “Five by Five,” the Animals issued two mono EPs in the UK and were sprung from some of the same roots, black blues and r&b with maybe a bit more attention to folk.

At least one major folk song so old its exact roots are unknown and argued about:

The magnificent “House of the Rising Sun” propelled the Animals to a status approaching the Beatles and the Stones.  Really, this one hit — transferring a fallen life from a poor young girl to a downtrodden guy — provided Eric Burdon with a format that would remain unequalled in his career. Alan Price on organ was the perfect complement to Burdon’s vocal and the song sent the band’s popularity through the roof.

The band wasn’t as good musically as the Stones; their instrumental breaks were very ordinary and closer to pop.  They seem at times a bit cheesy now except on “I’m Crying” where Price’s organ is again strong. But boy that Eric could sing.

On the animals are back he does a great cover of the immortal Sam Cooke’s “Bring it on Home to Me.”  No one could do it as well as Sam, but Burdon came close and brought his own deep soulful style to it.

The Animals achieved a second surge of popularity in the USA (and Viet Nam) with “We’ve Gotta Get Out of this Place,” which inexplicably became an anthem at the dances of privileged college kids, and very understandably among grunts hoping not to die in Nam. Again, Burdon’s deep resonant voice is just perfect to express the longing of British working class kids.

He’s also strong on “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” when it seemed he might be a great blues singer in the making.  But thematically, this fine song seems now to have been a preview of Burdon’s self absorption with being the coolest guy in the world.  Didn’t happen, but boy could he sing.  And he still can.

(BTW, never could find out why they fixed the plural subject-verb agreement in the second album. Of course, if you view “The Animals” as a singular noun, then it’s the second album that’s ungrammatical. Oh well.)

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

CD Review: Charles “CD” Davis and Friends

Charles “CD” Davis

24 Hour Blues (Blues House Records)

By Brian Arsenault

If I told you Eddy Arnold’s torch song “You Don’t Know Me,” done as a big band blues  number on Charles Davis’ 24 Hour Blues is but one of this album’s delights, would you buy it?  You should.

In this dickless era of the Justins and the emasculating Taylor Twitt, there is still music with balls. There is still the blues.  And Davis — former guitarist for the late Calvin Owens — has assembled a remarkable ensemble.  An ensemble, including two great chick singers, to show that the blues and real Eros are not dead yet.

If you missed this album, as I did when it first appeared in late 2011, be grateful that it’s being “reserviced” as Davis gains recognition.  Ironically, he’s been nominated for a “best new blues artist” award. I mean he played with Owens’ band for a decade, but recognition is merited.

This album has a big band blues core, but it also echoes with road house small blues combos, classic acoustic blues, even big jazz bands. On the aforementioned “You Don’t Know Me,” the horn section does some backing of the vocal like it was an Ellington piece.

Charles “CD” Davis

Davis plays in several styles, all clean as Tide washed.  A personal favorite is his acoustic blues guitar work on “Lonely Man” while Jabo (the Prince of Texas Zydeco) sings an echo of Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee and Muddy.  And is that a twelve string Davis is playing?

He saves his truly electric blues masterpiece for last on “Blues for My Father” where he starts with a true slow hand.  Restraint, holding back, building tension, Anthony Sapp’s magic bass underneath. Building, building. Neal Cassidy would have lost his mind.

Then soaring, stratospheric speed but always, always so controlled.  Not many can do that.  I think the organ comes in near the end because the guitar burst into flames.  At least any more and it might have killed.

And the vocals. Oh Lord, we have winners throughout.

On “Minor Thing,” Roberta Donnay is as jazzy as she is with a trumpet underneath like a ‘50s noir film. Tasty guitar solo by Davis. Earlier she raises the album’s temperature on the classic “That’s How I Learned to Sing the Blues.”

Speaking of heat, Trudy Lynn’s “It’s Tight Like That” reminds us that not everything on a blues album is G Rated, or PG, or even R maybe.  The band sings choruses sort of like — but not exactly like — a ‘40s big band backing the lead singer. But this is no “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” here. She is intemperate, thank goodness. Or badness.

The guys are good too. Already mentioned Jabo, who also shines on “Help Me Baby,” a juke joint jump, and “Old Fashioned Woman,” which slides along like an otter down a chute. Rue Davis provides some smooth vocals to complement the deep, growly Jabo here and takes the lead on others. Rue’s the guy who redefines how you’ll ever think about “You Don’t Know Me” again.

And Charles Davis is all over this album.  He wrote or co-wrote several of the songs, arranged the album, even put it out on his own label.  His guitar playing alone would have been enough, as well as his clear affection for the big band blues of which Owens was perhaps the greatest. The Owens band is well represented here.

Even better, Davis doesn’t feel the need to always put himself out front. He complements, doesn’t dominate, the vocals.  He lets horns lead when they should, singly and in concert. There’s even a great violin lead or two.

There’s too often this tendency to talk of the blues in the past.  Too many “last of the great bluesmen” obituaries as we try to pay tribute to the originators.  “CD” on this CD shows us that the blues present is about as good as anything can be.

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