Tribute Album for Beginners

I can't stand tribute albums. Well, normally that's the case. Mostly they just fail to live up to the greatness of whomever or whatever they are attempting to pay tribute to. Usually it has to do with a lack of focus: too broad a spectrum of performers covering a wide range of styles by a particular artist and there's usually some song that just outright sucks, which makes it hard to listen to as an album.

Folkyeah and Grass Roots Records are responsible for this Graham Nash tribute record that can proudly stand right next to the album its paying tribute to: Songs for Beginners. Yes, it's a tribute album with songs by many different artists, but song for song it recreates Graham's spectacular solo debut album, which I previously discussed here. There's really not a bad song on the album, which has just as much to do with the solidity of Graham's original, but also the strength of the artists selected to cover them, among them: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (aka Will Oldham), Vetiver, Nile Nash (Graham's daughter) and many others that I'm less familiar with but hope to become more familiar with in the time to come. Check out the promotional video they made, which has snippets of most of the songs:

"BE YOURSELF" GRAHAM NASH 2010 TRIBUTE ADVANCE EPK #2 promo from (((folkYEAH!))) on Vimeo.

If you're into vinyl, I suggest you order yours before it's too late - they only pressed 1000 and they did a superb job with gatefold cover, excellent artwork and nice thick vinyl. There's a bonus EP, which strangely I didn't receive (but hope to rectify that) but instead got the 7" single of Bonnie Prince Billy's song from the comp.

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Hombre Sencillo (Simple Man)
I was surprised to really like this one as I've had mixed experiences with Will Oldham. I know lots of people are fanatical about him, but I can take him or leave him depending on the song/album. This song, however, is making me want to revisit my position. By far, this is the most radical reinterpretation of any of Graham's songs on the album, yet even in its deviation I think it gets to the real heart of Graham's humble message to "be yourself". Sure, it sounds like a hippy cliche, but with the crap that gets paraded around as popular music, this message is more urgent than ever. They even made a little mini-movie which I highly recommend you watch.

Moore Brothers - Man in the Mirror
Beautiful harmonies from the group I've never heard above before, but will now keep my eyes peeled for "moore" to come.

Mariee Sioux (w/ Greg Weeks of Espers) - Sleep Song
Magical. Possibly my favorite song from Graham's album rivaling "I Used to be a King" (Vetiver does this version and while it's fantastic, surprisingly it's not one of my favorites from the tribute album) this lullabye reminds me a lot of another version I recently came across from Claudine Longet . . .

Claudine Longet - Sleep Song

Blue Ridge Rangers

Wow, it's been awhile. Sorry, to keep ya'll (all two of you) hanging like that without any new (meaning old) music to ingest your WW&W to . . . Truth be told, it's not that I haven't stumbled upon any great new songs or artists to showcase on the blog, but just that I've been really busy and distracted with the rest of life, such as: getting laid off, finding out I'm gonna be a dad, and then getting another job (in that order, naturally). But, I'm back and committed to posting some music on this and it's sister blog, Soul Spectrum, on the somewhat regular.

Today's post comes from a prolific, yet anonymous source: The Blue Ridge Rangers. The shadowy figures perched atop the bluish ridge are in actuality an army of Fogerty: John Fogerty, that is. After the breakup of Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1972, John Fogerty, lead singer and main songwriter embarked on a solo career with an album that not only didn't list his name (except for as producer on the back of the LP), but didn't include even one original song. Either he was trying to get back at Fantasy Records founder Saul Zaentz or he was trying to disassociate himself from CCR.

Either way, it's a solid album of classic country music performed entirely by Fogerty with innovative arrangements that fits in wonderfully with the output of other country-rockers of the time, namely Gram Parsons. CCR never really fit in with much of the contemporary rock coming out during their tenure (1968-1972) so its amusing that Fogerty's first solo album actually DOES fit in with a trend even in its attempts to be anachronistic. Any way you slice it, it's an interesting listen from start to finish.

John remade this album with some new tunes and a full band not too long ago, but if I were you I'd track down this original album, find a cold American beer and a sunny porch and dig in.

Blue Ridge Rangers (John Fogerty) - California Blues (Blue Yodel #4)
Blue Ridge Rangers (John Fogerty) - Workin' On a Building





PS - Isn't the young John Fogerty a dead ringer for both a young Steve Martin and young Harrison Ford?

Weed, Whites & Stones

Apologies for the long delay in posts, but I go married a couple weeks ago and naturally that took up a lot of my time. Today we're listening to a few Rolling Stones' cover tunes from a broad spectrum of talent. The first tune is classic WW&W material as it comes from the godfather of the genre: Gram Parsons. The stones were first and foremost a blues-based rock band, but thanks to Keith's friendship with Gram Parsons they began incorporating more and more "country" influences into their music. I can't find the original quote anywhere, but if the anonymous internets are to be believed, Keith Richards confirmed to Barney Hoskyns that to Gram this song was "a logical combination between their music and our music."

Our other two examples come from the English country-side and Brazil where some varied musicians picked up on the universality of some of the Jagger/Richards songwriting and refitted their songs in more cosmic-country tones, ala Ronnie Lane's cover of the Exile on Main Street classic "Sweet Virginia" and Caetano Veloso's live cover of "Let It Bleed."



















The Flying Burrito Brothers - Wild Horses
The story goes that Keith sent Gram a master of "Wild Horses" a year before the 1971 release on the Stones album "Sticky Fingers." According to Jagger & Richards this song was their attempt to write something in a Gram Parsons style. I remember reading somewhere that Keith asked Gram to not release the Flying Burrito Brothers version until after the Stones released their album. Thankfully Gram and the boys included it on their second album "Burrito Deluxe" against Keith's request because by the time "Sticky Fingers" was released in 1971, the Flying Burrito Brothers were no longer in existence. There's no question that the Stones' version is a classic, but to me the FBB version matches it, if not tops it with Gram's wavering ad plaintive vocals and the killer piano solo.


Ronnie Lane & the band 'Slim Chance' - Sweet Virginia
As a certifiable Ronnie Lane obsessive I had to go and buy every single Ronnie Lane-related release out there and this one came pretty late in the game but was well worth the wait. This 2CD set has a whole bunch of live and live-in-studio performances from the key years of 1973-76 or so. Most of the tunes on here are Lane originals, but this cover song really fits right in the Ronnie Lane mold especially given the original's rustic feel and acoustic instrumentation. What's funny about this one is that it was recorded for radio so the swear-words ("Got to scrape the shit right off your shoes") was changed to silence in one chorus and "brown" in the last chorus.

Caetano Veloso - Let It Bleed
I have no idea where this recording is from, but this tune surfaced on a 1999 Japanese compilation of rare Caetano Veloso tracks. In the mid-seventies Veloso started to regularly do English-language cover tunes on his albums, mostly of Beatles songs, but this is a rare Brazilian cover of a Stones song. It kind of drifts into a march tempo at the end. I can't say I've listened to Veloso's covers album from a few years back, but I can say the man has a knack for putting his own voice and style on other people's tunes. The first cover tune of his I heard was Bob Dylan's "Jokerman" from an early 80s live album of Veloso's.

Vetiver: Things of the Past and Present

So far this blog has been solidly dedicated to older tunes from the 60s and 70s mostly, with the exception of Arthur Russell and some later John Martyn cuts. This is not because I'm some music purist that believese that only the old stuff is good (though I'm guilty of that 75% of the time), but because I spend most of my energy digging backwards rather than in the present. So usually when I find something new it's by accident, like what happened with Vetiver.

For the last two years I've been pretty solidly obsessed with Ronnie Lane of the (Small) Faces. One evening, hanging out with my friend Matt on a visit to NYC I was playing a mix that included Ronnie Lane's cover of D. Adam's "Roll On Babe." Matt said something like, "Vetiver's awesome," to which I gave him a confused look, explaining that we were listening to Ronnie Lane. He explained that Vetiver covered this song on one of their albums, to which I was skeptical and intrigued. He ripped me a copy and since then I have been slowly and irreversably falling in love with Vetiver. What I find interesting is that had it not been for their cover of a song I already loved I probably wouldn't have bothered to dig deeper, but their commitment to an obscure, yet wonderful song like "Roll On Babe" meant that we were kinda in on the same deliciously underappreciated secret.





















I committed to purchase the album with that song, "Thing of the Past", on vinyl and absorbed the band's subdued and understated tone. At first it didn't really penetrate my armor of skepticism, but by the third or fourth listen I really began to appreciate the quirky selections - all the songs on that album are covers of relatively obscure folksy singer-songwriters, a style that is clearly the foremost influence on the band - and the sensitive treatment the band gives each piece of music, demonstrating a serious amount of respect for the source material. Come to think of it, that's one of the reasons I like them, because they seem to have a clear sense of where they sit and what they're trying to do, because they know what came before and what elements to cherry pick and what dated sounds or themes to leave on the rehearsal space floor.

More recently I picked up their newest one, "Tight Knit" and then there was no going back. This album is all originals (I think) and is their strongest release to date, though I still haven't gotten around to pick up their first one. The songs have a wider emotional range that extend from giddy "Everyday" to nostalgic "Rolling Sea" to ethereal "At the Forest's edge" as opposed to most of the previous albums that refused to budge too far from warm and melancholic nostalgia. Seeing as I got into the group because of a cover, I have included that one and another perfect surprise, finding out they also covered my favorite Lindsey Buckingham Fleetwood Mac song, "Save Me a Place." I rounded it out with an original, "Rolling Sea" from the newest album.

Now I just can't wait to check them out live. They're a local band I've been told, though they've been on tour since I discovered them, but I hear they're coming back in a couple months . . .

Vetiver - Roll On Babe











Vetiver - Save Me a Place











Vetiver - Rolling Sea

Rare Byrd Sightings

Here are a few tunes to tide you all over from the quality Byrds catalog. Before doing a wee bit of research just now, I was unaware how closely these two songs were linked. Both songs were unissued Byrds songs that were eventually released in 1969 as "Pre Flyte", a compilation of songs that pre-dated their first album "Mr. Tambourine Man." Both songs don't sound particularly Byrd-like, but that doesn't mean they're not excellent folk-pop numbers.

The Byrds - Airport Song
McGuinn shares the writing credits on "The Airport Song," but its delicate lead vocal and its jazzy changes mark this as a Crosby song, and not a bad one at all. Though not quite up to the level of "Everybody Has Been Burned," which dates from Crosby's pre-Byrds career as a solo folksinger, "The Airport Song" shows him working in similar territory. (from The Byrd Watcher site)

The Turtles - You Showed Me
One of the earliest Byrds songs, "You Showed Me" was an auspicious beginning. A minor-key romantic ballad, the song has a near- Beach Boys feel and ends up being an effervescent piece of moody pop. Although this fine song was left off the Byrds' debut album (no doubt to make room for more Dylan covers), it is available on Preflyte (or In the Beginning on Rhino). The Turtles did a fabulous, slowed-down cover of the song, which was a huge hit in 1969, at the end of their career. Furthermore, U2 sampled the Turtles' version for the hook on "Playboy Mansion" in the late '90s, providing the writers with another, unexpected royalty windfall.

"The 1989 debut album by hip-hop combo De La Soul featured an uncredited sample from the Turtles (specifically, the intro to "You Showed Me"), in the song "Transmitting Live from Mars". Kaylan and Volman sued, winning a large settlement, setting a legal precedent, and causing the music industry to begin carefully crediting (and paying royalties for) sampled works on future rap and other recordings. As they explained, "We don't hate sampling; we like sampling. If we don't get credit, we sue, and all that stuff (a share of the royalties, plus punitive damages) comes back to us!" (from Wikipedia)

An Unlikely Reunion . . . Byrds 1973

I've only recently come to appreciate The Byrds for all of their greatness. Like many other musical re-discoveries I came in through the back door. First it was because of Gram Parsons and his hijacking of their 1968 album "Sweetheart of the Rodeo". Then it was my discovery of Gene Clark (pictured left) who was the first Byrd to embark on a solo flight. And most recently its been because of David Crosby who's 1970 solo album "If Only I Could Remember My Name" has been blowing my mind as of late. But here I am now taking some cautious, yet curious steps deeper into Byrds territory.

I remember finding their 1973 reunion album in a Brooklyn record store for the low price of $3.99 and upon checking the album details I noticed the following details:
1. Produced by David Crosby
2. Two original Gene Clark tracks
3. Two Neil Young cover tunes

This is what Allmusic.com had to say about it:

"Much of the original material, especially David Crosby's, sounds like cast-offs from their other projects. And what sort of a Byrds album features two Neil Young covers and not a single Bob Dylan tune? . . . But for the most part, Byrds sounds like a competent but unexciting country-rock band going through their paces, rather than the work of one of the best and most innovative American bands of the 1960s."

But I beg to differ. Yes, this is an album of the former Byrds doing their solo thing, but with the added bonus of these country-rock pioneers coming back during the sounds' hey-day to show the youngins (read: The Eagles - not the similarity in names) how it's done. You have the early seventies production and all of the advancements that each of the individuals made in their own careers, plus you get these great songs with those heavenly Byrds harmonies! Upon listening to the album I found the whole thing to be pretty darn good barring Roger McGuinn's contributions and one of Crosby's tunes (the other is a different version of "Laughing" from his solo album I mentioned earlier). But two of the great assets to the album are the Neil Young cover tunes performed by none other than Gene Clark. Not only do you get the Byrds doing Gene Clark, but these are two of my all-time favorite Neil Young tunes. Contrary to the Allmusic review I feel that covering Neil is kinda like the evolution of covering Bob Dylan and it seems like the Byrds intended it to be that way, seeing as these two songs are the only ones not written by Byrds members. Dig it.

The Byrds - Cowgirl in the Sand
The Byrds - (See the Sky) About to Rain

Still Willin'

I finally got the double-disc "Untitled/Unissued" set by The Byrds and within is their studio version of "Willin'". I haven't waded through the whole set yet, but I have been enjoying me some Byrds lately. Coming up soon are some select cuts from their 1973 reunion album.

The Byrds - Willin'
A much different take here than the Little Feat and Linda Ronstadt versions, but nonetheless classically Byrds in treatment. The vocal here is by Gene (not Gram) Parsons, who had a knack of joining the band that Gram Parsons was just exiting from (Byrds & Flying Burrito Brothers). Gene was the Byrds' drummer from 1968-1972.

This song is a great road song, but its also a classic drug song. I was trying to find the scene from the first season of "Strangers with Candy" where Jerri goes on a a narco-binge before an important test. The psychedelic trip-out scene shows them injecting an acid sugarcube with heroin and then rolling Jerri up into a giant joint as someone else "smokes" her. I couldn't find that scene, but I did find this one, which is from earlier in the episode (I think).

Strangers With Candy

Dopers

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Welcome to Weed, Whites & Wine

Welcome to my first spin-off blog! I pretty much like all kinds of music, though I hardly ever listen to Classical, but one strain of music that I have become more and more obsessed with in the last several years is a style that Gram Parsons dubbed "Cosmic American Music." I don't want to demystify Gram's rather undescriptive term too much, but the kind of music we'll be highlighting here is a little bit country, a little bit rock n' roll, a little bit folk, but all pretty modern, like 1965 and onwards. We're not focusing on roots here. We're focusing on exciting new hybrids that emerged from the 1960s generation's rediscovery of traditional styles like Blues, Country, Gospel and R&B. And this won't be limited to just "American" artists as I have a particular soft-spot for countrified British rock as well, ala Ronnie Lane & Slim Chance (sorry, the song links are dead on that post - stay tuned for more Ronnie).

This inaugural post is the inspiration for the blog's title, taken from the Lowell George song "Willin'". Little Feat recorded the song as "Willing" for their debut album and then re-recorded it for their sophomore album. I would have to say that most times a song is re-recorded by the same band the second version generally pales in comparison, but in this case Little Feat's second take on the song produced the definitive version though many other artists have taken a go at it. Here we have Lowell's good friend Linda Ronstadt doing a faithful cover version of this classic road tune.

The reason I named the blog after this song is because it is the ULTIMATE road-trip song. It merges the freedom of cross-country travel with the longing for permanence, a place to settle down. It describes the best parts of long drives as well as the worst. It taps into the great American tradition of road songs, but injects it with some hippy-era indulgences. It's been covered by every country-rocker from The Byrds to David Allan Coe and Steve Earle. It is truly a "Cosmic American Classic."

Little Feat - Willin'
This is the second version of the song from the band's second album, "Sailin' Shoes." The production on this version is cleaner and the piano line is more prominent than in the earlier version.



Linda Ronstadt - Willin'
Linda's version follows pretty closely the blueprint of the previous version. I like to imagine Linda behind the wheel of a semi-truck "smuggling some smokes and folks from Mexico," which happens to be my favorite line from the song.

Little Feat - Willing
The original version of the song still holds a special place in my heart. I like how the soaring chorus from the later version of "Weed, Whites & Wine" started off in its original version as a plodding, descending laundry list before triumphantly declaring ,"and show me a sign and I'll be willing).

I know that the early 70s were different times, but I cannot imagine long distance driving while ingesting all three of the song's crucial ingredients. Maybe one or two of them at any one time would be fine for me. I imagine the impressionable Little Feat fans found that driving under the influence of Weed, White and Wine frequently resulted in another "W", Wrecks!

VIDEO: Little Feat - Willin'


VIDEO: Linda Ronstadt - Willin'