Something in the Air...

Just finished my first listen of Neil Young's "Le Noise" produced by Daniel Lanois, thanks to a heads up from thesixonefournine.com. Grabbed a beer and plugged the headphones into the office computer. Not quite like slipping the wax from the cover and dropping the needle in a darkened room... but with time that will come. I read that Neil only recorded this during a full moon, but hopefully he intended more frequent listening than once a month.

A new Neil Young recording is an event. Now it has become, through NPR, an e-vent. An old Neil Young recording is an event... I recently got hold of a original copy of the On the Beach LP (the inside cover is printed with a wallpaper design... a rarity the record store owner gleefully told me) and Side 2 is sublime stuff on a lazy afternoon. Any inclination to move from your spot is gone within twenty minutes. There is a distinctive sense of time and place that has been captured like a flickering Super 8 movie of sun drenched images from the seventies.

Which brings me to Daniel Lanois.

There is a wonderful chapter in Dylan's "Chronicles" in which he recounts his experience meeting and recording with Danny (as Bono refers to him). They record in New Orleans... twenty foot drapes, wood floors, ancient rugs, spanish moss, heavy air and sense of space, between space.

With every Lanois recording comes a visceral sense of space. Listen to Teatro and you feel that besides Willie and Emmy Lou the nearest voice is a million miles away.

One of my great shared concert experiences was on a on a rain soaked humid Sunday afternoon in 2006 at Bluesfest. Under a hundred souls sheltered under the tent as waiting for the next act. A few of us were in a state of high expectation... others were just pleased to be dry. Not long later the place was packed as word went round that something special was happening.

Daniel Lanois took to the stage took in a deep breath, felt the air with his fingers and said with a smile "Great... humidity... the sounds really going to travel today". He then let rip with some magical pedal steel which to this day is still bouncing off the hills in the Byron hinterland.

It belonged there. How could it ever leave.

BK's Lanois LP highlights...

Acadie/Daniel Lanois (The Maker... oh deep water)

Oh Mercy/Bob Dylan (Most of the Time)

Time Out of Mind/Bob Dylan (Highlands)

Teatro/Willie Nelson (Somebody Pick Up My Pieces)

Shine/Daniel Lanois (Falling At Your Feet)

Yellow Moon/Neville Brothers (With God On Our Side)

Dan won't let me omit:

For The Beauty of Wynona

Steve won't let me omit:

All the U2 stuff

Home is where...

A month on from being in the Lone Star State and "That's right you're not from Texas" is chugging from the Crossroads stage in Byron Shire. One of Houston's more celebrated citizens has followed me home. It was Lyle Lovett twice in one week as I caught his two and half hour Sydney show at the State Thearte and then at the 21st Bluesfest. Both shows enhanced his mana in my mind.

I was tremendously impressed by his interaction with his acoustic band. The Sydney show allowed him to relate good humoured stories about their connections and contribution to his music. Sublime vocal harmonies equalled with beautiful musicianship... John Hagen on cello and master fiddle player Luka Bulla. This all added up a rich musical experience, rather than man with guitar in front of a band.

It's great how he can gallop through various styles, bluegrass, blues, jazz and country... but it's slower brooding songs that really connect. Lyle is similar to Van in that he knows how to use the silence, the space between, to deliver powerful soundscapes.

Texas

Two years ago I was in Dallas and ended up stranded due to snow, sleeping on the airport floor with the cowboys, cowgirls and other interstate interients. So it was with a sense of contented anticipation when I escaped the sprawling airport’s tentacles. Arriving in Austin it was uplifting to hear a Lucinda Williams track seeping from the airport P.A. system rather the moozak or the chatter of competing flight calls. The last time I had an enduring impression of an airport was several years ago in New Orleans where a portable bar dispensed cocktails as you waited for your bags...for many that may have been the last thing they remembered.

Anchoring my 36 hours in town was a pilgrimage to catch John Prine in concert. For the first time I’d secured the tickets through Twitter… a good thing as it turned out, sitting in row 5, centre in the three level auditorium.

Opening for Mr Prine was Jim Lauderdale who got a toes the twitching and tapping with his Bluegrass tinged jangle. A major Nashville songwriting talent, he has filled his cowboy boots with the proceeds of songs like Twang which is the title track from the latest George Strait album. I especially enjoyed “King of Broken Hearts” which he wrote as a tribute to George Jones. Jones hasn’t recorded it yet but Strait has. Talked to him after his set and he has played Tamworth as wants to play Bluesfest.

As I took my seat for the main event I noted that unlike earlier in the week there was not a beret in sight, just lots of beards and denim. Then in a sign that I had spent too much time in planes in the past week I then went through the motions of fumbling for a seatbelt. It wasn’t required for this trip.

Prine walked out to a returning hero's welcome, thunderous applause and whistles before he had the chance to spin one of his yarns. Part of his story is surviving throat cancer so a husky quality to his voice comes from physical suffering. While his eyes sparkle, yours start to glisten as he sketches portraits of loneliness, ageing and quiet despair. What makes all this palatable is his wistful wit, distinctive phrasing and elegance of delivery. That is way Dylan rates him one of the best.

This is how you become lost in Texas...

It’s what’s in it, rather than what’s on it….

Maybe it’s time to buy a beret. You know the kind Samuel Jackson made cool.

It would be useful hiding the current state of my darkened noggin and I would have been very much in sartorial step at last night’s Richard Thompson gig. “RT “ wears one and so too do many of his tall bald fans. I watched the raindrops cling to beret flannel of several retired professor types as we waited to enter the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

While I’ve dabbled with RT for quite some time but it was only after seeing his son Teddy live in Bangalow, of all places, that I set about tackling his considerable back catalogue. Volumes of muscular folk is what I discovered. Guitar licks crafted with precision and intensity…. dark lyrics worthy of late night whiskey and brooding. I’ve secured most of his lp’s now… vinyl collectors get very excited about original copies of "Bright Light’s Tonight" & “Shoot Out the Lights”.

The first half of his show we were treated to a complete run-through of an album he’s yet to record. So now instead of plundering the past I have an RT album that doesn’t exist rattling around my head. While he also played an hour or so of classics with his full band, including violin and brass, it’s the new songs that haunt me this morning. I want to hear “Stumble On” again, along with “Brother Slips Away” and “Haul it in”… but I’ll have to be patient and wait for several months before I slip the wax from the jacket and hear this bout of songwriting brilliance again. Waiting is rare in this downloadable age.

It’s worth the wait. By then it will be a case of bugger the beret, pass the beach hat and Balvenie.

Gomesmerising

I first discovered Gomez at the Bluesfest a few years ago and was captured from the first few beats. They are such a "tight" band live.... three singers, all seemingly multi-intrumentalists. Their 5pm show was universally celebrated as the highlight of the event. Lapped up their last two albums, securing the latest "A New Tide" on vinyl.

Great to see them at a smaller venue, the Metro, and discover more of their hidden (for me anyway) treasure. This review from the Auckland show pretty well sums it up.

Time to check out the first five albums that flew under my radar.

Watching the...river flow

Setlist Anticipation - A condition where one becomes slightly preoccupied with the desire for an artist to play a particular song at a concert or event you attend.

Will he do “Into the Mystic”? (yes he did, first Van pilgrimage Fort Lauderdale) “Tangled Up and Blue”? first gig, no… second nah… a decade later at the third…BINGO! (thanks Bob).

A Set Ant© condition could be mild or very intense. If you have only a rare chance to see someone then the condition can become heightened… internal monologue running…”There must be only 10 minutes to go and they still haven’t played …”

So it is luxuriously liberating to attend concert by an act you care about and not experience a bout of Set Ant© at some point in the evening. Maybe this may comes with seeing an artist play many times… or you simply become enraptured in a performance.

Watching Elvis Costello solo the other night I found myself not being inflicted with any condition other than sustained bliss. Much is written about his songwriting prowess, but he is also a master of the cover. He rolled out George Jones (Roses), Van (Jackie Wilson Said), Bruce (Brilliant Disguise), Charles Aznavour (She) even his take on Ron Sexsmith’s version EC (Everyday I Write the Book).

This was my fourth visit to Elvisdom, each trip being radically different, from angry young man pumping it up, Garage Band Rocker, New Orleans sideman to Dylan tinged Song & Dance Man. “Alison” sounded sweet at all.

But who cared what he and his guitar played next? With such a deep and diverse back catalogue to call upon and his ability to reinvent songs best go with the flow for 130 odd minutes.

Elvis & Me…

1980 Sweetwaters… Elvis Costello and the Attractions.

2003 Tokyo… Elvis Costello and the Imposters.

2006 Cape Cod… Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint.

2009 Sydney… Elvis Costello Solo.

Genealogical

The Byrds have always jangled in by brain but, until now, I've never opened the door to Gene Clark's solo work. Even with the strong Dylan connection that should have shown the way, it was only a couple of weeks ago that I first dropped the needle on "White Light" and entered a feeling of blissful enlightenment, eventually followed by an urgent sense of needing to make up for lost moments with Gene. Awaiting the arrival of the lp this is lifted from...

So I've dived into a period of heavy Gene Clark immersion. It's almost like spending time with a distant relative who often appears in the family photo's but you've never really got to know... and it's great when other members of the family turn up to play too.