Indeed. Get ready for a more consistent monthly dose of new releases, music that’s been lost and found, philosophical rambling, cultural insights, news, views, videos, humor and more.
How Was Your 2020?
So yeah….this was supposed to be a monthly column after I retired from doing my weekly gig at No Depression’s website last August. But life got in the way of that idea. Between the stress and anxiety of working from home, isolation save the weekly trip to Trader Joe’s, the rhetorical political theater – spewing angst and hatred to a divided nation – I simply lost interest. Not in music, for it’s been a period of intense exploration and discovery, but in doing anything that involved much thinking or an attempt at creativity. I’ve fallen into a long season of passivity, satisfied with endless hours of watching films from Scandinavia to Korea, Germany to Hollywood. And those television mysteries from the BBC that seem to use the same actors like secondhand retreaded tires, and fascinating but soon forgotten documentaries about this, that and whatever. No comedy specials though. I lost my will to laugh. But the penlight is getting brighter and yesterday I was actually accused of sounding chipper. A first time for everything.
Please God…I Never Want To See Another Livestream Concert Again!
As I sit here punching above my weight, certain states that look more red than blue are tossing the masks and reopening the bars, restaurants, gyms and theaters. Down in Austin and Nashville where there are more unemployed musicians than grains of sand on a wide Hawaiian beach, a majority of club owners are not yet rushing to begin booking concerts. Optimism easily obscures reality and we’re likely another few months away from live entertainment. So at least for a little while longer we’re left with these sometimes interesting yet hardly satisfying live sets from empty stages and living rooms. I know it’s gotten bad when a favorite artist with hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook only managed forty-two viewers on their recent weekly broadcast.
Got Any New Music You Can Share?
Sure. I’ve been trolling along with the last of the great music bloggers, seeking out those albums and songs that I have never known of, and scouring the rolling waves of new releases that came out in the wind and left in a whisper throughout these past months. When you put everything you got into an album with the hope of touring and getting noticed, it’s been a friggin’ heartbreak after heartbreak. A hundred years from now some ethnomusicologist will no doubt write a successful book on the lost music of 2020.
I know…it’s not a live performance and what does it have to do with roots music? Whatever. I like the song and the whole album and I like this guy even though I am one of the last people on Earth who seems to know of him. His album Songs for The Drunk and Broken Hearted is his thirteenth. I got myself the bonus recording where he does a whole band thing followed by an acoustic version. Brilliant music. And he does a lot of livestreams. Passenger is the name he records under, but he’s Mark David Rosenberg.
Dirk Powell is – damn, it’s a lot easier if I just quote his allmusic.com biography:
Dirk is considered one of the world’s leading experts on traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo styles, along with carrying on the traditions of his late and legendary father-in-law Dewey Balfa, as well as the accordion player in the Cajun group Balfa Toujours.
As you can hear above, the new album When I Wait For You is much more in the singer-songwriter category than his band work and it’s truly a beautiful work.
This is The Kit’s fifth album Off Off On is in heavy rotation here at my abode. Fronted by English singer and songwriter Kate Stables, who is based in Paris, her exceptional musical exploration includes whomever joins her in the moment. She’s often playing a banjo, and reviewers just can’t seem to put a tag or genre on her.
Cordova’s Destiny Hotel was a great find from this Tennessee-based band that features vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Joe Firstman, keyboardist Sevans Henderson, guitarist/vocalist Lucca Soria and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Toby Weaver. They sound and look like a throwback to the Sixties that seems to be brought up in every article and review written, which probably pisses them off to no end. I feel for these folks since they are road hogs who have established themselves a large fanbase with nonstop touring. Morton
Morton Valance is simply indescribable and irresistible. A London-based duo who’ve released eight albums in fifteen years, I have never heard them until Bob & Veronica’s Great Escape was released. Th3e video is sort of an outlier on the album, but it truly shows their creativity and ability to step out, as the majority of the songs are slow tempo with tight and intricate harmonies. The duo features Ann Gilpin and songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Robert ‘Hacker’ Jessett. Along with this album, in 2020 they wrote and directed an autobiographical film documentary entitled ‘This Is A Film About A Band’ that was premiered at the Doc’N Roll Film Festival in London. Can’t wait to find it.
Australian singer-songwriter Emma Swift released an amazing – one more time – amazing album of Dylan cover songs titled Blonde On The Tracks. Based in Nashville and recorded with her partner Robyn Hitchcock and featuring Wilco’s Patrick Sansone, it’s pretty hard to believe this is her first full length album. Before becoming a musician, she was a radio broadcaster in Australia, hosting an Americana music show In the Pines.
Almost At The End…..Shameless Self-Promotion
Well that was fun. So here’s the deal: As most of you may know, I run a Facebook page and a Flipboard e-magazine that are linked here on my website. Every single day I scour the internet for music news and articles of interest, so you don’t have to. Every night on FB I also post a video to close it out. (This moth I’ve dedicated myself to finding 31 John Prine performances.) If you haven’t visited, please do. I should mention the Flipboard has over 3,000 articles including many that don’t get posted on Facebook, and is a great way to pass the time. Download the app or visit on your computer or tablet.
One More Thing…March is Women’s History Month!
The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history.
Beginning in the 18th century, immigrants from Britain, Scotland, and Ireland made their way across the ocean and into the backwoods and mountains of America. They brought with them their customs, culture, and music, which included both ballads and reels. The ballads were often just stories, shared by songbooks rather than recordings, and over time the lyrics, melodies, and titles were often changed. A new album by Naomi Bedford and Paul Simmonds titled Singing It All Back Home: Appalachian Songs of English and Scottish Origin takes many of these titles and presents them in a new light that restores the traditional while also adding in current country and Americana flavors. The result is a feast of tastefully executed acoustic instrumentation coupled with Bedford’s powerful voice that soars into the stratosphere along with Simmonds’ solid instrumentation and vocals.
Fans of folk music are likely familiar with the work of Shirley Collins, considered to be the doyenne of English roots music. From the mid-1950s through the late ’70s, she recorded some of the most beautiful albums of classic ballads you’ll ever hear. Some of you may also know of her through her relationship with folklorist and field recorder Alan Lomax and their 1959 song-catching trip through America’s South. A compilation album titled Sounds of The Southwas released soon after, and a few decades later the Coen Brothers used some of the songs in their film O Brother, Where Art Thou?
In 1978, after a painful divorce with her second husband Ashley Hutchings of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span fame, Collins literally lost her voice. She developed a form of dysphonia, a condition often associated with psychological trauma, and for the next 38 years supported herself by taking a number of mostly menial, non-music jobs. In 2004 she documented her time with Lomax as both his assistant and lover in the book America Over the Water,bringing her a new generation of fans and acknowledgement for her contribution to traditional music. Almost four decades after stepping away from music, she released a new album in 2016, and last year a documentary film about her life, The Ballad of Shirley Collins, was released. She was also kind enough to assist Bedford and Simmonds with their project, which elevates this release from simply an album to an event.
Simmonds, vocalist and songwriter for the British folk-punk band The Men They Couldn’t Hang, who’ve been together since 1984, plays guitar, bouzouki, mandolin and keyboards. Bedford grew up learning the music of folksingers such as Collins, Jean Ritchie, and Hedy West from her mother. Her family also lived next door to Andy Summers from The Police, and she was the babysitter for his daughter. In 2001 she co-wrote and sang on electronic dance band Orbital’s “Funny Break,” a Top 20 hit in the UK. After working with several other groups, she took a break from music to backpack through India and raise a family.
Sometime in 2010, while Bedford was working on Tales from the Weeping Willow, the first of three albums that she and Simmonds worked on together that focus on traditional music, she tried unsuccessfully to take an English folk singing group class taught by Collins but was too late in signing up. She inquired if she could perhaps pay to have a one-on-one session with her, and Collins agreed — in exchange for a jar of honey. A friendship began, and as Bedford shares:
“We were asked to play at one of her birthday parties, invited to join her at one of her large theater shows, and have got to know her a bit better. She has always been encouraging, particularly with regard to my Appalachian material. For Singing It All Back Home I went to her house for lunch and conversation and came away with some wonderful research materials. A songbook she lent me was Dear Companion (from the Cecil Sharp Collection), which we used as a prime source.”
The album was produced by Ben Walker, a multi-instrumentalist who is quite well known in England for his six albums with Josienne Clarke, extensive production work, and amazing solo guitar work, which you can hear on the EP The Fox on the Downs. Some of the other players assisting on the album include Lisa Knapp, Rory McCloud, and Justin Currie of Del Amitri fame, whom Bedford befriended years ago through his MySpace page and subsequently toured with as his singing partner.
On the liner notes of Singing It All Back Home, Simmonds speaks about the genesis of the project and some of the liberties they have taken:
“We began this project in January 2018 with a very simple premise: to rediscover, explore and celebrate the ballads that had been such a strong influence in Naomi’s childhood and which I felt were somehow intrinsic to the craft of storytelling in song. It was not always easy to find the exact melodies to some of these songs, and where that was the case, we added our own layer of interpretation. We hope and believe that this is acceptably within the folk tradition.”
Across the Atlantic, where Bedford and Simmonds are revered and treasured in the folk music community, the reviews on the project have been outstanding. Iain Hazelwood from Spiral Earth wrote that “You can feel what those Appalachian settlers must have held in their hearts, what they hoped for and the memories of home that drifted into their dreams. It’s an evocation and a celebration, plus it’s just damned good fun.” And over at Folk Music UK, Neil McFayden shares that the album “has all the passion & history of the characters that populate these stories; Naomi Bedford & Paul Simmonds paint them in a fascinating new light, while holding fast to their enduring heritage in an outstanding album.”
As we all know the financial challenges of being a musician in these times, I’d encourage y’all to check out their website for upcoming appearances and to explore their entire catalog. Each album, regardless of whether released under just Bedford’s name or credited to both her and Simmonds, are folk and roots music treasures, assembled in the handmade tradition of fine craftspeople, that add another foundational stepping stone on the path of what we consider American music. I’ll close this out with a favorite song from an older album, A History of Insolence, that I hope will leave you wanting to explore more.
This was originally posted as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.
Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com
While I know many people enjoy reading about concerts after they’ve happened, I find the prequel more interesting to write about. And so it is that I find myself furiously keypunching away at this week’s column because in just a few hours I will hop on a train, travel on two subway lines, walk three blocks, wind my way through an elaborate security check, flash a ticket on my iPhone, enter the theater, walk up the stairs to the balcony, make myself as comfortable as I can in the narrow row, and spend a few hours listening to what will likely be the final concert in New York City from Joan Baez. And I only say likely because, well … you never know.
It’s a little difficult to track down who created the concept of a farewell concert or tour, but perhaps in modern times it was Cream in 1968, and Clapton, Bruce, and Baker pretty much kept to their word for 37 years. In 2005 they played a several shows together in just two cities, putting out an album and DVD. Clapton called it “a fitting tribute to ourselves” and hinted that it was to an opportunity for Bruce and Baker to put some money in the bank as each were having severe health problems.
We all know that The Band staged The Last Waltz in 1976 as their final performance, with a film and soundtrack to mark the occasion, and in six years four of the five members were back in the studio and on the road again. This year there are quite a few artists who are on their second, third, or fourth farewell tours. For example, there’s Elton John, who announced on Nov. 3, 1977, that he was finished with concerts; Ozzy Osborne, who retired 27 years ago; and don’t get me started on The Who: every single tour they’ve done since 1982 has been billed as the final one.
For the past year Joan Baez has been on the road with her Fare Thee Well Tour and she’ll be heading to Europe for her final performances, which will end on July 28 in Madrid, Spain. It’ll come just shy of the 60-year anniversary of her first appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. I was just 7 years old back then, and it would be several years until I learned who she was. My sister was in her first year of college and going through her folk music and coffeehouse stage, playing Baez’s first album endlessly every single night in her room. I can’t tell you how much her voice grated on my 12-year-old ears, but like everything that is heard repetitively, she soon became comfortable and comforting to me.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Baez said that she’s happier with the phrase “retire from touring” rather than calling it simply retirement, explaining that she will possibly still play from time to time as long as her voice holds out. She hasn’t written songs in 25 years and at the moment doesn’t seem interested in recording another album.
When her tour was first announced I didn’t think it would be something I would be interested in seeing. There’s a bit of sadness at these sort of events, and I felt that even though I’ve never seen her live, I have the memories, images, and music forever etched in my brain. But a few days ago, when I read that she was coming to town this week, I felt a strong gravitational pull to be there. Almost robotically I went online, found an affordable ticket, and bought it in less than a minute. In spiritual terms, it was a calling.
Like a slice of warm blueberry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, there are certain songs — and the people who sing them — that bring me great joy and comfort. Joan Baez is one of them. She has been with me for virtually my entire life, and unlike any other musician or performer, with the exception of Pete Seeger, she holds a space deep inside of me that is central to the core of my being. In my mind’s eye I can see her onstage in Newport as a teenager, singing about Joe Hill at Woodstock, linking arms and marching from Selma to Montgomery, playing and speaking at countless benefits and rallies for peace, justice, freedom, jobs, hunger, poverty, the environment, and human rights. She has been a model for composure, thoughtfulness, strength, commitment, and achievement like few others.
And for those reasons I can’t imagine not hopping on a train, traveling on two subway lines, walking three blocks, winding my way through an elaborate security check, flashing a ticket on my iPhone, entering the theater, walking up the stairs to the balcony, making myself as comfortable as I can in the narrow row, and spending a few hours listening to what will likely be Joan Baez’s final concert in New York City. Fare thee well, and thank you.
Postscript: The concert was more than I had anticipated. At seventy-nine I didn’t know what to expect, but Joan’s voice was solid and it soared and her stamina was surreal. The show lasted almost two hours with no intermission and included percussion by her son Gabriel Harris and multi-instumentalist Dirk Powell. It was indeed a fond farewell.
This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music website.
On the morning of May 5, a Saturday, I woke up at the crack of dawn, made a pot of coffee, had a bowl of cereal, took a shower, got dressed, and went to work. After standing on my feet for over eight hours I drove back home, played guitar for a bit, made myself a small meal and did a fine imitation of a potato laying on a couch while binge-watching Norwegian crime noir on Netflix. When it was time for Saturday Night Live to begin broadcasting, I put it on, watched the cold opening and saw that the host was Donald Glover. I had no clue as to who he is or what he does. The jokes during the monologue failed to make me laugh, so I turned it off and went to sleep.
I would not identify myself as a fan of hip-hop music, but it is not an unknown nor unpleasant genre to my ears. Most of my exposure runs from the mid-’70s to the turn of the century, and after then I sort of lost interest. In all candor, I don’t understand most of the lyrics, the bass-heavy beats can’t compete with the whine of a pedal steel guitar, and I’m completely turned off by the misogyny. But I don’t exactly fit within the demographic and I’d guess that neither do you. While we easily praise and acknowledge the African-American contribution and influence to roots music, hip-hop remains largely ignored by this audience.
Donald Glover is a graduate of New York University, a writer for 30 Rock, an actor on the sitcom Community, and the creator, star, and occasional director of Atlanta, a series on FX. An Emmy and Golden Globe winner, he has appeared in several films, will provide the voice of Simba in the Lion King remake,and will play Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story. His music career began as a DJ and producer, putting out DYI mixtapes beginning in 2008 under the name mcDJ, and he performs under the stage name Childish Gambino with three albums and a few Grammy nominations under his belt.
While Glover hosted SNL and I slept, he debuted a new song, “This Is America,” which he co-wrote and co-produced with his long-time partner Ludwig Göransson. They simultaneously released a music video directed by Hiro Murai and in 24 hours it was viewed 12,900,000 times. Ten days later, as I sit here writing this, that number is now 123,622,585 and the song debuted at number one on Billboard’sHot 100. If you haven’t yet seen it, I won’t dare spoil the experience by going too deep, but I will warn that this is a violent representation of violent times in America. It is rich in texture, with multiple storylines that create a surreal atmosphere that takes repeated views to capture the various movements and symbolization.
Hip-hop has long ago surpassed traditional folk music when it comes to creating influential protest music for a mass audience. It’s as powerful as anything I’ve ever heard, and as I watch “This Is America” it takes me right back to the first time I heard people like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and the early work of Bob Dylan. This is a passing of the baton, this is the new folk music.
Postscript: For those interested in exploring the context and meaning of this video, there have already been a number of articles written and videos posted that will help guide you through it. Inside Edition offers an in-depth video explanation from Dr. Lori Brooks, a professor of African and African-American Studies at Fordham University. Time Magazine enlisted Guthrie Ramsey, a professor of music history at the University of Pennsylvania for its coverage.
This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.
Bruce Langhorne, Carolyn Hester, Bob Dylan and Bill Lee. September 29, 1961
To those of us who were around the folk music scene of the sixties and to either academic or armchair ethnomusicologists, guitarists both old and young of the past and present, Bruce Langhorne is not unfamiliar. And should you not know the name, you know the man.
Born in Harlem in 1938, Langhorne was a regular at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, where he accompanied many of the musicians who would perform at the hootenannies. He developed a unique style of fingerpicking and would sometimes attach a soundhole pickup to his 1923 Martin 1-21 and run it through Sandy Bull’s Fender Twin reverb.
By 1961, he was in the recording studio as a hired gun, first with the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, followed by Carolyn Hester, and then he contributed to several tracks on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. He’s likely the guitarist on “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Corrina, Corrina,” though in the deep dark world of the Dylan defenders of mythology, that’s been disputed.
Occasionally at performances or recording sessions, Langhorne would play a large Turkish frame drum that had small bells attached to the interior. He used it mostly on the Vanguard albums by Richard and Mimi Fariña that he is featured on, and it inspired a young Bob Dylan to write a song about him. Recorded by The Byrds and serving as an introduction to a wider audience, “Mr. Tambourine Man” has undoubtedly kept the Nobel Prize winner swimming in a steady stream of royalties.
“He had this gigantic tambourine,” wrote Dylan in the liner notes to his anthology Biograph, identifying Langhorne as the inspiration for “Mr. Tambourine Man.” It was, like, really big. It was as big as a wagon wheel. He was playing, and this vision of him playing this tambourine just stuck in my mind.”
On Jan. 14, 1965, Langhorne was called to Columbia’s Studio B along with a full electric band to back Bob Dylan for his fifth album. With no rehearsal, they worked on eight songs and in three and a half hours and came away with master takes on five of them. The next day, most of the same musicians were back to knock out the rest of Bringing It All Back Home. Although the album was originally recorded with a full electric band, Dylan decided to use only half the songs from those sessions and re-recorded the other half acoustically, with Langhorne playing countermelody on his amplified Martin. You can hear his lead guitar featured along with the full band on this iconic video of “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
I found a profile of Langhorne published in August 2016 on the Acoustic Guitar website, written by Kenny Berkowitz. I’ll let him pick up the story:
“For years, it seemed as though Langhorne had played with everyone. Before and after those Dylan sessions, he recorded with Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, the Chad Mitchell Trio, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Richard and Mimi Fariña, Hugh Masekela, Odetta, Babatunde Olatunji, Tom Rush, and John Sebastian. He was at the epicenter of change in the folk world, back at a time when session guitarists simply showed up ready to improvise, and an album could be recorded in a single day, or even in a few hours.
He recorded a few songs on his own, but they never materialized into an album, and as folk-rock turned into rock, Langhorne went on to score soundtracks for Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand(1971), Idaho Transfer (1973), and Outlaw Blues (1977); Bob Rafelson’s Stay Hungry (1976); and Jonathan Demme’s Fighting Mad (1976), Melvin and Howard (1980), and Swing Shift (1984).
But despite a long list of accomplishments, Langhorne has largely been forgotten, living out his days in Venice, California, too ill to walk along the beach. He hasn’t played guitar since having a stroke in 2006.”
This Gordon Lightfoot song was covered by Peter, Paul and Mary back in 1964, and it prominently features Langhorne’s guitar work. I was a little too young to know who he was at the time, but I’ve listened to this song hundreds of times.
It was a message from my oldest son that prompted me to write this column. He works for an organization promoting concerts of experimental music in New York and through guitarist Loren Connors he learned of a new album being released in February titled The Hired Hands: A Tribute to Bruce Langhorne.
Dylan Golden Aycock, with Connors and his partner and collaborator Suzanne Langille, compiled the project, which pays homage to Langhorne’s work and specifically to the soundtrack he composed for Fonda’s film. Here’s how they explain the concept:
“The goal here was to ask artists to cover or reinterpret a song of their choice from the soundtrack. No rules on whether the music should be derivative of a certain song, if the soundtrack inspires a mood, then the artists use their intuition.
Bruce has come on hard times in recent years, having suffered a stroke that prevents him from playing the guitar. He’s currently in hospice care awaiting his final curtain call. A large percentage of profit go to Bruce and his family.”
I linked it above, but if you click here you can preorder this handcrafted set of music from some of todays finest players, some you may know and others you don’t. It’s available both as a double CD with extensive liner notes from Byron Coley (reprinted on the Bandcamp page), and a digital download. There are also nine tracks you can stream for free right now.
Bruce was placed in hospice care in late 2015. Friends, as well as people who only knew of Bruce by reputation, came from near and far to pay their respects and, often, play some music for him. The huge outpouring of love boosted his spirit (and his body), and he was upgraded to palliative care. (Several months after this story was published, Bruce passed away on April 14, 2017)
“Yeah, he was a wizard. My part is pretty basic on ‘Urge for Going,’ but he was the one who did those triple pull-off things, the diddey-bump kinda lines. He’s in California. He had a stroke, and he can’t play much anymore which is really a shame. He was such a good player. Actually as a kid he had blown off most of his thumb and first two fingers on his right hand with fireworks, which got him out of the draft because they figured if he didn’t have a trigger finger, he couldn’t fire a rifle. So, of course, he became a guitar player, and then decided he was going to be a piano player later in life. Since his stroke he doesn’t play much at all. He’s supposedly the guy who inspired ‘Mr. Tambourine Man,’ Dylan’s song, ’cause he also played tambourine and just about anything you can imagine.” Tom Rush, April 2015
Postscript: For another look at Bruce’s story, check out The Perlich Post‘s article.
This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.
Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email is easyed@therealeasyed.com
This article and interview was originally published at the No Depression website on April 2, 2011. Marissa is a wonderful sound and visual artist who remains a favorite of mine, and I thought that this deserves a reprint here on my site. She is currently recording a new album for a 2015 release, and has a track on the recent tribute album to Karen Dalton.
Valerie, the twenty-something graphic artist whom I used to work with a few years ago was also a guitarist who fronted a metal band, and she was a good soul with Indian ink hair, Keane-like eyes and translucent skin. One day as I was driving some folks over to the Astro Diner for lunch, she sat in the back of my truck and shuffled through some discs that I had shoved out of the way and under the floor mat. I could see her smile in the rearview mirror and in her flat, po-mo deadpan voice she sneered, “Ed digs chicks with mandolins”.
Although I’m pretty sure I don’t suffer from idiopathic craniofacial erythema, I nevertheless developed a high cutaneous blood flow which caused a radiation of intense heat. Which means that I blushed as a result to an emotional response. It’s associated with shame or modesty, embarrassment or love. Charles Darwin described blushing as “the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.”
It’s no secret nor shame that I do indeed “dig chicks with mandolins” as well as women who play guitars, dulcimers, banjos, fiddles, cellos, bells, pianos, flutes, percussive instruments and autoharps. And if they can write songs and sing, especially in the upper registers while accompanied by open tunings, fingers that pick strings gracefully and have layered vocals with Eno-isms and Fripp-eries…than I may indeed fall hard.
Which brings me to the incredible Marissa Nadler. For when I listen to her sing and play her guitar, as I watch her videos and listen to her lyrics…I feel the heat and flush begin to spread from head to toe and damn it if she isn’t the circus that every little boy wants to run away with. So it would be fair to say that Marissa’s music touches this old man in a most unique way and I just dig her.
In the press section of her website, I counted over forty stories and reviews, from small blogs and fanzines, to mainstream press like Mojo, Pitchfork, Uncut, NPR, Interview and the LA Weekly. I’ve read most all of them because I found it fascinating that a) writers (mostly male) seem to fall in love or lust, and gush over her in the most poetic manner and b) her music has been described in more strange ways than one could possibly imagine.
While I’m left in awe of Marissa’s talent, words to describe her music don’t come easy to me and I admit to feeling hopelessly inadequate. Especially when I read the beautiful, lyrical and flowing words that others have come up with. So here’s a few uncredited “cut and pastes” from the press page of her website. I could never, ever come up with these phrases on my own, but it might give you some sense of what others think of her…and please consider this as a form of graffiti and neither thievery nor laziness:
“The indie-folk pinup girl and mistress of the murder ballad.”
“She’s hacked away the art school whimsy, tossed out the crystals and burned the floaty headscarfs.”
“Simple, melancholic fingerpicked folk ballads that take advantage of her sonorous, spine-tingling vocals, narrating tales of damsels in distress or lovers absent or dead.”
“Compelling medieval twang.”
“A markedly haunting pathos, musing on death, sadness and mourning with an elegiac beauty.”
“Part of me wishes she’d use her siren’s call to unite Sisters of the Moon in a woodland super-group of nymphs and urban wood-sprites.”
“Marissa Nadler could be a damsel who has tumbled from a frayed tapestry in search of her unicorn, a crystal doll who has escaped from her vitrine, or a tubercular maid who has slipped out of her Victorian deathbed photograph to traipse this earthly plane.”
“She’s like a young Stevie Nicks, all doped up and duped to serve as Devendra Banhart’s geisha. Nah, too strong for that. How ’bout Donovan reincarnated as Linda Ronstadt? Except instead of a ’70s pop star, in this life she’s Fairy Queen of the Muir Woods, a mythical creature spotted only by hippie chicks who dare to eat strange mushrooms and venture into the redwoods past nightfall.”
That’s enough of that….you get the idea. Beautifully written words that conjure some sort of witchy maiden swirling in the fog’s mist, wearing long dresses of lace and satin while her black hair blows in the wind and she holds out an alabaster cup filled with a steamy potion that is sure to lure any man to her lair.
And that right there is what I’d call her curse and her blessing, because she carries this image on her shoulders that might work with many fans but also will chase others away. But she is not living in the land of unicorns and dragon slayers, and her music is not all incense and peppermints and it sits neatly on the shelf with artists ranging from Joni Mitchell to Emmylou Harris to Vashti Bunyan. There is a lot of talent, strength and intelligence in this woman, and although I”ll admit that I fell for the image at first (and have since become platonically smitten as I’ve gotten to know her) it offers great satisfaction for me to help assist in the demystification if Marissa for you and bring it all back to Mother Earth.
Marissa Nadler turns thirty this month. She grew up in a Boston suburb and then attended the Rhode Island School of Design where she studied fine art. She taught herself how to play guitar, uses a lot of open tunings and fingerpicks with her thumb and index finger. She has four “official” albums out, as well as quite a few other projects that she sells at shows, on her Etsy page, website or Bandcamp page. She has toured extensively in the US and Europe. She’s tried living in New York, which she found claustrophobic, and Los Angeles which was just too sunny. She now resides again in Boston when not traveling the highway.
I’ve read she prefers old things to new things, and she cites these folks as some of the artist’s she likes to listen to: Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, Neil Young, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Roy Orbison, Elliot Smith, Bob Dylan, Mazzy Star, Opal, Throwing Muses, Leonard Cohen and the Band. On her Covers album (available only on Etsy), she sings Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt and simply nails Lennon’s “Jealous Guy”.
She was the breakout artist performing this year at the first ever Couch By Couch West web-fest alternative to Austin’s SXSW, putting up some simple homemade videos that drew me in and reminded me that I had all of her albums uploaded, but had barely spent enough time with them. The urge came upon me to curl up with them immediately and so began several days of non-stop Nadler-maniacal obsessive compulsion which made me seek her out like some lecherous stalker.
Thankfully, writing for this site has cachet and she’s graciously allowed me into her world, although I imagine it shall be fleeting as she is a busy person. Over several days we traded messages, tweets and emails and I share our conversations:
Easy Ed: When you and I first connected, you mentioned that No Depression was a magazine you read back in high school. What were your interests back then? Did you identify at all with the alt.country and Americana scene at the time?
Marissa Nadler: Well, I remember really having an affinity for the rootsy Americana scene at the time, probably because it was so different from my own upbringing in New England. I worshipped the west and the freedom it embodied. Part of alt. country and Americana was linked to that wanderlust. My interests back then were my painting career mostly, and music was still a hobby until about age 18. I would just spent my awkward adolescence copying master paintings in my basement and listening to music on the boombox. A lot of this music was prog rock and classic rock. A lot of it was folk and americana. I loved Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams and they really spoke to me. Also, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels. Elizabeth Cotton. I could go on and on.
EE: I felt you were the breakout artist this year at Couch By Couch West and you certainly captured my heart with your homemade videos. You’ve mentioned that it was a more comfortable setting for you, making and uploading videos, than your previous live SXSW experience. Can you share a little about that?
MN: Ha! Thanks Ed. CXCW was a good alternative to SXSW, at least for me. To answer your question, my career has never been an overnight thing. I am not the kind of artist that some A&R guy would see at SXSW and give a big record deal too. This is mostly because I am and always have been a bit shy, and stage fright really debilitates me at those high pressure events. For the past four or five records and those related SXSW shows, the people around me, whether various managers or various record label lackeys that I was working with at the time, would really put a lot of pressure on me to “kill it.” It was as if not doing these showcases was somehow career suicide. One particular year, I ran off the stage after three songs. I am really particular about my sound, but people always see a chick with a guitar and think they don’t need a soundcheck and also assume you suck. (That and you don’t get sound-checks at festivals). So, I’m fingerpicking on a twelve-string and all you can hear is feedback. I start crying, run off stage. End. Three songs. I must add, however, that this hasn’t happened since and I am doing well at my live performances these days.
EE: You use lots of open tunings when you play guitar, and on your albums it’s augmented by all sorts of other instruments, electronics and sounds. Does that come from your collaborators or is it something you hear in your head early on in the songwriting process and direct during the recording process?
MN: I’m pretty open to what my collaborators, like Carter Tanton, will throw in the mix. Carter, who’s arrangements feature prominently on my new record, has a very delicate ear and a sensibility for melody that I trust. So, I basically just have to work with people who I love and trust that can handle playing delicately and knowing when not to play. Usually, during the actual songwriting, my main focus is the words and the vocal melody, and when I can get a real groove on with the guitar, it’s usually by using an open tuning. I can keep the bass notes droning for a constant atmosphere.
EE: I read an interview where you spoke about going into Guitar Center and being treated like the little girl who plays a pink guitar. It seems to me that anyone able to put out five albums, who has toured throughout the world, created an image of both femininity and strength in equal measure and runs a business indicates quite a bit of ambition and tenacity. How do you view your accomplishments so far and what have been some of the highlights for you?
MN: Well, that is very sweet of you, as well as observant. It is a hard thing to strike a balance between femininity and strength. If you are too strong, a lot of men in the music industry view it as “diva” behavior. If you are too meek, or wear too many dresses, people think you can’t play your guitar. I get both assumptions a lot, no matter how many albums I put out, and notoriously have had difficulty with sound-men throughout my life. I have always had a very definitive idea for what I wanted. Whether is was 7 seconds of long hall reverb on my voice or more treble, I knew what I wanted but the sound-men always seemed to think differently. The obvious choice would have been to hire my own sound technician but I have never been able to afford one. I always felt and still do feel that there is a huge double standard in the music industry. There is an argument to be made that women musicians have to play guitar twice as good and write twice as well to get the same amount of respect that the men do. Also, I find an incredible amount of pressure to “look good.” Video killed the radio star, I guess.
In terms of accomplishments, pretty much I just live day by day. I have to be honest with you that I am one of those workaholics that is never happy with the work I have done and I am constantly striving to be better, even at the risk of complete emotional ruin. But, yeah, I guess if I had to name one single accomplishment, I am pretty proud of overcoming my debilitating shyness and it’s crippling shackles to be able to share my music with the world.
EE: Can you share a little about your new album and what we can expect to hear? You mentioned something to me about a pedal steel guitar.
MN: Well, I would say that Brian McTear, who produced this record, did a great job! There are many intimate moments on the record with just guitar and vocals and there are some big, luscious arrangements. There are three songs with absolutely no reverb, which was a huge thing for me. I always and still do love the way reverb make the voice sound, but on this record I wanted it to really cut deep. I noticed the dryer the vocal, the more emotional the sounds sounded. I used to not be able to listen to my voice without reverb. Now, I can listen to it completely dry. Its so much more intimate. Carter Tanton added an incredible amount of beauty to the record with some of his choices as well.
In other parts of the record, we used Tammy Wynette recordings as a way to place the vocals in the mix. So, in some ways, it’s mixed like a classic Americana record. Nevertheless, it has many atmospheric and dreamy moments. Yes, there are two songs with some real rootsy pedal steel “jamming.” And I have to tell you, I never thought I would hear a groovy jam on one of my own records. I actually can’t even believe I just wrote the words groovy jam.
EE: What was your thought process in deciding to fund it through Kickstarter and handle the sales on your own, going outside of the traditional music business model?
MN: Well, things are changing. Everyone’s got to try something new, whether it’s artists or the labels. Its a lot of work but I’m really enjoying my freedom. I am self-distributing through a mail order system. I put pre-order buttons up on my websites far in advance, knowing I would need to be as organized as possible. I also put up a way for stores to order bulk/wholesale from me. So far, so good! (Click here for her website.) If I get overwhelmed, I may use a distributor down the line but definitely an independent one.
EE: I saw you have posted some west coast tour dates for June…where else are you planning to perform? And is your audience of equal gender and age, or is it tilted one way or another?
MN: I am planning on touring the entire US as well as the rest of the world. My audience is changing. My first and most loyal fans have always been older men who are finger picking and songwriting fanatics and music buffs. I also now have a size-able legion of black metal fans at my shows due to my collaboration with Xasthur’s Malefic. I wish more ladies would come to my shows.
EE: In reading some of your press, people sure throw many different labels or genres on your music, many I’ve never even heard of before. So how do you describe what you do?
MN: First and foremost, I take my songwriting very seriously. That is my main craft. I work very hard on the lyrics, the structures, and the melodies. I also consider myself a guitar player. Labels beyond that to help describe the music to new listeners would be dreamy, atmospheric, sultry, nostalgic, and romantic.
I told Marissa that it was my hope with this profile that I could help expand her audience a little. You know, old guys coming out to the shows are nice and all that, but I’d think a younger, broader audience would be there if they just knew her a little better. With an extensive touring schedule being put together, it shouldn’t be too hard to find her.
Here’s a list of what I call Marissa’s “official” releases, although she is an extremely prolific woman in the recording studio and there’s much more to be found in the way of compilations, live EP’s, the great lo-fi Covers album available only on Etsy, and other gems and one-offs:
Ballads of Living and Dying (2004)
The Saga of Mayflower May (July 2005)
Songs III: Bird On The Water (March 2007)
Little Hells (March 2009)
Marissa Nadler (Coming June 2011)
These links where you can learn more, hear music, watch videos and buy things:
http://www.marissanadler.com
http://marissanadler.bandcamp.com
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Marissamoon6
http://twitter.com/#!/marissanadler
The photograph at the top of this post is credited to Courtney Brooke Hall, 2011. Copyright. http://www.lightwitch.com/
In 2011 I began to test my own fractured Americana and roots music definition and biases with a series of articles originally published at the No Depression website. Exploring artists who pushed against the bounderies to create remarkable collaborations, it began with Boston-based Marissa Nadler and then to Buck and Shanti Curran, who are profiled here. It took me down a road I’m still traveling on.
Hyphenated genres are there for the sake of hilarity when writing press releases, not for seriously describing music. Kim Ruehl, Twitter (Editor of NoDepression.Com)
April 2011
Around the time that our site manager Kim posted this thought of hers, I was in the midst of spending several weeks exploring the music of a number of East Coast contemporary folk artists from Maine to Pennsylvania, and pondering what the hell to call it and how I should describe it. What began with Boston’s Marissa Nadler, led me to Philadelphia’s Espers, Meg Baird’s solo work, and up to a town near the Northern tip of the Appalchain Trail where Arborea live and work.
As I read and researched each of these artists, I found myself knee deep in hyphenation-ville, because there are so many elements and influences that are pulled into their music, there seems simply to be no other way to describe it. Indie-folk, goth-folk, acid-folk, psych-folk, freak-folk, neo-folk, prog-folk, metal-folk, electric-folk, techno-folk, space-folk…you get the idea…it’s just all folk-ed up. And Kim just about killed it for me with her Tweet.
So I took a break to ponder.
A week or two later, while watching a television show on the Smithsonian Channel about Folkways Records, it was founder Moses Asch who put it all in context for me. I shall para-phrase his actual quote, but it goes something like this: “I consider folk music to be sounds made by folks.”
The “a-ha moment” had arrived which allowed me to go back into the woods and share this story.
Buck and Shanti Curran live with their family in Maine, and have been making music together since 2004 under the name Arborea, with four group albums currently out, and a few anthologies that they’ve either compiled or just contribute to. (They do a real nice “This Little Light of Mine” on an Odetta tribute I just found this afternoon; merely stumbled on) Acoustic Guitar magazine noted that their Robbie Basho tribute album We Are All One, In The Sun was one of 2010’s best. And it was a top editors pick in the December issue of Guitar Players Magazine 4 stars from Mojo, and has received great reviews from The Wire and Pitchfork.
This month, they’ve released Red Planet and have been traveling and performing all over the US, UK and Europe. (As I write this, they just landed in Ireland.) Before leaving the States, Buck and I spent a few weeks writing back and forth to talk mostly about music, and a little about life.
It’s tough sometimes for bands and artists to understand that I’m not someone who often reviews stuff, but I do love to shine a spotlight on those who dwell in the shadows. And while Arborea are not even close to being shadow dwellers, they live in the world of the hyphenated genre which prompts me to share a few words. Actually, I think I’ll share a song.
A little bio and press-type stuff I’ll steal from someplace else…it’s saves me time:
“Husband and wife team, Buck and Shanti Curran, construct a fragile, resonant world with a lingering Americana after-taste, shimmering with the same wide-open spaces Ry Cooder’s captured so well on Paris, Texas. Sounding like frayed, half-remembered, hand-me-down tunes, shaped and altered with each retelling, the fluidity and the sparse application of instruments wherein Eastern and Western modes gently mingle is the secret of this album’s startling beauty”.
BBC
“Arborea’s brand of folk music is ethereal, bone-chilling and beautiful all at once”
Performing Songwriter Magazine
“Maine folk duo Arborea creates timeless music, haunted by deep shadows. Their songs are bathed in shimmering harmonics, spectral slide, and positively spooky banjo. The songs also evoke a kind of mysterious quality, in which you are never quite sure what the songs are about, but they seem to touch a place in your soul that instinctively understands.”
Dirty Linen Magazine
Buck is an interesting guy, especially in the world of acoustic guitar playing. Let me have him share his story with you.
“My passion for acoustic guitars can be traced back to the 1970’s when I first heard and fell in love with my mother’s record of John Williams playing Bach’s Gavotte en Rondeau. I started playing guitar and taking lessons in 1981 after my father gave me his Yamaha classical guitar. In the early 80’s I was fortunate to discover the record ‘Routes to Django’, which featured the young gypsy guitarist Bireli Lagrene. Another milestone in my musical education was listening to the record ‘Passion, Grace, and Fire’ which introduced me to the breathtaking Flamenco guitar playing of Paco Delucia. These two acoustic guitar based recordings, really showed me that there was an entire world of ‘hot’ guitar playing outside the realm of amplified players Jimi Hendrix and Edward Van Halen.”
In addition to developing a very distinctive fingerstyle-type of playing, Buck also took an interest in hand built guitars were working at Ramblin’ Conrads, a premier folklore center and store in Tidewater, Virginia. And he took that extra step of learning how to design and build his own guitars.
Performing as Arborea, Shanti Curran provides lead vocals, banjo, Banjimer (a type of banjo dulcimer made by Tennessee luthier Mike Clemmer), harmonium, ukulele, sawing fiddle, and hammered dulcimer. Buck does vocals, guitar, slide guitar and sawing fiddle. And they both share songwriting duties, arrangements, and production.
Over a period of a few weeks as I became lost in their music, I started to wonder if No Depression was the place for them. After all, it’s not exactly twang or alt or what we normally think of as Americana and even roots music might be a stretch. Buck turned me around.
“We use the elements of pre-war folk and archaic blues as a starting point. Our recordings definitely have a dreamscape feel to them…but that is quite a natural product of how Shanti and I sound together and the open minor tunings we use with our banjo, guitars, and dulcimers. Our recording are quite stripped down, but they have an undeniable mood and atmosphere to them. It’s not like listening to a Pink Floyd record where you have dreamy synthesizers, electric guitar, drums etc….but mostly just Shanti signing and playing banjo and me on slide guitar. These ethereal elements are certainly present in the music of Skip James and banjo players like Hobart Smith…elements that can definitely be attributed to the resonance and ring of their instruments and the tunings they used.”
“Our album also features traditional songs like Black is the Colour….Careless Love which is not a trad song, but an anonymous poem that many traditional artist cover. The Tim Buckley song Phantasmagoria in Two. As well, our music is influenced by the rugged and beautiful Landscape of Maine. Shanti and I live close to the Appalachian trail…which terminates in Maine. A lot of people don’t instantly think of Maine as part of the Appalachian trail. Often we like to say, we are creating a Northern Appalachian sound.”
In one of our last email exchanges, I thanked Buck…as he had pretty much written the story for me.
It goes like this:
Buck and Shanti make folk music together. It’s exceptional work from highly talented people. It requires no hyphenation. End of story.
Some of the videos I featured here are from the March 2011 Sun Room Sessions featuring Helena Espvall from The Espers (currently on a never-ending hiatus) on cello, and Jesse Sparhaw on harp. Video by Derek Moench. They will be released on an EP in June, 2015 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the duo. And this last video was from 2014 and obviously not from the original article. But it’s a great example of the enduring work these two continue to produce.
Beginning in the 18th century, immigrants from Britain, Scotland, and Ireland made their way across the ocean and into the backwoods and mountains of America. They brought with them their customs, culture, and music, which included both ballads and reels. The ballads were often just stories, shared by songbooks rather than recordings, and over time the lyrics, melodies, and titles were often changed. A new album by Naomi Bedford and Paul Simmonds titled Singing It All Back Home: Appalachian Songs of English and Scottish Origin takes many of these titles and presents them in a new light that restores the traditional while also adding in current country and Americana flavors. The result is a feast of tastefully executed acoustic instrumentation coupled with Bedford’s powerful voice that soars into the stratosphere along with Simmonds’ solid instrumentation and vocals.
