Tag Archives: Watkins Family Hour

Make Americana Great Again: Why We Cherish Those Amazing Polls

donald-trump-neil-young-rockin-free-worldThat is one helluva picture. You might recall that it surfaced this past June after Neil Young demanded that Donald Trump stop using “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his campaign events. Utilizing his standard and preferred method of statesmanship, Trump went on the morning news shows, called Young a bad name, and then tweeted this: “A few months ago Neil Young came to my office looking for $$$ on an audio deal and called me last week to go to his concert. Wow!”

Young, no slouch himself when it comes to using social media, seemed to confirm Trump’s assertion of capitalistic hypocrisy when he wrote on Facebook: “It was a photograph taken during a meeting when I was trying to raise funds for Pono, my online high resolution music service.”

That Neil Young would choose Trump to get cozy with as a potential partner is enough to cause the price of flannel futures to tumble. Besides, in the past several months, Young’s digital entree has entered and floundered into the ether of a disinterested marketplace.

Pushing that particular random thought-bubble aside, it’s time to talk about the annual readers and critics polls that focus on one type of music or another. These are soon to occupy much of our collective time and space via traditional and social media, using the skill sets and wisdom of random cubes tossed together in a Yahtzee cup and spilt onto the countertop. Can we all agree that this excercise produces an inaccurate and imperfect list of superlatives? At the very least, I hope it will open up new avenues of exploration for some folks, as well as simply serving to bolster our own opinions based on an album’s popularity.

It is the former that most excites me because, with well over 120,000 new albums being released each year, there is no possible way to see all, know all, or hear all. It’s the depth and diversity of new music that makes scanning these polls so much fun. Nothing beats discovering something that slipped through the cracks.

In late October, the editor of No Depression:The Roots Music Authority requested a list of my favorite titles (I think she used the word “best”), and this is the list I sent her:

Jason Isbell, Daniel Romano, John Moreland, Pharis and Jason Romero, Tom Brosseau, Noah Gundersen, Watkins Family Hour, Joan Shelley, Milk Carton Kids, and an exceptional concert compilation called Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of a Dreadful Film. (Note to self: Going forward, try to be nicer.)

I’m sure y’all can spot the problem. It was way too exclusive. Narrowing my favorite albums of the year down to ten is just plain silly.

I also would have loved to include releases from Calexico, Jessica Pratt, the Westies, Kristin Andreassen, Joe Pug, Shakey Graves, Sufjan Stevens, The Kennedys, Kepi Ghoulie, Leon Bridges, Meg Baird, the Lonesome Trio, the Deslondes, Frazey Ford, the Skylarks, Kacey Musgraves, Ana Egge, Darrell Scott, Nikki Talley, Lindi Ortega, Dave Rawlings Machine, Jill Andrews, Darlingside, Decemberists, Daniel Martin Moore, Susie Glaze and the Hilonesome Band, and my friends Spuyten Duyvil.

I really like the duos and duets too. Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield, Anna and Elizabeth, the Lowest Pair, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. Not to mention the Honey Dewdrops, Iron and Wine and Ben Bridwell, Dave and Phil Alvin, and both the Wainwright and Chapin Sisters.

Don’t forget compilations with really long names that may or may not have been released this year, that I’ve been enjoying regardless: Arkansas at 78 RPM: Corn Dodgers & Hoss Hair Pullers, The Brighter Side: A 25th Anniversary Tribute to Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression, Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs By Karen Dalton, and Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music On the Mason-Dixon Line.

And then there are the names you already know: Iris Dement, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Leonard Cohen, Jesse Winchester, Dwight Yoakam, Mark Knopfler, Fairport Convention, and Bob Dylan (the old new stuff, not the new old stuff).

I haven’t counted them up, but this longer list of mine can’t be more than 50 or 60 albums — a pitiful, sickly and puny little list. Seriously, I’m ashamed. There are at least 119,940 or more to choose from and I know that you can do better than me. Whether you participate in the No Depression poll or any of the thousands of others that lurk out there, relax and enjoy. Have fun, don’t stress, don’t argue. It’s all about exploration.

Postscript: For the record, Americana is a radio format and an association, not a genre.

Pairing Tom Brosseau with Modern Art

TBThe last time I went to an art museum by myself was probably never. I can recall middle school field trips, romantic dates on Sunday afternoons, and slouching through exhibitions in pack formation with my kids who were neither bored nor overly enchanted. With the youngest now off to college and my empty nest being the new norm, a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan on a hot summer night seemed in order.

Times have changed since my being-dragged-to-the-art-museum days, and I hadn’t anticipated a sea of selfie-stick-wielding tourists more interested in taking pictures than looking at them. For my part, it felt right to detach aurally by pumping Tom Brosseau’s music into my ears on a continuous loop, as soon as I walked through the door.

I’ve always suspected that I don’t behave properly at museums. Some people stand in front of a painting for what seems like an ungodly amount of time, staring at it until their eyeballs slither over their cheeks and onto the floor. Others like to read the little cards that have the name of the artist listed, when and where they were born and died, the name of the artwork and what they used to create it (“olive oil and burnt sienna sage on bleached linen with Albanian mud, lamb’s wool, and distilled gin”).

I, meawnhile, prefer a method of migratory motion and furtive glances, and Brosseau provided me with a soundtrack that served to enhance the visual experience by adding thoughtful lyricism, unexpected chord and rhythmic transitions, and shimmering under-production, all around a single microphone.

If you don’t know Brosseau, you should know that neither did I until I saw him at last year’s Newport Folk Festival, performing in a variety of configurations. He is a mainstay of John Reilly and Friends, which usually includes Becky Stark from Lavender Diamond on vocals and a bunch of other folks who slip in and out as they are able. At the Watkins Family Hour post-festival show, he performed solo and also did a few songs with Reilly. At some point Sean and Sara Watkins made it a quartet.

Looking in the window from far across the continent, I’m imagining that there is a strong alliance between both of the Friends and Family collectives with a cadre of Los Angeles-based players that appear on each other’s albums, perform together at shows, sing each other’s songs, are tapped into the art and film circles, and telegraph dotted lines of connectivity to other like-minded musical communities throughout the globe.

Brosseau is a California transplant originally from North Dakota, and trying to pin down an accurate discography proves to be a challenge. A friend has provided me with a make-believe digital box full of uncredited songs that come from several sources. There’s the Les Shelleys album on FatCat Records with partner Angela Correa, Brousseau’s seven-inch single of Delmore Brothers’ tunes with Reilly, the Grand Forks project produced by Gregory Page and John Doe, featuring Hilary Hahn on vocals, and his solo Grass Punks albumwhich Sean Watkins produced. I suppose I could leave you with lots of links, but I think it’s much more fulfilling to strike out on your own as if panning for gold.

Listening to Perfect Abandon while letting my eyes wander over a disconnected collection of modern artwork by artists ranging from Yoko Ono to Andy Warhol, turned out to be a perfect union. This is music rooted in the traditional, yet pushed beyond the borders to allow something new to bubble up. With Brosseau’s album, my ears heard the footfalls of both Woody Guthrie and Lou Reed; the lone prairie met the metropolis. It was a wonderful choice for the evening and, by any measure, it was a most excellent pairing.

This was originally published by No Depression, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.

Families That Play Together

From The Sound of Music

New York City, August 13, 2015: This past Sunday, I took the train and then a subway to the Upper West Side, walked up and down Broadway picking at piles of books sold by street vendors for a mere dollar or two, and found shade in a plaza at Lincoln Center as I watched Iris DeMent perform songs from her new album. I looked around to see if her husband Greg Brown’s daughter Pieta was in the crowd with her spouse, guitarist Bo Ramsey. But if they were there, I missed them.

During the show, and as Iris sang, I pulled out my phone and tapped a message to a mutual friend of ours from Iowa City, photographer Sandy Dyas. Although we’ve never met face to face, we’ve had casual correspondence from time to time, over the years, and I’ve written about her work and featured it in my articles. Along with all of the people I’ve met through my connection with this particular website and music community, I consider Sandy a member of my No Depression family.

In life, love, law, politics, society, civilization, art, music, literature, and pretty much everything else in this world, there are threads that bind us together. While a dictionary might tell you that there are only three specific types of families, the American Academy of Pediatrics lists eight and sociologists can quickly rattle off over a dozen. Some folks might tell you that there is only one kind of family, but my own definition is much broader.

Be it a coupling of two or a group of thousands, we seem to have the capacity to create connections that can have the same feel and offer the same support system as what a traditional family does. Sometimes it endures, other times it evaporates as quickly as it came together. But whether bloodlines or lifelines, and despite a high rate of dysfunction, families often and unpredictably can produce some amazing results.

When Teddy Thompson came up with the idea of having his family work together to release an album last year, his sister Kami tried to back out. As quoted in the New York Times Magazine, she asked him “Could I be like that one Osbourne who’s not on the show, whose name no one knows?”

Nonetheless, Thompson’s Family is probably one of the best collections of songs ever created through emails, file sharing, and studio magic. It features music that is just simply beautiful, from divorced parents Linda and Richard, nephew Zak Hobbs, Richard’s son Jack from his second marriage, and the reluctant sister Kami with her husband James Walbourne who perform as the Rails. (If you haven’t heard the Rails’ album Fair Warning, run don’t walk.)

Explaining to the Times reporter how and why this album came about, Teddy says: “It was difficult to make it sound like everyone’s together, because we weren’t – which is exactly the way my family is. If anything, that kind of sums up the whole process. It’s trying to bring everybody from wherever they are, in their own little world. And make it sound like we’re a family.”

At the end of this year, when all of the writers and bloggers and reader polls put together their “best of” lists, if they don’t include Pharis and Jason Romero’s A Wanderer I’ll Stay, they will be sadly mistaken. While I tend to keep my distance from such beauty contests, it isn’t hard at all to point to this collection and scream, “This is why I love music,” at the top of my lungs. While I’ve enjoyed the story of how another married musical couple – Pete and Maura Kennedy – met at the gravesite of Buddy Holly, Pharis comes in a close second because she sent Jason a 1928 recording of Tupelo Blues by Hoyt Ming and His Pinesteppers, and they had a wedding three months after. You can read their whole story here, but you should know they live in Horsefly, British Columbia, he is a custom banjo maker, she was the co-founder of Outlaw Social, they were both in The Haints Old Time Stringband, and as a duo they’ve released three near-perfect albums.

For many years, I lived in a small town north of San Diego and attended services and played music on occasion at a small Unitarian congregation in Vista – the town where Sean and Sara Watkins grew up. While it could be a false memory syndrome thing, I’m pretty sure I saw them play, when they were just little people, at some local events.

Ten years ago, all grown up and based in Los Angeles, they created what I like to think of as an ‘Our Gang’ variety show that features an ever-changing cast of characters. We got to see them at last year’s Newport Folk Festival after-party, and it was the highlight of the weekend, which you can read about here.

When they released an album recently, I made the mistake of sampling some tracks on Spotify and stashing it in the virtual file cabinet. On the way to see Iris DeMent, though, I sat on the train and listened to it end to end, start to finish. Brilliant concept, flawless execution. Coming from a man who dwells in the house of shuffle and prefers my music to pop up unexpectedly like a jack in the box, I have to say: you won’t exactly get the concept of The Watkins Family Hour without putting in the time to go all the way. The only family members by blood in this troupe are Sean and Sara. But what’s so special is that, not only are the other musicians in the cousins’ club, but we – the listeners – are in the family too.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Roots Music Journal.

An Imaginary Line From CSN to Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins

ImwithherI awoke this morning with a throbbing left foot. I wore the black boots last night and my toes unconsciously tapped throughout the seventy-five minute set and the well deserved encore that was delivered by three talented singers, songwriters, and instrumentalists. On a beautiful summer night in the Spanish Courtyard of the Rosen House, located on the lush grounds of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts which is a mere sixty minutes north of Manhattan, I kept my eyes closed for much of time to shut out the visual and allow just the sounds of nature melded with the music to pour over the tip of my head and fill my body and soul. The only distraction to my thoughts and immersion were the whoops and cheers that punctuated the close of each song.

Many of us here have known, followed, and enjoyed the artistic talents and work product of these three. Sara from Nickel Creek, her solo albums, that Decemberists’ tour and the Watkins Family Hour which includes brother Sean and what seems to be a revolving cast. Aoife from years on the road and in the studio with Crooked Still, and most recently her solo album. And Sarah, who just turned 24 slightly over a month ago, with an already stunning list of achievements with her albums and collaborative performances.

As I listened to a set that was in equal measure traditional and contemporary, and shifted from covers unexpected to original-familiar, I created an imaginary narrative that took me back almost fifty years ago to the formation of a group with three other musicians: Crosby, Stills and Nash.

While the oft-told story of their coming together has shifted over time like sand on a beach, the one we accept is that Nash was living with Joni in Laurel Canyon and she brought the three of them together for simply a day of fun. And maybe it was Mama Cass. Whatever. One thing led to another, a slot was offered and accepted at the Woodstock festival and an album of virtually perfected tone and harmony resulted. What came after…it doesn’t really pertain to this storyline.

The thread or line I imagine is about taking unique and personal styles, blending experience, skill sets and an obvious friendship and respect toward each other, and creating something new from it. It’s hard enough to begin, almost impossible to endure, and a joy for an audience to witness.

For these three…SAS is not the moniker of choice I would assume, so let’s stay with the I’m With Her tour theme…the idea to play together germinated at last year’s Telluride festival and was allowed to grow in Brooklyn, like the tree before it. As I have lived bi-coastal and experienced the different energies of Los Angeles and New York, it wouldn’t feel wrong to contrast the artistic and creative wilderness of Laurel Canyon where three men came together a long time ago, with the urban and supportive artistic bubble of the borough across the East River that is now a breeding ground for the likes of these three women.

The concert dates so far have for the most part been overseas, the only website merely a rudimentary Tumblr page and with this project they seem to have kept out of the usual media runway and spotlight with the exception of these videos I’m sharing that have been posted along the way. There is a promise of an album, and I would guess a more official type of invitation for a wider audience to experience the music. For now, those of us catching them as the wave rises find ourselves of a privileged class.

With a new project being released soon from the Watkins Family Hour and a string of dates that will keep Sara busy, the three have a small number of summer and fall domestic dates scheduled. In addition to the show last night at Caramoor, there are only three more this month, one in August and two in September. To catch them them perform at one of these events would be like picking up a handful of seashells and being blessed to find just a few that are as close to perfection as you’ll get.

The Post-Newport Earthquake: Watkins Family Hour

WatkinsDid you feel it? That’s what everybody in Los Angeles asks each other whenever a shake or quake rattles and rolls through the valleys and flatlands. Sometimes there’s just a release of pressure beneath the crust, and other times it’s an up and down jolt that lasts only a second. And then you forget about it. Until the next time.

Sunday night there was a seismic shift. A movement of the tectonic plates. A tilting of the axis. Not in California, but here in Rhode Island.

Just hours after the 55th Newport Folk Festival had ended, several hundred people gathered together and laid witness to a roots music earthquake of significant proportion. A rolling thunder of music that may one day be noted as the moment when the old folk memories of the ’60s stepped aside and a new paradigm emerged.

Bringing their LA-based monthly residency Watkins Family Hour to Newport for an after-festival party, brother-sister duo Sean and Sara Watkins invited some friends to share the stage and create the most unanticipated and joyous musical experience that added three exclamation points to an already stellar weekend at Fort Adams.

WFH

Let’s see if we can get the order right:

Sean and Sara started it out with three songs, and then brought Willie Watson onstage for one together and two on his own, followed by…wait…damn. I’ll never get this right.

Let’s try it like this….here’s who else was performing as a single, duo, trio, or with a group, or in some cases just hanging out at the side, edge or behind whomever was at the mic:

Langhorne Slim

Willie Watson

Chris Funk

Aoife O’Donovan

Hurray For The Riff Raff’s Alynda Lee Segarra

Sam Doores from the Deslondes

John C. Reilly and Tom Brosseau

Milk Carton Kids

Pokey LaFarge

That’s the best that I can come up with for the moment, but there were even more. Pokey’s band, whose names I do not know, sizzled. Horn, clarinet, harp, percussion, guitarist, bass. And there was a piano player who sat in all throughout the night, who pumped the living daylight out of the house upright. Hot guitarists, clawhammer banjo, fiddle, slide, harmonious vocals.

Some musicians brought their own songs or favorite covers. But, running through it all were mostly old time classics pulled out of hats like magical rabbits. At the epicenter of the magic was Sean and Sara. The Watkins kids not only put this party together, they kept it rolling on the fly with enthusiasm and talent, well-learned skill sets, and deep musical knowledge; and a sense of humor, and a welcoming invitation to come on in and join in the fun.

A new Grand Ole Opry for the under-35 beard and flannel set.

I was just thirteen (you might say I was a musical proverbial knee-high) when Dylan came to Newport and shook it up by plugging in his Fender. Like you, I’ve heard this story many times as it was passed down, and it’s become one of the many Newport legends. This festival is just full of ghosts and spooky stories runnin’ around.

The Watkins Family Hour? Seems like I’ve been waiting all my life to see and hear something like this. Pete can rest easy…the kids did more than alright in Newport this year. They stole it back from the ghosts.

The finale…you might hear my voice deep in the background.