On August 27th Chicago-based label Drag City announced a new Bonnie “Prince” Billy album, Singer’s Grave a Sea of Tongues , by uploading a staged interview with Will Oldham, the cryptic force and songwriter behind the “Prince” Billy moniker, dubbed . . .
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“…I had been spending so much time exploring the upper atmosphere of music and the more ethereal kind of far-out spacey stuff. Now there was this need to take some more of the earth and to feel a little more tethered; a connection to earth…” Herbie Hancock, 1997
Cascading back into the etheric plane, Hancock centered his new 70’s quintet, the Headhunters, around the filthy sounding clavinet and flanked it with a slick rhythm and blues section composed of Paul Jackson (bass), Mike Clark (drums) and Bill Summers (percussion). Not to be forgotten . . .
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Diversions, a recurring feature on Aquarium Drunkard, catches up with our favorite artists as they wax on subjects other than recording and performing.
Luke Winslow-King's latest long-player, Everlasting Arms, hit shelves last month via label home, Bloodshot Records. Once again, the New Orleans based journeyman's latest collection is a swirling medley of primitive blues, gospel, folk and beyond. For this installment of Diversions, Winslow-King highlights a choice selection of Delta Blues and NOLA favorites.
Abner Jay :: The Reason Young People Use Drugs
I think Abner Jay really understands America's youth. He has a knack for singing very direct lyrics without metaphor. His sadness and life experience are shared so purely and honestly. You can't tell from this video that Abner Jay is a one man band; singing, and playing harmonica, guitar, and drums with his feet.
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They don’t make ‘em like The Johnny Cash Show anymore. In September 1969, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott appeared on the program and performed this spellbindingly cosmic rendition of Tim Hardin’s “If I Were a Carpenter.” Perhaps it’s the aging of the footage; the sepia-toned wear and the forested set, but there is something completely enigmatic about this performance. Jack’s posture is mysterious, his voice alien — high and reedy one moment, then deep and gravelly the next, nailing the poignancy of a line like . . .
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Dig into this -- a wide array of Neil covers from his first decade or so in action. There's folk rock, funk rock, country rock, yacht rock, pop rock -- all kinds of rock. And plenty of other stuff, too. New perspectives on old favorites. Say hello to Mr. Soul. / t wilcox
Spotify Version: Hello Mr. Soul :: Neil Young Covers, 1967-1978
1. Till the . . .
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With 2013’s Time Off, guitarist Steve Gunn took a leap that often proves disastrous for guitar soli performers: he started singing.
His albums had featured vocals before, but Time Off was different. On it, Gunn embraced proper songcraft, echoing the timeless strains of the Grateful Dead, Rob Galbraith, and J.J. Cale, pairing impressionistic lyrics and his smoky voice with Appalachian drones, cyclical riffs, and long-form boogies. Gunn was terrific as an instrumental bandleader and improviser; he proved to be an even better songwriter.
Ever prolific, Gunn followed the album with works more rooted in the instrumental realm, Melodies For a Savage Fix with Mike Gangloff, Cat Mask at Huggie Temple with Desert Heat, and Cantos De Lisboa, recorded with British folk guitarist Mike Cooper. But his new long player, Way Out Weather, is indeed the proper follow up to Time Off, a continuation of that record’s transformative ideas.
“Time Off was us kind of getting more comfortable in a studio,” Gunn says over the phone from New York, speaking in the same deliberate tones as he sings his songs. “Most of the recordings that I made previous to that were live or kind of home recordings… recording live shows or setting up a rat trap of microphones in my apartment.”
Gunn says Time Off was an extension of his work with drummer John Truscinski, freeform jams drawing from a wealth of deep music the two shared: early sixties electric blues from Chicago, Malian blues by Ali Farka Touré and Boubacar Traoré, the sounds of Musa Ma'rufi, tanbur player Ostad Elahi, sitarist Nikhil Banerjee, and the Dagar Brothers.
Working in at Black Dirt Studios in upstate New York with Jason Meagher, Gunn, Truscinski, and Justin Tripp took those vibes and added in elements of West Coast psychedelia and sterling J.J. Cale grooves. With a proper singer/songwriter album under his belt, Gunn invited an even larger band to Black Dirt to fill out Way Out Weather: Truscinski and Tripp returned, along with stringman Nathan Bowles, harpist Mary Lattimore, Meagher on bass, James Elkington on lap steel and Jimy Seitang playing synth. Tripp served as producer, arranging parts while others tracked.
“Everyone was workshopping things while we were tracking other things,” Gunn explains. “It was really a kind of awesome process. People would just kind of drop in and accompany what I was doing.” Gunn and the band had discussions about specific studios -- Capricorn, Fame and Muscle Shoals Sound Studios -- and players, like the Wrecking Crew and Ron Elliott, the guitarist and arranger on some of Gunn’s favorite records: Candlestick Maker, the Beau Brummels' Bradley’s Barn, and the Everly Brothers’ Roots. “We got real interested in approaching things influenced by some of the records we were freaking out about,” Gunn says.
With a larger ensemble in tow, Way Out Weather is more colorful than its predecessor, evoking the full band interplay of Fairport Convention or Van Morrison and band live at Montreux in 1974. The band sounds exuberant, like prime Dead on “Milly’s Garden,” playfully ornate on “Shadow Bros,” evoking the haunting layers of Frippertronics on “Wildwood,” and gets ominously groovy on the album’s stunning closer, “Tommy’s Congo,” where Gunn intones, “Never look down at what you need to do,” over a looping drumbeat and swaggering bass.
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Lexington, KY’s Bear Medicine doesn’t occupy a space--it invents one. Any description of their music using rock crit shorthand–“chamber-prog-folk,” for instance–seems inadequate, even misleading. To put it plainly, Bear Medicine leaves me speechless. Joshua Wright’s songs simultaneously nod to and annihilate time-tested songform traditions, while the band’s spooky energy and skillful arrangements combine to reveal a multiplicity of ideas within each strange, evocative song. Fans of artists as varied as Comus, Led Zeppelin circa III, Kayo Dot, and Townes Van Zandt . . .
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Tuesday marked the late Trish Keenan’s birthday, she would have turned 46. Her partner and bandmate, James Cargill, released two demos this week from the 2004 Tender Button sessions, via the band’s “Future Crayon” website, in her remembrance. That record is often referred to as “the minimal one” by fans -- a more simplified-sounding collection compared to the blooming psychedelia of its predecessors; Ha Ha Sound and . . .
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Just in time to help you squeeze the last remnants of heat out of this Indian summer, the fifth installment of our ongoing Bomboclat! series is an atmospheric and predominantly dub heavy mixtape. Hat tip to Jon "Sir Lord Comic" for his help in compiling these tracks. Find volumes one through four, here. - Cognoscere
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The Mattson 2 are twin brothers Jared and Jonathan Mattson. Descending from southern California. with one brother on drums and the other guitar, they are a self-described jazz duo. But as Agar, their latest lp, attests, they occupy a space much wider than that. At only five tracks and just under thirty minutes long, Agar is certainly concise; a clear and focused statement on both the brothers’ artistic chops and frame of mind . . .
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An eclectic medley of ramblin' folk, African rhythms and mellow tunes to usher in that October breeze.
Aquarium Drunkard Presents: Soulful Shade of Blue - A Medley
Brook Benton — Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright
Miriam Makeba — Oxgam
Bob Lind — Fennario
Tom Paxton — Last Thing On My Mind
The Beach Boys — Little Bird
Buffy Sainte-Marie — Soulful Shade Of Blue
Matthews Southern Comfort — Tell Me Why (Neil Young)
Richard & Linda Thompson — Down Where The Drunkards Roll
Tom Waits — Old Shoes
Greg Brown . . .
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Lagniappe (la ·gniappe) noun ‘lan-ˌyap,’ — 1. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. 2. Something given or obtained as a gratuity or bonus.
In 2012 I wrote about a young guy living in New Orleans who had just released a set of self-recorded demos. His name was Benjamin Booker. Like his voice, they were raw, intense and inspired. I then lost track of him, only to hear his name reappear a couple of . . .
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This week marks the release of Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone, the 11th studio album from Lucinda Williams. It's a first in many ways - her first double studio album, her first on her new self-run record label, and her first to feature lyrics written by her father, poet Miller Williams. Williams spoke with AD via phone earlier in September about learning to expand her songwriting palate, using other songs to craft her own, starting the new record label and how you should get out and play in front of an audience all ready.
Aquarium Drunkard: The last time you and I talked, we talked a little bit about whether there was a theme to that album, Blessed. And you said it was difficult to answer, that you hadn't really thought about a theme ahead of time. And maybe this is me projecting my own thinking onto your work, but this time it really feels like there's a connective thread for these songs, especially built around the title track and your father's poem. Was there a more conscious decision this time?
Lucinda Williams: Uhm, not really. [laughs] As far as the songs - we actually recorded about 35 tracks worth of material. This group of songs were picked to work together from those, so in that sense, yes, it was a conscious effort. The other ones will be on another album separately. But when I was sitting down to write the songs, I wasn't thinking of a specific theme.
And the "Compassion" song [ed. note: which contains the album title phrase], I wrote that kind of at the 11th hour. I didn't have it written. I'd been trying to get that done. I'd been wanting for years to take one of my dad's poems and turn it into a song, but it's a really hard thing to do. It proved to be really challenging. And the title [of the album] was decided before I had got that song. But I finally got the song done. It was something we wanted to see happen, but I wasn't sure if I'd be able to pull it off or not. That was the last thing we cut.
AD: If you hadn't been able to finish the song, the record would have still had the same name?
Lucinda Williams: Yeah. Interestingly enough, on the inside of [2007 album] West, we used the same quote from that song. It just seemed to be sticking with us and making sense. It was all just kind of a work in progress.
AD: In the promotional material, it talks about how you've been coming up with more material for each record than there is room for..
Lucinda Williams: I used to not do that though! [laughs] I'm not sure why that is, but I've become more prolific as I've become older.
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I don’t want to talk about the Mekons. There are plenty of hardcore devotees out there who will be more than eager to tell you everything: how the Mekons are possibly the most prolific college radio act ever, how they started as snotty-nosed art students making meta-critical punk, how they borrowed Gang of Four’s gear to record their first album and inadvertently sounded post-punk, how they then moved into synthy New Wave territory before that was viable, how their mid-Eighties embrace of folk and country (on Fear and Whiskey) is maybe up . . .
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Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday — Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST.
SIRIUS 358: Jean Michel Bernard - Générique Stephane ++ Ty Segall - Tall Man Skinny Lady ++ Pain Dimension - Everything Spinning ++ White Fence - Anger! Who Keeps You Under? ++ Jack Name - New Guitars ++ Jack Name - Pure Terror ++ Thee Oh Sees - Toe Cutter - Thumb Buster ++ David Vandervelde - Nothin' No ++ Landline - Wire ++ The Fall - A Lot . . .
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