4 posts tagged “music”
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"A representation or picture of a sacred or sanctified
"An important and enduring symbol
"An object of great attention and devotion"
On Thursday night, we drove to UCLA's iconic Royce Hall to attend the 50th Anniversary of the iconic McCabe's Guitar Shop back room concerts. The first performer was Odetta--sacred, sanctified, important and enduring--and the rest of the night was just as much of a soul full.
McCabe's small back room is like a church for those who love pure folk music in all of its idioms: balladry, blues, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, blue grass, and rock and roll. The walls are covered in guitars, the seats are hard steel folding chairs, the coffee is weak, and the sound and the sounds are perfect.
Here is the review, written by Steven Mirkin, that appeared on the Variety website on Friday:
Early on during the 50th anniversary celebration of McCabe's Guitar Shop (the opening concert of this year's UCLA Live Season), Nancy Covey -- who booked the room from 1974-84 and (with current concert director Lincoln Myerson) put together the evening's line-up -- noted that the Santa Monica venue made everyone who worked or played there feel like family. And family was a theme that ran through the concert, both musical (there was much intermingling between the 17 acts) by marriage (Covey met her husband, guitarist Richard Thompson at the club) and blood (the daughters of Thompson and David Lindley, Kami and Rosanne, performed with their dads). The result was a warm, generous and engaging night of music.
It definitely reflected McCabe's eclectic bookings over the years, from the California folk of Jackson Browne (performing with multi-instrumentalist David Lindley), the spookily abstract songs of Bonnie "Prince" Billy (aka Will Oldham), the fleet-footed Cajun sounds of the Savoy-Doucet Band, the gospel harmonies of the Blind Boys of Alabama, winking Western swing from Dan Hicks, Los Lobos' rootsy rock, and magician/actor Ricky Jay, whose wise guy patter while turning a deck of cards into deadly weapons linked modern humor to old fashioned carny traditions. It's a testament to the high level of performances that the evening never lagged, with every act performing two or three songs and often introducing the next act up, keeping the show moving as swiftly as a five-hour (including intermission) show could move.
There were too many highlights to mention. (Any concert that includes Richard Thompson as house guitarist, snapping off lines out of the Scotty Moore and Cliff Gallup textbook, is going to provide it's own highlight reel). But it was hard for anyone to top the emotional impact of Odetta. The 78-year-old folk music legend is now in a wheelchair, and when she spoke, her voice betrayed the weight of age. Accompanied by David Keyes on piano, she sang with a quiet, steely dignity. Her version of "House of the Rising Sun" bristled with pain and sadness, while a modern civil rights ballad was willful yet optimistic.
It was also a kick to hear Peter Rowan lead the house band (which included Michael Jerome on drums, Debra Dobkin on percussion and Taras Prodaniuk on bass) in a Bill Monroe tune, the Ditty Bops dance and sing beside Hicks, and special guest Chrissie Hynde, looking lean and sexy, admitted she never actually played McCabe's, but was so jazzed by the line-up she "blagged" her way into the show. Using an acoustic guitar, she performed two motor-mouthed, Dylanesque songs from the Pretenders' new album "Break Up The Concrete" that would have sounded right at home on McCabe's stage.
As the evening ended, Van Dyke Parks dancing up the aisle with his accordion while the ensemble sang "This Land Is Your Land," there was no doubt that McCabe's remains a vibrant and welcome presence on Los Angeles live music scene and, with any luck, will continue to squeeze auds into uncomfortable folding chairs for another half century.
Here are two videos of songs sung at the show, one from Odetta and one from Richard Thompson, from other shows somewhere, that illustrate the devotion to craft and honesty that were on display this whole night.
It was also a perfect week to buy a new guitar for me and my son. This is a picture. A Hagstrom Viking II, the iconic guitar played by Elvis Presley in his 1968 television special, as well as a favorite guitar of Frank Zappa.
Ok, ok, I bought the guitar at Tru Tone on the other side of town, another great locally-owned guitar shop on Santa Monica.
One of the best things about living in LA is having become friends with the Candaele brothers, Kelly and Kerry. I was thinking of this on Sunday as I stood in Kerry‘s patio in Venice, talking to Billy Bragg about Woody Guthrie. Billy Bragg just finished a second album, working with Woody’s daughter Nora, putting melodies to Woody Guthrie lyrics for which there is no known music or recording. And Billy Bragg was the right man for the task, I’ll tell you that. Just listen to this song from Mermaid Avenue (Guthrie’s Brooklyn street address). The video is home-made by some artist somewhere, who had a friend who wanted to buy one of his paintings, which cover his every wall, so he just filmed his entire apartment quickly, is of to say, “just pick one,” as in the background the Guthrie-Bragg (with the ever ethereal Natalie Merchant creeping in) song captures something of Woody and Billy’s romantic and edgy three-chord, story-telling souls. I think it’s brilliant. I know more than most--though not as much as Kerry or Kelly--about Woody Guthrie, so that came in handy. Billy was there because he and Kerry connected over a project Kerry is working on, writing and directing a film on Beethoven’s Ninth symphony. And Billy Bragg just finished re-writing the lyrics to Ode to Joy, because of some long story involving buskers, kids, the London Philharmonic and the Queen. To hear Bragg describe his meeting with the Queen is worth deciding not to get another beer during. Billy Bragg: “I said to the Queen: ‘I started off trying to be Bob Dylan, but I ended up being Friedrich Schiller.’” Her Majesty,the Queen of England: “That’s very nice.” But now Kerry Candaele and Billy Bragg are together creating a multi-cultural Beetovenaninthalicious extavaganza of Ode to folk, classical and everything in between Joy in Los Angeles in August. Be there. Donate. After we left Kerry's place, as if life isn't interesting and risky enough, we went to an opening-night trapeze school demonstration on the Santa Monica Pier while all around us Angelenos with earphones murmured about the Lakers fourth-quarter comeback in vain against the Celtics. Whew. And tonight? The three of us sat on the couch in the living room. I knew we were in trouble when I saw Inglewood’s own Paul Pierce during the national anthem. He looked like his sphincter was taut tight against his Adam’s Apple. “Uh-oh,” I said. Though we almost got them, if Pierce had but just 12 points in the game -- that can’t be too much to ask -- the Celts would be up three-nil, as they say in Ireland. But they’re not. A bad night and tomorrow in the office for the LA-Celtic alle menschen werden bruder, I’ll tell you that. Next post, from Jackson Browne to Jackshit: a little musical catching up. And just in case the Following the Ninth page didn't open in your browser, here is the Youtube-quality version of the trailer. It's a little more than five minutes, but well worth it.
First, play this:
These are the Carolina Chocolate Drops. We saw them Friday night, first-row right side, at McCabes Guitar Shop. They are Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson. Dom and Justin are still in their 20s, and Rhiannon, who is prettier than the first girl who ever stopped you dead in your tracks, is just over 30. This is a paragraph from a Joan Anderman story about them in the Boston Globe last April, (Joan Anderman, according to this virtual Bostonian, is one tight music writer and a great reporter; look how much she gets into this short explanation of their genesis): Flemons met Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson (both natives of the North Carolina Piedmont) two years ago at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, N.C., a first-time event celebrating the banjo's African-American roots. Flemons, who grew up in Arizona, starting playing three years earlier, when he was 20, and had become a voracious student of the instrument's lineage. Giddens, a fiddler and banjo player, studied opera and then immersed herself in the contra dance community before discovering string-band music. Robinson is a classically trained violinist, but an NPR report about an elderly musician named Joe Thompson sparked his curiosity. Robinson soon traded his violin for a fiddle and sought out Thompson, a lifelong resident of Mebane, N.C., who is thought to be the last black string-band fiddler of his generation. Thompson became the trio's mentor, and the lion's share of the Carolina Chocolate Drops' repertoire includes songs they've learned from him during their weekly visits. "He starts playing a song, we start following him, and he lets us know if there's something to be done," is how Flemons describes the group's tutelage under Thompson, who will turn 89 next month. "It has all the basics," he says of the music's lure. "A good feel - and that can be a strong beat or a swing beat or a thumping dance beat - that gets you on your feet and enough of a tune to sing along to. This music was made for dancing." Now wouldn’t you love to be in that room with the Chocolate Drops and Joe Thompson? Well why not? Go ahead, but then y’all come back now and let me finish my story. So we saw them Friday night and we were smitten from the first fiddle stroke. Don, a tall, rubber-boned, foot-stomping kid in suspenders and pork-pie hat, started off on a dobro, Rhiannon (barefoot, bright cotton dress, jeans) and Justin played fiddles. Before the night was over we’d hear a five-string banjo, a tenor banjo--with a slide, which was awfully neat--the jug, harmonica, snare drum, base drum, the bones, and a kazoo. They played songs with straight whiskey titles like Starry Crown, Dona Got a Ramblin’ Mind (the title of their album ), Cindy Girl, Cornbread Butter Beans, Viper Man (with a slide on the tenor banjo) as well as some unexpecteds like a folkified run through Blu Cantrell’s Hit ‘Em Up Style (though sharp friend Vicki, a tamborine-banger in a local band herself, caught the a jug = beatbox thing very early on). Shortly before the and of the first set, a large African American man in the audience raised his hand and prayerfully begged Rhiannon “to sing that Gaelic song.” And she did, a capella, in Gaelic. It was stunning, it opened as a lament, picked up tempo and resilience verse to verse, and ended in a triumph. There was a large group of Scottish Highanders, she said later, who settled in North Carolina, and the last Gaelic church in North Carolina was Black. Well imagine that. Yes, along with the songs there were lessons--they do a lot of school and college gigs. They spoke of the likes of Joe Thompson, Vera Hall, Papa Charley Jackson, Nobel Sissel, who wrote Viper Man, Grand Pa Jones of Hee Haw, and the Rowan Martin Hilltop Band, to mention a few. The best story, however, went to Dom who noted that this year is McCabes fiftieth anniversary playing live music in the back room. The first people to play in the back room were Elizabeth Cotton and Mike Seeger in 1958. Now Elizabeth Cotton was a self-taught banjo and guitar player who wrote a song, Freight Train, which is easily destined for folk immortality, when she was 11, which would have been 1906. The point of Dom’s story is that this style of music, string band music played for Square Dances, or more accurately, “Frolics” as they were called on the Negro side of the tracks, has all but disappeared in African American culture. Joe Thompson at 89 is thought to be the last string player of his generation. Elizabeth Cotton was another somewhere connected to that tradition, and she died in 1989. But there they were, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, just kids in our book, rescuers of a whole musical dialect, on the same stage of McCabe’s guitar shop that Elizabeth Cotton played on. May the circle be unbroken, amen. There is no American story involving race where race is not a factor, and this one’s no different. Rhiannon told Eric Easter of Ebony-Jet magazine in an interview: “A lot of Black music when it originated was raunchy, raucous, dance music. Black people created it, then Black people left it and white people held onto it forever. “In some ways the white people who held onto the music have been almost too respectful of it, playing in these insular circles and not willing to stretch it for fear of disrespect. I think there’s been a real desire for Black people to come back to this music and recapture what’s been lost. People seem to respond to us because of the energy we bring back to it – as an impetus for getting out of your seat and dancing.” At the end of the night, as Rhiannon put down her banjo and ran to our side of the stage to barefoot clog dance thought the fidllee-ai-yay finale of Sourwood Mountain, I thought of all the Elizabeth Cottons in music, and all that made them, and all they passed and pass along, on altars like this in back-rooms of music stores, and about everyone who loves making a music with a guitar and banjo, and about how our music, the folk and soul, and blues and rhythm of it all, is all just about making love, one way or another. My true love lives over the river, Hi-Ho Fliddlee-ai-yay
A few more jumps and I'll be with her.
Devil's in the women if they take a notion.
Hi-Ho Fiddlee-ai-yay
This challenge by Barack Obama might just be what Hillary Clinton needs to be an effective president. If Sen. Clinton is to be president--although it is very possible that Barack Obama will surge just enough, and just enough, into March, to prevail--she will start the job on day one with a full realization that, in order to count on a base of political support among Democrats and educated independents, she has to pursue peace in Iraq aggressively, be comfortable and confident in her own skin, connect her inner beliefs to her public policy agenda, and work to persuade a heterogeneous slice of the country that we need both a fettered market and a strong government to secure fair access to health care, protection from poverty, continuous opportunities for education and improvement, and, most of all, an ethos of public responsibility for the public good, even if it is expensive, as the nation has previously and successfully provided itself in its worst of times.
