For a Song: Lost in the Mail

The Balancing Act: Lost in the Mail

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The album review will appear later this week. Meanwhile, this seemed appropriate.

My last two For a Song posts were pop songs, at least in my book. The music of The Balancing Act should have fit in that category. I have always felt that they never reached the audience they deserved. Lost in the Mail is perfect example of their popish sound, especially their vocal harmonies. This is a band that was channeling The Hollies. The lyrics may have been the problem. Lost in the Mail is a beautifully done song of yearning and missed chances, but there is something slightly off about it. Mail is rhymed with jail, without explanation. It is not clear whether the jail reference is literal or metaphorical. It is left for the listener to fill in the blanks in their own way. Personally, I like a pop song that asks me to think, but others who heard this may not have agreed. Still, the song came out in 1988, and the proper video could have put it over in those days.

A Song Chain

A song chain is a game. It’s a variation on word association. We all played that as kids, where you call out a word, and the next person calls out the first word they think of. So think of a song, and then the next song you think of, and so on. Let me show you how it works.

Richard Thompson: Crawl Back (Under My Stone)

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My wife and I were talking earlier today about trying to find a concert or something special to do, just for the two of us, for a treat as the holidays approach. We did this a few years ago, and our treat was a Richard Thompson concert. He doesn’t get to area again until March, so we’ll have to do something else this year.

Usually, my posts of Thompson’s songs, both here and on Star Maker Machine, tend to focus on his softer side. Songs like Beeswing and Vincent Black Lightning show off Richard Thompson the storyteller. But the man can also flat out rock. Crawl Back is a fine example. Take the words literally, and the song seems to be an apology by a man who feels that he has let his lover down. But Thompson’s delivery makes it clear that this is actually a brush-off song. He’s telling her that her standards don’t suit him, and he’s gone. It’s powerful stuff, and one side of Thompson at his best.

Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy: King of Bohemia

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Thinking of Richard Thompson reminded me of one of my favorite covers of his songs, King of Bohemia as performed by Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy. I’m partly posting this as a kind of apology to readers of Star Maker Machine. Quite some time ago, I posted this song there. At the time, I was having problems with my file host, and in the end, I actually had to change hosts. The result was that this song was only up for an eye blink, and many people may have missed it. So here it is again. This time, my hosting situation is solid, so everyone should have a chance to hear it. You can read my original thoughts on the song Here.

Ann Savoy is a well known Cajun musician, and that naturally made me think of…

Beausoleil: Zydeco Gris Gris

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…Beausoliel. It isn’t usually hard to match an artist to the best venue for their performance. There should be good acoustics, and some acts may need a piano. Usually, the hardest thing is deciding how large an audience you need room for. But I once saw Beausoleil, and there was another consideration. Symphony Space in New York City is a nice mid-sized hall where I have had the great pleasure of seeing some of the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. The problem for a Beausoleil show there was the fact that the seats are bolted to the floor. This is not a band to sit and listen to. Seats or no seats, everybody got up and danced in the limited space in the aisles. We were most likely in violation of the fire codes that night. It was a great show though.

The song Zydeco Gris Gris is a fine example of Beausoleil’s artistry. The term Gris Gris refers to magical practices in New Orleans, and that reminded of me our recent Magic theme on Star Maker Machine. A strange thing happened that week: no one posted a song with the word magic in the title. I really though someone would post…

Peter Green: Black Magic Woman

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…this one. Black Magic Woman is the song that was a hit for Santana back when. But it was written by Peter Green, for the blues band he was in at the time. Perhaps you’ve heard of Fleetwood Mac? Green was one of the founders of the band, but he didn’t stay long, and he was long gone by the time they reached the height of their popularity. Green had some serious problems that kept him out of the music business for many years. But by 2003, Green had a band, and he revisited some of his old material. I like his vocal on this remake better than the Fleetwood Mac original. The song as done here is also twice as long as the original version. Although this is a studio recording, it has the feel of a live jam, and a fine one.

Call for Help:

Mary Bragg: Sweet Skin

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Donate here

The picture above may look familiar. I reviewed Mary Bragg’s last album Sugar here, and I included the song Sweet Skin. Listening to it again, I am struck by the way Bragg combines the funky bass line with the bluesy harp and vocal. It really works.

I don’t have any songs to share from Bragg’s next album at the moment. She is raising money to record it, by way of a Kickstarter campaign. I described how that works last week, but the key point is that Bragg needs to hit her goal by her deadline, or she gets nothing. So I ask anyone who can to please help. Thank you.

Darrell Scott - A Crooked Road (disc two)

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Love’s Not Through With Me Yet opens with electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, and electric bass. Darrell Scott comes in with a vocal that it is full voice, and higher in his range than much of what we have heard before. By the chorus, there are drums and organ in the mix. Welcome to disc two of A Crooked Road.

This is the rock album. Granted, much of it would qualify as folk-rock. But this is a different approach to making music than we heard on disc one. Darrell Scott the rock singer doesn’t use the lower end of his range nearly as much, and there isn’t much breathiness in his voice. But he still is a very emotional singer who is never overwhelmed by the fuller and louder arrangements here. Actually, many of the songs are mostly quiet, with brief moments where they swell, but then turn soft again. The dynamic shifts are, in fact, one of the treats of disc two. Oh Sweet Longing is a fine example of this. The song is almost seven minutes long, and the percussion shows up briefly about half way through, and then subsides. The full band only returns at the end of the song, with a rideout that includes an electric guitar solo. All of this serves a lyric of longing, and the dynamic ebb and flow of the song suits the subject beautifully. Only Snow Queen and Drama Lama is an all-out rocker, with drums, bass, and two electric guitars in the classic rock line-up.

The lyrics on disc two are the other major shift. Where disc one’s songs mostly told stories, those on disc two capture a moment in time and take a snapshot of their narrator’s emotional state. Only Snow Queen and Drama Lama tells a story, and where the tales on disc one are more literal, this one is told in metaphor and symbolism. But for the snapshot approach, check out Where the Spirit Meets the Bone. Here, a couple have reached the point where their feelings have been blocked up for some time. The song captures them at the moment where they are breaking up, and their feelings become unblocked in a flood of emotion that comes too late to save the relationship. Everything from the musical setting to Scott’s vocal delivery captures this perfectly, and it’s powerful stuff.

Over the years, I’ve heard many artists who made beautiful mellow music, but who reached a point where they felt, or were told by their record label, that they had to beef up their sound, and it just didn’t work. Likewise, there are rock artists who have embarrassed themselves in search of a softer sound. On A Crooked Road, Darrell Scott has complete artistic control, and he shows himself to be the rare artist who can do mellow and rocking equally well. That he does this as both a writer and a performer is even more remarkable. And if the listener is only in the mood for one style or the other, A Crooked Road gives you the choice. Just make sure you get to both discs eventually. It’s well worth it.

Darrell Scott: Oh Sweet Longing

Darrell Scott - A Crooked Road (disc one)

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Last week, there was no album review, and instead, there were two For a Song posts. Darrell Scott’s new one, A Crooked Road, is the album I wanted to review. A Crooked Road is a two disc set with almost an hour and a half of music, and it was impossible for me to find the time to listen to the whole thing on Halloween weekend, which is always a busy time in my house. Finally, late last week, I found the time. And I discovered that each of the two discs in A Crooked Road has a distinct character to it. Roughly speaking, disc one is the folk album and disc two is the rock album. That’s an oversimplification, but the point is, I decided to review each disc separately. So here is my review of disc one, and the next post will be disc two. This week, then, there will be no For a Song post. It is my policy to post two songs from each album I review, so the review of each disc will only have one song each.

Each disc of A Crooked Road contains ten songs, including two brief instrumentals. The songs on disc one feature either acoustic guitar or piano in the arrangements, with other instruments supporting them. The credits on the album don’t identify the other instruments, indicating only that all songs are “performed” by Darrell Scott. That might mean that Scott plays all of the instruments, but I’m pretty sure that I hear female background vocals in at least a couple of places, so perhaps there are other musicians on the album as well. On disc one, there are drums and electric bass in a couple of places, but also banjo and mandolin. A couple of songs have what I believe is an accordion, but it is played in an unusual way, using mostly the lower keys to set up a bass drone. Only one song, Take Me Back to Yesterday, uses no acoustic instruments that I could tell. This song comes in the middle of disc one, and breaks the mood to powerful effect. The electric instruments are played in what I would call an acoustic way, with minimal distortion, and no screaming lead lines.

Darrell Scott proves himself to be a flexible singer. He often uses the low end of his baritone range, and goes for a breathy sound. But he knows how and when to use a fuller voice, and when to sing higher in his range, and this allows him to be a very expressive singer without ever getting strident.

I reviewed Scott‘s last album, Modern Hymns, and that was an album of covers, and my introduction to his work. So A Crooked Road is my introduction to Scott’s songwriting. All of the songs on both discs are originals, including three cowrites. On disc one, Scott proves himself to a wonderful storyteller. The title track opens A Crooked Road. Each verse and chorus of the song includes slight changes in the lyrics from the verse and chorus before. Scott uses this technique to trace the arc of a relationship, from first meeting to old age. It works beautifully. Elsewhere, Scott uses more conventional lyrical structures, but the storytelling works just as well. As a father myself, I was particularly moved by A Father’s Song. The father in this case is a touring musician who must find the balance between his career and his desire to be with his children. Candles in the Rain (Childless Mothers) is a cowrite with Suzy Ragsdale, and seems to be told from a woman’s point of view. Scott gives a wonderful performance here that really brings his narrator to life. For Suzanne, the song I decided to feature, is a song that Scott wrote by himself, and it starts from an amazing concept: what would happen if Scott met the Suzanne that Leonard Cohen and other songwriters have written about? Scott describes a brief passionate affair that leaves him concerned about her, and still very much in love. He introduces the song by letting us know that sees her differently than others have, and his words bear that out. This is the song, for me, that shows Darrell Scott to be a songwriter with a wonderful imagination. The arrangements is simple, with mostly just guitar and accordion, and it too is perfect.

Disc one of A Crooked Road could easily stand on its own, and it’s a wonderful album. I’ll have my review of disc two later this week. Stay tuned.

Darrell Scott: For Suzanne

How to Make an Album

It used to be a simple matter to make an album. You would play your music live, get discovered by a major label, and then do whatever they told you. Later, it became possible to be discovered by an indie, and have the majors come calling after you proved your music would sell. Nowadays, it’s different. Now you get the word out that you want to make an album, ask for donations to pay for it, and go when you have enough to cover your budget. Then, you put the thing out, and hope that enough people hear it that you can give up your day job. The expectations are lower, but the trade-off is total artistic freedom. I started this blog hoping I could help some of this music to be heard, I only just realized that I might also be able to help some of it get made. So, from time to time, I will be posting features that include appeals to help artists make their next album. All of the artists in this post made, or hope to make, their latest album this way. The last two need your help. I hope my readers enjoy this music, and I hope those who can will be generous. Full disclosure: I am not receiving any financial compensation for doing this. I do hope to have the completed albums here in the future, so I can tell you how they came out. Below, I describe the workings of ArtistShare and Kickstarter. Any errors in these descriptions are my own, and if anyone from either of these sites would like to leave corrections in the comments, please feel free.

Lindsey Horner (with Andy Irvine): John Barlow

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As I said, artists have the option these days of raising the money themselves to make their next album. There are services to help them do this, and one of those is artistShare. I will describe how it works, as I understand it, but I’m not sure I have everything right. The best thing to do, if you’re interested, is to follow the link and find out on their site. ArtistShare asks for submissions, and then chooses which ones to carry on their site. Fund raising drives are open-ended, ie there are no time limits to raise the funds. They tend, from what I saw, to favor projects with a jazz flavor, but they use a pretty broad definition of jazz. The albums come out on the ArtistShare label.

Lindsey Horner is an artist who used artistShare for his new album, Undiscovered Country. The music here is certainly jazz, but some of the instrumentation is folk. On the evidence of this album, Horner’s groups don’t generally include a singer, but this album has a wonderful surprise: the great Irish folk musician Andy Irvine appears on two songs. Irvine is known not only for his solo work, but also for the music he made first in Planxty, and then in Patrick Street. Here, Irvine sings and plays bouzuki over a folk-jazz arrangement. It sounds like what Pentangle might have done if their classic line-up had stayed together. There is more of an emphasis on jazz on the rest of the album, but it also works as whole.

Melissa Stylianou: Three Little Girls

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Another service that helps artists raise money for their projects is Kickstarter. Projects here can be albums, books, movies, or just about anything that can be considered an artistic endeavor. The artist creates a video describing the project, and sets goals for how much they want to raise, and in how much time. If the artist meets or exceeds their goal by the deadline, they get the money; otherwise, the donations are returned, and the artist sees nothing. As with ArtistShare, I may not have all of the details right, so it would be best to go to their website for more information if you’re interested.

Melissa Stylianou and the next artist in this post, Sarah Blacker, recently completed successful campaigns on Kickstarter. Stylianou is an elegant jazz singer who also does a wonderful job of putting over the emotion of each song. Her albums are a mix of covers and originals. The covers include standards, but she will also do something like the Police song Tea in the Sahara, which was on an earlier album. Her originals stand along side the covers as equals; she is a gifted songwriter. Sliding Down, the title track of her most recent finished album, is a cowrite with Edgar Meyer, and that came out every bit as well as I would have hoped. More often, her cowriter is Kim Ratcliffe, who plays acoustic guitar in her band. Stylianou handles the lyrics, and is a poetic writer; Ratcliffe creates musical settings that play to Stylianou’s strengths as a singer. Three Little Girls is a perfect example of how this works out. The national steel guitar is an instrument that I’m not used to hearing in jazz, but it is a real treat here. The song also has a vaguely Middle Eastern feel to it; this comes up in Stylianou’s music from time to time, and it works beautifully.

Sarah Blacker: Early Girl

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I first heard the voice of Sarah Blacker on Keegan McInroe’s last album. There, I was impressed with her power. But, in her own work, Blacker shows that she can also get excellent result with a more restrained vocal delivery. Her voice is clear, and here she shows tenderness and even a hint of humor in her delivery. Elsewhere, she rocks out or uses fuller arrangements, but Early Girl has just accordion and Blacker’s acoustic guitar for accompaniment, so Blacker must carry the song with her vocal. She is more than up to the task. This earlier album shows a wonderful stylistic range, but it also makes sense as a whole.

Calls for Help:

Finally, here are two artists who are raising money directly from their fans, with no third party involved. I have provided links for those who would like to help. I would like to feature more artists like this in the future. If you are raising money for your next album, or you know someone who is, please let me know. Artists who are planning to use ArtistShare or Kickstarter or a similar service should let me know in advance of beginning your campaign if possible; that will give me the lead time to coordinate my post with your campaign.

Kristi Martel: Ravengirl

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Kristi Martel has funded three previous albums this way, of which Ravengirl from 2006 is the most recent. So she has been doing this for a while, and she has a fan base to work from at this point. Martel is a fine piano player and singer, who works through some pretty intense feelings in her songs. I’m about to tell you some things about her that are very private for most people; I only feel free to share them because Martel has already done so in the liner notes to Ravengirl. Martel escaped from an abusive relationship after four years. Later, she had a lover who committed suicide. These are things that stay with you, and Martel works through them with her spirituality and her music. In the past, that meant spare arrangements that emphasized haunted piano parts and Martel’s voice. Ravengirl was the first album Martel did after her lover’s suicide, and here she makes use of fuller arrangements. The piano is recorded without the reverb Martel favored in some of her earlier work. The overall effect is one of intimacy. Here is a friend who is still in pain, but she’s going to be OK. On Ravengirl, Martel also shows herself to be a creative arranger. She knows just how much percussion a song needs, and the interplay on some of the songs between the piano and acoustic guitar is wonderful. I want her new album to get finished, because I want to know what happens next. I want to hear her take the next steps, not only in her musical journey, but also in her emotional and spiritual ones.

Kim Davidson: My Heart Will Always Come Back to You

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Kim Davidson faces the greatest challenge of an of the artists in this post. She has been gigging, but she is working on funding her debut album. On the other hand, Davidson’s music might take her the furthest of any of the artists in this post. That’s because she can write and perform perfect songs like My Heart Will Always Come Back to You. There was a time when Davidson could have just gotten this song into the right ears in Nashville, and it would have been a massive hit for some country artist. Nowadays, the song is either country or Americana, depending on who makes it famous. I hope someone does, because this is a song that deserves to be heard. And it would be best of all if that someone is Davidson, because she sings the heck out of it. She also gives it a perfect arrangement, with none of the overproduction that mars so much of what comes out of Nashville. Davidson sent me the four finished (?) tracks she has for the album, so I can tell you that there is more where this came from.

I would just like to add that I really like all of the songs in this post, all for different reasons. I don’t want to put Davidson’s song on a pedestal, above the others. I just think that it has the greatest commercial potential.

For a Song: I Feel Possessed

Crowded House: I Feel Possessed

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This week kind of fell apart for me. So, the album review will return next week, and in the mean time, here is another For a Song. One thing that happened is that the election has sparked a political argument on my Facebook page between myself and a guy I grew up with. The details don’t matter here, but it reminded me of something.

I used to have a friend who worked in a record store. I would hang out there after work, and we would talk about music. His tastes ran towards pop, and his favorites were Hall and Oates. My tastes were more eclectic, then as now. Each of us believed that we could turn the other on to something that they would really like if they just gave it a chance, and occasionally it worked. More often, it led to us getting very loud. I took the woman who would later be my wife to meet this friend one day, and things went as they normally did. Later, she asked me why I went in there if we hated each other so much. From this, I learned that it’s a guy thing. Since then, I have had this kind of friendship a few other times, and the “arguments” have been about sports or politics usually. We unite over our total disagreement with each other. I can only say that these friendships are real to us, no matter what they look like to outside observers.

Getting back to my record store friend, In early 1989, he presented me with a cassette tape of his “best songs of 1988”, so I had to make my version for him. I Feel Possessed by Crowded House was on it. Not the song so much, but Crowded House became one of the groups we both liked. This was a band that could achieve a soaring emotional quality in their songs and singing, without having to resort to a heavy handed production style. I Feel Possessed has the slight reverb that was found on so many records in the 80s, but that’s about it. The rest is a great song performed perfectly, and that’s why it stands up so much better than much of the music of that year.

By now, if you recognize the image I chose for this post, you’ll know exactly why I chose it.

For a Song: The Sun in California

The Autumn Defense: The Sun in California

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Sometimes, I try to do too much. I have an album that I wanted to review this week. It’s a two-disc set with almost an hour-and-a-half of music, and I set out to work on it on Halloween weekend. It didn’t work. So I’ll have that review next week, while I have a different album that is much more manageable for mid-week this week. Meanwhile, here is this week’s For a Song.

Here in the United States, we have an election tomorrow. I am frankly dreading the results, so I wanted a song to take my mind off of it. A perfect pop song would do nicely. There is a vast amount of pop music out there, some of which is actually popular, and some of which was supposed to be popular but wasn’t. There is also a significant amount of great pop music that just never reached as many people as it should have. The Sun in California is a fine example. The song is a breezy love song, expressed delicately, but performed with complete sincerity. There is a beautiful blend of voices. Acoustic guitar and piano parts intertwine, propelled along by light drums and bass. I believe that’s a clarinet part on top, and it works beautifully. So why wasn’t this a huge hit. Probably because it wasn’t obvious enough. Much of what succeeds in pop is overwrought, with heavy-handed production and over singing. But I’d rather hear this any day.

Incidentally, The Autumn Defense has a new album coming out tomorrow. I’ve only heard snippets of some of the songs, but it sounds pretty good too.