Nightly Song
Musings on Songs that Strike a Chord Tonight

Jun
04

Mother of God by Patty Griffin

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Mother of God

Written and performed by Patty Griffin. You can click here to listen to the song. You can click here to buy it from iTunes.

I told myself that I’d write about “Mother of God” because we have tickets to see Patty Griffin (and the Avett Brothers, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Richard Shindell, etc.) at the Appel Farm Festival this Saturday (thanks to Paddy and Jamie for the tickets).  Truth be told, this song’s been running round my mind for many months. Griffin’s singing and the ethereal, yet muscular longing of the music persists in memory and functions like the pebble in the oyster agitating its way to something beautiful. The song sounds less like a performance and more a woman talking aloud, as if hearing her own words will help her find some peace and understanding. Far from a mere pop song or simple singer-songwriter confessional, “Mother of God” struggles to understand family and faith, life and purpose, and it avoids easy answers. The song evolves into a type of prayer, an offering of hope in the face of near certain futility.

Griffin builds the song around two women: a mother and the titular Mother of God. The singer/narrator, perhaps the eldest boy in the family or perhaps another sibling, is the third character in a kind of familial trinity, three separate, yet unified characters. Points of view fluctuate, the three main characters conflate and, though we follow a certain story and timeline, in many ways, the song views the same women and same relationship from different viewpoint. It is a song as cubist painting.

The song opens with the stark, heavy chords of a piano, the music signaling serious matters lie ahead. Then we hear Griffin’s solitary, resonant voice. The opening verse tells of the first mother in a small vignette with skillfully chosen words that convey the richness of a life and a family.

All you kids get out the back door
I’ve never seen her this bad before
She took all her favorite things down from the window
And broke ’em all over her clean floor
It’s Saturday at the mansion
The oldest boy walks with a slouch
The young ones are wild in back of the house
And she gave up and went back to sleep on the couch

With a few brief strokes, we see the mother as a depressive and understand the all too many implications. She’s exploding, taking her “favorite things” and shattering them on the “clean floor.” Of course, the floor is clean for the depressive fights so hard to keep up appearance, to hide the fear and desperation. Griffin doesn’t trivialize the moment with a description of figurines or tchotchkes nor the cliché of broken plates; no, these are “favorite things,” ceramics and glass and, metaphorically, her own children crashing on the floor. We do not behold Julie Andrews brightly singing about favorite things that can bring joy, these favorites thing smash hope. The episode wipes out the mother. She has no energy for the fight, no will to get up and play the role of mother. Instead, she surrenders to sleep on the couch.

Meanwhile, we watch the narrator – or is it the “eldest boy”?  – react to the smashing of things by shepherding the young ones out to the back yard. He directs them to safety – imagine bare feet and little hands needing protection from the smithereens of favorite things. As the mother struggles with the clean floor to maintain appearances, so he does the same. No need for the young ones to see their mother in such a state; he enforces a kind of collective denial.

What could he tell his siblings anyway? What sense can he make of the depressive’s rage and silent retreat to the couch? No wonder he “walks with a slouch,” his burden and life wearing him down. The younger ones, without the guidance, discipline and love of the mother simply go wild.

The second verse moves to a memory of the narrator/singer as a young girl connecting to the second mother, the Mother of God.

When I was little I’d stare at her picture
And talk to the mother of God
I swear sometimes I’d see her lips move
Like she was trying to say something to me

This mother is not flesh and blood, but a perfected, idealized icon. The singer/narrator can load any virtues or meaning she wants into the photo. As if wishing can make dreams come true, the singer/narrator imagines the lips of the picture moving, as if their perfect mother will speak as the narrator’s his own mother cannot.

Maybe the first mother and the Mother of God are one in the same. Maybe the narrator stares at a picture of her mother before the madness set in. Maybe the mother tries to speak, but like so many depressives, cannot find the words, cannot find the energy to take the initiative, so she collapses into silence. We are left with the singer/narrator waiting to hear what the mother can never say. What does the child need to hear that the mother cannot say? Can it be anything other than, “I love you.”

We slide to the third verse and in four deft lines, we move from the narrator’s teenage years to old age.

When I was eighteen I moved to Florida,
Like everyone sick of the cold does,
And I waited on old people waiting to die
I waited on them until I was

The singer/narrator flees the cold, referring to both the weather and the emotional life of the home. After years of waiting for the mother to speak, perhaps to say, “I love you,” the daughter gives up and sets off to seek sunshine, warmth and maybe a connection. Instead, she winds up serving “old people” and we cannot miss the irony that she leaves behind her own mother to wait on other people’s parents. She waits on them and they wait on death (“old people waiting to die”). She’s fled her home full of the mystery that was her mother, a world that she could not understand and wound up in a world devoid of meaning, a world where there is nothing to understand.

In a touch of brilliant songsmithing, the last line of the verse takes the singer/narrator from age eighteen to old age when she too is waiting to die. Imagine the eighteen year old, leaving home with the whole live ahead of her (as Amy Correia put it, “Like a platter before a king”) and then it’s gone, slipped past her.

The last two verses find us alone with the singer/narrator in her old age in her home.

So I’m wearing my footsteps into this floor
One day I won’t live here anymore
Someone will wonder who lived here before
And went on their way

I live too many miles from the ocean
And I’m getting older and odd
I get up every morning with a black cup of coffee
And I talk to the mother of God

She’s walking the floor fretting and maybe now she is the depressive, living inside her head and unable to act, another merging of characters. She walks her floors, wearing herself out, but she won’t leave any trace when she’s gone. She seeks solace in the thought that some future tenant (we’re all only renting, only passing by) will wonder who had previously walked those floors.
 

I think of my own mother’s home, the family home for nearly forty years. My mother passed away the day after Christmas and we recently sold the home. We spent weeks going through a life’s worth of possessions, and everywhere we looked, everything we touched, memories sprung forth as if every objected was spring-loaded with moments from our lives. Yet almost all of those items went into the dumpster, a few sold off at a garage sale where people wondered if they’d pay 50 cents for a tray I saw at so many parties. In the finale days before the sale, I walked the barren rooms and could not help but remember when I’d done the same nearly forty years earlier, an empty house that waited for us to fill it with life. On that last day, I walked those same empty rooms knowing that the physical memories would vanish when I closed the door for the last time and they would only live on in the mind of my brothers, sister and I and would pass forever when we passed. I also knew that a new family would throw open those doors and find a house waiting for them to make their mark.

In this song, the singer/narrator drinks her coffee and paces the floor taking stock of her life (Like Prufrock, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”). Her feet make no mark; she’s too far from the ocean, too far from the waters of renewal, think Baptism and Springsteen singing, we’re “going to drive to the sea and wash these sins from our hands.” She sees herself in the unadorned lights – “older and odd” – and she “talks to the Mother of God.” It remains a one-sided conversation.

The last line of that verse works on so many levels. She’s talking and praying to the memory of the icon, the Mother of God, who remains the substitute mother staring back, forever on the verge of moving her lips. Or maybe she’s talking to her own mother again, trying to explain, trying to understand, hoping that her mother, could finally speak, could finally say what she need to hear for all these years. Or maybe, the singer/narrator is talking to herself, alone in the kitchen hands wrapped around her coffee mug, speaking to the only one who will hear, the only one who will listen.

We hear the chorus for the third and final time.      

Something as simple as boys and girls
Gets tossed all around and then lost in the world
Something as hard as a prayer on your back
Can wait a long time for an answer

The girls and boys harken back to the first verse, shunted out the back door, wild and lost in the world. The way that Griffin sings the line also suggests that the converse is true; that it’s the boys and girls who pushed the mother over the edge till she was “lost in the world.” Imagine the depressive mother – maybe all mothers – whose children bring such joys, yet also bring stress and sadness. Only some mothers, those cursed with depression, succumb to the stress and lose the joy.

In what seems like a very Catholic song – full of faith, guilt and reverence for the Mother of God – the prayer in the chorus asserts a hope that an answer will come, that the mother will speak. Yet the prayer becomes a burden, a desire the singer/narrator must maintain no matter her frustration. To surrender the hope would be to abandon her mother (both her actual mother and the Mother of God), so she keeps lugging around the hope. The prayer requires a long time for an answer, though we never know how long. Perhaps the prayer becomes a form of self-flagellation (“something as hard as a prayer on the back”), a hope with which the singer/narrator whips herself, to remind herself of her obligation to her mothers.

During the first four minutes of the song – which runs to just over seven minutes – we listen to the piano and Griffin’s bare voice. We hear the verses and the chorus repeats three times. At the four minute point, the song changes. Griffin has followed the story as far as her words will take her, but she hasn’t reached the end, has not found understanding or peace. Now violins and a cello join the piano to express the yearning and futility, the sadness and hope. Griffin still sings, but the lines come off more as cries, not a fully formed verse or image. She almost sings, “Maybe…it’s alright,” speaking to herself or maybe the mothers, the words forming an improvised prayer. “Maybe we won’t fight any more,” she sings as a wish and an offering, if only her mother will believe. “Maybe love is waiting at the end of every room.” Is she talking to herself as she paces the apartment? Whom is she expecting to see? Her mother? A vision of the Mother of God? Her voice trails off. “I don’t know/I don’t know.” Perhaps this is the penitent’s loss of hope, the loss of faith; perhaps this is the voice of the depressive who cannot act, cannot connect.

The last line, barely a whisper, offers the faintest glimmer of hope. “But maybe, maybe it’s alright/maybe it’s alright.” Is it an act of faith to believe when all reason says that believe is foolish or is it an act of madness?

In the end, Griffin’s words fail her; they take her as far as they can, but not all the way. We are left with the pull of the cello, the straining violins and a few piano notes that climb the scale, a little lighter, a little brighter, perhaps that is the sound of faith or love itself. It is the essence of the song – the inviolate combination of lyrics and music – that allows the song to reach that last note. I write fiction and only have words; when the words fail me, I am left with nothing. Griffin follows her words as far as they will take her and then there’s the music to express what the words will not or cannot. The music conveys the ineffable.

Patty Griffin is an artist of great range and strength. Check out her website for more information. You can find several interviews with her on YouTube including here, here and here with Rachel Maddow. Here are some performances you can find on the web

As usual, you can find some insightful reading on Patty Griffin at No Depression.

Categorized in Patty Griffin
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Jun
03

Best Baseball Songs

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Best Baseball Songs

Usually I write on one song at a time, but here’s a baseball songs for your consideration. Each concerns a team, a player or has some relation to the game. Baseball has to figure in the song, so “Wild Thing” doesn’t make the cut no matter how attached it has become to baseball since the movie Major League.

I’ve started with my favorites, the songs I like or play or find interesting. I’m sure you’d come up with a different list. I then included a longer list of others you might find interesting. Of course, I’m sure that I’ve missed more than my fair share so add your comments and post of other songs.

I start with the lists and then provide notes for the top thirteen down below. Enjoy

A Baker’s Dozen Favorite Baseball Songs (in no particular order)

You can read more about each song down below.

More Baseball Songs (in no particular order)

  • Piazza, New York Catcher – Belle and Sebastian (Listen here.) This Scottish pop duo refers to the “is he gay or straight” rumors surrounding Piazza in the midst of this love song.  
  • Baseball – Michael Franks. Pop and jazz for the Sunday brunch crowd.
  • Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball? – Natalie Cole
  • As We Walk to Fenway Park in Boston Town – Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers More sublime and ironic music about his hometown. Sample or buy here.  
  • (Love is Like a) Baseball Game — The Intruders 
  • “The Ballad of Russell Perry” — Vigilantes of Love A Tennessee fireballer doing lots of thinking and getting lost in his dreams. “I can throw a fastball by any man who ever stepped up to the plate.”
  • Mrs. Robinson – Simon and Garfunkel “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?” Listen here.  
  • Life is a Ballgame – Sister Winona Carr
  • Big League – Tom Cochrane. Big League (Listen here.) The Canadian’s attempt at a power ballad. Sounds like baseball, though the video shows a hockey game.
  • Pete Rose Affinity — Summer Hymns
  • Willie, Mickey & The Duke (Talkin’ Baseball) – Terry Cashman. This was the first of Cashman’s many “Talkin’ Baseball” songs. He went to do one for individual teams – Yankees, Tigers, Twins, etc.
  • Talkin’ Softball – Terry Cashman. The Simpsons got Cashman to do a parody of his meal ticket. Very funny.  (Listen here.)
  • America’s Favorite Pastime – The Byrds (Listen here.)
  • Cheap Seats – Alabama (Listen here) “This ballclub may be minor league/But at least it’s Triple A.”
  • Batter Up – Nelly (Listen here.) Taking rap to the ball game.
  • Load up the Bases – Whiskey Falls.  For all you Braves fans. Listen here.
  • Swing – Trace Adkins (Listen here.) Macho country, any surprise?
  • 3rd base, Dodger Stadium – Ry Cooder.  Cooder produced an album, Chavez Ravine, about the community lost when they build Dodger Stadium.
  • Van Lingo Mungo – Dave Frishberg (Listen here.) Piano jazz playing with baseball names.
  • Say Hey (The Willie Mays Song) — The Treniers
  • There Used to be a Ball Park – Fran Sinatra (Listen here.) Scotch and sadness over the places that used to be.
     

 Notes and Links on the Best Baseball Songs

“A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” – Steve Goodman (Click here to listen.)

Goodman’s wry, heartfelt lament for the dying fan of those Cubbies who never win makes fandom immortal. Here’s a sample of the lyrics (read the full lyrics here):

So if you have your pencils and your score cards ready,
and I’ll read you my last request
He said, “Give me a double header funeral in Wrigley Field
On some sunny weekend day (no lights)
Have the organ play the “National Anthem”
and then a little ‘na, na, na, na, hey hey, hey, Goodbye’
Make six bullpen pitchers, carry my coffin
and six ground keepers clear my path
Have the umpires bark me out at every base
In all their holy wrath
Its a beautiful day for a funeral, Hey Ernie let’s play two!
Somebody go get Jack Brickhouse to come back,
and conduct just one more interview
Have the Cubbies run right out into the middle of the field,
Have Keith Moreland drop a routine fly
Give everybody two bags of peanuts and a frosty malt
And I’ll be ready to die

Bill Lee – Warren Zevon (Click here to listen.)

 A tribute to the spaceman, Bill Lee, a free-spirited, left-handed pitcher for the Expos and Red Sox, a good pitcher in his day, yet known for his personality and antics. He nicknamed manager Don Zimmer “The gerbil,” advocated smoking marijuana (he claimed to sprinkle it on his corn flakes, and once threatened to bite off the ear of an umpire, or as he put it, to Van Gogh him. Click here to read some Bill Lee quotes. Baseball could use another BIll Lee who made the game fun.

Brown-Eyed Handsome Man – Chuck Berry (listen here and here for a good version by Robert Cray)

A triumphant song about the brown-eyed stud and maybe even the success of civil rights. A great baseball verse closes out the song:

Two, three, the count with nobody on
He hit a high fly into the stand
Round the third he was headed for home
He was a brown eyed handsome man.
That won the game he was a brown-eyed handsome manI think Willie May, maybe you think Jackie Robinson or Ken Griffey Junior. 

Tessie – Dropkick Murphys (Listen Here.)

Take some punk and Irish music, a heavy dose of Boston and feed liberally with Guinness and you’ve got the Drop Kick Murphy’s. Here they belt out their version of the Royal Rooter’s Theme Song, “Tessie.” The Royal Rooters were a Red Sox fan club from the early 20th Century led by M.T. “Nuf Ced” McGreevy, a bar owner. They took this song form a Broadway musical “Silver Slippers” and would shot it to distract other players or just for the hell of it. The Drop Kick Murphy’s revived the song during the 2004 Red Sox race to the World Series.

Tessie, you are the only only only
Don’t blame us if we ever doubt you
You know we couldn’t live without you
Boston, you are the only only only
Don’t blame us if we ever doubt you
You know we couldn’t live without you
Red Sox, you are the only only only

Laughing River – Greg Brown (Listen here.)

A melancholy song about a career minor leaguer giving up his dream to settle down on the Laughing River. (Click here for the lyrics).

Twenty years in the minor leagues–
ain’t no place I didn’t go.
Well I gotta few hits,
but I never made the show.
And I could hang on for a few years,
doin what I’ve done before.
I wanna hear the Laughing River,
flowin’ right outside my door.

Paradise by the Dashboard Light by Meatloaf (Listen here.)

Teenage horniness transfigured into a baseball game complete with Phil “The Scooter” Rizzuto providing play-by-play. Meatloaf’s mini-opera may not be for all, but there was a time when you heard it blaring from car windows and dorm rooms all across the country. Great fun.

Catfish – Performed by Bob Dylan and Written by Dylan and Jaques Levy

An unreleased ditty that captures the spirit of Catfish Hunter and turns the nascent free-agency in baseball into a variation of a slave ballad. Great stuff. Find the lyrics here:

Used to work on Mr. Finley’s farm
But the old man wouldn’t pay
So he packed his glove and took his arm
An’ one day he just ran away

Catfish, million-dollar-man
Nobody can throw the ball like Catfish can

Come up where the Yankees are
Dress up in a pinstripe suit
Smoke a custom-made cigar
Wear an alligator boot

Catfish, million-dollar-man
Nobody can throw the ball like Catfish can

You can sample the song and buy it here.

Glory Days – Bruce Springsteen (Listen here.)

You remember those glory days, when you were a star, before life sucked. Springsteen made a great video to go with the song.

I had a friend was a big baseball player
back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy

Another Springsteen ode to vanished dreams and love.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game – The Hold Steady Version (here) and the Goo Goo Dolls version (here)

They may reside in Brooklyn now, but the Hold Steady left their hearts in Minnesota. They do a fun Minnesota Twins version of this old classic. The Goo Goo Dolls did a nice version for a Major League Baseball ad.

Joe DiMaggio Done It Again – Billy Bragg and Wilco (Listen here.)

Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics and Billy Bragg and Jeff Tweedy put them to music. Woody turns DiMaggio in to a working class hero, succeeding against the odds. Billy Bragg and Wilco bring it to life. Great fun.

Some folks thot Big Joe was done!
Some jus figgered Joe was gone!
Steps to the platter with a great big grin,
Joe Deemaggyo’s done it again!

Read all the lyrics here.

Centerfield – John Fogerty (Listen here.)

Sung with great exuberance, perfect for that spring day when you’re ready to go. He song check’s Chuck Berry with the line, “A-roundin’ third, and headed for home, it’s a brown-eyed handsome man.”

Well, I spent some time in the mudville nine, watchin’ it from the bench;
You know I took some lumps when the mighty casey struck out.
So say hey willie, tell ty cobb and joe dimaggio;
Don’t say “it ain’t so”, you know the time is now.

Oh, put me in, coach – I’m ready to play today;
Put me in, coach – I’m ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be centerfield.

Baseball Boogie – Mabel Scott (Listen here.)

She sure can swing and wants to know if you can hit that ball. No fooling Mabel Scott.

All the Way – Eddie Vedder (Listen here.)

The Pearl Jam front man puts his heart out front for his Cubbies. “We are one with the Cubs/With the Cubs we are in love.” Where Steve Goodman played tempered his fanaticism and the futility of the Cubbies with humor, Vedder plays is earnest and straight.

Don’t let anyone say that it’s just a game
For I’ve seen other teams
And it’s just not the same
When you’re born in Chicago
Your blessed and your healed
The first time you walk into Wrigley Field

Paste Magazine published their list of best baseball songs here. You can find more baseball songs at these blog sites:

Categorized in Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Chuck Berry, Song Lists, Steve Goodman, The Hold Steady, Warren Zevon and Wilco
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Jun
02

Kiss Off by the Violent Femmes

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Kiss Off

Performed by the Violent Femmes. Written by Gordon Gano. You can listen to the original recording here and a live version here. Buy the song on iTunes. The song first appeared on the self-titled album Violent Femmes as well as the live album Viva Wisconsin.

At their best – and that includes “Kiss Off” – the Violent Femmes distilled a raging stream of consciousness that gave voice to horniness, confusion, anger, fear, rebellion and a general what-the-fuck attitude. We’re not talking about the idea of teenage angst or anyone else’s idea of angst; we’re talking the thing itself. Their songs arose from the usual themes of sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, or more precisely, a longing for sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll and they avoided clichés, wallowing and novel staring in favor of primal scream. “You can just kiss off/yeah, yeah, yeah” the bellow.

The Violent Femmes were three guys banging three unamplified instruments – upright bass, simple snare drum and acoustic guitar – for all their worth. In songs like “Kiss Off,” Gordon Gano sings with an urgency that captures the collision of what’s racing around his mind and coming from his crotch.

I need someone
A person to talk to
Someone who’d care to love
Could it be you

The music insistent, the voice equal parts plaintive, demanding and sarcastic. No story song, “Kiss Off” unfolds with different voices and brief shards of images. We hear adult voices that criticize and castigate – “kid, you’re sick” and worry about the future – “this will go down on your permanent record.” The answer comes back like a kick in the teeth. “Oh yeah, well don’t get so distressed,” as if to say, “Future, we don’t need no stinking future.”

Is there any better list of reasons to rage, drop out, get high or just scream than the mad rant in the middle of “Kiss Off”?

I take one one one cause you left me and
Two two two for my family and
Three three three for my heartache and
Four four four for my headaches and
Five five five for my lonely and
Six six six for my sorrow and
Seven seven for no tomorrow and
Eight eight I forget what eight was for and
Nine nine nine for the lost gods
Ten ten ten ten for everything everything everything

As Gano sings, the music ratchets up, the pace revs up till it sounds like the place is gonna blow. How many kids, people when asked how they’re doing by the guidance counselor or the psychologist or the cubicle mate starts chanting, “I take one one one…”

“Kiss Off” makes no attempt at solutions; it’s enough to sing, thump the base, bang the drum and let loose.

*****

I’ve long had a special place inside me for the Violent Femmes and not only because of the times when I put all the windows down and tried to drive as fast as the music or songs like “Kiss Off” and “Add it Up” and “Blister in the Sun” so perfectly matched my own rage. It comes from a kind of first love, when you stumble on a band before others and you get to watch them blossom, when you experience a feeling of pride and protection. Back in 1982, I stood in line outside the old Folk City on Third Street in the Village waiting to check out this new band, the Violent Femmes, making their first New York appearance. A record company guy – not the highest ranking since he waited in line next to me – told tales of how they were buskers in Milwaukee until Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders heard them and let them open a concert, which led to a signing with Slash records. He claimed that the name derived from a locker room insult turned on its head. (“I’m not a femme, I’m a violent femme.”) It all sounded very cool and very Hollywood.

Inside, we stared at three microphone stands and the red patterned wallpaper that would seem garish in a whorehouse. Eventually, the three band members appeared, each carrying a single instrument: Brian Ritchie hauled his big bass, Victor DeLorenzo came with snare drum under his arm and Gordon Gano had his acoustic guitar strapped around his neck. Gano made some small talk, then they paused, took a deep breath and Ritchie made a call by plucking his base. DeLorenzo answered by smacking his drum and in that instant, the Femmes hurled themselves into “Blister in the Sun; it was if they had set themselves on fire.

For the next year or so, every time they played a show in New York, I scrounged up the nickels and dragged friends to go hear them, dragging friends because part of the joy of discovery comes in sharing it with others, even if some shake their heads at how worked up you can get over a mere band.

I was beyond college by then, but imagined that if you walked down a hallway, you’d hear the Femmes banging away in every other room. They managed a few records in their first incarnation and some almost hits. They never became big sellers in part because they didn’t quite fit: punk folk? Cowpunk? Speed acoustic?  Alt-country before there was an alt-country? I’m listening to “Kiss Off” and the experience is more than merely sentimental. Stripped down to essentials, it’s as raw and necessary as when I first heard it played in Folk City.

You can find out more about the Violent Femmes at their website. The Wikipedia article on the Violent Femmes includes a section on a bizarre argument that wound up in court between Ritchie and Gano over licensing “Blister in the Sun” to Wendy’s. You can hear more of their music on the web:

Enjoy.

Categorized in Violent Femmes
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Jun
01

Gallo del Cielo by Tom Russell

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Gallo del Cielo

Written and Performed by Tom Russell. You can listen to Tom Russell sing it live here and here. Joe Ely has recorded the song and you can listen to live performance from him here, here and here. You can read the lyrics here. You can buy Tom Russell’s version form iTunes here and Joe Ely’s version here. Russell and Ely sing it together here.

Here is an example of songwriting at its best, making a sublime legend of a story of a man who steals a fighting rooster. Like all great stories, there is so much more to this song than what first appears: adventure, loyalty, honor, gambling all set against the backdrop of a time before California joined the U.S. The Tex-Mex music, complete with accordion, perfectly matches the lyrics.

Come along for the ride with Carlos Zaragoza who “left his home in Casa Grandas when the moon was full.” He flees with “no money in his pocket, just a locket of his sister framed in gold.” Russell’s singing imparts nobility to this effort. Zaragoza heads to El Sueco, where he steals the roster called Gallo del Cielo, the rooster from heaven, and then travels north of the Rio Grande. Listen to the details; hear the hints of beauty and mystery, and the accordion weaving underneath that adds resonance.

In the second verse, we learn the background of the fighting roster Zaragoza has stolen:

Gallo del Cielo was a warrior born in heaven, so the legends say
His wings they had been broken, he had one eye rollin’ crazy in his head
He’s fought a hundred fights, and the legends say that one night near El Sueco
They’d fought Cielo seven times and seven times he’d left brave roosters dead.

Some would turn away from the barbarism of cock fighting, some would turn away from a song that tries to make epic the story of a man and his stolen rooster, yet Russell makes it work in the utter conviction of his craftsmanship and the sincerity of the performance.

The chorus gives purpose to Zaragoza’s adventure:

Hola, my Theresa, I am thinking of you now in San Antonio
I have 27 dollars and the locket with your picture framed in gold
Tonight I'll bet it all on the fighting spurs of Gallo del Cielo
Then I'll return to buy the land that Villa stole from father long ago

We follow Zaragoza to the “onion fields of Paco Monteverde” where the crowd laughed, “when Zaragoza pulled the one-eyed del Cielo from beneath his coat/but they cried when Zaragoza walked away with a thousand dollar bill.” The song is full of these vignettes, moments that rise and build the momentum of the overall story. Next, we travel to Santa Barbara where he now has $1,500 and onto the next fight in Santa Clara where the rooster will fight “a wicked black named Zorro.” Zaragoza now has $50,000 riding on his fighter, though he “fears the tiny crack that runs across his rooster’s back.” Here’s how Russell describes the fight that unfolds:

Then the signal it was given, and the cocks they rose together far above the sand
Gallo del Cielo sunk a gaff into Zorro's shiny breast
They were separated quickly and they rose and fought each other thirty seven times
And the legends say that everyone agreed that del Cielo fought the best
Then the screams of Zaragoza filled the night outside the town of Santa Clara
As the beak of del Cielo lay broken like a shell within his hand
And they say that Zaragoza screamed a curse upon the bones of Pancho Villa
When Zorro rose up one last time and drove del Cielo to the sand.

We know this is not simply a lost wager, that much more is lost, for by now we understand how much is invested in Zaragoza’s journey, his last desperate effort to regain the land and glory of his family and town. The rooster and handler are one in the same crazy with a broken wing, fighting nobly, but doomed to fall. Here’s how the tale ends:

Hola, my Theresa, I am thinking of you now in San Francisco
There's no money in my pocket, I no longer have your picture framed in gold
I buried it last evening with the bones of my beloved del Cielo
I'll not return to buy the land that Villa stole from father long ago
Do the rivers still run muddy outside of my beloved Casas Grandes?
Does the scar upon my brother's face turn red when he hears mention of my name?
Do the people of El Sueco still curse the theft of Gallo del Cielo?
Tell my family not to worry, I will not return to cause them shame.

What a beautiful and sad tale. Russell imparts such meaning and dignity in Zaragoza and Gallo del Cielo. I find myself listening to this song repeatedly rooting for Zaragoza, hearing new touches, new subtleties and new reasons to believe. The more one believes, the more one feels the pain of the defeat.

*****

I first heard Tom Russell, backed by his long time sideman, Andy Hardin, in the backroom of Tubridy’s Pub in Rockaway Beach in what must’ve been 1981 or 1982. Tubridy’s didn’t feature music on a regular basis, so I’m not sure why they even set up the show, most likely Mike Tubridy came across Tom Russell somehow (Mike seem to have his fingers in lots of different circles). In those days, Russell drove a cab and I remember thinking that it was a shame that this guy was so good, but couldn’t get a recording contract. I still have the self-produced LP that I bought that day. Well, Tubridy’s is long gone and I left the Rocakways long ago, yet Tom Russell is still making great music and seemingly getting better as he ages. Born in L.A. and now outside El Paso, his music melds many influences into a unique, impassioned sound. You can hear plenty of Texas outlaw and hill country music as well as Tex-Mex in his songs mixed with strong strains of country and hardcore folk. There’s plenty of Marty Robbins, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Freddy Fender and all the Texas outlaw music looming in the background.

In addition to his music, Tom Russell paints, has written three books and has produced some other albums, most notably the Merle Haggard Tribute, Tulare Dust, which he and Dave Alvin put together.  

I list his albums Love and Fear, Indians, Cowboys, Horses, Dogs and Cowboy Real among my favorites. You can hear many of Tom Russell’s songs on the web, including:

Check out Tom Russell’s website for tour info and ways to buy his music, including his latest album, Blood and Candle Smoke. You can read a review of the new album in Paste Magazine. You can read many articles and reviews of Tom Russell at No Depression. NPR did a piece, along with a performance, of “Whose Gonna Build Your Wall?” here.

Categorized in Joe Ely and Tom Russell
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May
31

Absolutely Sweet Marie by Jason and the Scorchers

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Absolutely Sweet Marie

Performed by Jason and The Scorchers and written by Bob Dylan. You can hear/see the video for the song here. You can see the lyrics here. You can see/hear a video of a live performance here. You can buy the song form iTunes here. The song appears on at least two albums, Lost and Found, and the live Midnight Roads and Stages Seen. Check out the Jason and the Scorcher’s website.

To live outside the law, you must be honest

A great version of a great song, Jason and the Scorchers demonstrate how to do a cover song. I want to talk about this song first, then riff for a bit on cover songs and list some great covers.

Jason and the Scorchers burn through this song with a frenzy that completely remakes the Dylan original. They do what great cover versions require: They make the song their own with no regard to the original. They re-envision the song so we see it anew again, see it in ways not imaginable before, yet obvious once we hear the new version. Where Dylan’s version played coy and danced around the swirl of images, Jason and the Scorchers roar through the verses, turning gentle references into dangerous shards and making clear the sexual longing and thwarted lust. Whipping guitar, pounding drums and bass and Jason’s snarl remove any doubt about the meaning of the song:

I’m just sitting here beating on my trumpet
With all these promises you left for me
But where are you tonight, sweet Marie?

This is not a mere broken heart; it’s more basic, more primal.

Absolutely Sweet Marie is another Dylan song full of longing for a love that just won’t happen, another failed attempt at finding his Beatrice to lead him out of Hell, and the loss comes out as anger at the woman of his dreams. Jason Ringenberg, lead singer and caption of the band, shouts, scratches, pleads and lashes out, conveying both his longing and anger while the band thrashes away behind him in what sounds more like speed country that cow punk.

The song plays out in a metaphor of a man stuck in jail for reasons that have something to do with Sweet Marie and she’s promised to help spring him. Actual jail, the prison of unrequited love, the lock up of sexual frustration, it’s all there. The song includes some of Dylan’s more famous lines, though Jason and the band refuse to genuflect before them. They’re riding this train for different reasons. In a moment of self-pity and acerbic wit, the song swears:

Well, anybody can be just like me, obviously
But then, now again, not too many can be like you, fortunately

Sitting in prison and waiting for an escape, Sweet Marie instead delivers six white horses to the penitentiary, a long time blues symbol of death. Take that sucker. (“See that My Grave is Kept Clean,” a song sung by Blind Lemon Jefferson and covered by Dylan on his first album has the lines, “Six white horses in a line/Taking me to that burying ground.”) In response, we hear the lines:

But to live outside the law, you must be honest
I know you always say that you agree

He may hate her now, but the singer is still jonesing for what Sweet Marie has to offer. He can’t help himself:

Well, I waited for you when I was half sick
Yes, I waited for you when you hated me

The wailing of the guitar and Jason blowing his demonic harmonica perfectly match the lyrics. Hate her, love her, this song gives voice to the full fury of that clash of hormones and ego.

Making a Great Cover Song

Jason and the Scorchers skip several verses from the song as Dylan wrote it. Sacrilege? They decided they didn’t need those verse to do what they wanted to do. And that’s the point of a great cover: use what you want to make it your song and skip the rest. There’s no better example than what comes of Dylan covers. Some have been wonderful re-imaginings of his original – is there any better cover than Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” – but there have been more terrible covers of Dylan songs than perhaps any other artist. Too often, the cover artist treats the song as sacred material, so earnest, so faithful that they miss the point. You can never do it the way Dylan does, so don’t bother. And please no more museum pieces, versions handled with white gloves, that treat the lines as if so fragile that exposure to air and light will break them.

Here’s a list of some covers that work because the artists made the song their own (in no particular order and with no claim to completeness). Please add your favorite covers:

Song Cover Artist Original Artist
All Along the Watchtower Jimi Hendrix Bob Dylan
Hurt Johnny Cash Nine Inch Nails
I Need Love Luka Bloom L.L. Cool J
Gloria Patti Smith Them (with Van Morrison)
Damn Your Eyes Bettye LaVette Etta James
Baby, It’s You Smith The Shirelles
House of the Rising Sun The Animals Traditional – Covered by Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk among others
You Don’t Even Call Me by My Name David Allen Coe Steve Goodman
Crazy Mary Pearl Jam Victoria Williams
Yo La Tengo Blitzkrieg Bop The Ramones
Crossroads Cream Robert Johnson
Good Morning Little School Girl An Morrison/John Lee Hooker Sonny Boy Williamson
Hound Dog Elvis Presley Big Mama Thornton
Live and Let Die Guns and Roses Paul McCartney and Wings
Mustang Sally Wilson Pickett Sir Mack Rice
Me and Bobby McGee Janis Joplin Kris Kristofferson
Proud Mary Ike and Tina Turner Creedence
Nothing Compares to U Sinead O’Connor Prince
Take Me to the River Talking Heads Al Green
Jersey Girl Bruce Springsteen Tom Waits
Because the Night Patti Smith Bruce Springsteen
Respect Aretha Franklin Otis Redding
Personal Jesus Johnny Cash Depeche Mode (and Marilyn Manson)
Louie, Louie The Kingsmen Richard Berry
Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar) The Doors Brecht/Weill
Wonderwall Ryan Adams Oasis
My Way Sid Vicious Frank Sinatra
Superstar Sonic Youth The Carpenters
I Fought the Law The Clash Bobby Fuller
Hallelujah John Cale Leonard Cohen
Sweet Jane Cowboy Junkies Velvet Underground
Walk this Way RUN DMC & Aerosmith Aerosmith
Jolene White Stripes Dolly Parton
Maybe I’m Amazed The Faces Paul McCartney
Woodstock CSN&Y Joni Mitchell
Goin’ to Acapulco Jim James and Calexico Dylan and The Band

 Jason and The Scorchers were a forerunner of what became Alt-Country, mixing genres as the spirit moved them. You can check out their website and find more recordings on line:

No Depression, as usual, has some good pieces on Jason and the Scorchers, including a good posting by Don McLeese that explores how Jason and the Scorchers link the Flying Burrito Brothers to today’s Alt-Country. Ben Greeman reviews the Scorchers latest album, Halcyon Days, in the New Yorker.  Jason Ringenberg has his own website here.

Categorized in Bob Dylan, Country Music, Cover Songs and Jason and the Scorchers
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May
30

The Bike by Amy Correia

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The Bike

Written and Performed by Amy Correia

Originally released on an EP and then the album Carnival Love, you can buy the song from iTunes here and the album here.  You can listen to the recorded version here and a live version here. Check out Amy Correia’s website.

At first listen, “The Bike” comes off as a sweet, breezy song about a girl and her bike tooling around New York City, a perfect accompaniment for a brilliant spring day.  It’s a great example of well crafted pop music with a swelling chorus bound to lift your spirits. Open the windows, put the tops down, cruise along and blast this song. Perfect.

Hey and I’m riding around riding around on it
Hey just riding around riding around on it

On the second, third and tenth listen, “The Bike” reveals its great depth and mastery in both the song writing and the performance. The sweetness is still there, though you start to sense the mettle that girds it. And the breeziness of the chorus remains irresistible, though you begin to understand how joy seeks to overcome the underlying sadness and death that underlies that story of the bike and the life she confronts. A pop song? Yes, but one bordering a true art.

The story song tells how the singer inherits an old bike from her uncle. From the opening swirls of the organ and the easy rhythm of the guitar and rums, the music sets the light and airy tone for the song.

I became the heiress to a red and rusted bicycle
Built like a tank from Sears Roebuck circa 1952
It had been entrusted to me by my late great uncle Pat
And I guess he didn’t ride it much
Both tires on the bike were flat

She sings “heiress” both making fun of her status – inheriting a bike does not an heiress make – and embracing how she comes to feel like one. The reference to Sears and Roebuck speaks to the solidness of the bike – in its day, Sears made things that lasted, their tools even came with a lifetime guarantee – and sets it in a certain time and place. We get another terrific double entendre when she sings of her “late great uncle Pat;” that’s how she is related to him (her father’s uncle), but it also speaks to what became of his life. Pat may once have been great, but that was long ago. The flat tires tell us of the bike’s condition, but also serve as a metaphor for Pat’s life.

This summer song takes a turn for the dark side in the next verse, though the singing and music skim along and prevent the song form dipping into the morbid:

Pat had died at Christmas time in 1991
He had fallen off the wagon
And he sunk into a Christmas funk
My father he had found him
Two days after he had died
Well he drank himself to death one night
In a little home he owned by the seaside

Pat’s life had sunk to a terrible desolation, sitting alone in a seaside home, though one can’t but help see this as a weather-worn shack in a dreary winter day on the beach. His isolation had gotten so that he had been dead for two days before anyone noticed, how terribly sad that the world could not tell if he was alive or dead for it made no difference.

Correia does not allow the song to fall into a sinkhole with Pat; instead, it follows a lighter path.

Well I took the bike and I cleaned it up
And my father he patched up the tires
Am I going to town or just spinning my wheels
And when I die I wonder how it feels

How sweet and warm, father and daughter salvaging this bike, this remnant of Uncle Pat’s better days. For a moment, the song wonders what’s going on – is she moving forward or “just spinning my wheels” and she thinks of Pat, wondering how it felt to die, to vanish. The chorus provides the answer with its rising energy and vehemence.

Hey and I’m riding around riding around on it
Hey just riding around riding around on it
Hey you know I’m riding around
riding around on it. Hey!

 She makes the physicality of riding the bike palpable and the thoughts of death and loss succumb to the pure energy of those moments spinning around on the bike. Riding that bike leads to moments of bliss.

The next verse brings us back to Pat again and the family. It is one of the touching details of this song that it is so grounded in family. Pat’s loneliness, in part, come form his lack of family, “He had never married and he never had kids,” his sparsely attended funeral juxtaposed to the warmth of the singer and her father working together to salvage the bike.

We get more details of the wake (“His sister had a picture of a poodle named Pepper/She put it in his hand and then she cried”) and the funeral:

And a hired man from the State
He played taps on a coronet
And a flag was presented to his sister
For time in the service that Pat had spent

The precision and detail help ground the song and add to its resonance.

The final verse connects the singer with Uncle Pat through the bike:

When he used to ride on the bike
Way back in 52
He was starting out a life
And the bike it was brand new
And life was laid before him
Like a platter before a king
He was young and he was handsome
and the world was alive with meaning
The world was alive with meaning

 

Her joy becomes his and the source becomes explicit, “life was laid before him” and “the world was alive with meaning.” The lyrics offer hope – her bike rides connect her with the vitality of Uncle Pat’s younger life, a time with his energy and happiness could make you forget the later sadness and desolation – earlier life. At the same time, the song sets up a parallel between Pat’s life and the singer’s, they both rode the bike when young, full of life with a world alive with meaning, but she has to wonder will that all fade for her too? Will she wind up alone in the seaside shack, the world no longer noticing if she is alive or dead?

There is no definitive answer, only t the hope of the chorus:

Now I’m riding around in the city
Through the smog and the summer heat
And I’m blowing through all the red lights
I guess you could say I’m feeling lucky
And the taxis and the trucks
Everybody’s blowin’ their horns
And I got a bicycle bell to ring
And I got a notion to sing as I’m riding along

In the City, where those taxis and truck can act like the bicyclists don’t even exist, she’s exerting her existence, staking a claim for life and meaning, they can blow their horns and she can ring her bell. The swelling music, the resonance of Correia’s voice make one belief, make it possible to find meaning, to remain alive and vital even in the world where the trucks and taxis keep blowing their horns. She’s rolling through those red lights, feeling luck, happy to be riding that bike. What more can you ask? The act of writing and singing this song takes a stand against the nihilism of Uncle Pat’s demise. In the end, Correia stakes a claim that her art will enable her to survive.

*****

Amy Correia remains an interesting songwriter and singer. She came to New York from southeastern Massachusetts via Barnard College. Though she’s made a few forays to the west coast and bake to her parent’s home, she seems to have settled into New York.  Ike “The Bike,” much of her music rises on sweetness and the attractiveness of her voice, though yields great meaning and she explores issues that matter to her. The conviction in the songwriting and singing makes the songs come alive.

You can learn more at Amy Correia’s website. She’s will release her third full album, You Go Your Way, this summer (2010). She raised funds from fans to pay for the recording, a process captured by Anthony Mason in a piece for CBS news and you can buy a limited edition copy of the album now in advance of the official release by clicking here.

This song originally appeared on the album Carnival Love; you can buy the song from iTunes here and the album here.  You can buy Amy Correia’s second album, Lakeville by clicking here. You can check out the following videos for Amy Correia songs:

Jon Pareles wrote a brief review of Lakeville for the New York Times which you can read here (subscription maybe required). No Depression published two articles on Amy Correia, which you can find here.

Categorized in Amy Correia
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May
29

Bettye LaVette – Damn Your Eyes

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Damn Your Eyes

Performed by Bettye LaVette on the album Bettye LaVette in Concert: Let Me Down Easy. Written by Steve Bogard and Barbara Wynick. You can listen here and buy the song on iTunes here or buy the album here.

This woman can sing, can grab you by the collar, shake you up and make you tremble. A nine minute song with five verses and a chorus, yet it all comes down to the title line, “Damn your eyes.” With Bettye LaVette, one line is enough. With that single, short line she makes us understand that dilemma when the brain knows better, but the heart, the stomach and the groin can’t help themselves. Damn your eyes. She wails, she growls, she stammers, she whispers and she howls. Damn your eyes. How much meaning, how much life she pushes through those three words. Damn your eyes.

Make her the Queen of Soul. Make her the Queen of Heartache. Give her whatever crown she wants. Bettye LaVette climbs into the song and the two – woman and song – are never the same.

There is this man, this man she can’t resist. Oh, she knows better. She starts slow, reminding herself “I can do what I want/I’m in complete control.” You know she doesn’t believe her own words, you know she’s trying to convince herself to walk away. The verse sung softly, cautiously, as if maybe this time it will be true. “I got a mind of my own/I’ll be alright alone.”

In the background the horns wander aimlessly, the bass hovers and the organ circles her voice, all waiting for the truth to come out. The second verse comes and already we get the change:

I gave myself a good talkin’ to
No more bein’ a fool for you
And when I see you all I remember
Is how you make me wanna surrender

She sees him and she knows: Damn your eyes. The pep talk, the reassurance, the nights staring into the dark imagining what she will say, how it will go, all melts away. Damn your eyes. She hates him, hates herself for wanting him so much. “Damn your eyes/For getting my hopes up high/Makin’ me fall in love again.”

She knows he’s lying. “You say that you’ll change/Somehow you never do/I believe all your eyes.” She can’t resist. She looks in his eyes and “you make it all seem true.” She knows better, but can’t help herself. Damn your eyes.

She tries to understand, asking if she sees what she wants to see “or is my heart just deceiving me.” Damn your eyes. Knowing better doesn’t matter. Thinking through things doesn’t matter. All her reason, all her restraint, all the things she knows she should do fall away. “I fall completely under your spell.”

The music picks up, the bass thumping more, the horns punctuating each cry, the guitar lashing against her voice. Damn your eyes. She can’t stand him. She loves him. She can’t stand herself. She can’t help herself. Damn your eyes. Her voice stretches the words. Three words but she explodes them with her anguish and desire. Damn your eyes.

For the last few minutes of the song, the music steps to the background leaving the voice alone wrestling with the hell of this love. Damn your eyes.

*****

Written by a pair of country songwriters Steve Boyard and Barbara Wynick, Etta James took the first crack at this song (click here to hear her version) and countless others have recorded versions including such disparate artists as Sinead O’Connor and Zap Mama.  

Bettye LaVette’s career has followed a winding road that proves the necessity of perseverance. She grew up in Detroit and recorded her first single at age 16 in 1962. She had a chance to be an early Motown star, but several recording contracts fell through and she drifted for nearly three decades, performing on Broadway in the show Bubbling Brown Sugar and performing in Europe.

Her revival as a recording artist began in 2000 with the release of along lost Atlantic album called Child of the Seventies and this German import live album that was recorded in Utrecht, Holland. Some of her better albums include “I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise” and “The Scene of the Crime,” which she recorded with the Drive-by-Truckers. She recently released an album of British covers called Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook. You can catch her rendition of the Who’s Love Reign Over Me” from the Kennedy Center by clicking here. Neat write up on that song at the Crooks and Liars Late Nite Music Club. You can watch the video for “Let Me Down Easy” here. She remakes the Elton John song, “Talking Old Soldiers” here. Check out a new live version of “No Time to Live” recorded live at the Highline Ballroom and posted by Anti-.

You can find out more about Bettye LaVette at her website. Check out an appearance she made on NPR here. You can read some reviews and articles about Ms. LaVette at No Depression by clicking here.

Categorized in Bettye LaVette, Cover Songs, Soul Music and The Blues
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May
27

Windfall by Son Volt – A Song for My Son

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Windfall

Performed by Son Volt and written by Jay Farrar, lead singer of the group. You can listen to live versions of the song here, here and here. You can buy it from iTunes here.

“May the wind take your troubles away.”

Released in late 1995 on Trace, “Windfall” is the first song on the first album from Son Volt, a band formed by Jay Farrar after the break-up of Uncle Tupelo. The song captures a melancholic urgency, a longing for connection through music. It is one of the most personal songs in my life, in part because of the nature of the song and in part because it ran through my mind so often during a particular crisis that it became part of that formative moment.

One verse captures the essence of the song:

Switching it over to AM
Searching for a truer sound
Can’t recall the call letters
Steel guitar and settle down
Catching an all-night station somewhere in Louisiana
It sounds like 1963, but for now it sounds like heaven

You could see yourself driving across an endless night, fiddling with the dial to hear a little more clearly. Farrar’s voice makes it work, plaintive and full of desire. When it comes time for the chorus, his voices picks up and a fiddle lifts the song. The chorus offers a benediction:

May the wind take your troubles away
May the wind take your troubles away
Both feet on the floor, two hands on the wheel,
May the wind take your troubles away

We have certain songs that fuse to moments in our lives and become an integral part of those moments. There may be no particular reason why these songs bind to us, some combination of happenstance and openness. I’m not talking about songs that serve as a soundtrack to events or even those that evoke a certain time period. No, I’m talking about songs that become part of our very fiber.

“Windfall” is one such song for me and here’s the story of that song and me.

Cast back to February 1996 and I have “Windfall” running round my brain. WFUV, my favorite station then and now, had it in rotation. It is a Saturday night, shortly after midnight, the covering OB tells my wife and I that the umbilical cord appears to have wrapped itself around our unborn child’s neck so she want to perform a C-section. A few minutes later, I’m holding our newborn son, John Lee, in my arms, weeping like the sappy sentimental fool I am, weeping with the same joy that coursed through me when I held each of our first two boys, reaching for my bride’s hand and squeezing tight. The OB put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Congratulations” on the way out of the room. It would be a long time before things so simple and clean again.

An hour or so later, the covering pediatrician, another stranger, entered the recovery room, eyes down, fiddling with a button on her white hospital smock. Her white sneakers seemed too white and too large. She tried to look at us as she said, “there’s some news…about your child…he may have Down Syndrome…a mild case perhaps…need to confirm…not certain.” She stood there for a bit, looking at her hands, saying something about services.

“May the wind take your troubles away.”

My wife and I kept nodding. We shrugged our shoulders. We thought we knew – Down Syndrome, okay – but we knew nothing. We hugged. We knew enough. Our boy, John Lee, Down Syndrome. Okay, we go on, three boys, each different in his own way.

Not till the next morning did the world we expected begin to fall apart. It should have been scenes of Mom nestling her newborn, his brothers fanning around asking to hold him, family members stopping by with big smiles and uplifted eyes. Instead, I arrived with a downloaded list of conditions that accompany Downs Syndrome as my wife finally succeeded in convincing our regular pediatrician to examine John Lee because he hadn’t held down any food. All the day before the medical staff ignored the warnings of a mother who knew something was wrong and the x-rays revealed the mother’s wisdom: John’s intestine had not fully formed, a blockage prevented food from getting through. As we held him on our arms, John Lee had been starving. Check one box on the Chinese menu of maladies and malformations that I carried in my hand. One from column A, two from Column B and a few thrown in by the house for good measure.

“May the wind take your troubles away.”

I followed the ambulance to Westchester Medical center, the tertiary care center, big medicine for my little boy. My menu of afflictions stated with warnings of heart defects, but the new doctors, stern, busy, speaking with professional dispassion, assured me his heart was fine. Yes, his heart was fine. Then I overheard the senior fellow ordering an EKG for the newborn with the heart murmur.  Welcome to the world of the NICU (Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit) where dissembling comes with the program. While the doctors hurriedly assured me it was nothing much and not to worry, the paper in my hand warned of Atrioventricular Septal Defects and Ventricular Septal Defect.  John Lee was no longer fine, now his heart had holes.

My boy lay in a clear plastic box, wires and tubes glued to his chest. So close, but untouchable, unreachable. The doctors poked and prodded. One scribbled notes on a chart and looked up, made an off-hand observation, “They try to save these babies now.”

“May the wind take your troubles away.”

I am a physically large man. In those days, I carried the title of Chief Operating Officer for a management company. I ran things. I built things, yet there I stood, alone, hovering over my boy. Humbled, wanting to do so much with so little I could do. I wanted my wife, needed her, but she lay helpless in a hospital bed, miles away, recovering from the cut they made to pull her son from the womb.

“May the wind take your troubles away.”

I read everything I could; I asked every question I could imagine. I piled facts on facts hoping for wisdom. I pushed back at the doctors, poked and prodded the bald man who screamed up at me, “We’ll tell you what you need to know.” I argued back, it was the least I could do for John Lee. Yes, he would have intestinal by-pass surgery. Of course, I will sign the papers but can you tell me what they say?  

In a last faithless act, I summoned a priest. He had fingers thin and short like spent cigarettes that opened a battered prayer book. We stood side-by-side as he baptized John Lee, waving his hand and reciting the words, “dust unto dust.” He smelled of the oils on his fingers and lime after-shave. He anointed the sick, the sick being John Lee, my two-day old son, not some elderly person at the end of a long life. The priest tilted his head and shrugged. “You never know with surgery, but I am sure it will all be fine. Have faith.” He put the hand that had rested on hundreds of shoulder on my shoulder, all he could offer. This was not God’s choice, not God’s plan. No, we’re talking randomness, an extra chromosome and what happened next depended not on prayers but on the skill of the surgeon.

“May the wind take your troubles away.”

They rolled him back and said the surgery was successful, a long bandage over the side they split open. Another doctor began to talk in acronyms – ASD and VSD – small holes in the heart that need patching. John hit the jackpot, had it all. “Not now, he’s too small. He has to grow to withstand the surgery…but he cannot grow until he has the surgery.” The doctor dropped those words and then scrammed.

I offered my son my exhaustion. I could barely stay awake, but could not let myself sleep. I shuttled back to the community hospital and hugged my wife. I shared facts. I told her what the doctors could do. She felt so cut-off, more helpless then me, laying in her own hospital bed, so disconnected from her son. I regaled her with talks of when John opened his eyes, of his tiny nose, his tiny hand of any detail that made him real

“May the wind take your troubles away.”

I drove home to see the older boys, Paddy and his big eyes, curly hair and trying to act so big for his six years and Jamie, blonde and wily and not understanding how Mom and Dad could go out Saturday night and then not come back. They peppered me with questions and I did my best to offer certainly, to offer sense in a nonsensical world. I thought of my own Dad and how he never showed doubt. How did he do it? I immersed myself in my boys’ world, listened to Jamie’s pre-school foibles, making paper hats and molding something with green Play-Doh; Pat scored another 100 on a first grade spelling test. Their world seemed not to include the sterility of the NICU where babies slept like specimens in plastic boxes. I pulled them tight and hugged hard as if the hug could hold in my absence, but my arms felt the impermanence of smoke than muscle and bone.

“May the wind take your troubles away.”

Family and friends called and stammered congratulations and hesitant condolences. Why condolences? A boy child born to us. My mother-in-law dismissed our anxiety. “He will be productive, can get a job pushing a broom, you’ll see.” At birth, each child is infinite, each can become Shakespeare, Martin Luther King, Odysseus, each full of joy and happiness and you give him a broom?

Family offered prayers and counsel. “God gave him to you and Carol because you can handle the burden.” My son, a burden? I imagined a cartoon God, flowing robes and hair, Zeus-like lightning bolt in hand, scouring the earth for happy families so he could smite them with affliction.

 “May the wind take your troubles away.”

We were lucky. My brother and sister taking care of our older boys. My friend Cliff, the best ex-offensive guard turned surgeon, finding us a cardiologist we could trust. We had friends who listened with no attempt to explain or promise away what none of us could understand.

“May the wind take your troubles away.”

I stood my guard over John Lee, hovering. I had so little to give, so little I could do. I wanted to wrap him in my arms, to pull him tight to my chest as if we could heal each other. I wanted arms big enough, strong enough to wrap all my boys to me, to hold my wife, to keep us together, to keep us whole in a world where everything pulls apart as if I could love hard enough to overcome the laws of physics.

“May the wind take your troubles away.”

I read poems to John. I read Whitman for his optimism and rhythms, his longing and completeness. I read Galway Kinnell’s Book of Nightmares, the poet’s gift to his children at birth, his verses, prophecies and blessings. And I sang the only songs I knew, as Kinnell writes:

not the songs

of light said to wave

through the bright hair of angels,

but a blacker

rasping flowering on that tongue.

Even with the birth of our third child, I knew no nursery rhymes, no children’s songs. I croaked my version of old Dylan songs – “One Too Many Mornings,” “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” and in moments of joy looking at my son, “New Morning.” I sang old blues numbers and slow ballads. And I sang “Windfall.” I sang the chorus like a chant, an offering and a blessing for my boy:

May the wind take your troubles away
May the wind take your troubles away
Both feet on the floor, two hands on the wheel,
May the wind take your troubles away

I sang as if John’s life depended on it, as if my own life hung in the balance. I sang as if my voice could patch the holes in his heart, as if the very sound of my voice could tether me to John, keep us from floating apart. I sang for my son cause it was all I could do. I had nothing but my voice to reach him, nothing but words and my off-key notes. I could not touch, could not act, I could only speak and sing.

“May the wind take your troubles away.”

Three months later at a different hospital (Columbia Presbyterian) and different doctors, John underwent successful open-heart surgery and he has thrived ever since.

 John Lee turned 14 years old this past February and finishes up the 8th grade next month, though he can barely concentrate on school given his excitement over going off to high school next year. If you meet John, you instantly share his happiness. Stay around long enough and you will hear him sing, maybe even see him dance. John loves to sing. He and I often sing together, walking down the street like two happy drunks giving full chorus to the sun and stars. He asks for the songs from when he as a baby and we sing his favorites, ”Baby Let Me Follow You Down” and “Be-Bop-A-Lu-Lu.”

He asks me to sing him to sleep at night. I sit on the edge of his bed and lean over him to do my best with “Girl from the North Country” and he smiles like no one else. And when he drifts off to sleep, I hover over him and softly croak, ““May the wind take your troubles away.”

Categorized in Son Volt
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May
26

Mama Hated Diesels So Bad by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen

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Mama Hated Diesels So Bad by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen

Performed by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen and written by Blackie Farrell

You can hear the studio version here. Original member of the band, Bill Kirchen, does a live version here. Bill Kirchen and the song’s author, Blackie Farrell, sing the song together in this video. You can buy the song here.

I’m a sucker for a tear-jerker country song and they don’t come any better or jerk any more than Commander Cody’s “Mama Hated Diesels So Bad.”  With the winding of the pedal steel, the irresistible hook of the chorus, the poignancy of the lyrics and Billy C. Farlowe’s singing, the song will pull you in, sit you down and make you listen.

The song opens with Billy C. leaning into the mike and half-talking, half-singing the chorus over the somber strumming of the guitar and the pedal steel:

Mama hated diesel so bad
I guess I knew it was something to do with Dad
The first time I seen her cry
Was after one of them things went by
Mama hated diesel so bad

The singer is his father’s boy and you already know where this song is heading, but you can’t resist. In the opening verse, the singer notes the good times (“we used to live on the high-grade end of town,” a delicious double entendre of high living and truck driving). The boy, he can’t resist the lure of “them white freightliners.” He can tell even at that young age the problems this will cause:

But there was something in Mama’s eye
When she’d catch me watching the road
Lord a little bitty piece of her died

After another round of the chorus, the singer offers us a long spoken story. Hearing that voice creates an intimacy as if you’re sitting at the diner or maybe a bar and an old man turns to you. There’s something in his voice that you can’t resist, a compulsion that he has to tell that story right then and there is nothing more important than hearing his tale. So we pull a little closer to the speakers or listen a little harder to the ear buds. We hear the singer recount his teenage years, the girls, the messing around and the growing attraction of those big rigs.

Talking to my buddies about all the big rigs
That all the time were rolling in
And talking about all the crazy places we never been
Like California

Once we had cowboys riding west on their stallion; for the singer the trucker is that cowboy, the trucker’s life full of new worlds and adventure. The truck is his way out, the path to the bigger life. The more he stays away from home, the more he feels the pull of those rigs and the more Mama suffers.

One day the county sheriff come up to me
He said they found my mama wandering
All by herself in the middle of the highway crying
She was trying of all things Lord
To flag down one of those big old rigs with a pocket handkerchief

Left on his own, our hero starts loading truck until he gets his own rig “and I left my hometown on my very first run to Frisco.” Was there any other way this story could have turned out? The song is pure country, but it has roots in Greek tragedies where fate leads to tragedy.

He doesn’t come home until three years later and we find him standing graveside, just him and the preacher, that horribly sad and lonely ending. Even there he tells how the preacher:

He prayed for quite some time
But I could barely understand the words he said
Behind that highway’s whine

His life is on the road and it permeates every moment, obscuring even the prayers said over his Mama’s grave.

In the final verse, we get the payoff that we expected all along about Mama and Dad and the full impact of the family’s tragedy, The preacher hands the singer a photograph and declares it was “the best your Mama ever had.”

Well I looked down at that picture
It was Mama and some guy
Standing in front of a semi-truck
“Just Married” painted on the side.

Dad may be dead or may be out on the road; it made no difference to his abandoned wife. And you know that the singer will leave the funeral service and climb back into his rig and take off. He is who he is.

Is the song horribly sentimental? Of course, the emotion it produces far exceeds the story told, but there is that pedal steel adding volumes to what we feel, the precision of the lyrics and the singing that makes you believe.  

*****

If don’t know Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen or if you only their radio hit to Rod Lincoln, then you can discover immense pleasure in checking out their music. If you haven’t listened in a while, crank up the music and rediscover the pleasure. In their heyday, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen were a great live act and some of the juice from those concerts has been caught on tape. You can check out We’ve Got a Live One Here or 42 live tracks from two different dates on Live from Armadillo World HQ 1973 & Capitol Theatre 1975.

You can listen to some songs on YouTube, including “Hot Rod Lincoln,” the great pothead blue’s song, “Down to Stems and Seeds Again,”  “Lost in the Ozone Again,” and “Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar.” You want to go out drink, dance and wind up with some sweaty fun, you can do no better than Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen.

The Commander (George Frayne) was born on a train passing through Idaho and you can hear how that happened in a recent interview the Commander gave to Nick Spitzer on the American Routes radio show. He moved to Brooklyn and to the South Shore of Long Island. The music didn’t start until the Commander headed to Michigan for college in the early 1960’s where he hooked up with Bill Kirchen, the musical talent who supplied the know-how and discipline that the Commander’s creativity and frenetic energy needed. Sounds like college offered lots of fun for the Commander: he discovered pot, formed the band and managed to maintain his scholarship, went onto get a fine arts master’s degree as a sculptor. Kirchen left for California and the Commander took a job teaching at Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Luckily, for all of us, Kirchen convinced the Commander and other members of the band to ravel west. Oakland provided the perfect location as the Town was known for both blues and County, the two dominant influences on the band. Within a few months, they were playing their country swing blues and rockabilly as an opening act for the Grateful Dead. You can read the full story of The Commander’s life here and his website here.

You can catch up with Bill Kirchen here. Both Kirchen and the Commander regularly play live shows, all worth catching if you can. (Kirchen often plays the Rodeo Bar in NYC, a great place to see him. He does a great version of Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.) Years ago, I caught the Commander doing a show at a bomb shelter of a club in the Rockaways with the creative name of Rockaways. Those were my much wilder days and my buddy, Rat, knew the Commander from his days of yore in Bay Shore and we wound up doing shots of Jack at the bar; the liquor seemed like rocket fuel for the Commander. From what I remember, he put on a hell of a show.

To read more, you can check out the articles on the Commander and the band that have appeared in No Depression. Click here.

Categorized in Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Country Music, Country Swing and Rockabilly
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May
24

Grits Ain’t Groceries by Little Milton

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Grits Ain’t Groceries

Performed by Little Milton and written by Titus Turner. You can hear the original recording here. Click here for a live version by Jimmy Hall with the Allman Brothers. Click here for a live version by Wet Willie recorded at the Bottom Line in 1977. YOu can buy a dowload here.

Sometimes everything comes together on a perfect record and that happened for Little Milton in 1969 with “Grits Ain’t Groceries. “ A song that professes love of outlandish proportions, if a man sung this for you, you would swoon indeed.

Shimmering guitar, hard-punching horns, thumping bass, perfectly paced drums and heartfelt singing mix to create as good an R & B record as you can find. The song combines a near Shakespearean chorus with swaggering and braggadocio verses that match incredible claims with a voice ready to back them up. Do not take Little Milton lightly.

The song opens quickly with a plaintive cry, “if I don’t love you baby,” answered by a thundering horn section and the rest of the chorus:

If I don’t love you baby
Grits ain’t grocery,
Eggs ain’t poultry,
And Mona Lisa was a man

Hercules had his labors, but they’re nothing compared to what Little Milton will do for his woman:

With a toothpick in my hand I’d dig a ten foot ditch
And run all through the jungle fighting lions with a switch
Because you know I love you baby

 

Who wouldn’t love a man willing to do so much for you? Don’t we all want a lover willing to move heaven and earth to demonstrate love? Digging that ditch with a toothpick is so much cooler.

In the next verse, Little Milton sings about the search for his baby, but in the heroic, outsized themes of the song, we don’t hear a vague description. Instead, he’s calling out, shouting his love:

All around the world I’ve got blisters on my feet
I’m trying to find my baby and bring her home with me
You better run into me baby and be convinced
If you don’t run it to me right now woman
You ain’t got no sense
Because you know I love you baby

This is not a weak voice, a simpering man. He’s turning the world upside down and baby, you are a fool if you don’t come running. Not until the third and final verse do we understand why she’s missing. Seems our hero was a good timing, hard-living man, but he swears all that’s behind him now:

All around the world I never will forget
I lost all my money, my woman, and my pet
But I’ve got to have you baby and I will settle for nothing less
Give up all my good time baby and stay for happiness

He’s lost everything and nothing hurts more than losing his woman. He’ll give it all up to get her back, just listen to the growl when he sings “I’ll settle for nothing less.” Many a man has claimed he’d give up the party life for a woman, but the shake and tremble in Little Milton’s voice will make you believe.

Coming in at a compact 2:40 seconds, “Grits Ain’t Groceries” marked the pinnacle of a blues career that started in Inverness, Mississippi and took James Milton Campbell Junior to St. Louis, Chicago and beyond. He recorded mainly for Bobbin Records (he was their chief A & R man) and Checker Records, which was part of the Chess Record Empire. In addition to his own performing, Little Milton produced acts like Albert King and Fontella Bass. After Chess Records broke up, he recorded for Stax for many years until its bankruptcy in 1975.   

I had the pleasure of seeing Little Milton live a couple of times, once in Chicago and once at the old Tramps Music Club in New York City. Always a professional, he made you understand the blues with his guitar style (think B.B. King with a little more funk) and voice full of soul and conviction. If he sung about needing five dollars, you’d reach in into your pocket to give him your last five dollars.

You can learn more about Little Milton at a very neat website dedicated to him.

Little Milton died in August 2005 and is buried in South Haven, Mississippi.   

You can hear Little Milton sing “Feel So Bad” here and “I’ll Always Love You” here.

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Categorized in Little Milton and The Blues
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