Fleeting

Fairport Convention performs two songs in this clip. Somehow, I never get past the first to view the second. After reading this post, you may understand why.

Who on God's green earth decided that dying in battle is glorious? My guess would be that, while the Greeks invented this notion, the Romans perfected it.

When you force slaves to fight your battles, you can afford to lose a few ... thousand. When your country is small, you feel every loss more keenly. This, then, is a song about war. It has nothing to do with glory.

Somehow, it is appropriate that a song which reverberates with quotidian details should be memorialized in a clip that's chock full of them, a performance by men at the exact age for going off to war.

The joshing. Isn't that how it always starts when, deep down, the sheer terror of knowing you may not come back alive beats like a bass drum? Dave Swarbrick gets in a good one at Simon Nicol's expense and Nicol, in his three-piece suit, jacket discarded, gets a wee bit defensive as Dave Pegg looks on like a tolerant, older brother.

Nicol, whose self-deprecation charms without even trying, introduces the song, kicking it off with an electric dulcimer that makes a fine, droning substitute for Scottish bagpipes. Swarbrick sneaks a look at a folded page of lyrics in his hand. As Nicol sings the first verse, there's the dawning realization that something has already died:

I've heard them lilting
At our ewe-milking 
And I've heard them lilting
Before light o' day

Swarbrick cranes his neck to see that those high notes reach the mic. Pegg's droning, rock-solid bass mimics the electric hum of the dulcimer. The two of them join the chorus, in memoriam:

Now they are mourning
For all time lamenting
The flowers of the forest
Are all wede away

No, there's no glory here; not even in the battle. Nicol's recollection is dry to the point of being deadpan, with the barest hint of snark:

Where the English, by guile
For once won the day

Again, the chorus, followed by an instrumental break releasing all the emotion that the singers don't quite dare.

All three repeat the first verse in unison, soldiers marching into -- or out of -- a local tavern; or, maybe just marching home. 

Then, the chorus, rendered once more in heart-stopping, three-part harmony, accompanied by nothing more than cymbal hits, struck surely but sparsely, as though the drummer doesn't have the heart to keep the beat.

With the last, fading notes, Swarbrick shakes his head at the futility of it all. 

When it's over at last, Nicol slumps in his chair and sighs. Pegg, the stoic of the bunch, simply turns away.

Written in honor of the Scots killed at the Battle of Flodden in 1513, today, this song is most often played on Remembrance Day to commemorate those lost in World War I.

This is Fairport Convention with"Flowers of the Forest".

The Great Interpreter

There aren’t many live recordings of legendary singer/guitarist, Red Allen, available so I’m glad to see his recorded work on YouTube. Red was one of the greatest interpreters of songs in bluegrass, and this performance is no exception.

The album this comes from, Keep On Going: The Rebel and Melodeon Recordings is an essential compendium of his work. Bonus: It features the work of some stellar sidemen including fiddler, Scotty Stoneman and banjoist, Porter Church.

The song is “Hello City Limits”.

Harmonious

Of the brother duos so popular in the 1930s, The Monroe Brothers had speed. Bill and Earl Bollick, collectively known as The Blue Sky Boys, had beautiful, intricate harmonies like these.

This is “Happy Sunny Side Of Life”.

An Old Song, A Definitive Performance

Junior Sisk, solo, displaying the effortless vocal technique and pure mountain soul that inspired IBMA voters to name him Male Vocalist of the Year. This is an old song and often-covered, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone ever do it better. This is “He Died a Rounder At Twenty-One”.

Newgrass Does Trad Grass

NewGrass Revival, having a blast at Bean Blossom, 1972. Relative to much of what NGR did, this is a fairly traditional sound. Even so, they manage to sneak in some mighty rock riffs.

This is “Wild Hog”.

Hank Williams, High Lonesome Style

Maybe it's that high lonesome sound, but, for some reason, the songs of Hank Williams sound especially good when done in the bluegrass style. This one is no exception.

 Here are The Shenandoah Cut-ups in their gospel incarnation, The Shenandoah Valley Quartet, with “How Can You Refuse Him Now”.

Decorated Veterans

What did it take to sing tenor to Jimmy Martin?

When he left Bill Monroe for a solo career, Jimmy Martin had to answer that question with a tenor whose power equalled Monroe’s. Martin found the perfect foil in Paul Williams.

A few years ago, Williams got together with two other Martin alumni – Doyle Lawson (who plays guitar here), and banjo man, J.D Crowe. They’ve made a couple of well-received albums, but when they hit the stage, they blow the roof off the dump.

In this clip, they’re joined by Jason Barie on fiddle and Dale Perry on bass – both of whom were members of Lawson’s band, Quicksilver, at the time. And though everyone is in top form, it’s hard not to single out Crowe’s return to a more traditional, blues-based style (He has said he learned a lot from Fats Domino’s piano playing) for his work with this group. This is his best picking in years!

Here they are with Williams out in front, singing one of his signature numbers, “The Hills Of Roane County”.

A Medieval 70s Hit

Ah, 1972 – those were the days. An English folk band could record a medieval Christmas hymn and it would actually be a hit!

This is the mighty Steeleye Span, fronted by Maddy Prior (whose soprano is even better these days), with “Gaudete”.

Oh! Almost forgot: A loose translation of the lyrics.

A Simple Song Gets Complex With A Second Look

I love this song, but I was hard-pressed to say what's extraordinary about it until I listened -- really listened -- to the lyrics.

"I fell in love in Cincinnati," Steve Gulley sings, following with the standard tale of a naive young man falling prey to a citified gold-digger, and a chorus that you wouldn't write home about. The final verse goes like this:

I wish that I was in Kentucky
With mama, and papa dear
But mama's gone now, and so is papa
And Kentucky's a long way from here

And, all of a sudden, the chorus makes horrible sense:

It's a lonesome feeling when you're traveling
Down a lonesome road, down a lonesome road
Nobody cares a thing about you
It's a heavy load, it's a heavy load.

The lonesome road is the Hillbilly Highway, both literal and metaphorical, that Appalachian migrants took to escape the poverty at home for the jobs to be found in the wealthy, industrial north.

More than one bluegrass pioneer made this journey -- Bill Monroe, Red Allen, and The Osborne Brothers, among others. Like this song's protagonist, The Osborne Brothers journeyed from Kentucky to Ohio. Eventually, they found musical success. Without the family, culture, and institutions that had sustained them back home, they found their share of loneliness and isolation, too.

This is Steve Gulley, Dale Ann Bradley, and Debbie Gulley with "Lonesome Feeling".

It's Just Gossip

Ray Charles based "Leave My Woman Alone" on this melody. A few great artists covered it as is -- The Carter Family, The Golden Gate Quartet, Sister Rosetta Tharp, among others.

I chose this setting by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerard because they include more of the verses, and the lyrics are crystal-clear. This is one case in which you want to know exactly what's being sung.

You don't hear this one much anymore. Too bad, because it's a one-way ticket to self-preservation, if nothing else. As for those Christians who would say that gossip is no more harmful than eating shrimp, well, they're the ones this song is talking about.

This is Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerard with "Let That Liar Alone".

Bakersfield Roots

Country music doesn't get any better than this.

The hard luck, futility, even the sketchiness of the perennial down-and-outer come through loud and clear in the emotive harmonizing of Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam, two country giants -- one of whom helped shape the Bakersfield (California) sound in classic country music, the other of whom brought that sound back in the 1980s to listeners who had been starving for it.

Homer Joy's song is, of course, a classic. But this version is special because it captures the cross-cultural, working-class roots of the city itself, thanks to the addition of norteño legend Flaco Jimenez on accordion. A perfect country recording.

One Cool Guy

Nick Lowe is a whip-smart songwriter with the British penchant for bone-dry humor. He has great hair. And he used to be Johnny Cash’s son-in-law. I mean, how cool can one guy be?

Even worse for us geek types, he hasn’t slowed down a bit. With this song, he designs his own “12-Step Program (To Quit You, Baby)”.

An Agrarian Murder Ballad

Despite being a classically-trained flautist, I'm enough of a purist to wish there were no flute in this performance. It all sounds a little too Ron Burgundy for me -- that'd be the titular character in the hysterical, 70s schlockfest, Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy. The film is worth seeing if you haven't, but it's made me slightly appalled to have been a flute player ever since.

Anyway, this fascinating tale is Traffic's agrarian murder ballad, "John Barleycorn".

Music For A Funeral

In the superb documentary, High Lonesome: The Story Of Bluegrass Music, Ralph Stanley sings a bit of this by himself. As you might expect, it is stark, spooky, autumnal. Strangely enough, this version, with it's trio harmonies, only serves to intensify those effects.

Music for a funeral from Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys, with "Village Church Yard".

How Britain Got the Blues

There are some hysterically-funny moments in this documentary. To wit:

“The guts of American rock ‘n’ roll spilled out across Britain in 1957.”

Yuck! Sorry, Britain.

“The Thames Delta”, after the Mississippi Delta, for a blues-centric area of Britain.

Apology rescinded.

Keith Richards’s Muddy Waters impression had me convulsing with laughter. Most everything he says in this segment – especially about achieving authenticity – is gold.

In fact, that “Thames Delta” tag must have come from some half-witted journalist of the period, because everyone interviewed here is adamant that they in no way faced the poverty, hardship, and oppression experienced by the black blues musicians they so wanted to emulate. The way they contrast British middle-class life with the lives of their blues-playing idols is meticulous to a fault.

I wonder, though, that they don’t credit the trauma their parents experienced on a daily basis during the war. It must have impacted their parenting in some way. It’s not life as a black person in the Jim Crow South, yet it’s nothing to sneeze at, either. But I digress.

In subsequent segments, the tremendous contribution of British blues fans to American music is touched on, but only obliquely, and the assessment is far too modest.

The truth is that Americans would rather have lynched these seminal blues artists than seen them on tour. Blues music, marketed as “race music”, was so obscure that fans had to order it through the mail; it couldn’t be found in most record stores.

The first generation of blues musicians would have starved if they hadn’t been discovered by the British public, and brought overseas to tour and appear on television – all the things that should have been happening for them in their own country.

As much as they downplay it, these British blues musicians spoon-fed our own music back to us. If they had not, it would have remained a regional musical curiosity – not unlike bluegrass before college kids on both coasts discovered it.

“How Britain Got the Blues” is essential viewing for any music fan, and anyone who seeks to navigate the minefield of cultural appropriation with anything approaching intelligence and civility. You’ll find all six parts here.

Bluegrass vs. Mainstream Country

 It doesn't matter whether you're talking traditional or progressive. If you don't hear this high lonesome sound, this tension of emotional opposites, you're not hearing bluegrass music. These are the earmarks, the sounds and techniques that set true bluegrass music apart from even classic country, to say nothing of mainstream country.

Many people will tell you that bluegrass music was first heard in 1946, when Earl Scruggs introduced the sound and speed of the three-finger banjo roll to a national audience. That is true, as far as it goes.

But the sound of bluegrass was not complete until Jimmy Martin joined Bill Monroe, and Monroe moved everything up a whole step or so to make the most of his new lead vocalist and his unusual tenor range.

This. This is bluegrass.

Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin with "In the Pines".

For much more about their relationship, read Richard D. Smith's exhaustive and earth-shattering Bill Monroe biography, Can't You Hear Me Callin'.

The History You Never Learned In School

Remember the first time you found out that some adult you'd looked up to had grossly misrepresented the truth?

I'm not talking about outright lies, but spin.

This is a song about spin. It's a song about bitter disappointment and heroes with feet of clay. It's also about the soul-crushing realization that you've been blindly yet blithely complicit in some incalculable evil.

Most of all, this is a song about anger, and the salvific realization that, if you don't get angry and stay that way -- at least in some measure -- you'll keep getting rooked until, one day, you're the one doing the rooking. One day, this song says without saying, if you don't look out, you'll be the one who's joined the ranks of the living dead.

Every one of these musicians understands that. Johnny Rotten wishes he could put anger across with as much skill and daring as lead vocalist, Julie Matthews, does here. Every note lacerates, every word accuses. This is utterly righteous anger, and it's impossible to deliver without musical and emotional integrity.

With Fairport Convention vets Ashley Hutchings and Simon Nicol, this is the Albion Band with "The Jewel In the Crown".

Empty and Aching

The late Maya Angelou once wrote, "I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back."

It's a good lesson for folks in their 20s to learn -- that, in order to get, you have to give, too. Simon and Garfunkel were in their 20s when they recorded this song, but by the time the story ends, they had yet to learn the valuable lesson about giving and getting. They started out to "look for America" with their hands out. They ended up the same way.

Kathy, I'm lost, I said
Thought I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching
And I don't know why

The question of why is a fine thing to answer in your 20s and 30s. Sometimes, finding the answer can be the stuff of a midlife crisis; but some get through their 40s and 50s and beyond without ever having answered it.

Counting the cars
On the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for
America

That might be one clue: Shutting yourself up in your car, doing your own thing and taking your own journey year after year is a good way to avoid the truth. Opinions, they say, are like navels: everyone has one. And everyone is willing to offer you theirs. If you're staring 50 or 60 in the face without having discovered how to fill the emptiness that everyone feels at one time or another, maybe it's because you stopped listening to good advice a long time ago. Probably because that oh-so-helpful advice always has to do with sacrificing yourself to something, someone, or Someone greater than yourself.

Of course, it's always possible that you've never received good advice.

You know what they say about that: "If you want something done right, do it yourself."

Here are Simon and Garfunkel, badly in need of some good advice -- or maybe just a well-stocked public library -- singing all about "America". Gee, maybe this whole album is about the American disease.

Hero Takes A Drink

I love this song because it is so. dang. country.

I love the way these guys -- all four are credited as composers of this track -- plant us right smack in the middle of their seedy, Southern short story with minute, literary details: "Lookin' at your watch a third time/Waiting at the station for the bus" and "Goin' where nobody says hello/They don't talk to anybody they don't know".

I do not, however, love their protagonist, who confesses that, "At night I drink myself to sleep/And pretend I don't care that you're not here with me," never once imagining that his problem drinking might be the reason his special friend went to Rockville in the first place.

Like all addicts, he's also addicted to his own personal drama: "But somethin' better happen soon/Or it's gonna be too late to bring me back".

Oh, cue the violins, you emo squirt.

They were young when they wrote this, R.E.M. How else to explain the presentation of naked, emotional blackmail as a romantic gesture?

Here's R.E.M., in a bid for your sympathy with "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville".

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What the Song Is Really About

You know those songs that remind you of relationships so intensely passionate you think you'll never recover?

Together Alone, the album from Crowded House, is full of those songs for me. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that "Fingers Of Love", from that album, is about -- ta da!!! -- masturbation. So, this one's probably about having a fender-bender in rush-hour traffic because you're driving into the setting sun. Ugh!

Crowded House, live, with a song from Together Alone, called "Distant Sun".