Soulful album of singer-songwriter folk, country and rock
“Singer-songwriter†usually labels someone who sings their own songs, but in Jimmy LaFave’s case, it describes someone who’s as talented at originating material as he is in lending his voice to others’ songs. His first studio album in five years balances eight new songs with five covers, three of the latter selected from the catalog of Bob Dylan. Perhaps the most surprising reinterpretation is his resurrection of John Waite’s “Missing You†from its 1980s chart-topping power-ballad origin. As a writer of emotionally-laden songs, LaFave could hear the finely-tuned angst of Waite’s lyric, and reconstruct it into rootsy rock ‘n’ roll. The production’s guitar adds a touch of Southern soul, and the emotional choke in LaFave’s voice mates perfectly with the song’s mood.
The Dylan covers “Red RiverShore,†the oft-covered “Tomorrow is a Long Time,†and Empire Burlesque’s “I’ll Remember You.†LaFave adds something special to each, reading the first in slow reflection, and warming the latter from the chilly production of its original version. The album’s fifth cover is Bruce Springsteen’s recently released (though earlier written) “Land ofHopes and Dreams.†LaFave strips the song of its E Street bombast to better reveal the tender heart of its inverted allusions to the gospel-folk classic “This Train.†LaFave uses the covers as a launching point for his original songs, weaving a continuous thread through expectation, melancholy, sadness and second chances.
There’s no shortage of live albums on Billy Joe Shaver, including well-picked gigs from the ‘80s (Live from Austin, TX) and ‘90s (Storyteller: Live at the Bluebird and Unshaven: Live at Smith’s Olde Bar), but when you’re an honest-to-God troubadour, each performance is a unique combination of people, place and songs. This two-disc (CD/DVD) document of Shaver’s September 2011 show at Billy Bob’s Texas, is just as essential as the earlier volumes. Though one could never expect Shaver to fully recover from the passing of his son Eddy, he sounds more energized – and less haunted –than he’s appeared in several years. No doubt the stage is both a reminder and a sanctuary, and he throws himself into these songs in a way younger performers couldn’t even imagine. His voice sounds great, and his band plays in a deep, empathetic pocket.
The set list holds few surprises for Shaver’s fans, but mostly because they’re so fervent about his music. Those new to Shaver’s catalog will find many of his best-known songs here, and even his most well-traveled tunes are sung with enthusiasm for words that clearly remain both important and true. The two new titles are the Johnny Cash-styled “Wacko from Waco,†recounting a 2007 shooting incident (also memorialized in Dale Watson’s “Where Do You Want It?â€), and “The Git Go,†deftly casting modern ills against biblical antecedents of temptation, truth and fate. Studio versions of the new tunes are also included as bonuses. Shaver’s musical range – from delicate old-timey tunes and folk-country to stomping country-rock – would be impressive at any age, but at 72, he’s hotter than most musicians a quarter his age.
While Jon Dee Graham’s earlier albums haven’t exactly been super-shiny mainstream productions, his latest release takes organic to a deeper level. Recorded over several months of gifted studio time, the album pulled itself together without an up-front plan, and the lack of a clock ticking away budget dollars manifests itself in more loosely finished productions. This isn’t a collection of leftovers; it’s a set of songs and performances that weren’t pre-conceived for release. It’s more finished than a sketchbook, but not as polished as a framed work of art, and the less finished corners reveal some of the artist’s work method.
The confidence to release such an album has grown from Graham’s life experiences, including a near-fatal car crash in 2008. The opening “Unafraid†provides a manifesto, and the album shows Graham’s not so much a fatalist as one who’s no longer derailed by doubt or fear. Working against his own recording history, Graham came to the studio with only fragmentary ideas, developing them with his studio hosts, John Harvey and Mary Podio. Rather than worrying the songwriting ahead of time, he developed the concepts, lyrics, melodies, production and instrumentation in unison. Graham overdubbed most of the instruments himself, but the album hits many of its strongest points when he sings against a lone guitar or piano.
A too-brief set of ‘60s and ‘70s Carole King demos
Demos are an industry currency that fans don’t often get to hear. They’re an audio notebook in which songwriters sketch their vision, either for themselves, or more intriguingly, for those to whom they wish to sell songs. In the case of a singer-songwriter like Carole King, there are both kinds of entries in her notebooks – writer’s demos that were inclined towards the sound and style of a potential client and initial renderings of songs that King would sing herself, including five tunes written for her 1971 breakthrough, Tapestry, and another, “Like Little Children,†written in the mid-60s but recorded 30 years later for the film Crazy in Alabama.
An earlier, unauthorized, volume of King’s demos and early solo recordings, Brill Buliding Legends: The Right Girl, gave a glimpse into her years as a Brill Building songwriter. But that volume fell short of its full promise, by including demos for songs that were never commercially recorded or never broke on the charts. Though interesting in their own right, these lesser works said more about the hard work that goes into getting a hit single than they did about the development of King’s best-known titles. Not so with this authorized volume of King demos, which not only offers up a few key Brill Building-era demos, but extends into her solo work as a successful performer.
The three major Brill-era hits included here in demo form are the Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday,†Bobby Vee’s “Take Good Care of My Baby†and the Everly Brothers’ “Crying in the Rain.†The first is surprisingly different from the hit single, with King’s folk-rock demo more wistful and forgiving than the skeptical and mocking tone of the Monkees take. The second, on the other hand, seems to anticipate Bobby Vee’s style, and though the single is more fully orchestrated, the mood and hooks were all there in the demo. Others, such as “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,†reveal their foundations – in this case, the gospel chords of King’s piano and the freedom of her vocals – even more clearly in these stripped down versions.
The early ‘70s singer-songwriter roots of Rick Springfield
By the time that Rick Springfield hit it big as a pop star, with 1981’s “Jessie’s Girl,†his fame as an actor all but obscured his very real roots as a musician. But a decade before topping the U.S. charts, Springfield was a working musician in the rock band Zoot (on whose heavy cover of “Eleanor Rigby†a young Springfield can be seen playing guitar) and a solo artist with a Top 10 hit in Australia. A reworked version of that hit single, “Speak to the Sky,†reached the Billboard Top 20, and took this debut album into the Top 40. The 1981 view of a dilettante actor dabbling in music is wiped away by this record of his earlier work, for which Springfield wrote ten original tunes, sang and played guitar, keyboards and banjo.
Springfield’s songs and the production sound are heavily indebted to late ‘60s and early ‘70s rock, particularly the bass, drums and piano sounds of the Beatles, Badfinger and Big Star. The album mixes deeper numbers with bubblegum, showing Springfield’s voice to work well in both heavy and light arrangements. “The Unhappy Ending†anticipates the histrionics of Queen (and presages the opening of “Killer Queenâ€), while the happy-go-lucky (but war-tinged) “Hooky Jo†sports hooks worthy of Kasnetz-Katz and Graham Gouldman. Springfield’s infatuation with Paul McCartney is evidenced by the album’s chugging beats, but there are notes of soul, country-rock and pop.
A middling Carole King album with a few moments of inspiration
Carole King’s second album for Capitol was originally released in 1978, and is now being reissued on her own Rockingale imprint with its original track list and an eight-page booklet that includes liner notes, lyrics, photos and album art. The songwriting continued her work with then-third-husband Rick Evers, who co-wrote two of the titles, and also continued King’s weakening commercial success. The album scratched just below the Hot 100, and a lone single (“Morning Sunâ€) just missed the A/C Top 40. As on her Capitol debut, Simple Things, King’s songs are incredibly optimistic, perhaps sparked by the communal living she and Evers had set up. Evers died, reportedly of a heroin overdose, a few months after the album was recorded, so the album’s sunny vibe was thrown into shadow by the songwriter’s loss.
King reaches back to the Brill Building for the cruisin’ themed “Main Street Saturday Night,†but it doesn’t crackle with the authenticity of her earlier work, and Evers’ new-agey lyrics for “Sun Bird†must have seemed deep at the time, but don’t hold a candle to the expressiveness of even King’s lesser works. Even stranger is the catchy “Venusian Diamond,†which combines late-60s Beatleisms with the too-clean studio sounds that marked many productions of the era. Even that’s explainable compared to the bandwagon “Disco Tech,†though even here you get the sense that King has a deeper sense of music’s primordial hold on the soul than many of the hacks writing disco at the time.
Previously reissued on CD in Japan, King’s 1977 Capitol debut is now being reissued domestically on her own Rockingale imprint with its original ten tracks and an eight-page booklet that includes lyrics and album art. Simple Things was King’s last album to reach the Top 20 and be certified Gold, breaking a string of Top 10’s that stretched back to 1971’s Tapestry. This set also includes her first collaborations with future-third-husband Rick Evans, who co-wrote three songs. Like all four of her Capitol releases, Simple Things showcases King’s songwriting craft, soulful voice and keyboard playing, but failed to make a serious dent in the charts. Even her fellow singer-songwriters – Carly Simon and James Taylor – were then having hits with other people’s material.
Midwestern folk brings country to town
