Nevins’ second solo album (her first since 1999’s Mule to Ride) hangs on to the rootsy underpinnings of her musical day job with Donna the Buffalo, but cuts a looser, more soulful country groove than does her long-time group. Without a co-vocalist sharing the microphone, Nevins’ voice carries the album, and without a second writer, her songs stretch out across all her influences, including fiddle- and steel-lined country, second line rhythms and the Cajun sounds of her earlier band, the Heartbeats. The latter appear together on the energetic fiddle tune “Nothing Really,†and individually on several other tracks. Additional guests include Levon Helm (drumming on two tracks), Allison Moorer (tight trio harmony with Teresa Williams on “The Wrong Sideâ€) and Jim Lauderdale (harmony on the acoustic “Snowbirdâ€).
‘50s and ‘60s rarities, demos and radio performances
Five years ago the archive of recordings left behind at the House of Cash was cracked open for the two-disc Personal File, which itself has been reissued as Bootleg Volume 1: Personal File in parallel with this second two-disc helping. Where the previous volume focused on Cash’s mid-70s home recordings, volume two reaches back further to explore Cash’s 1950s beginnings in Memphis and his transition to country superstardom in the 1960s. Along the way the set collects live performances, continuity and commercial pitches (for his employer Home Equipment Company) from Cash’s first radio appearance, on KWEM in 1955, mid-50s Sun demos and rarities, and a deep cache of 1960s studio recordings. Eleven of these tracks have never been officially released in the U.S., and fifteen, including eleven Sun-era demos, have never been officially released anywhere.
As on the earlier volume, Cash lays down his demos without the fire of master takes, but even when just feeling out his songs or recording them as a record of copyright, his authority and magnetism as a performer shines through. The mid-50s demos are sung to an acoustic guitar, lending them the intimate and unguarded feel of Cash singing more for himself than an imagined audience. Alongside early demos of Cash classics (“I Walk the Line,†“Get Rhythm,†“Belshazzarâ€) are the rare, proto-rockabilly “You’re My Baby†and the wonderfully primitive “Rock and Roll Ruby.†Seven Sun outtakes capture Cash’s classic tic-tac rhythm, as well as false starts and a rough guitar solo that finds the group seeking the groove of “Big River.†Cash’s commanding baritone is magnified by the terrific atmosphere of Sun’s production sound.
The 1960s recordings are more polished, waxed in Nashville for Columbia, with a band, backing chorus and at times in stereo. The tracks include non-album singles, B-sides and demos, including several proposed theme songs for television and film. Cash’s “Johnny Yuma Theme†fits with his many other Western-themed songs, but went unused for ABC’s The Rebel, as did a title theme for Cash’s 1961 film Five Minutes to Live, and most surprising of all (that is, for its existence, rather than it’s lack of use), a Western-tinged title song Cash proposed for the James Bond film Thunderball. Additional treats include a vibraphone led rendition of the nineteenth century “There’s a Mother Always Waiting,†a duet with Bonanza’s Lorne Greene on “Shifting, Whispering Sands,†and a solo cover of Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings,†all previously unreleased in the U.S.
Lissie gets trapped by the mainstream aspirations of Sony UK
Listening to Lissie’s major label debut is a familiar experience, in that she’s not the first artist to surrender the organic qualities of her roots in the process of aiming for a larger audience. Where her debut EP, Why You Runnin’, turned deeply confessional moments into arresting outbursts of emotion, her follow-up feels forcedly written, sung and played. Where the debut offered the studio as a space in which Lissie could be heard singing, the album is filled with placeless overproduction that, aside from the quality of Lissie’s voice, sounds disappointingly like other pop records on the market. The edginess that made Lissie’s earlier vocals so magnetic is lost here as she’s forced to compete with gratuitously busy arrangements; it feels as if the producers didn’t trust her voice to keep listeners’ attention.
The double-tracked “Stranger†does provide a clever modern twist on Buddy Holly and Bobby Fuller, but it’s only a moment’s respite from the album’s banal guitar solos and pop-rock arrangements. The minutes of deep artistic accomplishment belong to the songs brought forward from the EP: “Little Lovin’,†“Everywhere I Go†and “Oh Mississippi.†On these, Lissie’s voice is riveting, the arrangements build tension rather than volume, and the instruments create atmosphere rather than distracting complexity. Lissie’s moving, gospel-based homage to the mother river is perfectly set to a sparse arrangement of piano, chorus and distant tambourine, and the spine-tingling emotion shot into lyrics like “danger will follow me, now, everywhere I go†are unmatched by any of the newer performances.
Old-timey voice sings original alt.country laments and murder ballads
John Meeks lived the itinerant life of a troubadour before he was even old enough to drive or strum a guitar. Toted along to gigs by his musician father, and driven around the Southwest by his mother, Meeks racked up a lot of miles at a very young age. After a brief stab at college he settled in San Diego and tried out the indie-rock scene, but it wasn’t until he hooked up with the city’s roots musicians (including Pall Jenkins, Jimmy LaValle and Matt Resovich) that the sounds his father made came back to call. Meeks sings with a ghostly lonesomeness that’s partly Roy Acuff, partly Neil Young and partly a bluegrass yodel. It’s a voice from a much earlier era. His studied tempos provide time to hold onto notes in an expressive drone, bending and trilling here and there for George Jones-styled emotional emphasis.
Meeks’ downtrodden lyrics are written from the gut, rather than the mind, and they’re fit to melodies that feel like a natural wander rather than composed map. Taken together, they make songs that feel lived in, musical expressions of emotions that aren’t so much wondrous discoveries as they are worn resignations. It’s the unlikeliest of music to be made in a city renowned for its temperate weather and beautiful beaches. Of course, Tijuana is just a stone’s throw away (neatly echoed in the moody trumpet of “Been Down By Loveâ€), and Los Angeles is only a few hours up the highway, but Meeks’ murder ballads and laments of lost and crossed love remain surprisingly dark. Even at mid-tempo his keening melodies and the drifting backgrounds of guitar, bass, drums and fiddle are often laid out as a wail of defeat.
The intertwined creativity of Waylon, Willie, Cash and Kristofferson
Though Waylon, Willie, Cash and Kristofferson recorded three full albums as The Highwaymen, the foursome had much richer musical relationships than the purpose-built quartet dates. Legacy’s 2-disc Essential set documents both their official collaborations under the Highwayman moniker, and the duets and covers that found these artists returning to one another over the course of their careers. In addition to seven songs from the Highwaymen’s three albums, this thirty track collection includes solos and duets drawn from the artists’ original albums, television and stage performances (including tracks from the Johnny Cash Show and VH1’s Storytellers), and soundtracks. Among the riches are several covers of Kristofferson’s songs, including Nelson’s 2008 rendering of “Moment of Forever.â€
Tuneful singer-songwriter indie pop, folk and Americana sounds
The opening track of singer-songwriter Brett Shady’s solo debut is very good (especially for the terrific lyric “For every somebody somewhere in love / there’s somebody elseâ€), but it’s the defeated loneliness of the second track, “Jerome, AZ†that sets the album’s emotional hook. Shady sings of giving up on his big city dream and heading for open skies. But even though he didn’t give up on his own big city dream, his initial discontent with Los Angeles, born of the dislocation and culture shock felt by a gold country immigrant provides much of the album’s emotional fuel.
Shady seems to have finally made himself at home in Southern California, but at the time he wrote these songs, his lack of connection became the locus of his songwriting. Like many lovelorn pop songwriters, he balances himself on the edge of self-pity and self-strength, wallowing in the darkness but mindful that the sun still shines on the other side of his drawn curtains. Shady follows in a long line of rock musicians whose later years led them away from the outward-bound excess of rock and punk to the introspective songwriting of folk and Americana. Dana Gumbiner’s production nicely balances a minimum of studio decorations with Shady’s simple combo of guitar, bass, drums, and banjo, leaving room for the lyrics to be heard and felt.
Shady first latched onto music as a child, and looking back to acts from the ‘50s and early ‘60s in the craft of “Darling.†He suggests the song is seeded in Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby,†which you can certainly hear in the piano figure, but the vocal seems more heavily influenced by doo-wop crooning. Winningly, the production gives the whole song an indie-pop feel, which makes the ‘50s influences play more like ghosts. Shady’s country antecedents can be heard in the shuffle beat of “Red House Plea,†but here again the song takes off in an original direction with strummed guitars, a meandering banjo and an imploring vocal whose high tone suggests Don McLean and the Avett Brothers.
Mellencamp visits country, blues and rock ‘n’ roll ghosts
John Mellencamp is an artist whose depth continues to impress and surprise. His populist anthems of the 1980s demonstrated heartland roots that Springsteen could only write of, and even as he was charting with “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.†and “Lonely Ol’ Night,†he was filling out his albums with the social commentary of “Rain on the Scarecrow†and co-founding Farm Aid with Willie Nelson and Neil Young. His commentary continued to mature and turned naturally introspective, and though he continued to place singles on the charts, his albums became increasingly whole in tone. He explored urban soul sounds, returned to rock ‘n’ roll basics, explored historic folk and blues songs, and wrote through a dark streak of social and eprsonal commentary on his last few studio albums.
In many ways, the winding path of his career, the early malice of the record industry, the misunderstanding of music critics, the fight to regain his name and his artistic bona fides, is the road that led to this collection of original songs. The roots introduced on Lonesome Jubilee and explored on Big Daddy are now taken for granted, both in Mellencamp’s music and across the Americana scene. The mountain sounds, slap bass and vintage blues tones are no longer seen as affectations or anthropological explorations, but as the foundation that’s always underlined Mellencamp’s music. On this new, brilliantly executed album, Mellencamp visits and records at three historical locations: the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Sun Studios in Memphis and room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio.
There’s a bit of fetishism in toting along mono analog equipment, lining up on the marks laid down by Sam Phillips, and reinstalling a wood floor in the hotel room, but the connections made to the musicians who first sounded out these spaces famous was worth the effort. Mellencamp doesn’t attempt to raise ghosts as much as he amplifies the echoes that have always threaded through his music. The slap bass of “Coming Down the Road†catches the excitement of mid-50s Sun records without imitating them. Best of all, the minimalistic live recording – no mixing or overdubs – is mostly shorn of T-Bone Burnett’s influences as a producer. What this record (and yes, it is available on vinyl) shows is that it’s not the recording, it’s what’s being recorded. The primitive sound serves to focus the listener’s ear on the artist’s lyrics and moods.
Mellencamp wrestles with the existence of life-after-death, opting to appreciate his time on Earth in the opening “Save Some Time to Dream,†and taking a more laissez-faire attitude (“I’ll see you in the next world / If there is really oneâ€) in the defeated “A Graceful Fall.†The latter’s misfortune would play more darkly if not for Mellencamp’s large, near Vaudevillian vocal, as would the self-pity of “No One Cares About Me,†were it not sung to a country-rockabilly backing and tagged with an optimistic hint of redemption. That optimism segues into the album’s most touching song, “Love at First Sight,†which is matched by the heartbreaking wistfulness of the 50-years-later “Thinking About You.†The opening lyric of the latter proclaims “It’s not my nature / To be nostalgic at all,†but it’s only a device within the song’s story, as Mellencamp medicates on missed opportunities, unfulfilled desires and youthful lessons that only become clear with age.
Nineteenth century American songs sung in 1930s close harmony
It’s a mark of Stephen Foster’s seminal place in American culture that the two songs opening this collection, “Oh Susanna†and “De Camptown Races,†are known more as part of the musical landscape than a particular songwriter’s creation. But those two, along with “Old Black Joe†and “Swanee River†are indeed part of Foster’s catalog of American musical classics. “Oh Susanna†was his first commercially successful composition, and though written in Cincinnati, it became emblematic of the California gold rush of the mid-1800s. Within five years he’d written many of his most memorable songs. But in an era of limited copyright, Foster barely profited from his songwriting, and by the early 1860s he was living in poverty in New York City, finally passing away in 1864. But his songs lived on, burnishing his reputation as one of the first truly American songwriters.
The Sons of the Pioneers came together in 1933, at a time that Foster’s songs were gaining renewed recognition. Kentucky adopted “My Old Kentucky Home†in 1928, and Florida adopted “Old Folks at Home†(aka “Swanee Riverâ€) in 1935. Though the Sons of the Pioneers are more typically recognized for their close harmony Western songs, they included Foster’s works in their Americana songbook right from the start. The 1934 and 1935 performances collected here include lead vocals from all three of the group’s founding members, Roy Rogers, Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer, as well as an instrumental version of “Swanee River†featuring fiddler Hugh Farr. The tracks from 1935 also include guitarist Karl Farr.
Nevins explores her country and Cajun roots
