The second collaboration between singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault and poet Lisa Olstein is more musically upbeat than their self-titled 2011 release. The band returns with its original lineup of Billy Conway (drums), Jeremy Moses Curtis (bass), David Goodrich (guitar, piano) and Alex McCollough (pedal steel), though their music is more forceful and electric than the contemplative folk-blues of their first outing. Foucault rises to the occasion with soulful and impassioned vocals, but his easily imbibed melodies and the band’s rootsy playing can find itself at odds with the impressionism of Olstein’s lyrics. “Necessary Monsters,” for example, rolls along on the drums’ shuffle and terrific bursts of blues guitar, but if the lyrics have a sad story to tell, they’re not giving it up easily.
This celebration of Woody Guthrie’s one hundredth birthday is more like a family gathering than an all-star tribute. That’s because every one of these performers is an artistic descendent of Gurthrie’s music. It’s impossible to overstate Woody Guthrie’s impact on popular music, as his themes, songs, style and attitudes have transcended several generations of performers and fans; Guthrie remains a North Star by which folk-derived music is navigated. The song list includes many of Guthrie’s best-known and best-loved songs, along with archival lyrics posthumously set to music by Joel Rafael, Lucinda Williams, Jackson Browne and Tom Morello.
Staging this homage as a concert, rather than a collection of studio recordings pulled together over weeks and months, honors one of the basic tenets of Guthrie’s work: music as a shared, visceral experience. Guthrie’s songs were written for live performance, and every one of the night’s performers was fueled by both the material, the stages they’ve traversed throughout their careers, and each other. The breadth of Guthrie’s mastery is evident in material that ranges from endearing children’s songs to strident social commentary and searching introspection. The universality of his work is equally evident in the range of musical styles in which his songs are comfortably expressed, and the continuing currency of his topics.
Bonus-laden reissue of Steve Forbert’s first two albums
Steve Forbert fell from recording star escape velocity with surprising quickness. His 1978 debut, Alive on Arrival, was a precociously well-formed introduction, recorded only two years after leaving his native Mississippi, and the 1979 follow-up, Jackrabbit Slim, was refined with a sufficiently light hand by producer John Simon to garner both critical plaudits and commercial success for the single “Romeo’s Tune.” But his next two albums failed to satisfy his label’s ambitions and a subsequent disagreement led to his being dropped and embargoed from recording for several years. Forbert continued to perform, and picked up his recording career in 1988, but the mainstream possibilities charted by these first two albums was never really re-established. The loss of commercial trajectory probably induced few tears from his fans, though, as he built a terrific catalog across thirty-five years of recording.
What still must have puzzled the faithful is the time delay in seeing these titles reissued on CD, with Jackrabbit Slim not having entered the digital market until 1996. Both albums have seen spotty availability over the years, with downloadable MP3s [12] finally turning up in 2011. Blue Corn’s 35th-anniversary reissue not only returns full-fidelity, hard CDs back to the market, but augments the original track lists with a dozen studio outtakes and live cuts. A few of the bonuses were cherry-picked from a reissue Forbert has available through his website, but this two-fer is a perfect introduction. From the start Forbert was witty and smart, but understandable and easily empathized with. There’s are flecks of Loudon Wainwright’s humor and Paul Simon’s poetic connection, but without the East Coast archness of either. Forbert was neither wide-eyed nor jaded, but instead showed off a measure of introspection and awareness unusually deep for a twenty-something.
Listening to the earnest folksiness of his debut, it’s hard to imagine Forbert tramping about the mean streets of New York City and dropping in to play at CBGB. Steve Burgh’s production adds welcome punch to the recordings, but Forbert’s guitar, harmonica and vocals retain a folk-singer’s intimacy in front of the guitar, bass, drums, piano and organ. Incredibly, both albums were recorded live-in-the-studio with no overdubs, an impressive feat for a road-seasoned band, but even more so for a young artist’s initial studio work. The recording method pays additional dividends in the completeness of the bonus tracks; as complete as the original albums have always felt, the bonus tracks assimilate easily and must have been tough to cut at the time.
Extraordinary solo demos for Gene Clark’s White Light
Having passed through the New Christy Minstrels, founded and left the Byrds and dissolved a fruitful partnership with Doug Dillard, Gene Clark escaped the burdens of Los Angeles and relocated to a quiet spot on the Northern California coast. Although he owed A&M a pair of albums, Clark was given time to write new song under relatively little pressure. The label’s co-owner, Jerry Moss, eventually persuaded Clark to return to Los Angeles and record, first these demos, and subsequently his second solo album, White Light. The latter, produced by Jesse Ed Davis (who also produced these demos), remains one of the high-points of Clark’s career, but these guitar-harmonica-and-voice demos, released here for the first time, are equally fulfilling.
However direct listeners found White Light, these spare demos are even more so. Stripped to their essence, Clark’s songs explode with creativity, and recorded live in the studio, Clark plays the songs more as expressive notes to himself than as performances for posterity. There’s a delicacy in his vocals and a pensiveness in his approach that would be overwhelmed by a band, and he displays an eagerness to sing these new songs that could only have been captured once. Half of these titles reappeared on the original version of White Light, and two more appeared on the album’s 2002 CD reissue. “Here Tonight” was recorded in alternate form by the Flying Burrito Brothers, and three titles, “For No One,” “Please Mr. Freud” and “Jimmy Christ” were simply left in the vault.
Clark’s performances return to his earliest folk roots, with a heavy Dylan influence apparent in several of the songs. The tempos are often slower and the presentations more gentle than the later band recordings, suggesting that Clark may have gained confidence in performing these works by the time he waxed the album. But from the start, he shows deep confidence in the songs themselves – perhaps even more evident in such a stripped down form, where the words have nowhere to hide. As fine as was the band assembled for White Light, Clark sounds perfectly comfortable exposed as a solo troubadour sharing his wares. The poetic verses of the album’s title track flow more easily as Clark responds only to his own guitar, and the simplicity of “Where My Love Lies Asleep” adds a starkly personal touch.
Masterful live performance by country-folk singer-songwriter
Gauthier’s strength as a live performer is evident from the riveting cover of Fred Eaglesmith’s “Your Sister Cried†that opens her first live album. Taken at a resolute tempo, Gauthier is at once haggard, reportorial and sympathetic, and her hard-strummed guitar is augmented by dramatic accents, a harmony vocal and a solo from violinist Tania Elizabeth that leaves the audience hooting in appreciation. Together with percussionist Mike Meadows, the trio proves that less can very much be more, as their presentations leave enough space for the vocals, harmonies, lyrics and instruments to each shine, but combine the elements into a musculature that a solo singer-songwriter rarely achieves.
Key to the proceedings is Gauthier’s way with a lyric. Whether singing or reciting, she’s magnetic as a master storyteller who’s in no hurry. Her harmonica and Elizabeth’s violin are similarly free in their pace, allowing the solos and accompaniment to ebb and flow with the lyrical mood. The song list includes selections from all but Gauthier’s first studio album, with a generous helping of four selections from 1999’s Drag Queens and Limousines and three Fred Eaglesmith tunes. She sings of outsiders: a hobo king, an addict and an alcoholic, a disillusioned father, an unmoored adoptee and a repentant murderer. But even with their troubled backgrounds, they form a surprisingly seemly lot, humanized by Gauthier’s telling of their stories.
Poetic lyrics set to blues-tinged country rock
