Tag Archives: Folk

Matraca Berg: The Dreaming Fields

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A hit songwriter’s return to performing

It’s been fourteen years – entirely too long – since songwriter Matraca Berg recorded her last commercially released album, 1997’s Sunday Morning to Saturday Night. Though she’s never found the chart-topping success as a singer that she’s scored as a writer (having penned “Wrong Side of Memphis” for Trisha Yearwood, “Wild Angels” for Martina McBride, “You Can Feel Bad” for Patty Loveless and “Strawberry Wine” for Deana Carter, among dozens of other hit singles and album tracks), critics and fans have treasured her original performances. Unfortunately, when her former label (Rising Tide) closed shop in 1998, her last album found critical accolades that went unmatched by sales, and she returned to writing (including songs for the theatrical production Good Ol’ Girls), live performance and background singing.

Berg’s latest set shows off her talent for writing deeply personal songs that touch intimate, individual memories in each listener. Her songwriting craft and soulful performances suggest a modern-day Carole King, but one flowering at a time when music discovery has become highly balkanized. The funnel of country radio has narrowed further in the last decade, and the channels of indie promotion have simultaneously multiplied and fragmented. Berg’s songs have always been thoughtful, but her lyrics have become more allusive and her performances more subtle and introspective, necessitating longer exposure than a ten-second Pandora needle-drop or snippets woven into an NPR review. Whether her new album gets the hearing it deserves will depend in large part on word-of-mouth from her fans.

Writing in mid-life, the youthful optimism and wistful nostalgia of her earlier songs have taken a backseat to more realistic endings. The album’s title track is a somber elegy for her grandfather’s farm, one in which the golden hues of yesterday share space with the overgrowth and rust of today. The Hollywood dreams of a small town girl in “Silver and Glass” reveal themselves as fading illusions as age presents its inevitable transformations in the mirror. Even Berg’s beloved cherubs, which served as guardians in 1995’s “Wild Angels” (a chart-topper for Martina McBride), have matured into escorts for a bittersweet final journey in “Racing the Angels.” Only 2002’s “Oh Cumberland” (originally recorded with Emmylou Harris for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Vol. 3, revels unabashedly in the warmth of memories.

Berg contemplates the attraction of dangerous liaisons in “You and Tequila” (co-written with Deana Carter, and recently released as a single by Kenny Chesney and Grace Potter), but when vulnerability turns into deceit, a serial cheater’s dalliances catch up to him in the foreboding “Ode to Billy Joe” styled “Your Husband’s Cheating on Us.” Berg’s a deft author of characters, including a battered woman taking a stand and a mother coping with the inexplicable loss of a soldier son; but her best character is often herself. She closes with the ballad “A Cold, Rainy Morning in London in June,” evoking her longing for home and her comfort in having a home to long for. It’s a contemplative, yet passionate finish to an album woven from multiple strands of deep emotion and strong expression. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Matraca Berg’s Home Page

Where in the world is Richard Buckner’s next record?

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It’s been five years since Richard Buckner release his last album, Meadow. Five years filled with crushed opportunities, murderous accusations, larceny and equipment failure. Finally, on August 2nd, Our Blood, hits the shelves in both digital and analog form. Here’s the press release:

Since 2006’s Meadow, fans of Richard Buckner have been clamoring for new material and wondering what was keeping their hero from releasing the new songs he would perform on the road. Well, it’s a long story!

First, there was the score to a film that never happened. Then there was a brief brush with the law over a headless corpse in a burned-out car that had all eyes in Buckner’s small hometown in upstate New York turned toward him and his long-suffering truck. Shortly after a move to a safer, less popular corpse dumping ground, the death of his tape machine led to yet another reboot. After Richard called in pedal steel and percussion players and put new mixes on his laptop, his new “safer” place was burglarized. Goodbye, laptop.

Buckner says: “Eventually, the recording machine was resuscitated and some of the material was recovered. Cracks were patched. Parts were redundantly re-invented. Commas were moved. Insinuations were re-insinuated until the last percussive breaths of those final OCD utterances were expelled like the final heaves of bile, wept-out long after the climactic drama had faded to a somber, blurry moment of truth and voilà!, the record was done, or, let us be clear, abandoned like the charred shell of a car with a nice stereo.”

And so finally, we present Our Blood, to be released on CD and LP on August 2, 2011. This is the first Richard Buckner album to be released on vinyl!

Check out this track from the upcoming album.

MP3 | Traitor
Richard Buckner’s Home Page

Owen Temple: Mountain Home

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Country, folk, bluegrass and blues from talented Texas songsmith

Owen Temple’s last album, Dollars and Dimes, took its concept from the socio-political ideas of Joel Garreau’s The Nine Nations of North America. Temple wrote songs that explored the regional ties of work and cultural belief that often transcend physical geography, zeroing in on the life issues that bind people together. With his newest songs, he’s still thinking about people, but individuals this time, catching them as a sociologist would in situations that frame their identity in snapshots of hope, fear, prejudice, heroism, and the shadows of bad behavior and disaster. As on his previous album, his songs are rooted in actual places – isolated communities that harbor dark secrets and suffocating intimacy, a deserted oil town lamented as a lost lover, a legendary red-light district, and the Texas troubadours in whose footsteps he follows. The album’s lone cover, Leon Russell’s “Prince of Peace,” is offered in tribute to a primary influence.

Temple’s songs are sophisticated and enlightening, offering a view of the Texas west that’s akin to Dave Alvin’s meditations on mid-century California. He writes with a folksinger’s eye, observing intimate, interior details of every day life, and painting big, mythological sketches of Sam Houston and Cabeza de Vaca. The latter, “Medicine Man,” was co-written with Gordy Quist, and recently recorded by Quist’s Band of Heathens. Temple’s music stretches into country, bluegrass, gospel and blues, and he sings with the confidence of a writer who deeply trusts his material. Gabriel Rhodes’ production is spot-on throughout the album, giving Temple’s songs and vocals the starring roles, but subtly highlighting the instrumental contributions of Charlie Sexton, Rick Richards, Bukka Allen and Tommy Spurlock. Temple has made several fine albums, but taking intellectual input from Garreau seems to have clarified and deepened his own songwriting voice. This is an album that ingratiates itself on first pass, and  reveals deep new details with each subsequent spin. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | One Day Closer to Rain
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Tom Glazer: A Treasury of Civil War Songs

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Rich collection of mid-nineteenth century American songs

In remembrance of the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, Smithsonian Folkways has reissued Tom Glazer’s 1973 collection of wartime songs. Many of these compositions are so deeply ingrained into the American musical lexicon that listeners have all but stopped thinking about their origins. So while it’s unsurprising that “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “Dixie” were each canonized amid the War Between the States, it’s surprising to find that “The Yellow Rose of Texas” (whose period lyrics will make twenty-first century sensibilities wince) and “Goober Peas” were also created amid the songwriting boom of the nineteenth century. The rise of song publishing was fueled not only by a growing American appetite for music making, but the development of war reporting in all manner of written form. Topical songwriting became a way of recording events, defining sides and rallying support. The folk tradition (and loosely-formed nineteenth-century sense of intellectual property) is heard in the sharing of melodies between “John Brown’s Body” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” as well as “Maryland, My Maryland” borrowing its tune from “O Tannenbaum.” Glazer and a backing chorus sing mostly to a solo guitar, reflecting an era when music lovers were more likely to engage in making music than listen to it. The reissue’s booklet includes period photos of soldiers, musicians and most interestingly, soldier musicians, as well as extensive historical and song notes from University of Maryland musicologist Patrick Warfield. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | When Johnny Comes Marching Home
Smithsonian Folkways’ Home Page

Andy Friedman: Laserbeams and Dreams

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A beguiling album of thoughtful country, folk and blues

Friedman’s latest, recorded in 24 hours with only one overdub, fits even more deeply into the singer-songwriter realm than 2009’s Weary Things. His strummed acoustic guitar is backed by the electric leads of producer David Goodrich and the fingered and bowed stand-up bass of Stephan Crump. Friedman’s narrative vocal tone brings to mind Leonard Cohen, but the instrumental conversations lean to languid improvisation, and his lyrics aren’t as poetically elusively. Friedman’s a Brooklyn hillbilly whose hard-scrabble living in the outer boroughs leads him to the old-timey string band sound employed on “Old Pennsylvania,” and lyrics that imagine the city’s genteel yesteryear.

The opener, “It’s Time for Church,” provides a microcosm of Friedman’s talent – a vocal that resonates with hints of Dave Alvin, and a lyric that cleverly turns away from the title’s implication, feints back and then lands its final rejection. It’s a song about religion, but not the endorsement you’d expect. Friedman is a keen observer of his own days and the details of imagined lives and places. “Nothing with My Time” and “Quiet Blues” each contemplate what Friedman’s doing when he’s doing nothing, and “Pretty Great” offers the clear-eyed view of youth that’s only visible in rear view mirror. Friedman’s earlier years as a spoken-word poet are reflected in the short “Schroon Lake,” and his father-in-law’s poetry, written shortly before his passing, forms the core of “May I Rest When Death Approaches.”

Death also hovers over the electric blues “Roll On, John Herald,” with Goodrich raging away on electric guitar. More idyllic are Friedman’s dreams of long-gone summer retreats in the faded snapshots of “Motel on the Lake,” the warmth of a tour’s end in “Going Home (Drifter’s Blessing),” and the nostalgic “Down by the Willow.” The latter features a hypnotic, psych-inflected guitar jam by Goodrich. Friedman’s always been a fine songwriter and compelling performer, but on his third album there’s a heightened symbiosis between the two. The trio is terrifically sympathetic to his songs, adding emotional color and texture without overshadowing the lyrics, and Friedman’s vocals fit fluidly into the music. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | It’s Time for Church
Andy Friedman’s Home Page

Kermit Lynch: Kitty Fur

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The blossoming of a wine master’s music career

Kermit Lynch is well-known to oenophiles for his unique wine importing business; but even his most ardent customers would be surprised to find he’s also a gifted musician. Throughout the sixties, Lynch fronted bands in the Berkeley area, only giving it up in the early ‘70s when his travels through Europe begat a career in wine. With the encouragement of vintner/musician Boz Scaggs, Lynch returned to music in 2005, and with co-producer Ricky Fataar, released the album Quicksand Blues. In 2009 he followed-up with Man’s Temptation, mixing literate, world-traveled originals with well-selected covers that included a terrific old-timey take on Lee Hazlewood’s rockabilly classic “The Fool.”

With Fataar once again in the producer’s seat (and drummer’s throne), Lynch offers up his third course, adding an original title track to ten covers. Much like his taste in wines, Lynch’s music is varied and at times eclectic. He sings country, rock, blues, folk, reggae, Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye,” and even the romantic WWII-era “It’s Been a Long, Long Time.” His voice is a bluesy instrument with the weathered edges of someone more partial to grain than grape, and it adds new shades to each interpretation. The opening original “Kitty Fur” has the blue jazz feel of Mose Allison, the Rolling Stones’ “Winter” is played more like Sticky Fingers than Goats Head Soup, and Dylan’s slight “Winterlude” (from 1970’s New Morning) is slowed into a luscious waltz that’s more classic country than the original’s old-timey vibe.

Lynch is backed by top-notch players, including Rick Vito on guitar, Michael Omartian on piano, Dennis Crouch, Michael Rhodes on bass, Glen Duncan on fiddle and Lloyd Green on pedal steel. The core players are augmented by a horn section for Bobby Blue Bland’s “She’s Puttin’ Something in My Food,” and sound really together as a band, suggesting Lynch is as accomplished at leading a band as he is leading a business. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Kitty Fur
Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant

Amy Black: One Time

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New England singer/songwriter with Southern roots

For a New Englander, Amy Black sounds quite down home. Her Southern roots (she was reared in Missouri and Alabama until the age of sixteen) clearly packed their bags and traveled along in the relocation North and East, and have been renewed through visits to her family’s home town. Black sings in a folk-styled country voice that suggests bits of Patty Loveless, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Judy Collins, edged by the blues of Bonnie Raitt and a hint of Jennifer Nettle’s sass. It’s a voice that sat largely idle during a ten-year career outside the music industry, and one that wasn’t stirred back into action until a few years ago. Her 2009 debut with the Red Clay Rascals was stocked with covers, but on this sophomore outing she expands her artistic reach with nine originals that mix electric and acoustic, including guitar, fiddle (courtesy of Stuart Duncan), dobro, mandolin, dulcimer, bass (electric and upright), and drums. Though the album opens with a compelling tale of an imagined killer fleeing the law, the bulk of Black’s songs are about the lives of women. There’s straight-talking relationship advice in “One Time,” the lonely machinations of one who’s been left in “You Lied,” and tough realizations in “Whiskey and Wine” and “I Can’t Play This Game.” Black offers romantic optimism too, as she flirts with loving arms that remain just out of reach, potential yet to be realized. Among the three covers, Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man),” despite a nice dobro solo, sounds least comfortable among Black’s originals, but Claude Ely’s gospel “Ain’t No Grave (Gonna Hold My Body Down),” provides blue notes for Black and Duncan to really dig into. This is a nice step forward for a singer-songwriter with an ingratiating voice and a pen that’s just warming up. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | One Time
Amy Black’s Home Page

The Civil Wars: Barton Hollow

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Two voices intertwined into one

From the first moment you hear the intertwining voices of Joy Williams and John Paul White, you might think of The Swell Season, She and Him and other male-female duos. But Civil Wars is less a duet than two voices pulled inextricably together as one. Their harmonies are guided by the sort of familial telepathy that usually only blesses siblings like the Stanleys, Louvins, Everlys or Avetts. Listening deeper into the album, the duo suggests Richard & Mimi Fariña (or Holly Golightly and Lawyer Dave) on the album’s bluesy title track. The drawn-out wordings can feel conspicuous at times, but the alchemy of their voices is never less than mesmerizing. The intimacy of the duo’s vocal tone stands in contrast to the emotional volume of their singing; they use mostly acoustic instrumentation, but conjure a power that feels electric.

White is a little bit country and folk, Williams a little bit pop, and they write songs that are both and neither – rootsy but sweet. They evoke the delicate outlines of romances that could possibly be, relationships that retain the intensity of adolescence, and the hymn-like drama of a troubled marriage in “Poison and Wine.” There are small town comings and goings, hopelessness and hoped-for redemption, and the pair ignites (unfounded) rumors of couplehood with their old-timey Western ballad, “Forget Me Not.” The digital album download includes two bonus covers, a radically reworked vocal arrangement of the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back,” and an emphatic take on Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love” that adds a gypsy-jazz tone. Williams and White push and pull one another with their voices, but the battle is civil and the results enchanting. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Barton Hollow
Download The Civil Wars’ Live at Eddie’s Attic
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Kate Jacobs: Home Game

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A warm, musical letter from home

The girlishness in Kate Jacobs’ voice has always been perplexing. She sounds relaxed navigating the bossa-nova of “On My Monitor,” gliding along Astrud Gilberto-cool as she recounts the news of a young girl’s abduction; the everydayness of her delivery underlines the bland reaction one develops to the incessant nature of Internet-delivered instant alerts. Only at song’s end, as Jacob recoils from the constant provocation, does she react. But her reaction is to the news assault rather than the human one. Her own children take center stage for “All the Time in the World” and the album’s title track, but though her words of those of a mother, her voice retains its young tone. She continues to sound youthful as she cranks up the Kirsty MacColl-styled pop-rock “Make Him Smile,” and slides into the role of a jazz chanteuse for the ballad “A Sligo Lad.”

Six years since her last album, itself the product of a six-year hiatus during which she married and had children, Jacobs wrestles with the plenty of family life and the absence of solitary time, mutual attraction that doesn’t live up to the storybooks, and the ways in which children make time both stop and race. She’s a keen observer of her own life, dearly missing her years as a touring musician in “Rey Ordonez,” wistfully remembering the contrast of a cramped touring van and the imagination’s space of a baseball game on the radio. She recounts the joys and trials of parenting and marriage, but most deeply savors the rest that finally comes at the end of the day. Her longtime musical partner, Dave Schramm, adds blossoming notes of dobro, and surrounds Jacobs’ with guitars, drums, strings and backing vocals that turn her lyrics into a warm letter from a dear friend. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Rey Ordonez
Kate Jacobs’ Home Page

Bob Gibson: Ski Songs

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A wonderful album of original ski-themed folk- and pop-songs

This 1959 album has the hallmarks of a cash-in: a famous folk singer, a comical cover, and a seemingly lightweight theme. And while the subjects may seem trivial in comparison to those of Gibson’s better-known originals, neither the songs nor performances were tossed off lightly. Signed to the roots powerhouse Elektra, Gibson was living in Aspen, and turned his love of skiing into an album of song. His banjo is backed by Russell Savkas’ acoustic bass, Joe Puma’s guitar (which offers a swinging solo on “Ski Patrol”), with Eric Weissberg filling out the arrangements on all three. The result is a surprisingly clever, joyous and fulfilling album, with Gibson telling the imagined conquests of insufferable ski braggarts, the gory demise of a hot dogger, the ennui brought by Spring and the rebirth furnished by Winter. He interweaves skiing lingo the way Brian Wilson and Roger Christian did with hot rod talk, offering up a wry introduction to winter sport with the talking blues “Talking Skier,” and showing affection for snow-covered landscapes in “In This White World.” Several of the tunes are familiar, as Gibson practices the folk tradition of repurposing melodies from well-known songs. “Super Skier” borrows from “The MTA Song” (which, itself was borrowed from “The Ship That Never Returned”) and “Super Skier’s Last Race” borrows from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” While many of Gibson’s albums have were anthologized and reissued over the years, this one remained elusive until this welcome reissue. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Bob Gibson Legacy Site