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The Hold Steady: “Constructive Summer”
Summertime and the living is easy, or so the song goes. Relax, kick back, and watch the catfish bite—unless, that is, you’re Craig Finn, the singer and lyricist extraordinaire of the Hold Steady. The spastic frontman embraced summer’s ripe possibilities in “Constructive Summer”, the leadoff cut from 2008’s Stay Positive, with last chance ache and gusto, and delivered an anthem for the ages.
Echoing the nostalgic glories of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” and any one of Springsteen’s myriad summer epics of road burn, romance, and ruin, “Constructive Summer” jets out of the gate with Tad Kubler’s punk-turbo onslaught of stun guitar. The Hold Steady embody that classic rock vibe, cherry-picking thunder riffs from 1970’s best practitioners and tweaking them with their brawny Brooklyn-by-way-of-Minneapolis style. This is the kind of exultant music you want smoking out of your radio with the sun burning down on your back, bad times be damned.
If it’s the Hold Steady’s music that first mugs you, though, it’s Finn’s rant of a voice that delivers the goods: Lyrics that bristle with bravado and the desperate romanticism of faded youth. Finn is a word man, a street poet, a Bukowski-meets-Springsteen-in-the-parking-lot-of-your-dreams kind of writer.
Bonnaroo: June 11-14, Manchester, TN
When June reels around every year, I hear the siren call of Tennessee’s mega-music bacchanal, and despite the rabid heat, grungy camping, and general hassles involved, I’ve made the ’Roo pilgrimage the last four years in a row, including this one.
Bonnaroo stands outside the hamlet of Manchester, TN, on a 700-acre farm, an hour south of Music City. Every summer, Bonnaroo becomes Tennessee’s sixth largest city, and the festival even publishes its own daily newspaper, the Beacon. This isn’t the little hippie-fest-that-could anymore; though jam bands are still well-represented, it’s become something else: America’s arguably biggest, most musically diverse, and probably best music festival. It’s the Woodstock for the digital age.
I arrived this year on Friday morning; though it technically starts on Thursday, few bands play that evening. I spent that night in Nashville on honky tonk row, getting in shape for the upcoming events. It’s a good thing too, because thunderstorms soaked the area all evening.
Crusty Characters: Lou Reed vs. James McMurtry
Every era needs its misanthropes to chronicle the inevitable transgressions along the way. Music artists, particularly bold, ornery ones, have always reflected America’s tragic flaws as well as its majesty in song. From Dylan’s subversive leadership-by-example in the 1960s and ’70s to Neil Young’s more recent saber-rattling criticism of the Bush administration, the Baby Boomer generation has sustained more than its fair share of righteous outrage for decades. Continuing the tradition, James McMurtry, the Austin, Texas roots-rocker, has lately assumed the mantle of social critic with stunning poetic verve.
Though Texas is culturally a galaxy away from New York City, McMurtry’s voice and songwriting hearken back to a major ’60s icon, Lou Reed. When you hear McMurtry’s flat, knowing drawl of a voice, it’s almost impossible not to hear echoes of Reed’s tough, monotone delivery drift through McMurtry’s prairie pipes. Critics try to diminish these guys by calling them non-singers, a backhanded compliment, but it takes a steely voice made of flint and derision to deal with this kind of subject matter.
One man deals with urban street life and the other with the code of the flatlands, but these two offer some of the sharpest lyricism of their respective generations. Both are crusty characters, taciturn and notoriously difficult interviews, and defiantly refuse to be bothered by music trends or peer influence. Neither man believes much in forgiveness, nor does this fierceness define both men. Neo-cons don’t own the book on Old Testament wrath.
Nick Lowe: The Convincer
Nick Lowe
The Convincer
(Yep Roc, 2001)
Maybe it’s because of the Midwestern winter I’m currently surviving, but lately nothing has felt better than lifting a glass of wine (Pinot Noir—of course, I’ve seen Sideways) and cueing up Nick Lowe’s The Convincer as I gaze outside into yet another slush-grey twilight. Maybe it’s something about the chilled splendor of his voice or his reverb-frosted songs, but I sink into the couch and sigh. Certain things can still give you faith—even if it is only in the night.
Nick must have polished off a few bottles while making this record—I can hear that lazy Chablis glow twinkling in the margins. The Convincer, the last in a trilogy of sorts, completes Lowe’s mid-career renaissance with some late night soul-stirring. Between 1994’s Impossible Bird, 1998’s Dig My Mood, and 2001’s The Convincer on Yep Roc Records, Lowe made possibly the best music of his long career. I’m going with The Convincer here just because it’s the one that turned me on most to his soulful charms, but you can’t go wrong with any of them.
Late-Career Reinvention: Johnny Cash vs. Glen Campbell
Let me start by declaring straight out that “Wichita Lineman” is on my shortlist of All-Time Favorite Songs. I’ve always been a fan of any Glen Campbell/Jimmy Webb collaborations—once upon a time they were masters of country/pop classicism. If “Galveston” doesn’t crack your heart open at least a bit, you’re not listening. That’s why I first heard Meet Glen Campbell with some trepidation. Webb, the classic ’60s songwriter, had no involvement in this release, and this would be a reinvention of sorts for Campbell, his first new record in 15 years. Could his music hit that sweet spot again or would it fall far short of his golden era?
In answering that question, I considered Johnny Cash’s late-career reinvention with Rick Rubin on the American Recordings as a contrast. His last four records before he died revived public interest in him, especially from the younger, alternative set. Suddenly Cash had become hip again after a long fallow period of struggling with both songwriting and direction. That’s not an insignificant thing for a 70-year-old country artist, legend though he is.
Rubin, who has also produced Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty, and Mick Jagger to name a few, cherry-picked ballads from artists as diverse as Nine Inch Nails, Loudon Wainwright III, and Leonard Cohen to give to Cash. Cash was never a prolific writer, even in his prime, and except for the occasional song, his own creative well had dried up years ago. Rubin and Cash proceeded to strip these songs down to their stark, acoustic essence. Now that seems like an obvious idea, just letting Cash do what he does best, but in the ’90s it was fairly radical. After all, the 1980s were kind to very few pioneers, and giants like Cash and Dylan were lucky to survive the synthesizer era intact.
In their own way, Cash’s American Recordings’ four records sound as fresh and unadorned as his early Sun Records sessions did back in the ’50s. I hear that same freight train rumble of a voice, the same simple arrangements, and the same Old Testament power that resonates through the earthy core of Cash’s best music. Cash’s interpretation of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt” and its subsequent video stunned fans with its emotional honesty, especially delivered in the face of his impending mortality. If anything, the fourth installment, American IV: The Man Comes Around, is a bit too much of the same thing—barren spirituals that left us no doubt where Cash was soon headed. His stoic fatalism, which had coursed through his music since “I Walk the Line”, was especially world-weary here in the face of his beloved wife June Carter’s death. It was almost too much to bear the frail cracks in his voice on the last batch of songs he would record in his 50-year career.
With his continued success working with veterans, Rick Rubin obviously has the knack of knowing how to utilize an artist’s major strengths with some restraint. Unlike other in-demand producers like Daniel Lanois or Brian Eno, Rubin doesn’t have his own definitive trademark sound that he brings to each project. Instead, he adapts to the artists’ needs, and also reminds them what made them great in the first place—if they need reminding.
Though celebrated in his prime in the 1970s, Glen Campbell has never enjoyed the critical cache that Cash did. After he and Jimmy Webb stopped working together, the Rhinestone Cowboy disappeared into a bland haze of mediocre records and substance abuse. His “Countrypolitan” sound, all polished warmth and golden strings, was no longer in Nashville vogue—now replaced by big Hats, airbrushed pop guitar, and redneck sloganeering. Wherever Kenny Chesney’s type came from, it wasn’t from Cash or Campbell’s DNA. With his insipid good-time song craft, and “boat drinks for everyone” mentality, Jimmy Buffett has probably influenced contemporary “country” more than any of the Nelsons, Haggards, or Williams have.
At its best, the new genre is country-lite, and at its worst, it’s faux pop-goes-the-weasel country, manufactured cheese perfectly crafted for line-dancing and karaoke exhibitions. These new guys are “cowboy” in the same way George Bush, Jr. has always been. It’s all for show, for appearance’s sake, poseurs one and all. In other words, American Idol’s worst tendencies have even infected the White Man’s Blues, the original bastion of country music. It’s no coincidence that alt-country has thrived in the last 10 years, since its raw twang and earnest authenticity approach the real thing.
Meet Glen Campbell, a revealing title obviously geared to introduce Campbell and his 40-year career to younger generations, was produced by Julian Raymond and Howard Willing. According to Campbell, this entire project, including song selection, was inspired by Raymond’s guidance. Since Campbell was never a songwriter, choosing the right songs for the project was crucial. Just as Rubin did for Cash, Raymond exposes Campbell to songwriters outside of the country canon. Cash sings Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” and Nick Cave‘s “The Mercy Seat”, while Campbell sings Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” and the Velvet Underground’s “Jesus.” Strange juxtapositions, to say the least. Do they work, though?
Shane MacGowan and the Popes: The Snake
Shane MacGowan and the Popes
The Snake
(ZTT Records, 1995)
I was rumbling my way through late night TV recently, and found a repeat episode of Henry Rollins’ indie talk show. Get this scene: Rollins, the genial host in his black muscle t-shirt and crew-cut, the very vision of sculpted, teetotaling health, introducing his music guest, Mr. Shane MacGowan, the one and only, dissolute and bloated in his shaggy-dog demeanor. I had to laugh. But when MacGowan began croaking out the standard, “Dirty Old Town”, draped over the microphone and staggering in place, his voice stoked all the ghosts in my head, and I remembered how much I once loved the Pogues, especially their irascible frontman.
I officially began my Pogues mini-revival the next day, inhaling their records again and recalling their unique gifts. I thought back to when I saw them live at the Brixton Academy in London on St. Paddy’s Day way back in their prime—the classic setting for a vintage band. The group swaggered on wearing NYPD uniforms, swigging pints onstage to match their audience’s intake, or maybe it was vice versa. Two hours of drunken Irish sing-alongs ensued. My boot-tips actually had dents in them from swaying for position in the rowdy scrum on the floor. Still one of the best concerts I’ve ever witnessed or survived.
Seeing the great Shane MacGowan again, even on the small screen, made me dig out his solo debut, The Snake. It was released without much fanfare back in 1995, years after MacGowan had been sacked for drug/alcohol abuse by the remaining Pogues. I liked it then, but now in retrospect, it stands up as the equal of any late-period Pogues record, though not their peak, such as Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash or If I Should Fall From Grace With God from the mid-’80s.
Produced by Dave Jordan and MacGowan himself, The Snake plunges us back into the Irish bard’s maelstrom of gutter vibes and lyrical tales. MacGowan unveils his new band, the Popes, here, and they’re really not too far off the Pogues’ Celtic-punk sound. The requisite fiddle whistles show up, as do tenor banjos, uillean pipes, and the Irish harp. A few Pogues, Spider Stacy and Jem Finer, even play on a couple tunes. Johnny Depp, a mate of MacGowan’s, is credited for “weird guitar noises”—maybe apropos for a celebrity who’s befriended such unwashed renegades as Keith Richards, Hunter S. Thompson, and Mr. MacGowan.
The big difference in sound stems from Paul McGuinness’ guitar attack, especially on songs like the opener, “The Church of the Holy Spook.” It’s a fist-in-your-face garage workout that starts things off in punching form. MacGowan shouts in his craggy bark, “But I ruined my life by drinking, bad wives, taking pills, and cursing / Rock ‘n’ roll, you crucified me, left me all alone.” He’s never shied away from autobiography, and any time he can combine his Catholic childhood with his later vices is good grist for his songs.
Always obvious even from the start of his career, MacGowan’s exceptional songwriting gifts still shine here. Just his song titles alone can spin you off on poetic rambles—check out “A Mexican Funeral in Paris”, “Donegal Express”, or “The Rising of the Moon.” Like Tom Waits in his lyricism and voice, he’s got a knack for romanticizing his songs with wild drama and colorful detail, so they don‘t feel ordinary. His songs are full of life to be lived, whether on the margins, in the gutter, or down at the local pub.
Another welcome surprise here is his duet with Sinead O’Connor on “Haunted.” It’s a pop slow-burner that builds to crescendo with MacGowan’s shredded pipes trailing O’Connor’s golden voice on each refrain. Beauty and the Beast, indeed, and it works. His voice, now a defiant wreck, can still move you with its grit and burned-out soul. The song makes me think of his great duet, “Fairytale of New York” with the late Kirsty MacColl from the Pogues’ earlier era. That echo can’t be accidental. And “Haunted” doesn’t suffer from the comparison as much as you’d think.
If you’ve seen any interview footage with MacGowan in the last 15 years, you already know he has trouble completing lucid sentences. His stained, rotten teeth flash as he cackles. His natural state now, and seemingly for decades, is permanently pickled. Whether through pints, acid, or pills, it’s all a wash down the gullet. His befuddled manner is not so different from Ozzy Osbourne’s perpetually numb state, I hate to say. He’s become a soused legend, but watching him struggle with coherence can be a painful thing to witness. The damage leaks through his voice and his eyes.
So it’s a relief to find MacGowan is still capable of writing such earthy yet romantic songs. Probably to the surprise of his ex-Pogues in arms, he wasn’t finished after all when the band cut him loose for his debauchery. He followed The Snake with another fine solo release, Crock of Gold, a few years later. And, of course, since then he has reunited with the Pogues to mixed success. Even if MacGowan never makes another record or staggers through another concert, his legacy as one of the finest songwriters of the last few decades stands intact.
Listen: “The Donegal Express” [on youtube.com]
Peter Jesperson on the Replacements Reissues
Foremost among this year’s bounty of music reissues is the long-awaited re-release of the Replacements’ entire catalog. For such a seminal band of the 1980s, there’s been very little career reappraisal up until the last few years. Befitting their notorious underdog status, maybe it has taken the record industry’s powers-that-be some 17 years (since their breakup in 1991) to digest their raggedly magnificent music and legacy.
Either way, this belated gift is worth both the wait and the frustrations involved. The initial treasure trove of material was released in the spring by Rhino Records, and contains extensive bonus cuts and liner notes for the Mats’ first four records, ranging from their punk debut, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash in 1981, to their last record on the Twin/Tone label, the classic Let It Be in 1984. The latter record was responsible for putting the Mats on the indie map and left of the dial, and kick started their underground legend.
Rhino just released the second batch of reissues, which foretells the Mats’ rise to a major label, Warner Brothers, with Tim in 1985, and extends to their low-key, melancholy farewell, All Shook Down, in 1990. Each reissue arrives chock-full of alternate cuts, live songs, and new interviews with band members and producers.
If you ever wondered what nuggets the Mats were holding back, now is the time to ante up and explore. From the raw ache of the acoustic leftover “You’re Getting Married” on Stink, to the early incarnations of “Can’t Hardly Wait” on Tim, it’s great to hear the rough gems they left on the studio floor.
I recently interviewed the man responsible for much of this project, Mr. Peter Jesperson, from his home in Los Angeles. If his name doesn’t strike a chord in indie hearts everywhere, it’s a shame—because he’s the guy who basically ‘discovered’ the Mats in Minneapolis a few decades ago. For good measure, he also co-produced several early records and managed the four cohorts—as much as they could be “handled” anyway, during the first half of their career.
In the ’80s, Jesperson managed Oar Folkjokeopus, one of Minneapolis’s first indie music stores as well as a kind of headquarters for like-minded musicians. Westerberg first came in to drop off a demo tape, and the rest was kismet. The Replacements were soon spawned, scrapping their way out into the world; four scruffy high school dropouts who would go onto become that generation’s finest—at least for my money.
Jesperson co-founded Twin/Tone Records, one of the first and best indie record labels, and eventually signed Robyn Hitchcock, Soul Asylum, the Jayhawks, and many others.
If that kind of credibility isn’t enough, he now is A&R Chief of New West Records, the roots-laden, Austin/California label that has signed Kris Kristofferson, Dwight Yoakam, John Hiatt, and Lucinda Williams to their roster, just to name a few legends.
Despite Jesperson’s association with myriad other quality bands, it’s easy to hear the passion and warmth he still exudes when talking about the Replacements, his long-time mates. Every band deserves a champion, an advocate, such as Jesperson. His enthusiasm and interest largely motivated this labor of love, even amidst the reluctance of several ex-Replacements to reexamine their music from so long ago.
I like to envision these two Minneapolis natives, Jesperson with his old comrade and ex-Mat, Tommy Stinson, now both LA transplants, discussing these reissues and their shared glory years on some California beach, the sand snapping at their Midwestern overcoats, with a few cold ones in tow. Here come a few regulars, indeed.
Crawdaddy!: What instigated these reissues?
Peter Jesperson: Well, I think it’s something we talked about doing for a long time. When I first ran into them, I just thought, “This is a band that will go down in rock history and will be doing anthologies one day.” Not to sound snotty about it, but I really believed that from the get-go. So this is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time—and other parties might have a financial interest who suggested ‘let’s do the reissues now,’ meaning back in ’94, ’95. And we thought it was just too early. I suppose it’s true with any band, but there’s a little bit of a soap opera involved with the Replacements that doesn’t exist with every band.
There’s a lot of emotional baggage, and it was a great time for those of us directly involved, and there were also some difficult times. It was hard to go back, though maybe less so for me because I’m constantly thinking about them or talking about them. I don’t think a day has gone by in the last 25 years when I haven’t had some door open because of my affiliation with them. So I never got too far away from it all. To some degree, Paul [Westerberg, singer-songwriter and guitarist] is the same way since he did a lot of Mats songs when he played live—whereas Chris [Mars, drums] and Tommy [Stinson, bass] really did separate themselves from it. Paul is not the kind of guy who is going to sit around and work on an anthology, so if I couldn’t get Chris or Tommy involved I didn’t think there was much hope of it happening. It was just recently that Tommy said, “I think I can go back and listen to this stuff now.”
Drive-By Truckers: Whiskey, Tears, and Dixie-fried
Not every band with alt-country/rock roots successfully defies expectations to the extent that the Drive-By Truckers do. For eight records now, this Georgia-based outfit has chugged their way through career crises that would have derailed a lesser band.
With the release of Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, the Truckers have yet again dealt with internal turmoil and regrouped to record this sprawling epic. Most bands are lucky to have one gifted songwriter on board, but these guys have three strong contributors. They wrote and recorded over 50 songs for Creation’s Dark, eventually whittling them down to 19 for the disc.
Creation’s Dark touches on all of the band’s familiar themes, from subverting Southern stereotypes, exploring blue-collar, character-driven song-stories, to juggling their three-guitar attack. Their self-deprecating lyrics often underscore what it means to grow up in the South and still retain that identity through adulthood. The trick is they do this without resorting to the easy platitudes of Southern pride that would only demean their home region beneath the Mason Dixon line. The songs range between rave-up boogies, country soul numbers, and gutbucket balladry.
Seeking Grace: Iron & Wine vs. Paul Simon
Many a midnight I’ve fallen asleep with Iron & Wine on the stereo, waiting for my dreams to take me down in deep blue shades. In the shank of the night, we all need a little medicine from time to time. Sometimes music is just enough.
I first listened to The Shepherd’s Dog, Iron & Wine’s third and latest record, during the daytime, and was surprised by the change in Sam Beam’s lo-fi aesthetic. Basically a one-man band until this release, Beam left his four-track machine behind in his bedroom and expanded his music to include polyrhythmic textures, percussive flourishes, and multicultural influences. Nothing too radical here, but if you’re familiar with the hushed intimacy of his earlier work, it’s significant.
So we understand each other, I will say upfront that I believe Iron & Wine is one of the finest songwriters to grace any music genre in the last 10 years. A Southerner by birth, Beam taught film studies at a Miami college for years until he had some success with Sub Pop Records, and moved his family to Austin, Texas. With three excellent records and a few EPs trailing him, Beam has only just begun his eclectic journey.
Beam has said he found inspiration in Tom Waits’ own mid-career, musical reinvention, SwordfishTrombones, when the great man traded in his kerosene-soaked saloon ballads for those of the rusty, tin-can blues variety. Though Beam shares an auteur’s sensibility with Waits, a more revealing parallel can be made with Paul Simon, especially his lyrical verse, and embrace of African, Brazilian, and Jamaican roots music throughout his solo career, most notably on Graceland in 1986.
Simon’s self-titled debut from 1972 is barely remembered these days, but it’s an understated classic of acoustic blues and mellow grooves. He nimbly fingerpicks his way through breezy but melancholy melodies, such as “Peace Like a River” and “Papa Hobo.” Light, burnished odes sung in a creamy, tired voice.
Without Garfunkel’s soaring tenor to lull or distract, Simon’s pop classicism and wry wit shine here in minor keys. If you don’t play guitar, it makes you want to, let me say that. And the slight reggae lilt of “Mother and Child Reunion” just holds you in its sway; the squared, offbeat rhythms hum, and your hips glide beneath the Martin six-string sunburst.
Iron & Wine’s debut (and still my favorite), The Creek Drank the Cradle, released in 2002, glows in similar, subtle shades. What strikes you immediately is the whispered warmth in Beam’s voice, as if he’s reluctantly spilling family secrets. (Rumor is he mixed his vocals low, so he wouldn’t wake up his sleeping daughters—but that may just be a convenient tale.) Each song unfurls his intricate guitar figures, dropped-D tunings, and aches with exquisite sorrow. Despite the acoustic sound, this is not easy listening—his bittersweet verses demand focus. Spare and sad, this music bleeds with emotional resonance.
One of my favorite Westerns is Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and it ends with Julie Christie’s character lost in an opium reverie in some Northwest frontier town while her lover, played by Warren Beatty, is shot to death on the snowy streets. Though Leonard Cohen is used on the soundtrack (and it’s hypnotic), I imagine hearing Iron & Wine during these scenes. So many of Beam’s songs swirl like fever-dreams unraveling in memory—gentle, pulsing, and timeless. Like some ancient parable. His acoustic arpeggios would ripple and his eloquent lyrics breathe as Christie inhales the smoke and drifts off into blissful oblivion as her fallen lover blooms red on the white ground. Slow fade.
As a film teacher, Beam must appreciate the cinematic dimension of his imagery. His songs have been used on recent indie soundtracks like In Good Company and Garden State because of their poignant shorthand. Much of his material feels rooted in Appalachian soil. A splash of banjo and these plaintive stories spill their fable-like qualities about fathers, families, animals, and snakes hidden in the high grass with deliverance so close.
Andrew Bird: Linguistic Whiz, Multi-Instrumentalist
by: Greg Gaston
Andrew Bird may not consider himself to be a man out of time, but his renaissance talents and fascination with music from 19th and early 20th century suggest otherwise.
In our fickle pop-culture world, we don’t run into many virtuosos these days. If you’ve ever seen Bird perform or heard one of his patented, orchestral pop songs, you know you’re in the presence of a master musician—whether he’s playing guitar, violin, glockenspiel, or just whistling. His background includes classical training for violin and a music scholarship at Northwestern University, as well as a late-’90s stint playing with the retro-swing band, Squirrel Nut Zippers.
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by: Greg Gaston
published: February 5, 2010
in column: Feature Story
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