Restless and Real - words and sounds from a shrinking world

Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas :: Music :: Reviews :: Paste

2012-02-01T08:39:00.000-08:00

Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas :: Music :: Reviews :: Paste

Anoushka finds her gypsy soul

2012-01-31T11:23:00.000-08:00

Traveller

By Anoushka Shankar

Review by DouglasHeselgrave

At last! With ‘Traveller’,Anoushka Shankar has finally released an album worthy of her immense talent

The first time I heard Anoushka Shankar play live, I was completelymesmerized. She was a very young womanthen, touring with her father, but even in her earliest performances, shecommunicated a unique ability to fuse what she’d learned from a lifetime ofdisciplined study with a broader palette of sounds that owed as much to JimiHendrix and John McLaughlin as it did to the Indian classical music she’d grownup with.

Right from the beginning of her performing career, it wasobvious that Anoushka had a very special talent. Like her father, she has the gift of beingable to improvise around a musical theme to draw out nuances of emotion andcolour that few others would have had the sensitivity to be aware of. She can play like a temple on fire one minuteand then stop on a dime to coax images of raindrops slowly dropping into a pondthe next. At the age of thirty, Shankaris one of the world’s greatest living performers, yet up until now her recordedoutput has not reflected the breadth of her talent.

To be fair, the world has changed a lot since her fatherfirst broke out onto the international scene in the mid-sixties. At that time, Indian classical music wasstill considered an exotic form, and the elder Shankar’s mission to introducethe world at large to sitar music was perhaps sufficient in itself to guaranteehim an audience and a place in history. Of course, Ravi Shankar has gone far beyond the parameters of simplyplaying classical music and even at the age of 91, he remains an innovator andpeerless musician who continues to make recordings that fall way outside theperceived confines of the raga paradigms. Anoushka must have realized early on that if she wanted to distinguishherself, she, too, would have to break the mould and create music thatreflected her training, but at the same time went beyond it. To that end, in addition to the three albumsof Indian classical music she has recorded, Shankar has also created two CDs oforiginal music, ‘Rise’ (2005) and ‘Breathing Under Water.’ (2007) While both albums,especially ‘Breathing Under Water’ which is a collaboration with the Britishelectronica giant, Karsh Kale, have some wonderful moments on them, neither ofthem sounds fully realized or complete. Neither of them reflect the seemingly effortless confidence thatAnoushka exudes on stage and no matter how many times I return to them, theycontinue to sound watered down and to obfuscate rather than showcase hertalent.

Thankfully, all of that has changed on ‘Traveller’, herdebut on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Built around the concept that Indian classical music and Andalusianflamenco share common musical roots, Shankar and her producer, the renownedLatin guitarist, Javier Limon have recorded a record that allows her immensetalent to shine. It is thrilling to hearAnoushka dive into flamenco grooves on her sitar, subtly switching back andforth in her phrasing to highlight the points at which the two styles of musicintersect. Listening to her riff off ofLimon’s guitar on ‘Inside Me’, the first cut on the disc, or Pedro RicardMino’s expansive keyboards on ‘Buleria Con Ricardo’, it’s immediately obviousthat Anoushka plays a lot better when she surrounds herself with musicians whochallenge her. In concert, her father orthe sublime Tanmoy Bose – who threatens to become the world’s best tabla player– have always provided this encouragement and tension, but up until now herplaying in the studio has never sounded this fully realized.

A musicologist could have a field day with cuts like ‘BoyMeets Girl’, a duet between Anoushka and Pepe Habichuela, the renowned flamencoguitarist from Spain. There is a PHDthesis just waiting to be written about the heartbreakingly beautifulconversation between strings the two share with us here. Or, one could write instead about how Shankarand Limon use Indian and Flamenco vocalists interchangeably on some of thecuts, further stressing the commonalities between the two musical forms. Whether it’s Shubda Mudgal channeling ancientsongs of love or devotion or Concha Buika singing fado tinged blues, the effectis the same as listeners are drawn into the depths of emotion, faith anddisappointment that each style of music evokes.

‘Traveller’ is the album everyone has been waiting for fromAnoushka Shankar. It cashes in on all ofher training, listening and playing up until now to finally express the joy,fluidity and confidence that audiences have enjoyed for years when she’splaying onstage. The material is sostrong, and the musical performances are so thrilling that one can only hopethat ‘Traveller’ will give Anoushka Shankar the attention and critical acclaimthat she so richly deserves.

This article also appears at www.nodepression.com

Things 'bout coming her way - the rise of N'didi Onukwulu

2012-01-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

Nigerian-Canadian singer channels Big Mama Thornton, Phoebe Snow, Billie Holliday and Joni Mitchell to create an amazing collection of new soul and R and B classics.

By Douglas Heselgrave

Move over Adele, Joss Stone and Madeleine Peyroux. It’s time for some real soul music. Sure, Adele and Joss can sing and Madeleine naturally slinks around a lyric, drawing annunciated despair out of every phrase in a way that’s hard to equal, but N’didi and her music are something really special. Something rare.

In my work, I listen to music constantly, and one of the unfortunate side-effects of this is that after a while it takes an awful lot for a song or a singer to make a lasting impression on me. After a week of playing, ‘The Escape’ - N’didi’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed, ‘The Contradictor’ released in 2008 – and listening to it at least forty or fifty times through, I still can’t get enough of it and discover new things with each repeated play. For, ‘The Escape’ is one of those rare albums – like Tracy Chapman’s or Phoebe Snow’s first records – that stands completely on its own merits and was built to last and endure beyond the transience of cultural whims and musical fashion. Real music is like that.

So, what is it about ‘The Escape’ that is so special? On the surface, it’s hard to tell. There have always been lots of talented young women blessed with confidence and good pipes who sing convincing approximations of soul and R and B music, but N’didi has something slightly different to offer. Perhaps it’s the songs themselves. Unlike many songwriters in the genre, Onukwulu avoids the pitfalls of using clichéd phrases and situations to give her ‘blues credibility.’ Instead, she trusts her literary instincts and follows them to create songs that are truly unique, engaging and emotionally believable. In this way, she is more aligned with writers like Joni Mitchell and Tracy Chapman who have spent their careers exploring personal and complicated subject matter that doesn’t neatly fit into the pop or roots music paradigm. Again, Adele and Joss can sing beautifully, but often what they’re singing about is so trivial and trifling that it becomes all about the performance and not about the song. N’didi has no such problems. Every song’s lyrics are balanced, concise and evocative and interpreted with phrasings and vocal nuances that are often absolutely thrilling and never less than completely successful.

For those who have followed N’didi’s career so far, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but even her most ardent fans will acknowledge that ‘The Escape’ represents a significant personal triumph as well as a huge artistic leap from her previous work. Born in Burns Lake, British Columbia, in the centre of the province’s resource belt – a rough and tumble frontier that is hardly known for its support of arts and culture - N’didi Onukwulu’s is an unlikely success story. While her father was a renowned Nigerian jazz musician, N’didi never considered singing professionally until she was a teenager. With that dream in her head, she left her rural home and moved to New York where she began singing at open mics and performing in small clubs. Though her early music was influenced by hip hop, by the time she moved back to Canada in 2006, her music began to reflect the more complex blend of jazz, blues, folk and R and B that has become her signature style. Her debut album ‘No, I never’ was a critical success in Canada which drew the attention of renowned producer and musician, Steve Dawson who invited her to record ‘The Contradictor’ for his Black Hen label the following year. That album reflected some significant artistic growth when compared to its predecessor, but with its mixture of heavy guitar, blues, reggae, folk and electronica, the sounds on the album didn't quite gel and communicated a sense of restlessness, indicating that the search for Onukwulu’s truest voice and musical setting had not ended. After touring ‘The Contradictor’ through the US and Canada for months, N’didi travelled to France where she found the receptive audiences and musical inspiration that had remained elusive at home.

Though ‘The Escape’ was recorded in France and many of the songs involve her new life there, N’didi recruited the services of two of Canada’s most respected roots players, Jesse Zubot (strings) and Kevin Breit (guitars) to flesh out her sound. In every instance, the collaborations work – with Zubot sharing composition credit on four songs – as even a quick listen through the songs on ‘The Escape’ reveal that Onukwulu has finally found the ideal musical soundscapes to support her evocative lyrics and powerful singing voice. The sound she’s opted for is less dense than it was in the past as on songs like ‘The Escape’ and ‘Waiting for a sign’, there is an undercurrent of stripped down rockabilly that is very appealing and perfect for N’didi’s vocals to interact with. And, ‘The Escape’ is a record where the vocals are the star. Whether she’s yearning her way through the gentle waft of the Phoebe Snow inspired ‘Around the Corner’ or vamping in her Eartha Kitt meets Dionne Warwick slur as she does on ‘Waiting for a sign’, N’didi proves she’s got chops aplenty and a very easy and natural sense of swing that holds all of the songs together. And, if anyone writes and sings a more erotically charged song in 2012 than ‘On the Metro’, I don’t want to hear it. My heart won’t be able to take it.

There aren’t many albums like ‘The Escape’ being released today. It has everything a great album should – wonderful songs, fabulous singing and great instrumental performances. So, stop reading this and start listening to ‘The Escape.’ You’ll be glad you did. It may just add years to your life and put the spring back in your step that you might have thought was gone for good. Thanks N’didi!

watch N'didi perform 'On the Metro' live on French TV -

http://youtu.be/tjnQFqdtbb8

Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Friends

2012-01-11T10:31:00.000-08:00

Review by Douglas Heselgrave

Very few people outside of South Africa had ever heard ofLadysmith Black Mambazo before Paul Simon sought them out to sing on hisGraceland album in 1986. The vocalensemble formed by Joseph Shabalala in 1960 had long been legendary in theirhome country, but the combined effect of the racist apartheid government of theday which made travel outside of South Africa difficult for black citizens, andthe general lack of exposure to African music in the west up until thenprevented Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s music from reaching internationalaudiences.

Graceland, of course, went on to sell millions of copies andLadysmith Black Mambazo’s international career took off in the wake of itssuccess. Since the late eighties,Shabalala and his band have recorded dozens of albums, won three Grammy awards(and been nominated for thirteen more) and continue to spend an average of eightmonths a year on the road playing to audiences worldwide.

This new compilation, ‘Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Friends’features duets and collaborations with African, American and European artistsselected from the band’s most popular international recordings. For the uninitiated, this bargain priced, twoCD set may be the perfect introduction to the band’s soaring vocal style. While the music of many other Africanperformers such as King Sunny Ade, Salif Keita and Fela Kuti has nevertravelled beyond the ears of aficionados in the world music community, thefamiliar and immediately likeable rhythms and melodies of Ladysmith BlackMambazo’s songs have made the band a global success.

The music on ‘Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Friends’ covers awide range of styles from note perfect renditions of R and B classics such as‘Chain Gang’

(with Lou Rawls) and ‘Ain’t no Sunshine’(with Des’ree) toAmerican gospel standards like ‘People Get Ready’ (with Phoebe Snow) and‘Amazing Grace.’ (with Emmylou Harris) On track after track, the purity of LBM’svocals and the clarity of their arrangements make this an album that isimpossible to dislike. It’s easy to becynical about the need for yet another version of a song like ‘Knockin’ onHeaven’s Door’ (sung here with Dolly Parton), but it never takes more than asingle verse of any of Shabalala’s new arrangements of these overheardstandards to melt away all of the reservations or resistance one may have begunlistening with.

Perhaps that is the secret of Ladysmith Black Mambazo’senduring appeal: they sing music that falls completely outside of contemporarystyle and fashion, that unlike the songs of many other African acts is almostcompletely devoid of overt political content, yet is so pure and uplifting thatit speaks for itself and points the way to a better, safer, healthier and moreintegrated world where all forms of expression are possible. What more could you want from a CD thanthat?

You can read this review from Paste Magazine in its original setting at:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2012/01/ladysmith-black-mambazo-ladysmith-black-mambazo-

'hello bonjour' - welcome to 2012

2012-01-03T12:17:00.000-08:00

A simple song with a message we need more than ever.

love to you all in 2012

Ravi Shankar - Nine Decades Vol. 2 - Reminiscence of North Vista

2011-12-21T11:11:00.000-08:00

by Douglas Heselgrave

At 91 years of age, Ravi Shankar has earned the right to bereflective. As a dancer, choreographer, composer and virtuoso sitar player,Shankar has spent most of his life – since he was a very young child – on theroad, fulfilling a mission to expose the world to Indian classical music. Up until a very few years ago, he maintaineda touring and recording schedule that would exhaust most players half his age,but the intense physical demands of playing the sitar have finally forcedShankar to pare down his activities and spend more time at home.

While this may be bad news for concert goers who have hadthe privilege of attending Shankar’s illuminating live performances over theyears, the extra time Shankar has on his hands now has been well spent. For, even though his reflexes may have sloweddown somewhat, Shankar’s intellect and restless creativity has not, so for thelast year or two the sitarist has been attending to the preservation of hisrecorded and performance legacy by releasing archival concerts on EMI recordsas a part of a personally selected series entitled, ‘Nine Decades.’

The music for this second volume of the ‘Nine Decades’series was recorded at Ravi Shankar’s home in California on August 29, 1969just one week after he played the Woodstock Festival. Unlike his performance at that legendaryevent which was characterized more by its speed and virtuosity than itssubtlety, this home recording finds Shankar and Alla Rahkha, his table playerin a much more reflective mood. At this time, Ravi Shankar was at the height ofhis popularity in the west and not surprisingly, the parties at his homeattracted luminaries from the worlds of music and film including GeorgeHarrison, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando. And, while it remains uncertain how theintricate improvisations and interweaving melodies resonated with the celebrityaudience in attendance, the recording preserved here is amongst the very bestof Shankar’s music captured anywhere. Comprised of two meditative evening ragas (melodic sketches) the trackson ‘Nine Decades Volume 2’ showcase Shankar at his intuitive peak. The compositions are soothing and can beenjoyed at low volume as background music, but listen actively and you’ll hear thework of an improviser who – without flash or bombast – is every bit the equalof Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix at their freewheeling best.

George Harrison once famously credited Ravi Shankar with‘inventing world music’ and though that might be a bit of a stretch, if youlisten to ‘Nine Decades’ a few times, it might be enough to understand that noone alive today has contributed more to the development of the planet’s musicthan he has. This CD is absolutelyessential listening and belongs in everyone’s collection.

Read this article in its original setting at: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/12/ravi-shankar-nine-decades-volume-2-reminiscence-of.html

Ralph Metzner: A Father of Psychedelic Culture

2011-12-16T13:33:00.000-08:00

By Dale Rangzen, Cannabis Culture - Monday, May 17 2010

TAGS:

CANNABIS CULTURE - A review of the book Birth of a Psychedelic Culture and an interview with its author, LSD researcher Dr. Ralph Metzner.

Ralph Metzner is co-author of the new bookBirth of a Psychedelic Culture and one of the original researchers of LSD at Harvard.I recently told a younger friend of mine that during the early nineteen sixties LSD was not only legal, but it was also considered to be a very valuable therapeutic tool whose uses were studied by some of the brightest young minds of the day. At first he didn't believe me and accused me of having dipped my finger once too often into the sacred nectar. I wasn't surprised by his response, but it reminded me how polarized any discussion of consciousness altering substances has become in our society.

The sixties weren't that long ago chronologically speaking, but for all intents and purposes the early Harvard experiments with psychedelics undertaken by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner seem as if they took place a thousand years ago. The idea that a university would fund and encourage such research seems to belong to another era entirely. For those who came of age in post-sixties North American society, the only news they've read about psychedelics has been bad news.

Birth of a Psychedelic Culture, the new book by Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert aka Ram Dass goes a long way to setting the record straight and couldn't have come out at a better time.

Metzner states, "We wanted to do this book because we had not told those stories from our perspective. Leary has told those stories from his perspective in several books, most notably Flashbacks and High Priest, and there have been two other biographies that came out (recently), one of them is a hatchet job."

Indeed, most writing about the era has failed to capture the essence of what really went on during the early psychedelic experiments. Most accounts fall roughly into two camps - they're either cautionary tales about "a time when (people) lost their way - or rose colored idealistic rants that depict a time when all was 'groovy'. Of course, the truth lies somewhere in between these extremes, and both Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert take great care in communicating the sincerity and seriousness with which they began their research.

Many people today don't have any sense of what North American society was like in the nineteen fifties. As young men coming of age in the post war era, there is no way that Metzner and Alpert could have had any idea of what they were about to embark upon when they started experimenting with psilocybin and LSD. For many, the arrival of these substances was the inevitable counterpoint to the cultural malaise, and certainly nothing else could have blown the lid off our collective ennui like acid did. But, Metzner and Alpert reinforce the idea that - at least in the beginning - these drugs weren't considered as recreational catalysts, rather their effects were studied in laboratory conditions to see if they could be used as a way of addressing everything from alcoholism to violent recidivism amongst prisoners doing hard time in jail.

As time passed, Leary, Metzner and Alpert began to realize that the uses of these substances went far beyond the clinical and they began to do experiments with members of various religious and artistic communities to see what effects they would have on spiritual belief and creativity.

The golden era of psychedelic research didn't last long. Eventually, both Harvard's fear of repercussions as more and more students began experimenting with psychedelics, and the concerns of the larger culture as news of their properties began to spread, put a kibosh on their sanctioned use. The story of Leary and Alpert's fall from grace as they were ingloriously turfed from Harvard is well known. It marked the end of academic privilege as far as psychedelics were concerned, and opened up their use to the larger culture.

Richard Alpert remembers, "People like Aldous Huxley wanted to calm Tim down, because he wanted psychedelics to be available only to intellectuals. Then there were doctors who wanted it available only to doctors. I think Tim just recognized these plants were placed by God for everybody. I don't think the sixties would be the sixties without Tim."

Honeymooning in India - Ralph Metzner, Nena Leary, Timothy Leary at the Taj Mahal 1964The authors of Birth go on to tell how - free of the constrictions of Harvard's rigid environment - the counterculture or hippie movement really began to flower. As Metzner and Alpert take the reader through the Millbrook community experiment and through their initial voyages to India where they found cultural references to support a psychedelic viewpoint, the story becomes one of a search for personal and collective freedom in a society that was not ready for its implications.

Reading through their account, the reader is struck by the innocence and idealism of the main protagonists. They had no guides or context for their research, and rather than the idealistic buffoons or drug victims the press has often portrayed them as, they come across as fearless if somewhat naïve warriors on their own roads less traveled.

The distance of years has certainly given Metzner and Alpert perspective to tell their story. If the book had been written in the sixties it may have been a brash manifesto; if it had been written in the eighties it could have taken the form of a revisionist cautionary tale, but today as each of the authors approaches his twilight years and is the beneficiary of nearly a half century of reflection about these events, it's possible for them to offer well considered and true reflections.

In addition to their reflections, there are many anecdotes and short interviews with some of Leary, Alpert, and Metzner's associates and experimental subjects. Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, RD Laing, Charles Mingus, Maynard Ferguson and William Burroughs all make appearances as their own reflections on the early days of the psychedelic movement help give perspective to the main story.

Birth of a Psychedelic Culture offers a mature and expansive look at one of the most important cultural and scientific developments of the twentieth century. Some have called Acid 'God in a pill' while others have called it 'the most dangerous substance ever invented.'

Whatever one's own perspective, it must be admitted that subsequent developments in computers and technology, the adoption and development of certain therapeutic models as well as interest in yoga and eastern religion may not have manifested in the way they have if it was not for the introduction of psychedelics. Every bit as important as the moon landing that took place during the last year of the sixties; psychedelics and their implications are just beginning to be understood. Birth of a Psychedelic Culture is an essential book and a riveting read. It'll be a very long time before the release of a better book about this era.

Q and A with Ralph Metzner

Ralph Metzner kindly responded to some questions I had about his new book, Birth of a Psychedelic Culture. With Timothy Leary dead for well over a decade and Richard Alpert aka Ram Dass living in semi-retirement in Hawaii following a stroke in the mid nineties, Metzner is the psychedelic elder who is doing the most to keep the legacy of those heady days at Harvard alive in the public's imagination.

At nearly seventy-four years of age, Metzner does not suffer fools gladly, and during our correspondence continually referred me to his published work for answers to the questions I posed. Belying hysterical assertions that LSD causes brain damage, Metzner is clearly still in possession of a lucid wit, and seems to remember the events of the early sixties as if they happened yesterday. Here are some excerpts from our conversation.

Dale Rangzen: If you could distill the essence of what you learned and experienced during your psychedelic sessions, what would you say were the greatest insights provided to you?

Ralph Metzner: The importance of set and intention primarily. Second to that, setting and context. Related to that is the importance of preparing one's mindset and environment. The ability to integrate the experience into one's ordinary life afterwards is critical.

DR: Do you think that society changed as a result of psychedelic use? If so, how?

RM: It's impossible to say. I believe that the important thing is not drugs per se, but the notion and practice of expanding consciousness and taking many more perspectives into account in all situations. The use of drugs is almost a red herring in that it focuses on the particular media, which becomes sensationalized. After all, Charles Manson used LSD and look at what he did with it. What good was that?

DR: Did you and Timothy Leary ever differ on how to expose or introduce psychedelics to the larger culture? At a certain point, Leary jumped out of his academic framework and opened the floodgates and wanted everyone to have an experience with psychedelics. Was this wise? What did you think at the time?

RM: Again, you should go back to my book. In it, I relate a conversation with Leary about the Turn on, Tune in, Drop out slogan, explaining my idea of how it should be extended and how he disagreed with me. As regards leaving the academic framework, that's simply what Leary felt was important to do at the time. He felt the implications and possible applications of psychedelics were too significant to limit them to academic, medical and psychiatric uses. Still, he was not opposed to those applications. I agreed with him about the importance of them being made more available, though I also think the research and medical/therapeutic angle is worth pursuing. Ultimately, it was not a process any of us directed or controlled - it was first a cultural and then a mass movement that had its own momentum. Even Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters didn't control or direct it - they just went along with the energy waves.

Ralph Metzner measures out the doses - Mexico 1963DR: As a person who's a little older than the average tripper, I often wonder what role psychedelics play in understanding life as we age. Do you have any insights into this? In other words, are psychedelics still useful to you though you've done them many times?

RM: The age of the individual and their stage of life of course plays a crucial role in shaping the kinds of experiences one has with psychedelics as with everything else - sex, food, spirituality, exercise etc. Again, the intention or set with which you approach these experiences is more important than your age, gender, profession, education or context. Also, the cultural and historical situation has changed. Being basically conservative and cautious by nature, I'm not sure I would even be interested in psychedelics if I came to them now. There is just so much sensationalism and misunderstanding - not to mention the threat of jail terms or serious consequences from contaminated drugs and the like.

DR: Why do you think there's so much interest in the early days of psychedelic research at Harvard at this point in time? There have been other books on the same subject published recently. The Harvard psychedelic club by Don Lattin comes to mind.

RM: It's curious that the Don Lattin book came out at the same time as our book. Its approach is quite different. It focuses on the biographies of four celebrities who happened to connect at Harvard in the sixties. They in no way constituted a 'club.' Andrew Weil was the self-appointed hit man who got Alpert fired. Nor, did those four people 'kill the fifties' as the ridiculous publisher's subtitle suggests. It was a sub-cultural movement involving thousands - perhaps millions - of people from many walks of life who shared a passionate interest in exploring and expanding their consciousness. They found a relatively easy way to do so. John Perry Barlow's introduction to the book has wonderful reflections on all of this.

DR: You called Andrew Weil a 'self-appointed' hit man. Have you altered your perception of him over the years in light of the 'good' he's done? I think many people have been surprised by how he's been recently portrayed as his youthful 'exploits' have been exposed. Has your rift healed?

RM: I said that Andrew Weil was a "self-appointed hit man" because that is the role he chose to play in the Harvard firing of Richard Alpert. He has frankly, and remorsefully, described what he did in an interview in the book edited by Robert Forte, which we quote from in Birth of a Psychedelic Culture. I had very little awareness of that story when we were at Harvard, and did not even know Andy Weil at that time. So I never had a rift with him that needed to be healed. Years after we all left Harvard, he has become a good friend of mine and we have often participated together at various conferences and workshops, both in the US and in Europe. In the Birthbook, I say "Weil went on to become a major proponent of and model for a healthy diet and lifestyle, and holistic and integrative approach to medicine." I have tremendous admiration and respect for the work that he has done in extending the prevalent paradigms of medicine.

DR: You call yourself deeply conservative and cautious. Thousands of people with similar natures tried psychedelics once or twice and then fled in terror. What made you stay the course? Were your only trepidations to do with legality and purity of the substances? Or, was there something very special about the community you were experimenting with that made you feel safe and secure no matter how far out you traveled?

RM: It's a complicated situation. The social context around psychedelic drugs has changed so much, with media constantly playing up the putative dangers of psychedelics in a sensationalist manner. In the early 1960s, it was all unknown and the potential values and benefits of these substances made their scientific exploration and application in healing and related areas (creativity, religious experience) enormously interesting. These potential benefits and values remain and are being explored again, now that the genie is out of the bottle, with the established methods of scientific research. In the meantime, an underground culture (not counter-culture) has grown, with unknown numbers, worldwide, in which knowledge is shared and communicated in communities of like-minded individuals. For myself, I did stop using psychedelics in the late sixties and immersed myself for about 10 years in the exclusive study and practice of an esoteric school of Agni Yoga, in which meditative methods of transforming consciousness were used. I found it very valuable to combine these yogic methods with selective use of psychedelics - for example with MDMA when that substance became available as an adjunct to psychotherapy in the 1980s. Certainly, the community of individuals with whom you share your healing and spiritual practice is as essential as the "set and setting" and the "drug."

So much fabulousness along the way - Mountain Girl remembers

2011-12-16T13:31:00.000-08:00

So Much Fabulousness Along the Way

By Dale Rangzen, Cannabis Culture - Wednesday, August 31 2011

TAGS:

CANNABIS CULTURE - Hippie elder and counter-cultural icon Carolyn Elizabeth Garcia (a.k.a Mountain Girl) fondly reminisces about the early days of the psychedelic movement and time spent with Ken Kesey and The Grateful Dead in this CC interview.

I didn't think twice when I was offered an opportunity to speak with Carolyn Adams Garcia a.k.a. Mountain Girl about the new Ken Kesey documentary, Magic Trip. Like many who were born slightly too late to participate in the acid tests directly, I grew up in the shadow of the sixties counterculture and as a teenager, I was inspired by the exploits of Ken Kesey and his group of Merry Pranksters.

I had literally missed the bus, but I did my best to catch up and along the way, I encountered the teachings of a whole host of characters that had stepped off the road most travelled to pursue their own paths. The out-on-a-limb postulations of Timothy Leary, the archaic teachings of Richard Alpert (a.k.a. Ram Dass) and the stand-up spiritual comedy of Wavy Gravy were all part of my post-adolescent education. But, it was the music of the Grateful Dead and the culture that surrounded them that really set my imagination on fire. To me, it seemed that they were living an impossible dream of liberation while succeeding on their own terms. Central to this exploding scene was free spirit and original psychedelic den mother, Mountain Girl, who was often left to steer the ship and keep everyone grounded while chaos swirled all around them.

Mountain Girl was born Carolyn Elizabeth Adams in 1946 in Poughkeepsie, New York. After she was expelled from high school in 1963, she travelled to Palo Alto, California where she met Neal Cassady, the beat icon immortalized in Jack Kerouac's On The Road. Cassady introduced Carolyn to Ken Kesey and many of the people who would soon become the Pranksters. Kesey and Adams fell in love and lived together briefly on his land in La Honda during which time they had a daughter named Sunshine.

Around the same time, Carolyn met Jerry Garcia and the members of the Grateful Dead when they agreed to act as the 'house band' at the infamous acid tests organized by the Pranksters. The pair hung out together for many years before finally marrying in 1981. Though they divorced in 1984, the two remained friends right up until Jerry Garcia's death in 1995.

Carolyn's book Primo Plant: Growing Sinsemilla Marijuana was first published by a local underground press in 1976 and remains an indispensable, common sense book on the topic. She is a board member of the Rex Foundation charity and still enjoys going to hear Furthur, the band founded in 2009 by former Dead members Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, in concert when they play in Oregon. "I have to. It would be rude not to," she told me.

At the age of 65, Carolyn's contributions to understanding the countercultural perspective cannot be overestimated. She is imbued with a grace, humor and a sincerity that is all too rare today. Simply talking to her on the phone was a gift. Of the dozens of interviews I've been involved in, the chance to talk to her from her home in Oregon stands out as a true pleasure and an uplifting experience that I will always treasure.

Here are some excerpts from our conversation:

Carolyn Garcia: Hi! It's great to hear from you. We haven't had the pleasure of meeting each other, but in calls like this, it feels like I'm connecting with old friends that I've never met. I love that I'm talking to Cannabis Culture and that we are a culture now. Talking to you - it's better than doing an interview with a big newspaper. I like this so much better. I love that I can talk to medical marijuana people from different places. The good news here in Oregon is that CAMP didn't get funding this year, so that folks here and in Northern California can breathe a sigh of relief.

Cannabis Culture: I'm not sure I've heard of CAMP.

CG: That's the federal and state funded helicopters that suppress marijuana production. They've been doing it for years and this year they didn't get their funding.

CC: Is that because the attitudes have changed or that it's simply ineffective?

CG: In California, they're still having a lot of trouble with folks putting big grows up in national forest areas and those are the people they're trying to get. Unfortunately, they'll pick up anybody else along the way. It gives them something to do and a reason to feel important. I don't know personally what the motivation is. Growing pot can trash the land, but it's also a big feather in the cap of law enforcement to bust one of these big Mexican grows.

CC: Up here in B.C., it's pretty progressive, but every now and then they decide to make an example of someone.

CG: They decide to pick on somebody.

CC: I was watching Magic Trip last night with my family and my daughter was wondering 'why can't we go and have fun like that anymore?'

CG: (Laughing) See, eleven year olds get it. They think those people are just being silly.

CC: My partner Jen broke it to her saying, "you know they're on drugs" – but that doesn't even compute for my kids.

CG: The thing is that they had a very small amount of LSD on the bus. There wasn't much. They had another psychedelic.

CC: Something called IP91? I'm not sure what that is.

CG: Yeah, I'm not sure. But, I've got to say, I didn't even see anyone drinking a beer. Nobody drank alcohol. They had some pot, but not a lot. The pot in those days was mild, very mild. So, I think there was an attitude of just frolicsomeness. They didn't feel as if they had to get anything done.

CC: Do you think that's something we've lost as a society?

Mountain Girl with Jerry Garcia.CG: Well, I don't think we ever really had it. It's not considered adult behavior for one thing. You know when you see someone at a show dancing until they drop and you're a little worried about them. Well, they're putting on a great show for everyone around them. They're giving it all they've got. I think that comes from the same place. It comes from the excitement of human energy. Like a kitten. You can play like a kitten. If you can find that part of you inside of yourself that wants to play like a kitten, you can let yourself do that.

CC: I think we've all got it. I'm thinking of the last Furthur concert I saw with my daughter. She was watching women in their sixties dressed in fairy costumes dancing in the mud. She was kind of hanging back at first.

CG: Wondering 'what are they doing?'

CC: Then the first one who got really muddy was enough to give her permission…

CG: …to dive in. Kids love to dance in front of the stage. Little girls especially – between the ages of two and six – because they haven't gotten self-conscious yet. I think just dropping the self-consciousness and all the posturing that we do is so healthy.

CC: Modern life offers us so few opportunities.

CG: Yeah, but it's really great to see kids having a great time.

CC: We've gotten together to talk about Ken Kesey's trip in 1964. If there was a bump in history and all of that happened today with the bus, do you think you'd have been able to do it in the same way?

CG: Probably not. It's doubtful. I think that what happened was special. You know it didn't just happen. It was a deliberate choice to create the bus and it was a choice to go on no matter what happened. It was sort of like at the coming of the psychedelic consciousness, there were an enormous number of choices to make about how you were going to live your life that didn't really seem to exist before that. You know, we were really stuck in the middle of negative territory in the US and it was very hard for artists to break out and do art that wasn't just paintings on the wall somewhere. To have a project like the bus that was a rolling, roving art project was amazing. It was always renewing itself. It was so exciting. You know, it kind of reeked of newness and novelty. The bus alone was a turn-on for a lot of people.

CC: Eventually you got off the physical bus. How did you maintain the spirit of that – the free form approach to life and experiences?

CG: It was hard. I transferred my intentions to child-rearing and Jerry Garcia. That took up a lot of time. I was cooking for people and taking care of the household. I had to live in a house and that was really tough. Being stuck in one place sucked actually! Being mobile, in a new place all the time and having all this novelty, but there was also this tremendous sense of excitement. There was all this energy coming in and excitement and intention from people coming in. The novelty of the band brought in all this excitement. After the Pranksters, there was this enormous amount of attention around the music groups like The Airplane and us (The Grateful Dead). The media attention was phenomenal.

CC: So, with all of this media attention, how did you keep it together? I mean, you said you were raising kids – in your own form.

CG: We just kind of did. By that time, we had developed our own characters to the point where we couldn't get shoved off our direction by conventions. I think the acid tests and the bus had a lot to do with it. The Pranksters and their friends were just a bunch of characters. Neal Cassady was among the top characters there and he was busy constantly helping people with their character development because he was such a well-developed character. We had people around like Ginsberg, who was an amazing character. And, then there was Hugh Romney who became Wavy Gravy. Of course there was Owsley. We're talking about people who were so firmly in their own characters. They made it possible for everyone to develop their own characters around them. So, it wasn't wishy washy, you know. They knew who they were.

CC: Did it ever feel like too much? Did you ever want out?

CG: Oh man, all the time! It often felt like too much and I'd have to go hide for a few minutes to get my balance back. The energy, especially at the acid tests, would build to such a fever pitch, it would be hard to maintain your attention. I had a job during it all! I was supposed to be running all of this equipment and making sure plugs didn't get pulled out and microphones weren't knocked over. I'd be soldering all of this equipment and having to do this when I was a little bit enhanced, you know! So, it was a good juggling act, and after a while, you'd develop this amazing self-confidence being out on a limb like that.

CC: Do you consider that the golden age of the psychedelic movement? When you started doing these experiments, acid was still legal. That changed quite quickly and LSD became illegal.

CG: It did. I'm going to blame the psychologists because they held on to it for a long time. They kept it under wraps and in retrospect it was probably correct to do so. They saw the incredible value of these tools for helping people that needed to be helped over difficult places in their lives. Psychedelics are great tools for developing knowledge. The media only looked at the surface. They didn't look carefully at the science involved. We knew all about the science, but there was a time when this stuff was spilling out into the public, which we had no control over. There was suddenly a whole bunch of it around. There was a sense that we had an opportunity to bring people into a room and have a good time while protecting them from the outside world while those first ten hours were going on. It was pretty hectic, but it was also a tremendous amount of fun. We weren't making any money.

CC: Acid's never been like that – you never hear of LSD moguls living in tax havens in Costa Rica.

CG: Especially in those days. We charged about fifty cents or a dollar to get in. We got lucky enough to attract this bunch of musicians in Palo Alto in the beginning who were willing to come out and play. And, talk about a group of characters! They were able to develop those characters to the point where they became the longest-running band and, God, look what they did with that.

CC: And, if you wrote those characters down in a script, no one would believe you.

CG: No one would believe any of this. How that all happened and hung together for so long and created such fabulousness along the way. They went from being a post-Beatles blues band trying to play Rolling Stones covers and Willie Dixon covers and then suddenly realized they had to write their own stuff and create their own thing. They created all that music and a lot of it was so experimental. It was so vibrantly in the moment. It was amazing what they could do with the skills they developed over the years. To be able to do that and trust that the other guys on the stage weren't going to screw up. It's really amazing what they did and I don't know that they get enough appreciation even today. The amazing amount of improvisation they did was so successful.

CC: And they introduced the larger culture to so many forms of music – I mean, they played the Stanley Brothers and John Coltrane often during the same set and it was all played with such commitment and joy.

CG: That's true. There was so much joy. Joy is a good word. It was joyous and the whole Prankster thing was joyous until we got entangled with the law. That made it a lot harder.

Mountain Girl toking.CC: Can I bring up something else that was happening? I'm thinking of the scene in the movie when the bus arrives at Millbrook where Leary and Alpert were staying. It seemed like there was a huge culture clash captured on screen there. We talked a bit about the psychologists and their perspective on psychedelics. It seemed so serious. Even in the body language. There's a huge difference between how, say, Richard Alpert and Ken Babbs stand in a room. Can you talk a bit about the differences in approach between the two psychedelic camps?

CG: They were going all religious, the Millbrook guys. But, they had also locked themselves in a building with a mason jar full of LSD. They were weirder than we were, and that – I think – was a shock!

CC:How did Ken (Kesey) look back on these early experiences? I know that you and he were neighbours and friends right up until the time of his death, and I'm wondering if his perspective shifted at all about the acid tests and the Furthur trips.

CG: Oh yeah! I lived four miles away. Well, I don't really know. I think some of the quotes that are in the film shed some light on that. I think he looked back with considerable nostalgia. First of all, he paid for all that damned film with the money he made from those fabulous books that he wrote. It was madly expensive to use that much film.

CC: Especially because he was filming in 16 millimeter.

CG: Oh my God! I can't even imagine how much it must have cost to do that. So, basically that was his pot full of treasure. And, right up until the day he went in the hospital, he was over at his studio re-editing portions of that and they were selling little handmade movies constantly over his website. The Kesey website still sells a bunch of that stuff. What he would do would be to make an hour long film of some of that stuff and give it a title and then paint a case for it for a VHS tape.

CC: That is so far out.

CG: They had a little case that he would dip paint and fantastically embellish the lines and people would write back and say "it's still wet and sticky after six months". He'd laugh. He didn't care. There are hundreds of those out there, but they pretty much had a handmade studio there for years and years. He and Ken Babbs edited and re-edited with the help of their children, of course, who understood computers and could help them figure it out. So, they were constantly working on that stuff.

CC: Do you think he'd be happy with the film as it came out?

CG: Oh yeah. I like it very much. I think it's fine.I think it's a little bit too long and I think they left in some commentary that didn't need to be left in. What they did was cut and paste a lot of stuff together that didn't really belong together. I think it was very cleverly done. Well, that's what they had to work with. They had a big pile of stuff. They had seen Ken's versions of things and they went back to the original material. What they did do was find wonderful quotes and overdub them into the film in a way that was really charming. They did a very nice job of welding together the story, too. It's so nice to see the film. They really made it look pretty.

CC:They also made it all understandable for the uninitiated without a huge background in sixties culture.

CG: It really does pretty much tell the story even though it sketches the last part which goes into what happened after that. So, those are all tiny indications of what happened, but it's hard to cover everything. I'm glad they did it. When I watch it, of course I have a lot of personal connections with people in it. So now I've seen it four times and suddenly I realized the fourth time that it's really fun to watch this film. I don't have to feel personal about it. It's just really fun all by itself.

CC: It sure is.

CG: I showed it to a room full of freaks and they were howling. They thought it was really funny.

CC: And what else could you want from a film?

CG: Exactly. Thank you so much.

Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place

2011-12-16T13:29:00.001-08:00

By Dale Rangzen, Cannabis Culture - Tuesday, August 30 2011

TAGS:

CANNABIS CULTURE - Behind the scenes at The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests: footage from Ken Kesey’s wild ride on the magic bus has finally been released as a documentary film from Magnolia Pictures.

I'll have to begin with a disclaimer. If you're looking for an objective, unbiased review of Magic Trip, you should stop reading now.

This footage of Ken Kesey and the Pranksters' cross country jaunts aboard 'Furthur' (the magic bus) has been lying dormant – ready to explode on screens – for almost fifty years. Quite simply put, it's impossible to estimate the effect that the maiden psychedelic voyages depicted in the film have had on the development of the western counterculture, but what is perhaps surprising is how coherent, accessible and informative filmmakers Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney make the journey for the as yet uninitiated. What could easily have been a rambling, incoherent hieroglyphic journey for those not versed in sixties lore instead comes off as a joyous, nostalgic ode to a simpler time when North America was poised at the cusp of great cultural change.

At the centre of the action in Magic Trip is Ken Kesey, an award-winning athlete and promising scholar whose first novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a surprise hit when it was published in 1962. Bolstered by funds from the success of this novel and the hit play starring Kirk Douglas that grew out of it, Kesey and a group of friends decided to equip a bus and drive from the west coast to the New York World's Fair in 1964. This would be an exciting trip in itself, but Kesey – who had been a willing participant in early LSD experiments conducted by the CIA at Stanford University in 1959 – decided to up the ante by bringing along a generous amount of LSD – a substance that was still legal at the time.

Thankfully, Kesey had the foresight to bring along a 16 mm movie camera and film equipment to document the journey, and the over 100 hours of footage various members of his ensemble captured on film form the bulk of Magic Trip's visuals.

Understandably, the cinematography is not world class. None of the people behind the lens were professionals and they were – more than likely – chemically enhanced while the film was rolling. Still, this is part of Magic Trip's charm. The offhand images bursting with rich colour tell a story that could not be told if there was more forethought. Styles of clothes, automobiles and architecture whirl past the viewer's eyes like a lysergic episode ofMad Men as Kesey and his crew get ever closer to the World's Fair while the reasons for going fade farther and farther away.

The main action of the film culminates when Kesey and the Pranksters drive to Millbrook - a sprawling old family estate and property near Poughkeepsie, New York - to visit the intellectual faction of the psychedelic movement as represented by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and his gang of east coast academics. The tension is palpable as Leary refuses to come out and say 'hello' with Alpert drawing the short straw and getting charged with keeping the Prankster's brand of wild anarchic fun in check. For Leary and company, psychedelics were serious business and Kesey and his unwelcome friends quickly hit the road and moved on.

Timothy Leary and Neal Cassady on the bus.The only thing lacking in Elwood and Gibney's otherwise excellent film is meaningful follow-up on how the trip affected those involved and the culture at large. There is a somewhat rushed sequence at the end of the film that attempts to answer 'what happened' and 'where are they now?' but it would have been nice to have included some contemporary interviews with Ken Babbs, Stark Naked and Gretchen Fetchin to find out what happened to them and how they looked back at their cross country trips aboard Further. Apparently Kesey worked with the footage and created hand made films of the Further adventure for anyone who wanted them. It would have been interesting to hear more about that, too and included a few interviews with Kesey from over the years.

Still, these are relatively small quibbles that shouldn't prevent anyone from enjoying Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place. It is an important historical document and Ellwood and Gibney deserve a lot of credit and respect for going through the mountains of film stock to make such an engaging, riveting movie.

Magic Trip is currently showing at films across USA. No Canadian release has been scheduled at this time. Watch for it soon on DVD.

Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie

2011-12-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

By Dale Rangzen, Cannabis Culture - Thursday, December 15 2011

CANNABIS CULTURE - In part one of CC's three-article series on activist and entertainer Wavy Gravy, writer Dale Rangzen reviews the documentary film Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie.

Read Part 2 - "An Interview With Michelle Esrick, Director of Saint Misbehavin'" and Part 3 - "From Merlin to Flesh Gordon: An Interview with Wavy Gravy" on Cannabis Culture.

A long, long time ago one of our primordial ancestors first hit a hollow log or blew through a reed and found the sound pleasing. From this happy accident music came into the world and now we have Bach, Miles Davis and the Grateful Dead. More recently, a storyteller's voice showed signs of strain and little squiggles were put on papyrus and writing began to record human thought and emotion, giving us The Dead Sea Scrolls, Shakespeare and Jack Kerouac. Skip ahead a few thousand years to the 19th century and witness its obsession with capturing light and shadow on paper and gel, and then watch Michelle Esrick's film, Saint Misbehavin' and by the time it's finished, you might just think that it was the reason why movies were invented in the first place.

After all, Saint Misbehavin' has got all of the elements of a great epic. The hero of the story does go through a great transformation, endures unbelievable trials and tribulations, has visionary experiences and ends up with an ice cream flavor named after him. Not quite The Iliad or The Odyssey, to be sure, but whatever Wavy Gravy's story lacks in the scary monster and plague of locusts department, it more than makes up for in fun and rollicking good times (with a few tears thrown in for good measure).

The hero of Esrick's epic - Hugh Romney – begins life rather inauspiciously before enrolling in the military at a young age, but Saint Misbehavin' is not a war story – at least not in the traditional sense. Romney spent his time in the army painting murals, not making the world safe for American capitalism. It's only after leaving the military and moving to New York that the story gets interesting. For Romney arrived in Greenwich Village – the epicenter of the fading beat and burgeoning folk scene - just as the sixties were beginning to explode all around North America. Romney fit right in and shortly he was reading poetry, doing stand up and organizing hootenannys at The Gaslight coffee house where artists like Bob Dylan and Buffy St. Marie got their starts. Romney and Dylan briefly lived together before they began to follow their individual trajectories and create their own mythologies.

While Dylan's story is very well known, Wavy Gravy arguably had an equal role in forming attitudes and offering alternatives to the generation growing up at the time. Now, thanks to Michelle Esrick, his story has finally been properly told.

Esrick spent ten years following Wavy Gravy with a camera and researching his life. In the early part of the film, she chronicles his commitment to the anti-war movement that grew in response to America's involvement in Vietnam. Romney paid a terrible personal cost for being on the front lines as repeated beatings from the police have left him with debilitating back injuries that still cause him great pain over forty years later. On a happier note, during this time Romney and his partner Jahanara began experimenting with alternate living situations and the Hog Farm commune that they co-founded in the mid-sixties is still going strong today.

Romney is perhaps best known as one of the MCs at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. When thousands of people arrived without proper food or shelter, Romney and his fellow Hog Farmers flew into action, collected food and organized a kitchen to feed the masses. They also set up a recovery area for people suffering from bad acid trips establishing a compassionate model that has served as a blueprint for festivals and Grateful Dead concerts for more than four decades.

The Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream flavor Wavy GravyAfter Woodstock, Romney and his buddies spent the next seven years making their way around the world by bus. During her research for the movie, Esrick found a virtual holy grail of forgotten footage from the rag tag group's journey to the east in a storage locker where it had resided for more than thirty years. The twenty minutes of vintage film stock from this trip that ended up in Saint Misbehavin' is priceless and reason enough to watch the DVD.

Since the late 1970's Wavy Gravy (watch the film to see how he got his name) has divided his time between running Camp Winnarainbow – a spectacular kids' camp operated on rural land owned by the Hog Farm – and as a spokesperson for SEVA. SEVA is a service society founded by hippies and compassionate freaks that focuses on curing operable blindness in the third world. Since its inception SEVA doctors have cured over 500,000 people – including 25,000 children – of blindness through simple cataract operations.

Perhaps, the most inspiring thing that Esrick communicates about Wavy in her film is his humility and sense of humour. There is nothing preachy or sanctimonious about his approach to activism. By flaunting his flaws, Wavy constantly shows that he's just like you and me, but unlike most of us, he walks his talk and gets off his ass if something is bothering him. He's inspiring without making us feel bad about ourselves. His comedy isn't of the obvious slapstick variety that one often expects from a clown. He's often corny and trite on the surface, but open yourself up and you'll experience the kind of deep soul laugh that it truly healing. As you'd expect, there are no putdowns in Wavy Gravy's humour.

Since it was released in 2009, Saint Misbehavin' has received almost universally positive reviews. This may seem baffling at first. After all, there are no big stars, no special effects and no sex in the film. It's not the type of over the top message movie (Blood Diamond, Gandhi) that Hollywood producers love. Instead, it is a low-key celebration of human potential and a joyful exploration of the spirit that resides in all of us and is best exemplified by the life and works of Wavy Gravy. Warmth, love, and an utter lack of cynicism make Saint Misbehavin' a movie like no other.

Saint Misbehavin' has just been released on DVD. In addition to the theatrical release, the DVD features almost an hour of crucial extra footage. To paraphrase Wavy, you owe it to yourself to watch 'something good for a change.' You'll be glad you did.

Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie - Theatrical Trailer from Ripple Effect Films on Vimeo.

Taking it Furthur – Waking the Dead

2011-12-16T13:22:00.000-08:00

Taking it Furthur – Waking the DeadBy Dale RangzenCuthbert Ampitheater, Eugene OregonSeptember 24, 2011“The way things were going, I never would have expected to be here at this moment. This is the overtime round, and every gathering like this is a blessing. And the way the band is playing, you can tell they know that and they’re making every note count” - delirious elder Deadhead between sets

Who’d have thought that forty-six years after playing their first gig together, Bob Weir and Phil Lesh would still care so much about their music? It would have been forgivable if after so much time, their live show had ground down to a well-rehearsed routine or nothing more than a workmanlike celebration of their greatest hits. There are plenty of classic rock acts on the road that give their audiences just that and still manage to send them home happy.

But, simple crowd-pleasing has never been the forte of anyone associated with the Grateful Dead. From the very beginning, they’ve asked more than that from their audience. Being a Deadhead has always been more of a back and forth two-way conversation between the artists and fans. It’s never been simply about consuming pre-digested entertainment that can be carelessly disposed of and forgotten as easily as a fast food wrapper. There’s always been lots of gristle to ruminate over and chew on as the music Bob Weir and Phil Lesh are conjuring these days continues to demand so much of the listener. In the public imagination, The Grateful Dead may always remain as little more than a psychedelic band - a throwback to the summer of love who lull their soft-headed fans with utopian ballads about peace and contentment. Fortunately, that’s only the tip of the iceberg as anyone who’s followed the music’s nearly fifty year history knows. Songs like ‘Trucking’, ‘Ripple’ and ‘Uncle John’s Band’ are classics of the hippie era and still figure prominently in Furthur’s repertoire, but if that’s all that Jerry Garcia and company contributed to the history of music, it wouldn’t account for the dedication and diversity of the crowds that continue to gather and follow the band as it selectively tours around North America.

By playing music that ranges from crass roadhouse boogie to covers of Marty Robbins country classics with generous doses of everything from techno to free jazz thrown into the mix, the Grateful Dead have always thrown a huge musical net. As risky and improbable as such a creative approach sounds, it’s paid off hugely over the years as their longevity certainly attests. When they’re on – as they were this last weekend in Eugene - it’s not much of a stretch to suggest that no one plays better than they do. To hear them navigate the elliptical twists and turns of ‘Estimated Prophet’, ‘Dark Star’, ‘Caution…’ and ‘The Eleven’ – some of the most challenging compositions in their repertoire - without flinching or hesitation should convince the most skeptical of music fans that the members of Furthur are at the absolute peak of their musical game. Furthur’s ferocious and eclectic approach to sound encourages the audience to listen – really listen – and engage with the hidden potential that rests inside of every song – no matter how many times they’ve heard them before.

Going to a Furthur show in 2011 might be more than a little overwhelming to the uninitiated because the Grateful Dead has never really been a band as much as it’s been a culture and an extended nomadic community of freaks and diverse individuals whose gatherings have a power and appeal that has to be experienced to be believed. A person parachuted into ground zero – the centre of the Furthur parking lot – during the band’s weekend stand in Eugene could be forgiven for wondering if they’d somehow been sent back in time to 1968 rather than the early fall of a year more than a decade into the new millennium. For to look around at the tie dyed buses, burrito kitchens, freak out tents and spontaneous drum circles that were forming all over the property around the stadium, the atmosphere that was created felt more like Woodstock or a Rainbow gathering than anything one would expect to experience in contemporary America. Scantily clad young men and women wafted through the crowd holding huge kind buds, chocolate covered mushrooms and banners offering a variety of psychedelics and no one batted an eye. Baskets of hash brownies were passed through the throng of people gathering outside the gate. No one took more than their share. People who had taken too much of a substance were kindly escorted to a quiet place, supported by compassionate individuals who patiently talked them down. If there was another America somewhere outside of Eugene this weekend, it was a universe away and nobody here wanted to know about it.

It may have been many years since any of the members of the Grateful Dead took any acid themselves, but the imprinting of the thousands upon thousands of trips they took left its mark on them many years ago. No one anywhere – to this day – can create a more psychedelic soundscape and environment than the members of Furthur can when they’re on a roll. It’s a power that they came by early and honestly as in their most embryonic form –back when they were called ‘The Warlocks’ – Jerry Garcia and company served as the house band for Ken Kesey’s acid tests. Those early gigs – that often stretched out to eight hours or more – essentially unhinged their conception of what a song had to be as the crude blues and Beatles covers that once formed their set took on extra dimensions and dissolved into huge exploratory jams that mirrored the stages of the psychedelic experience.

Acid and marijuana helped take down the gates imposed by the conformity of the fifties and the Grateful Dead – along with other Bay area outfits like Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service – were happy to provide the soundtrack to the burgeoning Haight Ashbury scene that was influencing youth culture throughout the western world as the sixties went on. A decade later, the hippie scene had all but faded as the culture moved into ‘the me decade’ and other musical forms from ‘prog rock’ to disco expressed the values of a new generation.

Whatever changes were afoot during the ensuing decades didn’t seem to faze the Grateful Dead in the least. They continued to tour and record at a regular pace as they – somewhat bafflingly – continued to increase in popularity the further away the sixties became. Their concerts were more like tribal gatherings or meetings of counter cultural survivors than rock concerts. The campsites and parking lots around a venue were like hippie retreats where a person could eat great vegetarian food, learn about sustainable agriculture, trade high quality pot seeds and score great acid. It’s a scene that was cherished by thousands upon thousands of musicians, political visionaries, spiritual advocates and eccentrics of all descriptions before the Grateful Dead suddenly retired their freak flags in the late summer of 1995 after the death of Jerry Garcia in August of that year. For many, ‘the long strange trip’ was over and real life loomed threateningly around the bend. But, again, you’d never have any inkling of that if you happened to drop right into the middle of the crazy throng of humanity that gathered to hear Furthur unleash the psychedelic beast lurking in the heart of their music in Eugene last September.

At this moment in time, Furthur are undeniably on fire musically, and their loyal and sometimes long suffering fans couldn’t be happier. Several times during Furthur’s weekend run in Eugene, people in the audience threw up their arms, hugged friends and wept with joy as if the band’s triumphs and redemptions mirrored their own.

The moment Lesh and Weir are experiencing now is one to savor as it hasn’t always been an easy ride being a member of the Grateful Dead. Since Garcia’s death, it’s safe to say that there have been a lot of bumpy patches and the moments of pure crystalline musical joy have at times seemed few and far between. The muse that channeled such sweet, complex and riveting sounds throughout a September weekend in Eugene has often been conspicuously absent in recent years – though it’s not been for lack of trying.

Since Garcia’s death, the surviving members of the Grateful Dead have continued to experiment with playing music in many permeations and formations of their former group. The whole ensemble –with a revolving set of keyboard and guitar players – have toured as ‘The Other Ones’ and ‘The Dead’ on several occasions, and while each tour has had its share of interesting musical moments, the magic that characterized the Grateful Dead for so many years has often been in short supply. It’s been said that Jerry Garcia was the glue that held the whole group together and that the transcendent musical conversations that morphed between songs during live sets were really conversations that each member was having with Garcia. His death created a huge emotional and musical void, so it’s not really surprising that it took years for the others to find new approaches and creative territory to explore with each other.

The Dead tour of 2003 shook things up by adding R and B singer Joan Osborne into the mix with some very interesting results, but many of the band’s older fans found the young singer’s wailing and rapping hard to take. For their 2004 tour, they ditched Osborne without having anything much else to offer in her stead. Acrimony and accusations marred the tour and for several years it appeared that it was all over as Lesh and Weir toured constantly with their own groups. (‘Phil Lesh and Friends’ and ‘Ratdog’ respectively) Percussionists Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann intermittently played together as The Rhythm Devils while each cultivated their own groups, Planet Drum and The Trichomes as additional side projects. The surviving members convened again in 2009 for the Dead 09 tour which unfortunately - despite some great shows late in the tour – failed to create any new chemistry or memorable innovations when it came to interpreting The Grateful Dead’s old material. The Dead 09 tour ended inauspiciously as Lesh, Weir, Kreutzmann and Hart took up with their own bands again to tour without indicating any desire to play together again.

Rumbles of change began to be heard later that year as the news leaked out that Lesh and Weir had had a pow wow and expressed a desire to play together again. Both were apparently discouraged by the ‘restrictive format’ imposed by touring under the banner of ‘The Dead.’ Hart and Kreutzmann were not invited to participate in the new venture as the ‘drums’ section of the show as well as the improvisational ‘space’ sequence were central to the predictability that Lesh and Weir wanted to sidestep.

Many in the Dead camp felt that the formation of Furthur was the last straw, the final coffin nail in what remained of the sixties spirit and that their favourite musicians had finally lost the plot, plugging in their instruments to the twin amplifiers of greed and senility. Fans held their breath, a few gigs were played, and surprisingly the initial reports were good. By the time they swung through the northwest in the fall of 2010 for gigs in Oregon and Washington, the band was on fire. Focus and intensity had returned with a vengeance and skeptical listeners had to admit that the unmistakable Grateful Dead sound hadn’t been as robust and interesting in a long, long time.

By the fall of 2011 – if the music they play during their three night stand in Eugene was any indication - Furthur sound even better than they did last year. Flashing back to the midway point of the first set of the second concert of their Oregon run, it was obvious to everyone that this was all about music and legacy and not about anything as trivial or transient as fame and lucre. To paraphrase an old Grateful Dead song, these days Weir and Lesh are not playing ‘for silver, but playing for life.’ The fans know it as they continue to be surprised by how Furthur’s band of grizzled veterans can find new ways to deconstruct and express songs and musical ideas they’ve toyed with – in some cases - for almost five decades.

The road can’t go on forever. Bob Weir appears healthy and consumed by creative fire, but he is in his late sixties and Phil Lesh tilted onto the septuagenarian scale a few years ago. But, for the time being, the Dead’s ‘overtime round’ in its latest incarnation, Furthur is in full blossom and charging forward at breakneck speed. There are plenty of twists and turns ahead. Time’s passing and there’s no better time than now to jump on the bus.

Essential Listening – A beginner’s guide to listening to the Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead recorded several studio albums during their thirty year history, but if a person restricted their experience of the band’s music to listening to those records, they’d probably wonder what all the fuss was about. First and foremost, The Grateful Dead have always been a live band and it is their concert recordings that are most prized by their fans. In the old days, tapes were traded back and forth for free – without any money changing hands – but it can be difficult to track down music that way. For the curious, it’s never been easier to access high quality recordings of their music than it is today. To begin with, there are over 100 official Grateful Dead live shows for purchase to choose from. Check out the band’s official site at www.dead.net to start looking.

Here are some of my favourites:

Road Trips series – is an inexpensive way to sample live shows from throughout the band’s career. Typically offers the best songs from a run of shows rather than complete shows (much to hard core Deadhead’s dismay, but sometimes it’s nice to just hear the good stuff)

Dick’s Picks – Archival recordings of complete and near complete shows. These warts and all sets are highly prized by collectors who want to hear the highs and lows of each show. Very reasonably priced and perhaps the best way to experience the whole spectrum of the Grateful Dead experience.If you’re willing to splash out a little more money, there are several great box sets of complete runs of shows to choose from. My favourites are the bargain priced ‘Winterland 1973’ and ‘Winterland 1977’ box sets. Played to a hometown crowd, these nine disc sets feature the band in all their ferocious, tender, psychedelic glory.

There are lots of Grateful Dead videos out there to watch, but for my money, the only one really worth buying is ‘The Grateful Dead Movie.’ Filmed in 1974 and released in theatres two years later, it presents the Dead at the peak of their powers and offers lots of background into the band as well as great footage of seventies Deadheads getting their freak on. If you really love watching straight up concert films (I personally find them quite boring) there are lots of vault releases of complete shows available on the Grateful Dead’s website.

Or, if you want to sample without buying, there are hundreds of Grateful Dead, Ratdog, Phil Lesh and Rhythm Devils shows that can be streamed for free online. Try www.archive.org for a comprehensive list.You can listen to the 9/24 Furthur show in Eugene show at –http://www.ohkeepahblog.com/2011_09_24_archive.html (or the complete Eugene run and many more can be heard at www.archive.org)Happy Listening!

An interview with Michelle Esrick - director of 'Saint Misbehavin'

2011-12-16T11:43:00.000-08:00

An Interview With Michelle Esrick, Director of Saint Misbehavin'

By Dale Rangzen, Cannabis Culture - Thursday, December 15 2011

Michelle and Wavy.CANNABIS CULTURE - In part two of a three-article series on activist and entertainer Wavy Gravy, CC presents an interview with Michelle Esrick, director of Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie by writer Dale Rangzen.

Read Part 1 - "Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie" andPart 3 - "From Merlin to Flesh Gordon: An Interview with Wavy Gravy" on Cannabis Culture.

Dale Rangzen: First, thanks so much for making this film. It is such an important record of Wavy Gravy's life. When did you first decide to make a movie about him?

Michelle Esrick: l couldn't believe there wasn't a film about him after I had I got to know him. I remember going to the video store to rent one and there wasn't anything in the store. I couldn't believe that everybody didn't know who he was.

DR: How did you first hear about him?

ME: I met him in 1992. A friend of mine was writing a book about the history and culture of drugs in America and so I went along for that ride. We drove cross-country and Wavy was one of the people he interviewed. When we met him, his ice cream flavor had just come out. He was reading from his book Something Good for a Change. There were six tubs of the ice cream there, and I remember having bowls and bowls of it. Then, after the reading, we took him to lunch and he really impressed me.

DR: He is such an open being. You just don't meet many people like him.

ME: He made such an impact on me and we stayed in touch after our first lunch together. Then, in 1996, my partner and I launched a line of Grateful Dead neckwear. You remember those Jerry Garcia ties?

DR: Yes, I do. I remember thinking they were pretty weird at the time.

ME: We did several big launches and press events and Wavy was the spokesperson for that line. We had asked him and he set up a scholarship fund for Camp Winnarainbow so that a percentage of all the sales went to sending kids to camp. So, this really gave Wavy the incentive to do it and the line turned out to be very, very successful. So, we ended up working on the project together for a couple of years and during this time a couple of things were going on. First, I kept hearing him tell story after story about his life and the people that he knew and it was just always so interesting. They were never ending. We spent a lot of time together and this guy's life became like a ten-part miniseries and then on another level, personally and spiritually, he was always encouraging my perception to a better place. He was humbling me because I'd always liked to think of myself as an evolved person and he would say something that would show me I had a long way to go if I wanted to think or act in certain ways. It was always like putting on a new pair of glasses every time I was with him.

DR: He always seems to endlessly positive. I wonder how he keeps it up. Does Wavy ever get blue?

ME: Wavy Gravy is human. Even though the title of the film is Saint Misbehavin', I'm not calling him a saint in the usual sense. We all have a saint in us. We call people who are loving and want to help build the world saints. Every person we've ever called a saint is a human being underneath. Wavy is very human and he's certainly about flaunting his flaws. He does a routine at the kid's camp called "brush 'em if you've got 'em" that involves telling them about when he was a poet he used to brush his teeth with Cream soda and Snickers bars. He tells the story in the dark. He makes it scary and at the end of the story he pulls out his false teeth and tells the kids if they don't brush their teeth they'll look like him! He shines the flashlight in his mouth and the kids all scream. They usually brush their teeth about four times a day after that. He's had parents calling him and asking him how he got them to brush their teeth. That's just a little example of how he uses his flaws to teach people.

DR: Wavy was telling me that you worked on this film for ten years. How did you keep your focus for that long? How did you know when it was finished?

ME: I knew it was finished when D.A. Pennebaker (legendary documentary filmmaker who made Don't Look Backfeaturing Bob Dylan in 1967) put his hands on my shoulders and said, "Stop editing! You're done!" When I showed him the final cut, he got teary and I got teary because my hero got teary. I did tweak a few more things, but that was it. I had never made a film before and the film came out of being completely inspired after being with Wavy. I really could see it. I could see how people would feel if I could capture his essence and put it on screen. For the first six years, I was also working as an actress, so I was doing different things creatively and then I came to a point where I realized if I didn't focus on it 100%, I would never get it done. I had the desire to let everything else go and complete it. Making a documentary film as an independent filmmaker, it's very difficult to raise the money and do the creative part. It's like you need to have two different heads. There was a lot of pressure to be worried about money and yet still have the energy to be creative at the same time. Whenever I wanted to give up because everything was too hard, I'd go back to the good feelings I'd get from Wavy and know that I had to finish it. I could never let go of it. Something would happen that would be a sign to me that it was meant to be. It could be a phone call or a donation, but some sign from the universe would come and there would just be no doubt about what I was meant to be doing. Then when I was able to put scenes together and have people see them, that gave me energy that kept building and building and building.

DR: Do you have a favourite scene in the movie? A perfect moment?

ME: I don't know if I've ever been asked that.

DR: My kids like the first scene with the Wavy Gravy mustering prayer. They love the Winnarainbow scenes, too.

ME: Wow! You're kidding. I could cry. I don't know. What I've seen is that everyone who is around Wavy goes through a perception shift. So, I realized that not everybody gets to hang out with Wavy Gravy, so I felt that I had to share him.

DR: I've had interesting experiences showing the film to people. I've shown it to some pretty hardcore left-wing intellectuals who approach it with bemusement and then part way through - they're always won over. It's quite amazing.

ME: I completely identify with that. I remember showing a rough cut in Los Angeles – a place where there can be a real wall up.

DR: With the cynical kind of vibes?

ME: There was this one very high-powered music mogul and he came in with such a wall up that you could barely say "hello" to him without being afraid. When the movie was over, a line formed to talk to me. He was in the line and I noticed the line was very long and I figured he was too cool to stay in the line. He did stay and he hugged me because he was so moved after seeing the film.

DR: His greatest skill is in breaking down people's barriers and allowing us to laugh at ourselves.

ME: He really is the way that you see him in the movie. He doesn't come home and become a different guy. The way he is is the way he is. I've been criticized for not showing the 'real Wavy' and it hurts because that really is the real Wavy. Should I have shown him having a moment of disappointment? I showed that he parks a car and puts the wheel up on the curb! (laughs) I guess I just assumed that everybody knows that we're all human. But, does he yell at his wife? No. Does he lose his temper with people? No. He feels pain, but I have to say that he transforms pretty quickly. I never heard him complain about all of his incredible back pain. In the DVD extras, there's a scene where Michael Franti gives him the Power to the Peaceful award and he was in really bad pain the day he had to come out an accept it. But, he doesn't complain. He just said, "I need to sit down" or "I can't stay too long." That blows my mind. He never complains. When a friend passes, of course he feels pain and loss. But, he'll write a haiku about them and have a moment where he'll cry. He transforms the pain. As far as answering your question, I don't know if I have a favourite scene. The journey to the East footage was amazing.

DR: It was. I'd read about that trip and to see the footage was fabulous.

ME: And we're some of the first people to see it. It was in a storage space since 1972.

DR: That's what Wavy told me.

ME: Yeah, the Hog Farmers had been paying rent on it for so long and they'd forgotten what was in there. So, I asked them for permission for all of them to let me look around in there. That was an advantage of working on the film so long – by the time I heard about the storage space, everybody pretty much knew and trusted me. There was eight hours of footage from Asia that we put down to 19 minutes. It was so hard to limit the DVD extras to 55 minutes. It could have filled three DVDs.

DR: Let's talk about the clown persona a bit and why it works. It's an interesting stance to take in today's world.

ME: Well, I have thought about this. I love Shakespeare and he has lots of fool characters in his plays. I think Wavy takes on that role.

DR: In Shakespeare, the fool has certain rights and privileges. In some ways, he is very lowly, but he has a certain kind of license to say what he thinks and not be punished for it.

ME: Yes, to me, he is that character. He is the modern day fool. Everyone in the community usually judges them. The classic fool is willing to sacrifice himself to transmit wisdom. No one likes being told what to do, but the way Wavy says things allows people to accept what he says. If I said the same thing, people would fall asleep. The king knew about the fool's power and would call for him at certain times of turmoil. Deep down the king knew about the wisdom of the fool.

DR: The reception to Saint Misbehavin' has been almost universally positive and as I said, we're a cynical culture. How do you account for this?

ME: Well, this is what I have witnessed happening with him when we were promoting the Grateful Dead wear. We could go anywhere – a Beverly Hills hotel – and people would get up and there would be at least four people who knew him as we walked through. These were big moguls. Or, we went to a benefit at Johnny Depp's Viper Room for Leonard Peltier and we didn't have tickets, but he said "don't worry, it will be great." We went there and there were three giant bouncers and I was thinking they're from a world where Wavy Gravy doesn't matter. They won't have any idea who he is. They were four hundred pounds each and seven feet tall and they cried out "Wavy!" as they opened up the velvet ropes and we walked in. Everywhere we went, people's moods shifted and I saw time and time again the effect he would have on people. So, if we can get people to watch the movie – they may not want to watch it beforehand – but once they see it, they change. I think it's because he's transmitting what we already know in our hearts. The final answer came out when I was talking to Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead about Wavy. I asked him what Wavy had taught him. Bob said, "Wavy hasn't taught me anything!" and I thought "uh oh," but then he said, "he affirms what I already know.

DR: Perfect. That's it!

ME: Weir said every time he's around Wavy, it's like he says something that aligns him and brings everything together. I think that's the answer to the question. Wavy affirms what we already know.

Dale Rangzen interviews Wavy Gravy

2011-12-16T11:41:00.001-08:00

From Merlin to Flesh Gordon: An Interview with Wavy Gravy

By Dale Rangzen, Cannabis Culture - Thursday, December 15 2011

TAGS:

CANNABIS CULTURE - In part three of a three-article series, CCpresents an interview with legendary activist and entertainer Wavy Gravy by writer Dale Rangzen.

Read Part 1 - "Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie andPart 2 - "An Interview With Michelle Esrick, Director of Saint Misbehavin'" on Cannabis Culture.

DR: Hey Wavy! Thanks for taking my call. How are you?

Wavy: Semi-spectacular!

DR: That's the best we can hope for, isn't it? My kids have been watching Saint Misbehavin' at night before bed. I put it on the other day and I wasn't sure what they'd think and I kept saying "I can turn it off if you like," but they loved it. They've watched it lots of times and my oldest daughter wants to work at your Camp Winnarainbow when she's older.

Wavy: Ahhh, no kidding. You know that when people ask me what my greatest legacy is, I always have to say the kids who have come out of Winnarainbow. I've been doing the camps for 35 years now.

DR: How did that start?

Wavy: It was serendipity. You know that coincidence is a miracle that God doesn't take credit for. My wife asked me to babysit our son – who was seven years old at that time - while she attended a sufi camp – that being her spiritual lineage. It was out in the Mendocino among the redwoods. I had noticed that many parents there had brought their kids, and that sometimes meant that they couldn't attend meditations. So, I said, "Give me the kids and I'll keep them busy." A few other parents – one who was a juggler, another who was a film director – helped me keep the kids involved. It started to take off and we ran our first camp at the Hermitage at the Lama Foundation. That's of course the place where Ram Dass wrote "Be Here Now", which was the spiritual Bible of the sixties. We discovered that we really enjoyed doing it and the kids seemed to enjoy us. We moved the whole scheme to another campsite a few miles away and found that the kids really enjoyed their own personal liberation and it made it easier for the parents to attend their meditations. So, it's evolved to the point where we have 700 kids every summer at camp. We take 150 at a time for seven weeks over the summer. We have a week of camp for adults now too and it's grown to the point where people come from all over the world. Last year, after the nuclear accident in Japan, we had a whole group fly from over there seeking higher ground at Winnarainbow.

DR: It's become a truly legendary camp. Both of my kids would do anything to attend.

Wavy: Well, in the early days we did camps at the Lama Foundation and we did one on the east coast at the Omega Foundation. Eventually, the Hog Farm found some permanent land.

DR: How did you know when you'd found the right place?

Wavy: I went into this oak grove and in my imagination I immediately envisioned a circle of teepees. We found a way to purchase the land and I moved onto it with a part of my extended family. I live in Berkeley during the rest of the year, but for the camp season I live five miles outside of Laytonville. It's a pretty little town, but if you blink, you'll miss it.

DR: A lot of things, the best things in life are like that. It gets more mysterious as it goes along, doesn't it?

Wavy: It is all a mystery to me – the adventure of life. My adventure started out when my parents were living in Princeton, New Jersey. I remember, one of my earliest memories, was when my father was away in Venezuela working as an architect. I was five years old and my mother had put me out in the yard for my morning airing when this guy with a shock of white hair comes walking by. He asked my mother if he could walk me around the block; now in those days, that was not such a shocking proposition. The thing I absolutely remember from that walk was how funny that old guy smelled. Do you know who he was?

DR: No idea.

Wavy: Albert Einstein!

DR: No shit.

Wavy: Absolutely true. Now, everybody who I've told this to has asked me what we talked about and I have no idea. The only thing I remember is that he smelled like nobody else I'd ever met – or met since. Now, my nose is open and I'm waiting to finally get the chance to say to somebody "You smell just like Albert Einstein!"

DR: Now, that's a one liner seventy years in the making!

Wavy: Indeed! Still waiting to use it! Well, at seventeen and a half years of age, my parents divorced and I had no idea of how I'd make it to college without any support. A high school advisor told me that the GI bill for the Korean war was going to be cut off in ten days, so it was a good time to volunteer for the army and have my college paid for.

DR: Wavy, it's impossible to picture you in the army.

Wavy: Yeah, but I volunteered for the draft in the army. Hard to believe, but true. Mostly, I painted murals and decorated day rooms for the military. Here's a funny story. So, usually, I cleaned my paint brush on my uniform which rapidly turned every colour except for khaki. One day, I was on the parade ground at Fort Dix and a general drove by in his jeep. Suddenly, it screamed to a halt and the general asked me, "What army are you in, soldier!" I answered in a tiny voice, "Yours sir!" He looked me up and down and drove off. I think I eventually ended up decorating his basement.

DR: What happened after you got out of the army?

Wavy: After the service, I went to Boston University and attended the amazing theatre school there. We were located on St. Bethel Street in a big ancient gargoyle-covered building. A lot of the greatest directors in America came by there. My main occupation was crewing in the costumes department. That lasted for a while, but a lot of the teachers in the theatre department were there because of the McCarthy era blackballs. When that passed, they all quit and went back to New York to practice their craft. They took me with them. While I was there I read about jazz and poetry readings in San Francisco and the whole scene that was growing there. I thought I could do that and got my first gig in the basement of a bar in Boston called Pebble in the Rock. After a while, my partner and I hitched into Maine and started a coffee house there. A little later on, that ended and I went to New York again to study at the Neighbourhood Playhouse and I started to do readings at the coffee houses in Greenwich Village. I ended up as the poetry and entertainment director at The Gaslight, which was the premiere venue for the scene in those days.

DR: So many people got their start there.

Wavy: People would line up around the block to look at the beatniks they had heard frequented the place. After each reading, people would throw money into a hat. It was great at first, but it got tedious after a couple of years. The poems weren't coming out of me quickly, so in between poems I started to talk a lot about the weird day I'd had. Then one night, a guy came in and said skip the poems and talk about your weird day and you'll be a hit. So, I was sent around country doing my standup thing and I opened for John Coltrane; Thelonious Monk; Peter, Paul and Mary. Big acts at the time. When I was at The Gaslight, I was organizing hootenannies and this young guy named Bob Dylan walked in.

DR: Did you realize he had something special right away?

Wavy: Oh yeah. He came in and asked, "Do you mind if I play tonight?" and you know, I was so accustomed to the 'moon, june, spoon,' rhyme schemes of the folk scene and he came up with some very fresh images. "Hard rain" was written on my typewriter. But, I remember first hearing "Visions of Joanna" with its "ghosts of electricity" images and it was like nothing we'd ever heard before.

DR: There's a scene in the film where we're told that you told your wife to be – Jahanara – that you didn't think you'd live for very long. Are you surprised that you're still live and kicking?

Wavy: Oh yeah, I didn't think I'd make forty. Those were turbulent times. I was tap dancing on the edge all of the time. I was certainly ready to do anything to stop the genocide in SouthEast Asia. There were times I'd go to a protest and they were taking me out of the window of the bus in a full body cast. Even like that, there'd be cops blowing whistles and encircling me and like I was being given a penalty in a hockey game. It was a truly raucous situation I lived in for years.

DR: Truly! It's quite a transition from a poet and a stand up raconteur to a political agitator and finally a clown. How did all of that come about?

Wavy: I discovered that when I was dressed as a clown, policemen wouldn't hit me. So, when I went to the Republican convention in Kansas in 1976, I bought every red clown nose in the States and put them on the resistors. Nobody got hurt. One of my favourite memories was when – in the early days of the Hog Farm – we took a baby pig on the bus to remind us of our humble beginnings. We decided to run that pig for president in 1968, declaring it the first black and white candidate!

DR: That's hilarious. I wanted to ask you this. I was just down at the Furthur concerts in Eugene. It had been a few years since I'd gone into deep hippie territory and I was amazed at the power and vibrancy of the scene. Why do you think this culture has had such lasting power?

Wavy: As for Furthur, there is a love affair between the band and the audience, that is so palpable you can almost see it. The band creates a groove and tosses it out, the audience wash themselves in it, and this great invisible ball of love goes back and forth. It's like Ravi Shankar says: music elevates people beyond the slings and arrows of outrageous day-to day-life and lifts them to a spiritual place.

DR: What kind of hippie legacy have the hippies left?

Wavy: You can see it in the creative imagination of the Occupy movement. It's Hippie know-how at work. We know how to go into an area and exist. We know how to maintain life support in difficult situations. I see the legacy in the Burning Man in the desert. I went there and it absolutely blew my mind. I've been going to Rainbow gatherings for many years. It's where hippies go to reconnect with each other, share stories and crafts. We're talking 8 to 9000 people in pristine forests.

Hippies are all over the place. With Burning man, it's even more elaborate. They're committed to bringing out everything, every coffee grain they bring in. It all has to be carried out. Going to Burning Man was like somebody plugged in a Rainbow gathering. It was like flying out of Merlin and into Flesh Gordon.

DR: I've never been to Burning Man. One thing we haven't talked about is the role that drugs had in this whole scene. There's been so much negativity around the role of drugs in North American society that it's loaded to even talk about, so I hesitate. But, personally speaking, I can't deny the role they've played in opening me up. You know the Ram Dass one liner "just say know!"

Wavy with David Crosby.Wavy: Hmmm. I just flew in to Hawaii to see Ram Dass for his 80th birthday. He's doing so much better since when he first had his stroke. Of course, we both were involved in the founding of the Seva service society. There's a great section on SEVA in the DVD extras of my movie that I'd love people to watch. I have to be careful of what I talk about concerning drugs because I do so much work with kids at Winnarainbow. There's a chapter about my response to drugs in my book, Something Good for a Change. You can suggest that people read that. It's not a new topic to me, but, because of who I am and my background, over the years I've had a lot of people who were having bad trips call me up and ask me what they should do. My response has always been – 'Go out and make a root-beer float and call me back if it doesn't work.' The whole concentration it takes to make the journey to the supermarket, put ingredients together and drink the float is enough to get them centred and together. So, by the time they've successfully consumed the root-beer float, they're not having a problem anymore. No one's ever called me back. All I'll say is that there's a big difference between smack, crack and smoking flowers. The jails are stuffed with young people who have done nothing more than smoke flowers. I say let my people go and let my people grow.

DR: Enough said. One of the most fascinating aspects of the new movie about you is how it portrays your forty-year-plus experiment in communal living. Can we talk about how the Hog Farm – which has got to be one of the oldest functioning communes in North America – and how it started?

Wavy: It was serendipitous. After a bunch of stuff went on, Mrs. Gravy and I decided to move out of LA into the country and we moved to a little sleepy bucolic – oh God so beautiful town in the hinterlands – but only forty five minutes from Hollywood by the freeway in Semlin, California. We had this little cabin.

DR: How cool is that!

Wavy: So cool as to be frozen solid and glacial. We got this call from the Pranksters that Life magazine was going to shoot a cover on psychedelica and they wished for us to join them in a cover shot with the Pranksters and the Grateful Dead. We were honoured to drive into Hollywood to do this and while we were all posing for the cover, Ken Babbs stole the bus and took off to join Kesey who was on the lam in Mexico. So, in our little one bedroom cabin my wife and I ended up with thirty-five house guests. It was very chummy. We had a garage and a chicken coop where, needless to say, people were living. The landlord came by and said you can't have that many people living in a one bedroom cabin and you're evicted. Once again – in the land of kitchen synchronicity about an hour and a half later a neighbor drove by who said "Old Sol up on the mountain had a stroke and he needs someone to slop up them hogs!" So, we were given a mountain top with a house on it rent-free if we would tend these fifty hogs the size of a Davenport steer! They were enormous. We would feed them slop every day at sunset, but because we heard that about forty eight farmers a year were devoured by their livestock we always fed them in groups of two. On Saturday evenings, we would attend the mega music concerts at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles which was the premiere venue for bands like the Dead and the Airplane, the Rolling Stones and Cream and all of those bands. We had a travelling light show called The Single Winged Turquoise Bird and I got to climb on a microphone and do energy games with the audience at band breaks. Then, on Sundays, pretty much all of Southern California was invited to join us at our mountaintop for free celebrations. Each Sunday was a different theme. I remember kite Sunday during which there was no wind, which was kind of a bummer. Then, when the sun went down, the thermal energy shifted and then, well, you couldn't tell if someone was flying a kite or whether they were just putting you on! It was really cool. We had a Hog Farm country fair with a kissing booth, a contest to see who could stay under water the longest, a pie eating contest and all that kind of stuff. Tiny Tim came up once and we built a theatre for him out of nothing – with benches and a stage. You know, if you get a few hundred people moving rocks with shovels and you can do just about anything.

DR: You've been through lots of incarnations with the Hog Farm over the last four decades or so. Are some of the original members still there? How has it all evolved?

Wavy: Yes, we have some of the original people. The amazing thing is that we're still together.

DR: Was it a long trip to actually settle there? I know you were on the road for years.

Wavy: Yes, we were. One Christmas, a couple of the people who were mechanics bought us a white school bus to drive around. Shortly after that, we secured a gig working for Columbia Pictures in a film called Skidoo which was Otto Preminger's acid movie starring Groucho Marx as God and Jackie Gleason and Carol Channing. It's available now on DVD and it's pretty amazing if you think about it.

DR: I did read in Leary's book Flashbacks about his acid trip with Preminger. He sat watching a bank of TV screens if I remember right and freaked Leary out.

Wavy: In the middle of the shoot, I went to the neighbourhood playhouse with him and he brought this hip Hollywood chiropractor who was adjusting me to the point where all I could do was scream and pass out. So, he filled me full of codeine and mailed me to Pennsylvania to JFK's doctor and he performed a spinal tap on me and found lots of problems. So, he got this surgeon to operate on me for nothing. So, I was in the hospital until I was smuggled out and onto the buses in New Mexico and the rest is history, as they say. We lived in buses for seven years and we drove across the country doing a show called the Hog Farm and Friends in open celebration. It was like taking our free Sunday show on the road. We'd go from college to college and do our shows.

DR: I have a hard time imagining what it would be like living on a bus for seven years. Lots of people start endeavors like this, but they don't stick to it like you did and still do. Are you someone who doesn't need much privacy or personal space?

Wavy: After the bus trial, everything else seemed enormous. On the bus, we had these benches that would open up to double beds at night. Inside the benches were our footlockers where we had our personal space. We had overhead space also, so there was a pretty good amount of storage. Live on a sailboat and you'll have a little less room than you had.

DR: I'm thinking of the film where some of the adult children who grew up at Hog Farm talk about have 25 mothers and fathers. That's an amazing social experiment that you pioneered. I'm not sure if you realize that or if it's sunk in. You live differently than most other people.

Wavy and his wife, JahanaraWavy: Hold on now! First of all, if you look at a book calledIntentional Communities, you'll discover that there are more people living on communes now than there ever were in the sixties. A lot of people come together because they want a nice big house and stuff and they can't afford it on their own. So, they get three or four other families together and they rent a big house. It all seems to come together around the refrigerator and the kitchen. And, if they can do group meals and take turns cooking, there's a lot of blessings there. That seems to be the way it gets started. Then, we all had different jobs and we do again. There was a while before we hit the road that we all had the same job and then traveling on the road and doing the shows was amazingly unifying.

DR: I bet.

Wavy: In some respects, I really miss that but I don't have the physical wherewithal that I could hold up in that kind of vector. I think you need to be in your twenties or thirties to pull that off.

DR: I'm out of that range, too. I used to be able to fall asleep anywhere – the baggage department of an Indian train – but those days seem far behind now. Lots more aches and pains.

Wavy: There's no telling what's going to happen. I could certainly exist nicely on a big rock and roll bus with a lot of people lugging my shit around if all I had to do is sit down in front of a microphone. That may still happen. Michelle (Esrick – the film's director) wants to do that. Who knows? We'll take the film and show it to folks from college to college and that sounds like a very interesting way to activate some young people.

DR: Far out.

Wavy: That's in the fantasy vector at this moment.

DR: To me, that's part of the great legacy created by this film. It has this model of living in the Hog Farm and it's captured so beautifully. It's there for young people to see.

Wavy: It's also very much in both of my books. Like I say, there's an enormous amount of communities out there and some of them are looking for more recruits. Some teams need to get together and try it. Everybody has a circle of friends.

DR: I have lived communally in a cabin on the mountains outside Vancouver, but I am still attracted to privacy and personal space.

Wavy: Well, at the ranch dwelling scene, some places are more condensed than others. Mr. and Mrs. Gravy for the first time ever have a two room structure – one on top of the other – and the bedroom is upstairs. Downstairs, is a tiny kitchen. We have a cookhouse on the property where most meals are held. We do Thanksgiving at the ranch and we do Christmas at the Bay area and some form of New Year's. Though we don't do the Grateful Dead New Year's anymore. I've been working a lot with the Animal Liberation Orchestra for New Year's. I'm happy to make a few extra bucks because mostly I do Camp Winnarainbow as my full time thing. There is an organic farm run by an Irish woman named Irene who does incredible stuff and she just put in a full orchard. Also, on the property is a business called In Tents and they make fireproof teepees and awnings. These are made by a woman who lives here named Georgie Chase.

DR: In Tents!

Wavy: Yeah, I made up that name. I've become very good at the short dash. Also, a fellow named Evan has an environmental business on the property and he talks about this amazing vision we had called Earth People's Parkthat involves buying back the earth and giving it away. We actually purchased 500 acres of land in Northern Vermont and then the Feds after twenty years tried to seize it and we ended up having to turn it into a state park. This idea is what I call the last left hand turn in America. If you set up an office and you get people to mail in five or ten dollars a month and then you can take the money and buy back more land across the country and then leave it. These places would be way stations that would belong to everybody. In an altered state, I got an incredible buzz around that idea. It's off the charts. That's a spark that more young people are going to have to take up and run with. So, there's a lot to do.

DR: No kidding!

Wavy: These things along with the Seva Foundation occupy most of my life. I organize those concerts and put them together for them. The biggest one we did was actually in Toronto, Canada. It featured the Grateful Dead and The Band. It was an absolutely memorable night and we raised a quarter of a million dollars for our work with SEVA curing blindness in India and Nepal.

DR: I remember some great Seva concerts in Vancouver with Bob Weir, Rick Danko and Jorma Kaukokken amongst others.

Wavy: Yes, we're planning another. I'm in deep conversation with Elvis Costello about it, but his dad has gotten very sick. Bruce Cockburn and I are also talking about it. He played at our ranch and is now living in the Bay area. We do some wonderful shows on the property for about six or seven thousand people. The one to catch is calledThe Kate Wolf Memorial Festival, which we've done for many years. It's pretty much an acoustic show and it's as sweet and swell as anything you can imagine. That takes place during the kid's camp so I zoom back and forth. We also broadcast the show in the immediate area, so everybody working on the farthest peripheries of the show are able to hear the main stage from the place they're volunteering. If they ever do another Woodstock, I'll do that. I'm there for Michael (Lang – the promoter of the Woodstock concerts) I've been to all three Woodstocks. I tell people that the first one made me famous and the other ones got me paid.

DR: Was it at the first Woodstock that you realized hippies could create an alternate way of doing things that could succeed or rival what was done outside in the 'straight' world?

Wavy: That's why they got us to Woodstock. We'd been driving around the country and holding these open celebrations and they thought that we could be useful. We were startled when we came out of our chartered aircraft from New Mexico and we discovered that they'd made us security. That was a jaw dropper. We didn't realize the impact we had until we were halfway across the Southwest going into Texas for the Texas Pop Festival. It began to sink in – the impact of our association with the Woodstock Festival. My God! We're still getting feedback from that.

DR: Well, it all could have turned out so differently. There was such a hysterical element surrounding the culture at that point.

Wavy: So, I imagine if I can make it until 2019, it's going to be interesting. They'll really pull out all of the stops for the 50th anniversary celebration of Woodstock. It was crazy when it was thirty years old; it'll be strictly nuts if they do a fiftieth. Eternity now! That's my slogan! Eternity now! Here I go!

DR: Happy trails Wavy!

The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams

2011-11-17T11:00:00.000-08:00

You can read my review from Paste Magazine at http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/11/various-artists-the-lost-notebooks-of-hank-william.html

By Various Artists

Review by Doug Heselgrave

Paste rating 8.5/10

‘The silence of a falling star

Lights up the purple sky

I wonder where you are tonight

I’m so lonesome I could cry.’

We’ve all listened, played and maybe even sung those linesby Hank Williams so many times that they’ve worn out. It’s a fate that hits a lot of greatmusic. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, LedZeppelin, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix. You own all of their albums and rock radioplays their music so often that it’s over for you and it’d take years for youto hear any of this music with fresh ears again. And with artists like Hendrix and Marley whohave been dead for decades, it’s a sure thing that they won’t be releasing anynew music on this side of the mortal coil any time soon.

Hank Williams is like that. His songs have been such a deep integral part of roots, pop and countrymusic for so long that it’s often difficult to believe that they were the workof a single person who had a short career and died tragically at the age oftwenty-eight in 1952. Nearly sixty yearslater, his star has yet to diminish, but if you’re like many Williamscompletists who own every single, album, radio show and anthology, the newlyreleased ‘Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams’ comes as nothing short of arevelation. There have been manyexcellent tribute albums of Williams’ music – the ‘Timeless’ collection thatfeatures many of the same artists as this one is a standout – released sincethe singer’s death, but this one truly offers something different.

More than anything else it offers a fresh opportunity tolisten to and appreciate what made Williams’ music so unique in countrymusic. Like Johnny Cash and WillieNelson, Williams was one of the few country artists who found an appreciativeaudience in the larger musical community and ‘The Lost Notebooks’ reminds uswhy this was so. He was the consummateartist and listening to his music one encounters a mind, soul and spirit likenone other in the history of pop music. His economy, directness and the stripped down perfection of his lyricsand melodies have never been bested.

‘The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams’ is the second CDreleased on Bob Dylan’s Egyptian Records label and is structured very much likethe Mermaid Avenue CDs released a decade or so ago by Billy Bragg and Wilco.Those CDs featured new music set to lyrics by Woody Guthrie. Bragg and the members of Wilco were givenaccess to Guthrie’s notebooks and free reign to choose which poems and lyricalfragments they’d like to set to music. For this set, the Hank Williams estate did a similar thing andapproached Bob Dylan with notebooks full of Williams’ unpublished lyrics, poemsand song ideas that they hoped he would set to music. Dylan contacted like minded friends and theproject evolved into a 13 artist, 12 song compilation that sympatheticallyevokes the spirit of Hank Williams and extends his legacy with these dynamic‘new’ songs.

While there’s nothing as defining or significant as ‘Cold,cold, heart’ or ‘I’m so lonesome I could cry’ in these new lyrics, withoutexception, they’re all good, solid songs. More than anything else, many of thesecompositions read like early blueprints for more polished songs that HankWilliams released later. Each of them offersinteresting insights into Williams’ creative process and emerging lyrical andmusical vocabulary.

The performances themselves are - for the most part - wonderful. Tribute albums, by their nature, can be areal mixed bag, full of hits and misses, but with this compilation the resultsare far better than one might have expected. There are several nods to mainstream country with spirited performancesfrom Alan Jackson, Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell and Patty Loveless thatdemonstrate the enduring influence of Williams’ music. Not surprisingly, of the country artistsgathered for this project, Merle Haggard offers the most powerful performancewith a chilling rendition of ‘The Sermon On The Mount’ – a song that showcasesthe dark and troubled take on Christianity often favored by Williams.

There are no huge departures or experimental reworkings ofHank Williams’ musical style, and for the most part all of the artists payrespectful tribute to his music and sound like they had a lot of fun ‘gettingtheir Hank on.’ Of the rockperformances, Jack White’s guitar driven ‘You Know That I Know’ is definitelythe most fun track on the disc that perhaps best captures the wonky,heartbroken spirit of Williams’ best songs. Bob Dylan sounds suitable ragged as he croaks out ‘The Love That Faded’in his best million miles of bad road voice. Levon Helm offers more of the ramshackle music he’s favored lately witha rollicking ‘You’ll Never Again Be Mine’ that should set many a barn onfire. But, the biggest surprise on ‘TheLost Notebooks’ has to be ‘How Many Times Have You Broken My Heart?’ sung byNorah Jones who quite simply gives her best performance in many years as shenails every ounce of emotion in the lyrics with the kind of voicing andharmonies that have been sorely lacking in her recent music. Though the lyrics cover subjective groundthat may be overly familiar to Williams fans, Jones’ interpretation is dead onand is – by itself – worth the price of the CD. Lucinda Williams turns in the only real dud of the set with ‘I’m SoHappy I found You’ in which she relies too much on her own hurting drawn outphrasing to carry the melody and ends up delivering a song that does littlemore than wallow in maudlin clichés.

Still, that’s a very small complaint in an otherwisefantastic tribute CD. If you’re an oldHank Williams fan, ‘The Lost Notebooks’ is more than enough reason tocelebrate. If you’re new to the music ofcountry’s greatest singer, this new collection is a wonderful place from whichto begin to explore his music.

The complete Columbia albums collection by Leonard Cohen

2011-10-28T12:57:00.000-07:00

Review by Douglas Heselgrave

The collection arrived in a plain brown unmarked box. It sat inauspiciously on the corner of the front stoop for days before I noticed it. I unwrapped it, pried open the packing staple and pulled it out. A hard dense nugget, like a chunk of coal, like a gold ingot the optimistically inclined might describe it as. I tossed it back and forth, impressed by its weight, unassuming silence and suggestion. It was too much. A lifetime’s work. Seventeen albums collected like Hammurabi manuscripts, old scrolls, packed in tight. It was too intimate to break the seal, too much longing, too much pain, too many dark nights of the soul, too many success stories from the self-deprecation of the old lady’s man’s stance. I could do nothing but hide it. Poorly.

The box’s green and gold glinted, stared ominously at me from the left corner top of the piano for nearly a week as I slowly began to imagine what there was unwritten that I could pass off about the collected works. I’d thought a lot about Leonard Cohen in the last five years or so. More than any other time since my early twenties when a torn and waterstained copy of that first album, ‘Songs of Leonard Cohen’ came with weekend guests to that first apartment on Homer street and was left behind.

At that time, his influence was unfathomable, unmeasurable. A man who in the chase of desire saw angels, in post-coital letdown felt breeze of bare ruined choirs, and who in the midst of his best come on, panties between his teeth would give a sideways glance to the mirror, fumbling for ‘hail Marys.’

Listening to Leonard Cohen was the reward for enduring a classical education that allowed for sharing a language, following pads of footprints into fearful places that he had the audacity to illuminate. Listening to Leonard Cohen took off a layer of skin; I could only imagine how relentlessly exhausting it must have been to have been born as him.

Leonard Cohen’s poems, novels and music gave a stoic, public face to my confused Canadian identity. The aboriginal, Jewish immigrant, evangelical seer, and dour Scots who crowded my geneology – old world and new world colliding – found perfect expression in his art. Sometimes listening to Cohen’s songs was like trying to stretch while hiding in a broom closet; other times it was like fingers releasing a string while the kite disappeared in the distance.

Still, I never let Cohen out of my sight. But, for years one could be forgiven for not giving his work too much thought or consideration. He was busy on a mountaintop, busy being robbed. When he emerged from the monastery, humbled and chastened by spiritual work and lightfingered caregivers, Cohen’s situation appeared as the perfect divergence in the script for the hard scrabbled redemption his mythology required. At moments, his predicament peeked through the parable and I felt for the ‘old man’ who had to get behind the mule again to sing, record and trawl through the cities of Babylon in search of much needed lucre and sustenance.

His loss is our gain, repeated over and over again through the literature of Cohen fandom. It gleamed with a terrible perfection.

I didn’t turn back to the old albums. There was the newness of Dear Heather’s minimalist charm to enjoy. It was a blue penciled minor work with its subtext of great country songs that hinted at what was to come rather than the here and now. More than anything it was an addendum, a scrapbook that recreated the languor and directional viewpoints of ‘The Book of Longing.’

For Cohen fans, the real news was the world tour that at first tentatively sought to dispel Leonard’s belief that nobody would care to hear an old man and his songs. As it picked up majesty and momentum, the concerts served to knit together a cohesive sound, to write the book of Leonard with such a seamless flowing line that one could have thought all of the music was the product of one long day’s journey into night. It was truly his finest hour, but as I saw Leonard perform his second transcendent concert in Vancouver, I realized that I had allowed him to choose his musical moments for me – that he was acting as curator of his own exhibit. The Leonard Cohen I remembered was the Leonard Cohen that he gave me on stage in 2009 and 2010.

But, there is so much more to him, and as the box set continued to stare from the piano, I realized that it had been a long time, a very long time since I’d really listened to all of his albums. I owned them as records, cassettes and CDs; they’d been around so long, made their impressions long ago, and I had rarely been compelled to look back.

I opened the box and tilted out all seventeen CDs and began to play them in order beginning again with ‘The Songs of Leonard Cohen.’ Four days later, the last notes of ‘Closing Time’ off of ‘Songs from the Road’ finished as I washed the dishes from the night before.

There’s not much to say. The experience was powerful, profound and personal.

Our time on earth is precious. What we do with it is the measure of who we are. Listening to the titanic struggles, the slow bird wing breaking inside this music, it’s easy to feel that we do so little with our lives. How can we compare our own feeble days spent fumbling with the mighty chords that run through Cohen’s evocations of Eros and pain? At other times, I felt blessed that I had not been chosen to carry such a life’s work with me like Jacob Marley’s forged chains around my neck. Lucky that it was just music and that I could press ‘pause’ and go for a walk in the backyard garden.

There is not much to be gained at this point of Cohen’s history to go through the songs or the albums one by one. Taken together, they are dazzling consistent – a journey, a Pilgrim’s Progress, a soul traversing the wilderness who gently assumes a modicum of wisdom along the way. What strikes the listener is the incredible sinewy, coherence of Cohen’s voice and world view – there are no embarrassments, albums that don’t fit into the whole.

Listening back, I recalled how some of Leonard Cohen’s albums took me by the hand and were effortless from the first listening. ‘Various Positions’ is still the record that I most quickly settle in with. It was the album of my mid-twenties, the first Leonard Cohen lp I bought when it was new. Despite featuring ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’ and ‘Hallelujah’, it is a sorely overlooked album. Songs such as ‘The Night Comes On’ and ‘The Law’ are amongst his very best recorded work and it’s a wonder he doesn’t perform them more often. Other albums, like ‘New Skin for Old Ceremony’ were more difficult and jarring to revisit, eliciting ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ when grappling with strange arrangements; similarly, the audacity of the cheap synths on ‘I’m Your Man’ has not smoothed with age. How did the man who long used a Jew’s harp as backbeat ever hook up with Phil Spector and his wall of sound? Yet, somehow, all of the sounds, missteps and cheesy arrangements form a perfectly sensible whole and resonate with dignity and purpose when considered as a whole.

The truly surprising outcome of the whole listening experience was a deepened appreciation for Cohen’s unerring sense of melody. As an artist known for his words rather than his musical virtuosity, this assertion about Cohen may come as a surprise, but from the very first album, hidden in its muted mix and minimalist scoring are hooks, choruses and melodic combinations that simply can’t be ignored. Producers from Bob Johnson and Phil Spector to the stalwart, John Lissauer have all had killer melodies to work with that reached their highest expression on the recent world tours. The amazing musicians and singers – true virtuosos all – that he surrounded himself with on his travels found so much in the blueprints suggested by the songs that they could tap into the wellspring of Cohen’s soul to create music of the first order.

Finally, this box set may be superfluous. You may have owned – as I have– all of these releases for many years and be reluctant to replace them. It is not for me to get you to consume more. The world’s got enough trouble dealing with all the things its people own already. But, ‘The Complete Columbia Albums Collection’ by Leonard Cohen is a finely crafted, beautiful set offered at a very modest price, and the experiences it offers – if the last week of my life is any indication – are more than priceless. Thank you Leonard!

This review originally appeared at www.nodepression.com

"Sharp Diamonds and Haystack Jewels - 'New' archival recordings from John Prine, The Grateful Dead and Miles Davis

2011-10-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

Reviews by Doug Heselgrave

Sometimes, there’s a disconnect between an artist’s creative output and the product they produce that finally makes it to the market. The music business is so carefully managed and manipulated today that it’s difficult for most of us to remember a time when singers and players regularly put out more than one record a year. For example, ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ and ‘Bringing it all Back Home’ both came out in 1965 – ‘Blonde on Blonde’ was recorded the same year. There’s no way that any record executive worth his salt would allow that to happen in 2011. For decades, Miles Davis recorded constantly while Neil Young has made it a policy to flip the recording switch every time he touches his instrument. For most of his career, Bob Marley would cut a song or more a day in the studio, and a great deal of that music has yet to see the light of day. So, there’s no shortage of good music lying around in the vaults, but the current perception in the industry seems to favour regulated product flow rather than allowing a musician’s natural creative arc determine the timeline for new releases. While some artists have nurtured hardcore groups of fans that will buy anything they record, the logic of the marketplace still dictates that not everything a musician plays will get put out – regardless of its quality.

But, in the last 20 years, the rarities and archival live CD market has experienced a renaissance and ‘new’ music from iconic artists – some of whom are long deceased – makes up an increasingly large percentage of overall music sales. There are probably lots of reasons for this – the most compelling being that the demographic who still buys physical product – the over forties – often haven’t bought into new music like hip hop or electronica. So, having long ago bought all the official releases by their favourite artists, they’re happy to see high quality products in the form of studio outtakes, withheld albums and live recordings from these musicians’ peak periods of creativity made available for the first time.

This phenomenon first appeared after the death of Jimi Hendrix. In the half decade or so following his passing, there were at least half a dozen partially finished recordings released. Not surprisingly, most of them were not very good and for many years a lot of suspicion surrounded any newly discovered releases from the Seattle guitarist. Thirty years later, the Hendrix family is in charge of Jimi’s legacy and his unreleased work is finally being properly packaged, mastered and released. Similarly, Bob Dylan’s music has been poorly bootlegged from the beginning of his career, until finally in the early nineties, he began to release ‘Official Bootlegs’ of his unreleased material, thereby taking charge of his legacy by assuring a bottom line of quality.

Whether one wants to think of this new flood of bootlegs as a cynical cash grab for senior citizen musicians on the downward slide into senility or a musical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it doesn’t really matter. From my perspective, each of the sets under consideration here adds something to the legacy of the artists or groups in question. John Prine has been releasing a lot of music on his ‘Oh Boy ‘label in the last few years with live and tribute albums preceding this wonderful set of early demos and radio performances. Hopefully, this one will be a success and set the stage for more archival releases. Since his death in 1991, Miles Davis’ estate has carefully released live sets from all phases of his career, adding greatly to an understanding of his music. This year’s ‘Live in Europe 1967’ is full of dynamic, scorching performances from an under-represented period of his work. Finally, of course, there’s this sequel to ‘Europe 72’ from the Grateful Dead- the band who virtually invented the official bootleg industry. This new sampler from the Europe 72 tour is one of their best ever.

John Prine – The Singing Milkman Delivers

Central to the John Prine mythology is that he began his career as a mailman. During his mail route, he apparently wrote many of his most enduring songs and this set of early recordings, set to tape while he was still pounding his letter delivery beat, is going to melt a lot of hearts and remind people what’s so deeply enduring about the man’s music.

Essentially, this two CD set covers most of the songs from Prine’s first few albums. Split over two discs, the first disc features Prine singing and accompanying himself on the guitar in Studs Terkel’s studio. It wouldn’t’ be accurate to call these versions demos in the conventional sense. After appearing on Terkel’s program, Prine asked if he could turn on the tape machine and use the studio to record all of the songs he had written to date. Thankfully, Terkel agreed, allowing Prine to quickly rattle his way through his growing repertoire. The performances are strictly off the cuff. They are – to quote Prine himself –real diamonds in the rough. His voice hadn’t quite assumed the casual power it would have a few years later, and the warmth and nuance of his simple guitar style was still in an embryonic form at the time of these recordings. Yet, despite these criticisms, these simple versions of Prine favourites have the power to draw a person in and keep listening.

The second disc features live versions of many of the same songs recorded at the Fifth Peg in Chicago in November, 1970– as well as a few Hank Williams covers ( Hey Good Lookin'/Jambalaya) and an unreleased original entitled ‘A Star, A Jewel, and a Hoax’ that I would love to hear Prine play again. As often as I’ve heard all of these songs, there is still something very compelling about listening to Prine introduce songs like ‘Paradise’ and sing them just after they were written.

John Prine’s gotten better over the years – I am among those who thinks he’s performing his best work now, but this set shouldn’t be missed. At ten bucks for 2 CDs, it’s the best deal in the world from one of its nicest citizens.

The Grateful Dead – Europe 72 Volume 2

Jerry Garcia used to joke that the Grateful Dead were the slowest rising act in show business. Well, they certainly have never appeared to be in much of a hurry, so it’s not much of a surprise that it took nearly four decades between the first and second volumes of this set to come out.

The original Europe 72 was one of the most celebrated live collections ever released that - more than anything else - helped forge their reputation as a premier concert band. Still, this two CD set probably never would have seen the light of day if it wasn’t for the furor created by 70 + disc ‘The Complete Europe 72’ box set that’s coming out this month. Because the whole tour was remastered for the box set, it
wasn’t much of a stretch for The Grateful Dead’s archivist David Lemieux to put together two CDs crammed with tour highlights for people whose budgets couldn’t accommodate $450 for the deluxe edition.

Volume Two offers great value. First, it features none of the same tracks that were on the first Europe 72 albums. The CDs follow the arc of a typical Dead show ,if there is such a thing, in that the first disc features mostly shorter songs while the second disc showcases longer jams and improvisational tracks. The first disc opens with a scorching version of ‘Bertha’ followed by a bouncy ‘Me and my Uncle’ – the song that has the distinction of being the song most often played live by the band. There are several soulful contributions such as ‘Chinatown Shuffle’ from Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan who died the year following the Europe sojourn.

Personally, I have always liked the more experimental side of The Grateful Dead’s music best – so the second disc is the one I listen to most often. It has a truly amazing, meditative version of Dark Star that I’ve been playing over and over again. Other favourites include wonderful versions of Merle Haggard’s ‘Sing me Back Home’ and Woody Guthrie’s ‘Going down the road feeling Bad’ that NoDepression readers should appreciate. Like the Prine set, this one is bargain priced, and is a good way to catch up with some fantastic early Grateful Dead music from one of their most legendary tours.

Miles Davis Quintet – Live in Europe 1967

Casual fans of Miles Davis whose collections are bookmarked by ‘Kind of Blue’ and ‘Bitches Brew’ may have forgotten or not be aware that in between those two iconic recordings, Davis composed and played some of his most unrelenting and challenging music.

1967 was a transitional period for Miles Davis. John Coltrane had died a few months before these recordings and his second quintet featuring Wayne Shorter on sax, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums was in the third year of its fourth year run. He had not yet jettisoned the traditional jazz structures or acoustic instruments that ushered in his Bitches Brew, In a Silent Way period, but he was encouraging his band to play in a tight and aggressive way that was quite unlike anything he had played before. In the early days of the quintet, Davis had his group play selections from his back catalogue in concert – a choice that kept the players ‘somewhat in line.’ (Although it would be pretty easy to think the opposite judging from the way out versions of 'Round Midnight' and 'On Green Dolphin Street' that Miles and the band play here) But, by 1967, he had recorded a few albums worth of new music with these musicians and by the time they'd reached Europe to play their fresh material in front of live audiences, the band was on fire. The resulting performances captured here are nothing short of revelatory.

None of the music featured here could be described as ‘free jazz’ , no matter how many solos and sojourns the musicians go out on. Davis’ solos direct the band to aggressively go out on limbs, but there’s still an underlying structure and sinew holding each piece together. Everyone is obviously listening intently to each other as the slightest diversion or hint from Davis encourages the whole ensemble to follow. Shorter’s sax is angry and metallic one minute, swooping like a bird the next. Tony Williams pushes the group in and out of the beat, with his savage pounding filling any silence that threatens to creep in. Much of the credit for holding the whole ensemble together must go to Ron Carter whose bass notes pick out just the right emphasis from Williams to deepen and channel it for Davis and Shorter to play off of.

Live in Europe 67 is available in one disc and four disc versions. The four disc version features complete shows from Antwerp, Copenhagen and Paris. Similar sets (with Paris show stretching to two discs) but very different versions of each track. There are so many highlights in this set that it’s difficult to choose a representative track, but ‘No Blue’ (perhaps an antidote to Kind of Blue’s boudoir ready ‘All Blues’) clocking in at nearly 15 minutes, is a good contender. Almost forty-five years after it was first played, this music is still ahead of its time with its crazy counterpoints, wild time signatures and shifting morphing leads and rhythms.

‘Live in Europe ‘67’ features some of the best music from one of the 20th century's most important musicians.
Like the other sets described here, this one is very reasonably priced and comes highly recommended.

Festivals, Robert Johnson and Paul Simon Looking Back – Best of the first three quarters

2011-10-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

(a very late reckoning)

By Doug Heselgrave

My basement threatens to flood, my house’s foundation is showing its age and the sewer pipes are wound into a chokehold by roots from the 60 foot tall blue spruce in my front yard. Wringing my hands over money I don’t have to pay for the repairs and straining my aging back (I’m digging as fast as I can!) haven’t left me much time to write recently, so instead of an in depth look back at individual concerts, artists and CDs that have moved and impressed me over the last few months, I have only this abbreviated round up to offer. My apologies to all!

Live Music

This summer, I was lucky enough this year to attend four music festivals, which – as exhilarating as the festival experience is– can also be collectively exhausting with acts, songs and venues blurring into each other. Now that winter is just around the corner, I’ve had time to let the dust settle and the music I heard permeate a little more deeply, I realize how lucky I’ve been this year.

Living in British Columbia, we get spoiled by an abundance of music festivals. Any festival relies on the alchemical interaction of diverse elements – setting, music, staff, weather, food – to create a vibe and temporary sense of community. The venerable Vancouver Folk Festival has been located at Jericho Beach for more than 30 years and this summer’s offerings were better than most. The opportunity to hear Gillian Welch, Justin Townes Earle and Roseanne Cash – amongst others – in a gorgeous waterfront park – complete with protected environments for waterfowl and sacred First Nations aboriginal sites is something I will never tire of.

Doug Cox’s Vancouver Island Music Festival has really come into its own in the last few years and continues to attract a variety of worldclass roots, world and country acts every July. Though the festival was challenged by rain, the mercurial weather conditions inspired rather than deterred opening night headliners, Alison Krauss and Union Station to give one of the most inspired, improvisational and uplifting concerts I’d seen in some time. Their live act continues to get better every time I hear them. It was also thrilling to hear Randy Newman perform, reminding me that sometimes there is nothing more entertaining than listening to a man alone at a piano. Songs as great as Newman’s will never go out of fashion.

The rain blew over the prairies and met me in Alberta where I’d flown in to attend the Calgary Folk Festival for the very first time. While it’s still obviously growing and establishing its identity, Calgary has come out of the shadow of its older sibling, The Edmonton Folk Festival to offer a very solid weekend of diverse musical entertainment. Highlights included an incendiary performance by a rejuvenated kd Lang as well as great sets from up and comers, The Head and the Heart and reggae originator, Ernest Ranglin. I can’t wait to go again!

In mid-August, I attended the Burnaby Roots and Blues festival for the second time. I heard kd Lang perform exactly the same set as she did in Calgary, but it was every bit as exciting. She is truly at the top of her game. It is difficult to imagine that there is a better, more accomplished, singer on the live circuit today. As good as kd was, the real diamond in the rough that day came from the septuagenarian British bluesman, John Mayall. Over the years, Mayall’s live shows have been hit and miss affairs; I’ve heard him ride the blues muse bareback to drive his fans into fits of ecstasy while other times I’ve been rapidly exhausted and bored by the metallic white noise that his sometimes barely competent bands have tried to pass off as music. In Burnaby, a loose limbed, fit looking Mayall took a sold out crowd on a journey through the back pages of his songbook as he offered generous, improvised versions of classics such as “Key to the Highway” and “Room to Move.” It was truly a performance to remember and one worthy of his considerable legacy.

Recorded legacies – Retrospectives on CD

This year, more than most, there seems to have been a real plethora of interesting reissues, retrospective and archival live sets released – often at budget prices and with accompanying alternate, demo or live versions of classic songs tacked on to tempt serious fans. Here – in no particular order – are some of my favourites of the year so far –

The Complete Recordings by Robert Johnson

You've may have heard these songs so many times that they've become more than songs and you don't even notice them anymore when they play. Is it even possible a century after Robert Johnson’s birth to treat the twenty-nine tracks he recorded during his life simply as music? While it’s true that we live in an age of hyperbole – where words like biggest, best, essential, and groundbreaking are thrown carelessly around to describe everything from a new iphone app to the latest Kanye West CD, it’s more than anyone can do to review this music in anything resembling a conventional way. Really, each of these songs offers more and better than we humans deserve. They effortlessly express what it means to be alive more than just about any other music I’ve ever heard.

You’ve been told The Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan - or the blues as it’s become - couldn’t have happened without him. The sound he pioneered has become a cliché that everyone can play once they’ve got three chords under their belt. But, isn’t that the beauty of Robert Johnson’s music? It’s not aloof or elevated beyond our reach. It’s familiar. It’s part of the map of the human soul that we spend our lives mutely striving to live inside of.

“Come on into my kitchen Cause it’s gonna be rainy outdoors”

No matter how many times you’ve heard those lines or lived these songs, they’ve never sounded better than they do on the newly remastered ‘Complete Recordings’ issued by Sony Legacy in celebration of Johnson’s centenary. As important as Shakespeare, as deep as Lao Tse, Johnson’s songs are the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John of American music.

If you could only own one record, this would be the one. Hands down. It’s all been downhill from here.

Paul Simon – Re-mastered and Reconsidered

(Paul Simon, There goes Rhymin’ Simon, Still crazy after all these years, Live Rhymin’)

It’s taken me years to warm up to Paul Simon’s music again. As a kid, I couldn’t get away from listening to Simon and Garfunkel on family car trips; while at school, desperate English teachers striving to be hip had us study ‘I am a Rock’ and ‘The Boxer’ in poetry class. By the time I was in senior high, punk crashed over our suburban neighbourhood like a tidal wave to scatter the music of corporate rockers like Yes, The Eagles and Pink Floyd so far from my turntable that it would take decades for them to work their way back.

In this environment, Paul Simon didn’t fare too well. He was too self absorbed as he sang in minute detail about his neuroses, and how hard it was to be a sensitive, rich, understood musician. Add to that the accusations of musical appropriation that have dogged him for years over ‘Loves me like a Rock’, ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ to say nothing of the vitriol from members of Los Lobos and ethnomusicologists over the songs on Graceland.

So, maybe I’m getting soft in the head, but I’ve really loved Simon’s last two albums ‘Surprise’ and ‘So Beautiful…or So What’ and decided to give his back catalogue a second chance -much to the chagrin of my eleven year old daughter who could only offer ‘Doesn’t he have his own style at all?’ after enduring hearing his first five albums almost non-stop for a week. Ironically, she’s partly to blame for my decision to review these albums. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Paul McCartney (who once represented the absolute nadir of pop music for me) have all found new life with the kids in my neighbourhood and I thought that perhaps I should give the much maligned Simon a second chance.

Like everyone of my generation, I knew all of Simon’s hits, had heard them a million times each on the radio, but I hadn’t really listened to any of his earlier albums in over 30 years. Surprisingly, for the most part, they’ve really stood the test of time. To state the obvious, Paul Simon is a great songwriter. For every hit like ‘Mother and Child Reunion’, there’s an understated gem like ‘Duncan’ with its stripped down charm that would find favour if recorded by a new indie or lo fi group like The Fleet Foxes or Iron and Wine.

The songs on ‘Still Crazy after all these years’ represent a high point of his self-absorption, but the late seventies was a navel gazing era and Simon plunged in deeper than most. Yet, even this record has its hidden gems. ‘Gone at Last’ features a ripping gospel vocal from the recently departed Phoebe Snow that really made me stop what I was doing, listen and press ‘repeat.’

Even though the world in Simon’s music comes from often feels no more than two inches wide, it’s comes off as about four hundred feet deep as he spins koans and conundrums about life in the late twentieth century. Dressed up in melodies that only Paul McCartney or Brian Wilson could rival, there’s something in Simon’s everyman Woody Allen with a beat voice that remains appealing.

Budget priced with bonus tracks and demo versions, if you haven’t listened to Paul Simon’s music in a while, these newly remastered versions of his classic albums are a great place to start. You might be surprised by how good they sound.

This review originally appeared at www.nodepression.com

20,000 miles by Slide to Freedom

2011-10-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

Review by Douglas HeselgraveDoug Cox, Salil Bhatt and company release what may just be the best Blues/ Indian fusion album ever

Albums that attempt to bridge the gap between cultures are often hit and miss affairs. For every successful fusion record like ‘Graceland’ or ‘Dub Qwaali’ there are dozens of well-intentioned collaborations that for a variety of reasons simply don’t work. Whether it’s a case of too many concessions made to accommodate diverse musical ideas - the melodic equivalent of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole - or a lack of creative cohesion on the part of the contributors, it seems as if albums as good as Slide to Freedom’s 20,000 miles are the exception rather than the rule. 20,000 miles is Slide to Freedom’s third release and features the best music they have recorded to date. The band’s first two releases ‘Slide to Freedom’ and ‘Make a better world’ had some great moments on them, but there was an underlying formality and hesitating quality that sometimes prevented the music from soaring as high as it could. There are no such problems this time around and the reason for this is that between the second and third albums, the musicians sound as if they’ve started to relax and worry less about playing ‘fusion’ and more about just playing great music. There is a sense of ease and comfort in the interplay between the musicians that completely transcends the differences in their artistic backgrounds. This is evident right from the opening track – a fabulous version of the Zombies’ ‘Spooky’ in which Cox’s resophonic guitar and Bhatt’s veena coalesce to create a rhythm quite unlike any I’ve ever heard before. The rest of the album is just as successful. Tunes like ‘still small alaap’, ‘vishwakans’ and ‘anjuman’ that have more of an Indian classical structure fit in perfectly with country and blues influenced tracks like ‘Still Small Voice’ and a cover of Hank Williams’ ‘Angel of Death.’ Each of these latter tracks feature Doug Cox’s musical foil, the amazing Betty Soo on vocals and are, in themselves, reason enough to buy this record. If that wasn’t enough to grab you, Sacred Steel fans should enjoy listening to Calvin Cooke and Darick Campbell’s slide guitars that glide under the surface of many of the songs on the album. From a strictly musical perspective, the closing track ‘suicslide’ is one of the greatest fusion tracks ever recorded. Gliding effortlessly between Grateful Dead style jams, Coltrane harmonic explorations and pedal to the medal veena solos, it is a ten minute musical adventure that I never wanted to end. 20,000 miles is a serious contender for best Canadian roots record of the year. Here’s hoping that they tour sometime soon.

Contents under Pressure: Bob Dylan’s Asia Series

2011-10-03T15:41:00.000-07:00

A review by Douglas Heselgrave

‘These are more tranquil paintings. With that last series, you would have to assume that there is going to be movement, whether you see it or not. With these paintings, I restricted myself in a lot of ways ….. these figures are more internal – non-Western’ – Bob Dylan
in conversation with John Elderfield

For all his talk of stillness, even the quietest paintings in ‘The Asia Series’ – Bob Dylan’s new exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery - feel as if they’re spring loaded. They twitch like Apaches posing for a photographer who’s taking too long to click the shutter. Yet, if they could talk, most of the figures represented on these canvases would concede to have attired themselves in comfortable dress, and to have done their best to assume attitudes of repose. But, beneath this mustered calm, there’s sharpness in every corner; words, oaths, long held grudges threaten to spill out.

The psychological depth communicated in Dylan’s new paintings is magnificent and represents a high watermark in his career as a visual artist. For all the studied stoicism of his subjects, the emotions that churn subterranean to the surface are impossible to ignore. Movement is more vibrational - packed as canned heat - than it’s been in the past. A combination of confidence and practice appears to have freed Dylan from the mechanical impediments associated with wrestling with form and colour to concentrate on the communication of emotions that coil just beneath the surface of each of these images. Whether the jangliness that emanates from a tightened hand, or is wound into the cortexes in Dylan’s figures is intentional or is an inevitable, unconscious representation of the world as the artist experiences it is uncertain.

Looking at the eighteen paintings on display, held together loosely by subject matter inspired by the artist’s trips to the far east, it is easy to conclude that if there’s stillness in the images, it’s often as brief as the space between an in-breath and an out-breath. If there is stillness here, it is the product of toil and effort as though flight has been held back, held down, as by iron bands.

Sympathetic aches tweak the tendons, the Achilles heel, when considering the squatting figure of the gambler in ‘The Gameplayer.’ The viewer cannot help but wonder ‘how long can he stay in that position?’ Situations – as is often true in a Dylan painting – have been frozen in ‘medias res’ with the dice already rolled and the fates boxed in and determined. With the thick and muddy tones, the resignation in the eyes of many of the subjects, Dylan reminds us that the situations represented are pages from stories, eavesdropped conversations, that we’ve heard before. As in dreams, as in real life, they’re interrupted. Nothing is concluded.

With no definitive, we create myth and very few artists have created more imagined pasts than Dylan has. In these paintings, moments of remembering shuffle with moments of forgetting - reminding one of the dusty postcards you can still buy on Hong Kong’s Hollywood road of Chinese histories that never exited. As ever, Dylan loves to play with stereotypes as the stoicism and ‘inscrutable faces of the east’ that he portrays here suggest varieties of struggle and quiet desperation that are far more interesting than the images at face value.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the gorgeous allegory portrayed in ‘LeBelle Cascade.’ On the surface, it is a lovely, almost placid, tableau– a throwback to the orientalism of the late nineteenth century. But, if that were all the artist could conjure up, these would be paintings for friends and family. Nothing more. Instead, ‘LeBelle Cascade’ offers a disquieting exposition of vice, or denial in repose. There is something off putting, distasteful about this depiction of traditionally dressed Japanese women who poutily regard the viewer while semi-clad men with their faces turned away hover in the background. Dylan’s explanation that it’s based on people one can find posing like statues in Japanese tourist parks only serves to deepen the unsettling nature of the painting. How long one can linger as the vicissitudes of money and the flesh are weighed out in ‘LeBelle Cascade’ is a private matter between a person and their stomach or conscience as the case may be. It is a truly masterful work that affirms again just how far Dylan has come as a painter in the last few years.

Looking for unity in the images, a narrative thread, I found myself rejecting the eastern motif as the dominant theme. Rather, I began to mentally divide the people Dylan depicts into those I could turn my back on and feel safe, and those I couldn’t.

In Dylan’s paintings, as in so many of his early songs, it is only the workers who - whatever other hardships they face - exhibit any sense of peace. This is best seen in some of the seemingly less ambitious – though equally powerful – canvases such as ‘Up the Hill’ and ‘Bull’ in which both central figures effortlessly communicate a pride and sense of relaxation that seems to elude most of the other subjects Dylan paints.

In other compositions such as ‘Hunan Province’ and ‘Mae Ling, the painter and the subject appear to switch roles. On these canvases, the artist appears most interested in capturing the indirect Fellini like stares of the people in the compositions. Perhaps few people alive have had to endure as many stares from strangers as Bob Dylan has over the years, but as a painter – rather than a ‘pop star’ – he indulges in a relaxed appreciation of these indirect attentions and allows himself to submerge himself in their gazes. The effect is that Dylan draws invisible lines that allow painter and subject to watch each other while the rest of the world whirs by, or is held back by angular lines and mountains of deepening shadow.

A terrible ripping need for escape is a subtext in many of these paintings.
This is represented in its most obvious form in ‘Opium’, a languorous old world image of a women in a ‘den of sin’, but it also ripples through ‘The Game’, ‘Trade’ and ‘The Cockfight.’ In these paintings, moments of distraction are brief, charged, and not to be passed up.

As is often true in Dylan’s art in all mediums, the more sophisticated the situation,
the harder the edges the subject hits up against. Look at the domestic drama represented in ‘Kitchenette.’ One second captured could easily extend into a novel, a movie, a class in modern ethics. Surely it one of the tensest scenes Dylan has ever depicted in any medium. The same could be said of the nasty undercurrents portrayed in ‘Big Brother.’ Do the angular, out of proportion hands of the man lighting the cigarette envelop and protect the subject or are they reaching out to smother? Who is watching? Who has a stake in this drama unfolding?

What angular universe do the figures in ‘Cockfight’ inhabit? They remind me of hundred year old Haida native carvings that struggled to depict the alien white men who continued to arrive on their shores in greater numbers. Less like paint and more like angry swooping down strokes of chisel through cedar. At other times, the people in these works resemble old Jesse Marsh comic strip illustrations in which he reduced his interpretation of Tarzan to a knifelike figure, an African statue cutting through negative space. Still, these speculations are indulgences. There’s no proof Dylan ever saw a Haida carving or read Jesse Marsh comics in the fifties. But, however one chooses to draw up the pie of Dylan’s painterly influences, it’s satisfying to watch his stylistic stew is getting much thicker and tastier. The German expressionist elements are still very much present as preoccupied figures with Fassbinder attitudes of despair still make themselves known, however cloaked in Asian contemplative garb.

Finally, some mention must be made of the controversy surrounding the images themselves and the revelations touted in the press concerning how Mr. Dylan used some previously existing photographs as reference and inspiration for the paintings in ‘The Asia Series.’ Respectfully, those writers who ballyhoo about this as proof that the painter is a no talent fake obviously know nothing about visual art and its history. Artists – like musicians – have always taken from life and worked with existing source material as a template to communicate their ideas and emotions. Look at Van Gogh. – It’s not the sunflowers themselves that people love – it’s what Van Gogh saw in them and had the bravery and skill to put down on canvas that fires people’s imagination. It’s the vision. No one ever gets accused of plagiarism when they write a love song – even though there are millions of love songs out there. It’s understood as a genre in which to work. In the same way that every new love song stands on the shoulders of all those that have come before it, Bob Dylan as painter is working in a medium that has thousands of precedents. Within these precedents, Dylan manages to have something compelling to say in much the same way that he found new possibilities and ideas to explore within the often staid confines of folk music.

Finally, every painting in this series extends the conversation Bob Dylan has carried on with the world for the last fifty years. How do we come out of ourselves enough to express our particular predicaments? Realizing these predicaments, how do we carry on with dignity and resolve? Are true human relationships possible or are we all voyeurs watching our lives from the sidelines?

Once the dust has settled and the purveyors of today’s news have picked the bones of Dylan’s newest shortcomings clean, the eighteen paintings in this show will continue to have enough going on in them to stand on their own. They will age well. If you don’t live in New York, a catalogue is available. It’s beautiful. I can’t stop looking at it.

Enjoy the show.

This article also appears at www.nodepression.com
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Note: I would have loved to have been allowed to feature more images in this article, but other than ‘The Kitchenette’, they are all subject to copyright. You can see them online or order the catalogue.

The Peacemaker’s Chauffeur By Jason Wilson

2011-09-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

Review by Douglas Heselgrave

When I first heard Bob Marley in 1977 at fifteen years of age, the way I thought of music changed almost instantly. Until then, I thought that music that expressed the need for social change and self-reliance belonged solely to artists like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Richie Havens. An acoustic guitar – and little else in the way of accompaniment – was de rigeur. ‘Dance music’ such as reggae had always existed in my mind as little more than a novelty or at best a soundtrack to a summer party. But, once I heard the newly minted ‘Exodus’ album at my friend’s brother’s apartment, I was hooked.

As a burgeoning reggae fan, I couldn’t have come on board at a better time. In the next few years, I became exposed to the music of Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Burning Spear, Culture, Wailing Souls, Augustus Pablo, Toots and the Maytals ….. the list goes on. I was lucky enough to see Bob Marley live on the Survival tour and in the following years, it was not uncommon to be able to attend shows by Tosh, Dennis Brown, Culture, Third World, Burning Spear and Gregory Isaacs all in a single summer.

Those were heady days, and if you’re of my generation and of my musical inclination, you may have begun to despair about the state of reggae in recent years. Caribbean friends assure me that there is a lot of great music still being produced, and I’m sure that they’re right. But, for me, reggae peaked in the early eighties with Sly and Robbie’s original Black Uhuru lineup. I don’t mean to suggest it’s all been downhill from there – I’ve enjoyed a lot of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s recent music. Burning Spear is still a force of nature, though I wish he still toured regularly, and I’ve enjoyed a lot of latter day dub and reggae inspired lounge by outfits like Washington, D.C.’s Thievery Corporation. Still, to my ears, a lot of the reggae I hear – like the blues before it – has become cliché ridden and redundant. If ever a genre of music was in need of a shakeup, it’s reggae.

But, as the Good Book says, change sometimes comes at the strangest times in the most unlikely of places. Who would have thought that my favourite reggae album of the summer would come from a white Canadian keyboard player who spends much of his time playing celtic and folk music with Scotland’s Dick Gaughan? But, the more I listen to Jason Wilson’s excellent recent double CD, ‘The Peacemaker’s Chauffeur’, the more I am convinced that he’s onto something that may just help broaden the spectrum of how people consider reggae music.

Jason Wilson is a Toronto native who grew up hearing reggae music in the predominantly West Indian section of town where his family lived. So, it wasn’t much of a stretch when the young keyboardist gravitated to playing reggae as a young man with the critically acclaimed local outfit, Tabbaruk. Between 1989 and 2004, they recorded eight albums worth of music, releasing six CDs including the Juno nominated ‘Jonah’ in 2000. In between sessions, Wilson apprenticed with the late reggae keyboard originator, Jackie Mittoo with whom he did several recordings and whose last work is featured on ‘The Peacemaker’s Chauffeur’. He also had the opportunity to record with such name acts as Sly and Robbie as well as UB40. In his spare time (!) Wilson also managed to earn a PHD in history and pen an award winning book about hockey entitled ‘Lord Stanley: the man behind the cup’ in 2006.

Somehow all of Wilson’s diverse interests – passion for history, hockey and celtic folk music – percolate together to form a perfectly enjoyable reggae concept album entitled ‘The Peacemaker’s Chauffeur’ that Wilson first released in a limited way in 2008. When I met Wilson this summer, he gave me a copy to listen to at the Calgary Folk Festival (where he was supporting both legendary Jamaican guitarist, Ernest Ranglin and Scottish folk singer, Dick Gaughan) and I have to admit to a little skepticism. When I heard him play with Gaughan, he had just the right approach and every keyboard flourish elevated the Scottish guitarist’s songs. He rocked the festival with Ranglin both times I heard him play, but I still worried about if and how he’d be able to blend his musical influences on a solo record.

A quick look at the album credits showed that top flight musicians from both genres – Dave Swarbick and David Francy from the folk side and Jackie Mittoo, Ernest Ranglin and Aswad’s Brinsley Forde representing the reggae camp – contributed to the project, but I’d heard cross genre recordings before that had been nothing short of disastrous. I needn’t have worried. ‘The Peacemaker’s Chauffeur’ is a good and sometimes great recording that deserves to be heard. Loosely held together by the themes of war and peace, Wilson articulately explores the effects of war on common people over the course of fifteen original tracks and two carefully chosen covers (Elton John’s ‘Madman across the Water’ and the traditional ‘Matty Groves’)

As one would expect, the playing is stellar throughout most of this double CD. There are very few missteps and when – as on the classically inspired ‘Flowers of the Forest’ – the music doesn’t seem to jive with the album as a whole, Wilson can be forgiven as listened to in isolation, the performances remain uniformly excellent. For the more traditional reggae fan, ‘The Warrior’, ‘Madman across the Water’ and ‘The importance of being Ernest’ (a tribute to Ranglin) should prove more satisfying.

Finally, Jason White should be given huge credit for taking the risks he did with ‘The Peacemaker’s Chauffeur.’ He’s got the chops to play whatever he wants and rather than make a predictable crowd pleaser, he’s gone out on a limb in search of something different. A very worthwhile release that deserves a listen.

This posting also appears at www.nodepression.com

The Old Magic by Nick Lowe

2011-09-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

The spirits of Buddy Holly, Frank Sinatra and Chet Baker inspire Nick Lowe’s
new album

My review from www.pastemagazine.com

For more than three decades and despite all of the critical acclaim he’s received
during that time, Nick Lowe has been making music that flies right under most
people’s radar. And, that’s a shame because it’s hard to imagine a soul so hard-hearted and melody-challenged who wouldn’t find a lot to love in The Old Magic, Lowe’s first collection of new songs in four years.

If you didn’t know any better, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to hear songs like “Checkout Time” or “Stoplight Roses” and think you were listening to recently
discovered treasures from the Sun Records vault or outtakes from a lost Johnny
Cash recording from the ’50s. As hyperbolic as that may sound, the eight originals
and three covers that Lowe has recorded this time out are as good as pop music
gets.

For most people, Lowe is remembered primarily for his exhuberant new wave and
pop records from the ’80s. Discs like Labour of Lust and Pure Pop for Now
People sound just as fresh as they did when they were issued, but the singer and
guitarist has never been one to rest on his laurels as he’s continued to release a
steady stream of brilliant albums that have found favor with a small but dedicated
group of fans.

Nick Lowe remains a songwriter’s musician. He’s never been one for flashy solos, complicated chord sequences or bombastic arrangements. The tracks on The Old Magic are based around simple melodies with Lowe’s intimate, straightforward vocals mixed right out front. Numbers like the Sinatra-esque “House for Sale” and the Buddy Holly-influenced Sensitive Man are masterpieces of lyrical economy that showcase Lowe’s brilliant phrasing and nuanced delivery.

It would be difficult to pick a standout track on such a strong album, but the Chet
Baker-styled “I Read A Lot” is certainly a contender and may just be one of the most
witty and soulful break-up songs written in years. Mature love songs are a true
rarity in pop music, and The Old Magic offers proof that no one writes them better
than Nick Lowe does. At 61 years of age—a time in life when many people begin to
consider retirement—Nick Lowe has put out his best album in many years and more
than three decades into his career, the British tunesmith may be just beginning to
hit his stride.

read this in its original setting at www.pastemagazine.com -
http://mplayer.pastemagazine.com/issues/week-11/articles#%3Futm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=This_Week+In+The+mPlayer+07-05-11_7_5_111&article=/issues/week-11/articles/nick-lowe-the-old-magic

The Place I left Behind by The Deep Dark Woods

2011-09-12T13:42:00.000-07:00

Review by Doug Heselgrave

Saskatchewan roots band’s third album builds on the promise of their earlier records to deliver a near perfect set of songs

What is it about the Deep Dark Woods that distinguishes them from so many other young roots bands who essentially mine the same musical ground? That’s something I’ve been asking myself as I keep replaying their wonderful new album, ‘The Place I left Behind.’ Because on the surface there’s not really much that separates them from a hundred other bands traveling through North America with wooly beards, faded plaid shirts and banged up guitar cases in tow. Love gone wrong, money frittered away chasing unfulfilled dreams, train steam curling around the bend as old best friends disappear beyond the horizon – it’s all been said and sung before. Surely, we don’t need to hear another ramshackle woozy song about rambling ways and loves who only want us when they’re hurting.

Go into ‘The Place I Left Behind’ with that attitude and see how long you can keep it going. Maybe you’ll break down when the listless harmonies of the opening ‘West Side Street’ slide in or if you’re especially hard to win over, it may take until the second – and title - track rolls around before you stop everything else you’re doing to ride wistfully down vocalist Ryan Boldt’s journey into restless heartbreak.

As on its predecessor, the Steve Dawson produced ‘Winter Hours,’ the songs on ‘The Place I Left Behind’ explore a mythological North America that has long passed if it was ever truly here. Like The Band before them, the songs of The Deep Dark Woods evoke the dusty corners and regretful morning after come down from dreams never fulfilled. We meet recently passed lovers never seen for who they are until glimpsed – too late – from the rear view mirror. Words unspoken at the time make their way into songs where despite the richness of Boldt’s vocabulary, the truest undercurrent of emotions are left for Lucas Goetz’s pedal steel to express.

Musically speaking, the same lilting Rick Danko meets Crazy Horse in Jerry Garcia’s back yard vibe that worked so well on ‘Winter Hours’ can be heard everywhere on the new record. Some tracks like ‘Sugar Mama’ are straight ahead, simple and lovely three chord folk ditties while others like ‘The Ballad of Frank Dupree’ dive right into the Neil Young cosmic sludge with such nuance and joy that it’s easy to imagine it as a highlight in their live set. (note: as good as this record is, the DDW are essentially a live band with the recorded versions serving as springboards for the songs in concert) Without Steve Dawson’s tasteful restraint and careful arranging to hold them in check, the band more fully explores the edges and emotional possibilities of their music in a way they’d only hinted at before.

To answer the question posed at the beginning of this review, what distinguishes The Deep Dark Woods from so many other similar bands is that listen as you might, their focus never breaks and their gaze never drops. Each of the members sounds completely comfortable and natural in the musical universe they have created. Nothing sounds put on. The archaic experiences and paradigms they explore are real to them and the reports they send back to the listener carry the weight of authenticity. And, you don’t need me to tell you how rare that is.

‘The Place I Left Behind’ is a record you need to hear.

This posting originally appeared at www.nodepression.com

“It’s a Godly Thing” –Ernest Ranglin and Jason Wilson in conversation

2011-07-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

“It’s a Godly Thing” –Ernest Ranglin and Jason Wilson in conversation

with Douglas Heselgrave

Calgary Folk Festival
July 23, 2011

In a perfect world, Ernest Ranglin would need no introduction. The 79 year old Jamaican guitarist has made inestimable contributions to the development of ska and reggae music – having played on hundreds of seminal recordings as well as famously tutoring Bob Marley on his guitar technique – but sadly many people in the larger musical community have still never heard of him.

This situation is somewhat regrettable for the elder musician who began life as a ‘serious’ musician who wanted to play avant garde and jazz music for a living before accepting and embracing the love and affection thousands of world music fans had for what Ranglin calls the ‘commercial’ side of his music. Indeed, Ranglin had challenges with playing dance music from the very beginning of his career - when he secured his first gig playing in a ska band, he had to hide it from his parents who would have been mortified to know that he was playing party music.

If Ranglin felt any emotion other than pure delight when he and Canadian reggae keyboardist, Jason Wilson’s band played two killer sets for thousands of world music fans in Calgary at the annual folk festival last weekend, he hid it well. At nearly 80 years of age, Ranglin was a little unsteady on his feet as he walked on stage, but the instant he began playing his guitar, the decades slipped away as his fingers flowed up and down the neck of his instrument like greased lightning.

Hearing Ernest Ranglin play live was like a dream come true. There simply aren’t many musicians of his caliber (or of his generation) still on the circuit today, so it was an honour to have an opportunity to sit down and talk with him and Jason White about music by the banks of Calgary’s Bow River as the sun went down.

Here are some excerpts from our conversation:

Doug: Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Ernest.

Ernest: It’s nice to be here. This is my first time in Calgary. I was in Montreal earlier in the summer, but this is nice. It’s beautiful down here by the river.

Doug: Well, I’d like to start by asking Jason a question, if you don’t mind. Your band played with Ernest today. That must have been an honour for you.

Jason: It was a dream come true for me. I feel like I’ve been really blessed. Jackie Mittoo was my mentor. (Jackie Mittoo was one of the premiere roots reggae keyboardists in the genre’s golden age) The last couple of years of Jackie’s life were spent with me. His last recording was done with me and you know, and I few years later I was introduced to Ernie and we hit it off. He liked my band and he ended up recording on our last album as well. (on the album ‘The Peacemaker’s Chauffeur Ranglin plays on ‘the importance of being Ernest’) I kind of pinch myself. It’s kind of funny I call Ernie my friend now because we’ve played on so many shows together –

Ernest: We’re just like brothers –

Jason: At first, it was Mr. Ranglin, Mr. Ranglin. Now it’s Ernie. It’s a blessing!

Ernest: Ha Ha….Ernie – he’s ‘earning’ that’s what he wants to say!

Doug: So, in your own country, you’ve been well recognized. You’ve been given the order of distinction.

Ernest: Oh, that was way back in 1973. Now, I’m a commander of the order of distinction. I got that award about three years ago.

Doug: Do you still live in Jamaica?

Ernest: Yes, I do. I have a doctorate also. That’s from the University of the West Indies.

Doug: Do you ever think of retiring? You’re 79 years old!

Ernest: Retiring! Did he saying ‘rehiring?’ I’ll come to Vancouver if you want to rehire me!

Jason: That’s right!

Ernest: Ha Ha Ha. I haven’t really thought about it.

Doug: When did you first pick up a guitar?

Ernest: It was at an early age and I’ve been loving it ever since and I’m still loving it.

Jason: I thought you wanted to be a cricket player.

Ernest: I could make a few runs off my guitar –

Doug: I heard you play 54-46 twice today. What struck me was that each time you played the solo, they were completely different.

Ernest: Of course!

Doug: How important is improvisation to your music?

Ernest: It is so great not to repeat yourself because to me whenever you start repeating yourself, that’s the end of your ability to improvise. Let’s just call it that. Because your thoughts are rolling along, you should have whatever is going, new ideas at all times and if you get stagnant that’s where you stop.

Jason: I think the crowd responds to that, too. Because if – like you –you see the show twice in a day, if it’s not slightly different –

Ernest: You shouldn’t be doing the same thing. That’s why I don’t want to put down classical music, but if you play the same Beethoven or the same Chopin, and it’s the same notes and same expression that you play every time. That’s a good way to learn because all of those things can be learned. But, if you have to do the same thing every time, it becomes boring –

Doug: There are musicians out there that I’ve met – ones who love to play – who have played essentially the same set for 20 years.

Ernest: Really! I wouldn’t want to do that. Well, Well. I want to look at life just as how the wind is blowing against these trees and maybe they’re blowing a different rhythm every time. I can admire the rhythms of nature and we need to be creating at all times.

Doug: How do you put yourself in a frame of mind where you’re open to those things? Is it a conscious state of mind you’re in when you improvise?

Ernest: Well, it’s a Godly thing. Ha Ha Ha. Because God gave us all this knowledge and He’s always dealing with us. I’m quite certain He’s not going to tell you the same thing every time, or He is going to tell you the same thing every time but in different ways. So, this is what this is about.

Doug: I know you as a reggae artist, but I also enjoy your jazz records. Do you differentiate in your mind between different types of music? By that I mean, do you approach music all the same way, or does it depend on what you’re playing?

Ernest: The whole problem is that I have played jazz from the 1950’s and I tried to prove what I could do, but then after when I reached about the 70’s or the 80’s, I had reached a point where I didn’t have a good manager to push me. I think of people like Dizzy Gillespie and those, I reached up to about number three and I knew if I had a good agent or good manager, I would have reached the top. But, I didn’t have that chance, still I’m really glad that people could have seen me create what I did. Still, I feel that it’s only musicians who really know my ability (the extent of my ability) I was good friends with the top musicians, but that never really reached out into the public. People like Les Paul would seek me out –

Jason: He was a bit of an unsung hero in jazz –

Ernest: Yes, Les Paul, I saw him in 1953 with Mary Ford and he came to look for me in ’54. I met many great people, but only musicians. I was not exposed, so I never got the exposure. So, when things reached about the 90’s I had to reconsider. There was nothing for me to really try to prove.

Doug: When you talk about proving –

Ernest: I’d been doing this all these years and I didn’t get anywhere with it because I didn’t have the right people to push me. So, I went into the commercial music in about 1992, 1993 and from there I played real good jazz from about that time. Until now, all that I’m doing comes from the knowledge I gained from the fifties to the seventies. What I’m doing now is just a matter of making a living.

(both Jason and Ernest break into uncontrollable laughter)

Doug: So, I’m thinking of those records from the nineties – ‘Below the Bassline’ and ‘Searching of the lost chord’ on Island Records.

Ernest: Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. So, this is where I went over to the commercial side of music. I have to live. I remember Joe Harriot

Doug: Fantastic musician

Ernest: Yeah, he’s a great guy and… Who’s this man who had the music here in America who was the avante garde player?

Jason: Ornette Coleman

Ernest: Yes, Ornette. Well, Joe Harriot was doing the same thing from Jamaica, but playing it in England and doing his own thing. But, he called his music a different thing and Ornette called it avante garde, but it was the same music. So, I was over in England and talking to Joe Harriot. Well, I’d known him from young boy days, so he said let’s play together and he wanted me to play that music. But, I had to say ‘Joe, I’ve got to live.’

Doug: Do you enjoy playing that ‘outside’ kind of music?

Ernest: Well, I said ‘no’ because I’ve got to live. So, I put down this music from the early nineties and I’ve been trying to live from playing middle of the road music. I think I enjoy middle of the road because if I try and go play jazz music today, about 2% of the audience is going to listen to what I’m going to do –

Doug: I find that sad. Your ‘Live at Ronnie Scott’s’ album is really one of my favourites.

Ernest: But that was 1964!

Jason: And there was an audience for that kind of thing then.

Ernest: That’s when Joe wanted me to do that, too. So, this is it. I’m just trying to live. (Ernest makes a wide gesture with his hands that encompasses the beautiful scenery in front of us, smiles deeply, puts his hand on my knee and looks into my eyes) Just trying to live!

Doug: Amen

Ernest: Amen

this posting also appears at www.nodepression.com

"We're closer to the Stanley Brothers than we are to Tool"

2011-07-22T21:16:00.000-07:00

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings interview Part II

By Douglas Heselgrave

In the first part of this interview, Gillian and David discussed how they first got interested in roots music, their early acceptance from the ‘hard core’ bluegrass community and the challenges of arriving in Nashville just as Garth Brookes hit the charts and changed everything.

David: Yeah, at that time, people just thought if they could pry us apart, they could do something with Gillian. And, you can’t blame them. If you look at that time period in Nashville, you could see what was going on and it didn’t exactly fit what we were doing.

Doug: To say the least.

David: But, there was this other thing going on and that's where I was going with this. You look at Mary Chapin Carpenter and there was this other thing going on. There was this female singer songwriter thing and it was popular and on the radio. And, that’s actually how Gillian got signed in a publishing deal.

Gillian: They were looking for ‘another.’ Truly, that’s what it was. My publisher said to a friend, ‘I’m looking for a female singer-songwriter’ and this woman who ended up being my manager, said ‘I saw a girl….’

Doug: A girl! (laughs)

Gillian: Yeah. (laugh) ‘I saw a girl, a girl named Gillian Welch’ and then I went and played him some songs.

Doug: Did all of these attempts to separate you put any stress on your relationship?

Gillian: How did we stick together, you mean? We stuck together because this was the sound we were interested in.

David: T Bone was at least partly interested in the sound we were working with. That’s how we ended up doing the first record and most of the second record with him.

Gillian: And those were at least half duet.

David: It was funny the first record; we cut all the duets within about four days. Then, we spent six weeks trying to bang out band tracks we liked.

Gillian: We don’t know how to do that.

Doug: But, with ‘Soul Journey’ you had some drums and other instruments.

Gillian: We did, but that was a different thing. We had some songs that were less in the Appalachian vein and they wanted backbeat. They wanted drums.

Doug: And they worked. The songs with more instrumentation aren’t at all jarring in the flow of that record.

Gillian: So, we made our sort of abberant you know drum record.

David: And we put on some solo stuff.

Gillian: What it wasn’t was a duet record.

Doug: Did you ever or were you ever tempted to recreate any of that larger sound on stage?

David: We just had a great time playing with Levon in Nashville and Larry Campbell had done an amazing horn arrangement for two songs.

Gillian: Yeah, he did some beautiful Last Waltz style arrangements –

Doug: He is amazing. I really admire a lot of his work with Dylan and Levon Helm.

Gillian: We did a tour with Bright Eyes and played some songs with his whole band.

David: We did 'Miss Ohio' that way.

Gillian: So, it happens and we’ve got this little catalogue of stuff that will take drums.

Doug: That’s fun.

Gillian: It is fun, but it’s also funny. Being away from the duet for long enough because ‘Soul Journey’ wasn’t a duet record, and then you’ve got this big eight year gap I feel like we had a lot of pent up passion to return to the duet. Like, we went into this record and the first thing I felt was ‘this is a duet record. Nobody else is playing on this. This is just the two of us.’

Doug: Well, you certainly know each other’s playing, and it’s like you breathe for each other and every time I’ve heard you play, there’s a point where you kind of melt together.

Gillian: You know, we’re interested in certain sounds and there’s a tremendous freedom in the duet.

David: It’s kind of the worst way to play when you think about it. It’s the hardest thing to arrange for because with a solo act you just accept certain things. It doesn’t matter if it’s not all there. It is unified.

Gillian: It's sort of inherently commanding because it’s just one person.

David: In a duet, you lose all that and you don’t gain all that much.

Gillian: You don’t gain any reinforcements. (laughs)

David: You know with a band, if you add a bass player and you just have so much more latitude. However, the way we’ve tried to deal with that is when you play guitar as though it was one large instrument or instruments….

Gillian: If we do the mind meld properly, it’s like we’re just one performer.

Doug: Like in ‘Revelator’ tonight. You both went so far out, I didn’t know how you’d get back.

Gillian: Mind meld. This album is pretty spontaneous, but you have to remember that as a writer, I’m pretty slow. Dave’s pretty quick at working on a song. I have to play a song for hours and hours to get a feel for it.

David: In this case (for ‘The Harrow and the Harvest’), a lot of what would happen is arrangements or last minute writing. A song like ‘Tennessee’ was substantially rewritten at four in the morning the night before we went in to record it. And, then you’d get the third performance of that on tape. Now, there’ll be some of it that carries over, some of the melodic outline, but none of the feel from earlier versions. But, because the song is in there in a particular way it can….. But, say on a song like ‘I Dream a Highway’ we’d never played it before. So, we played it twice and I edited both versions together. But, I wanted that because I knew it was a minor song that had…Hmmm…. There was a lot that could happen with the harmonies and the guitar playing than if we’d done it a lot of times, so we could just travel through a lot more of it than if we knew where we were supposed to start and where we were supposed to end. We got lucky. It’s always good to do that because if you fuck up, you can play it to death and get that sound. But, you can’t ever get back to the beginning again.

Gillian: You only have take one or two to get it that way. Then, it changes into something else. Then you’re past that. Sometimes the immediacy of the story goes away. Sometimes in the first couple takes I‘m truly living the thing and then once you’ve done it a couple of times, part of your brain is trying to remember what you did that you liked. And, then part of your brain, I feel like as a person, my first take of a vocal is pretty honest and actually how I feel.

David: That’s why live performance is interesting. You do song after song. I mean, ‘Revelator’ was a song we’d played a decent amount of times before we went in and tried to put it on a record. But, we hadn’t played it for a long period of time. We’d been working on a number of other songs that weren’t quite as good…

Gillian: …and we’d been building a studio

David: We were a long way away from it. One day, we’d done a couple of tests on this other demo, and this song we were working on sounded very good, but we just didn’t like the song that much. So, it just crossed my mind, hey why don’t we try ‘Revelator’ again and see what it sounds like in here.

Gillian: It was a mike test – the version on the record. Dave just said, ‘play ‘Revelator’ and it was okay, let’s try it and we used the mike test.

David: We played it once and it was great because we hadn’t played it in months. We got that first take feeling. You can always get that feeling back if you are away from a song long enough. Your brain goes through that thing again. It’s a little like voodoo. You try to trick yourself.

At this point, Steve Edge a local promoter interjected to suggest that the songs sounded not so much written as found in a time capsule.

Gillian: That’s so funny. The record is many things to different people. It’s a bit of a Rorschach thing. I wouldn’t disagree with that statement, but to me they represent last year. They’re not time capsule – y to me. That was my year.

Doug: Tough year –

Gillian: That’s how we talk and that’s how we express ourselves. Of course, we work in a traditional vein, but the sound –

David: By the same token, no one who is deeply familiar with thirties and forties stuff would ever mistake us for that.

Gillian: We don’t actually sound like the Stanley Brothers.

David: Most of the time I see that written, I assume those folks who say that haven’t heard that music.

Doug: I couldn’t agree more. It’s always seemed to me that you’ve absorbed or you communicated a spirit of time and place, but that it’s filtered through you and sounds like a blending of you and your influences. There are lots of people out there who recreate period music and you’re doing much more than that.

David: Yes, there are similarities, but we’re closer to The Stanley Brothers than we are to Tool for instance.

Gillian: (laughs) a little bit

David: But, then again if you want to go home and play a few Depeche Mode songs on the acoustic guitar, they sound a lot like the songs on Revelator. Apparently, they write all their stuff all that way and then just go in and arrange it differently.

Gillian: There’s a harmonic thing, there’s Dave’s improvisational palette that stretches way beyond a roots palette.

Doug: Which is of course a huge part of the appeal.

Gillian: This new album – for all of its darkness – may actually be our warmest record.

Doug: In terms of the sound?

Gillian: There’s a lot of blood in this record

David: Yes, you mean warm in terms of tone.

Gillian: Yeah, when I hear ‘Revelator’, I think of winter.

David: That’s a very cold record.

Gillian: There aren’t any leaves on those trees there.

David: It ends with ‘what will sustain us through the winter?’

Gillian: This one seems kind of earthier. Wry-er. I think this is our most humorous record.

David: Gallows humour.

Gillian: Gallows humour to be sure, but I think if Woody Guthrie was around, he’d get a few chuckles out of this one. I’m happy about that. I’m happy that after all the time that passed, this record basically comes from fall of 2010 and the winter. It’s from a chunk of time.

David: ‘The Way it will Be’ was old, and ‘Hard Times’ and ‘Tennessee’ were from before that, but so much stuff got finished during that period of time. At least six of ten songs on the record were written during a specific time. We did a lot of writing during that eight year gap, and I’m sure a lot of what we did influenced how this one sounds, but I just don’t feel that we were writing that well over the course of that time. The best way I can describe it is that when we write songs we like they really balance between the modern and the traditional, the narrative and the confessional, and rock and roll and country. They just walk this weird line and I feel like the stuff we were writing that we didn’t release somehow didn’t have that funny balance.

Doug: Were you trying for something else consciously? Trying to break into a new mode?

David: No

Gilllian: We were just trying to write songs –

David: And, that’s a hard enough job. Trying to write songs and thinking ‘I’m going to write them like this’ is really setting yourself up –

Gillian: We were just trying to write songs and our life seems influence what they are.

David: Every song on this record does come from an emotional or an experience based place. None of them are exercises. Because with music like this, people may want the songs to come out of a ‘holler’ somewhere, they want to call it academic. But, it never has been for us. You know, sometimes its not implicit, and we don’t know at the beginning where a song is coming from necessarily….

Gillian: This is about as forthright as we can be. I can’t actually be –

David: It’s like if you want to talk to the people who wrote the songs, you’re not talking to them now.

Doug: So, I should be looking for astral plane Dave and Gillian? That whole Stephen Hawking thing about parallel states -

David: Yeah. It’s a different headspace and a different thing. I mean, Gill can write ‘Orphan Girl’ and not even be aware that it’s touching on her birth history of being adopted….

Gillian: Yeah, I can write that whole thing about my life and not even be aware enough to realize what I’m writing. (laughs) You know, that’s just how it is. Whew!

Steve Edge commented on David singing ‘Sweet Tooth’ from the DRM record during the Vancouver performance.

David: Yeah, we always have tried to sneak one in. I’ve always sung at least one song in a show. But, before I had a record, I just sort of picked something. I’d have lots of traditional songs or songs I’d like to sing.

Gillian: The big difference is that you used to sing covers and now they’re always originals.

David: That was the beginning of things turning for us.

Gillian: It was really good for us to write for a different band.

David: It bought us more time to get this thing together.

Gillian: We did some work for the Decembrists, too. At the very end of the project, Collin had called me while he was still writing the songs. He said, “I’m writing these songs and I keep hearing your voice in my head and it’s freaky.” He was so concerned that his record not slow down work on our record. He said, ‘I really want you to do this but I’d feel terrible if it got in the way of your record.’ Finally, he called when they were mixing the album and it just timed out great. We were already driving across the country. We got to LA and we knocked out our contributions in two days and it was great. It was a testament to his craftsmanship and how good the songs are.

David: The vocal blend was great. We’d previously sung on stage and expressed a mutual admiration for Robyn Hitchcock.

Doug: That was a pretty cool record you did with him.

Gillian: With Robyn? Yeah, that was fun.

Doug: Okay, this may be a little off topic, but I read that you opened for the Buffalo Springfield shows. I’m an old fan and loved the records when I was a kid. How were the shows?

Gillian: Yes

Doug: Did you have a chance to play with them?

David: Ha. No. Their first six shows in forty two years and they didn’t necessarily need sit ins! I wouldn’t have done it if they’d asked. Ha

Gillian: It was spectacular. It was some of the best music I’ve ever heard coming off a stage.

David: Ritchie sung so great. Everybody was playing incredibly well. I actually believe in a way they sounded…. I mean, they actually sounded closer to their peak than when they started. They were just so young when they made those records. After doing the shows, we went back to listen to the old records and – wow – maybe there would have been some magical time in the middle where that would have happened, but what we heard was them at their best.

Gillian: Just phenomenal. Four out of the six shows were out of this world.

Doug: What an honour to have been part of that.

David: Yeah.

Gillian: I think of all of them – Stephen Stills watched our set every night.

Doug: How’s he playing these days?

Gillian: He’s playing great. He’s got some tendonitis issues. He’s singing great. Just wonderful.

Doug: Well thanks so much. You’ve been really generous with your time. It’s getting very late.

David: Yeah, didn’t we just promise you ten minutes?

Gillian: Thank you. We’ll see you some time. We just have to figure out if we’re going to drive or stay tonight. Our next four dates have huge drives between and we’re currently not doing airplanes.

Doug: You drove from Nashville?

Gillian: Yeah, we’ve seen a lot of country in the last few days. (laughs)

with Gillian, Leah and David in the festival kitchen

with Gillian, Leah and David at the festival kitchen

The sounds of the festival filtered in through the tent where we’d been talking as we all got up to leave, but just as I was packing up, David came over to me again to talk about his reaction to the early posting of ‘The Harrow and the Harvest’ Review at Nodepression. Like a lot of artists, he and Gillian have had problems with leaked music and unfortunate press. Gillian came over and joined the discussion to describe the first review of the CD that comprised of nothing more than ‘you can’t dance to it.’ David added, ‘our first official music in eight years and the first review is people using scorecards to say it’s not a dance record.’

As we kept on talking, David confessed that he missed the pre-Internet era when no one knew a new record was coming out until two weeks before it dropped. In today’s market, releasing music has become a high security venture steeped in secrecy and intrigue. We discussed how much marketing music had changed since ‘Soul Journey’ was released, and how eight years is a short period in a lifetime, but an eternity in terms of how technology has upended everything.

I remember when I began writing for print, advance copies of music had to be sent out months early to accommodate the longer production time needed for a review to see the light of day. David noted that the long leads were still in effect for print journalts, which results in some outlets receiving advance copies far before other – usually online – sites do. Balancing the demands of the diverse media platforms has become a situation that's virtually impossible to manage.

I offered that as far as I could see the main difference and advantage of online reviews vs. print reviews is their longevity. As much as news dates quickly and stories are forgotten, most online reviews are archived while newspaper reviews are lining birdcages a few days later. Reviews I wrote five years ago are still available online and people use search engines to access them all the time. So, even an early review will be read years into the future – something not possible in traditional journalism.

We went on to discuss the reception ‘The Harrow and the Harvest’ has received and how different the reviews have been in Europe than in North America. In Europe, Dave said, ‘All of the reviews have been about whether they like the music or not. It’s about the record and the songs themselves. Full stop.’ Whereas, in North America ‘it’s all been about where we fit into the history of country music or roots music. There’s this intellectual thing going on and endless discussions about how authentic we are or we aren’t. It’s all about that thing and never so much about the songs.” I offered that part of that difference must exist because here in North America we’ve had access to all of the old music they have been inspired by and can make easy comparisons while in Europe the music traditions are different and they can experience Welch and Rawlings’ music more ‘purely’ and without any accompanying baggage. This got us talking about how so many musicians from jazz artists to blues singers used to have to leave America for their work to receive the appreciation and respect they deserved. Gillian picked up on this to say that she finds it ironic how on the one hand they get pigeonholed as traditionalists while on the other certain camps question how authentic or entitled they are to play the music they do.

By this time, the site began to close down for the night and David looked at his watch, trying again to decide whether to try and get some sleep or get in the car, cross the border and start down the road to Olympia, Washington for their next gig. We shook hands, and exchanged ‘see you sometimes’ before Gillian and Dave left the tent we’d been sheltered under to meet a small group of fans that had been waiting patiently to say hello.

This interview originally appeared at www.nodepression.com

Talking with Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - "When she sings, she sounds lonesome - what are you going to do?"

2011-07-22T21:11:00.000-07:00

Talking with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival
Part One

July 15, 2011 Vancouver
By Douglas Heselgrave

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings on the Main Stage
Photo by Sam Parton

I had spent days trying to line up an interview with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, but had had no success at all, so I’d pretty much resigned myself to simply reporting on their concert at the Vancouver Folk Festival. I hadn’t had a chance to hear them play live together since 2003 when a friend and I drove down to Seattle to take in their show at the Moore Theater. I still had lingering memories from that night of a concert that verged on life-changing. The dedication, focus and absolute commitment Welch and Rawlings share and the musical vision they’ve have nurtured and developed over the last decade or so continues to grow with an integrity that is truly unparalleled in today’s popular music. So, needless to say, I was happy to have the chance to take in their new show after so many years and knew that I would have a lot to write about.

I was settling in at the festival’s kitchen back stage and talking with my friend, Sam Parton when we ran into Gillian and Dave. Being naturally shy, I hung back but Sam (a happy extrovert) took me by the hand, made introductions and suggested to Gill that we talk. David came up and introduced himself at that point and said he’d telephoned me when the Nodepression review was originally posted to discuss the problems that advance reviews posed for artists and record labels. He said he’d like to speak later and would try and make time, but I didn’t take him very seriously. Surely he was too busy - there were dozens of musicians surrounding us – all of whom seemed to want to talk to him and Gillian, so I went to hear Justin Townes Earle’s excellent set and forgot about it. But, then, just before the two were due up on stage, Gillian ran over to me with a piece of paper and asked me to meet them after their set to join a discussion.

Their concert – if anything – was better than the show I saw in Seattle. In the eight intervening years, the duo has become closer musically. Their singing and playing has become so intimately woven that it is often difficult to hear them as distinct entities. It takes a lot to excite me these days, but I had chills up and down my spine throughout their set as Gillian and David played most of their new album as well as offering up a few old songs like ‘Orphan Girl’, ‘Miss Ohio’, ‘Caleb Meyer’ and the most intense version of ‘Time: The Revelator’ I have ever heard. They are the real deal. Lots of other artists can mention the River Jordan in a song, but when Welch and Rawlings sing about it, you can hear the mud falling from the banks and drifting downstream. They are that good.

After the performance ended, Gillian, Dave and I - and three other local journalists - sat down for a ‘quick ten minute interview’ that stretched on into the night. Gillian began the conversation by saying that it was a rare opportunity for them to play in a natural setting like Vancouver’s Jericho Beach.

Gillian: It’s always easier for us to play indoors. We find it really challenging to play outdoors. Our music is kind of like chamber music. We really use the space that we’re in to get the sound that is very atmospheric. We think of filling the space, so when there’s no container it just kind of goes out into the atmosphere and dissipates.

David: It’s an incredible site. The sunset was beautiful. It’s always nice to have the chance to play somewhere like this.

Gillian: Yeah, all of the freighters in the ocean. Their lights all came on as we played.

Doug: What I really noticed was how uplifted the crowd was by your set, and I think that’s so interesting because you two sing about such dark situations all the time. How do you account for the effect your music has on the audience?

Gillian: Hahaha. It’s funny. Even though the subject matter and some of the circumstances are kind of dark, usually the narrators in our songs are singing from a place of perseverance or having gotten through the trouble. It’s a pretty stoic, realistic, occasionally verging on optimistic outlook.

David: There are plenty of blues singers who have remarked that singing the blues makes them feel good, makes the listener feel good.

Gillian: It’s true.

Doug: Why do you think we need that – people in general, I mean - to hear sad songs to uplift us?

David: Hmmm…. That’s possibly more than a thirty second answer.

Gillian: Or, better yet, that’s probably a question for you to answer. I just know for myself that I always like – hmmm…. Let’s think of an example. When I bought‘Guitar Town’ , it was guaranteed that I’d like the saddest song best. What’s the saddest song on that record? ‘My Old Friend The Blues.' Guaranteed that’d be my favorite song.

David: - or we’d like ‘Tecumseh Valley’ more than ‘White Freight Liner’

Gillian: Even though ‘White Freight Liner’ is a great song. A lot of people are that way. Yeah, I guess you could say that we don’t really write dance music.

Doug: But at the same time, a lot of people out there tonight were dancing.

Gillian: Yeahhhhhhh, you can dance to it, but it’s not really party music. It’s not even terribly social music. It’s funny, now we’ve gotten to the point where we can contrast the Gillian Welch catalogue with the David Rawlings catalogue.

Doug: Meaning ?

David: One of the best things I read about my record was that the show and the record felt a lot more social than they were used to. It’s much more extroverted as opposed to this kind of thing we do this way with Gill’s music.

Gillian: Yours is more about – a community there. It’s much more social.

David: It’s not so much about a difference in personality (that exists between us) as it is about a difference in instruments – vocally speaking.

Doug: But, you don’t ever sound as if you’re holding back vocally when you’re singing with Gillian.

Gillian: My voice lends itself to a certain expression, a certain type of story.

David: When she sings, she sounds lonesome. What are you going to do?

Gillian: That’s one of the reasons I was cast in ‘O Brother’ as the downtrodden share cropper wife. When I got the script, my character’s name was the sad eyed woman.

David: Wasn’t it the sad faced woman?

Gillian: I thought it was sad eyed woman.

David: No, that’s the Dylan song.

Gillian: Well, that’s just the kind of way it goes with me.

At this point, a local reporter asked Gillian about her background in a psychedelic surf guitar band, and she and David used this as an opportunity to set the record straight.

Gillian: Well, I grew up singing folk music. I went to areally progressive, liberal, hippie type grade school.

David: The type you might find in California in 1973.

Gillian: Yeah, we didn’t wear shoes, we didn’t get grades. We sang folk songs and every Friday we’d have a communal lunch and sing songs for our parents. So, yeah I was into folk music! Hard core!

David: Gillian was the guitar player.

Gillian: So, from the time I was about nine or ten, I was the guitar player for these things because I had asked for a guitar when I was about seven. So, I was the guitar player for these things. So, mine is a kind of weird history. I think of everyone who is singing roots music in 2011 has a weird history with it.

David: So, there’s some confusion around the fact that Gill is from California. The real confusion should be that we’re from the nineties. NO one was doing that music then.

Gillian: So, I had a real background in folk music, but I’d never heard the records. I’d never heard the original versions, but learned the songs by singing them in my community.

David: If you think about the time period between the seventies and 1985, for the early part of that period what was king on the radio? Neil Young had put out ‘Harvest.’ There’s James Taylor, Paul Simon….

Gillian: Male singer songwriters with acoustic guitars are kings of the radio at that time.. This was what was in my head while growing up. I wasn’t rebelling against my background with the surf punk thing. You shouldn’t make too much of it; it was just for a couple of parties. It sounds good on paper.

David: You know if you play electric guitars and go to college, you’re going to end up in some bands.

Gillian: So, there I am in Santa Cruz going to college and my roommate is a bluegrass DJ and he’s got an incredible record collection. So, for the first time, I hear the songs that I grew up singing. I hear the records. I hear the sound that just completely devastates me – in a good way. It’s that strident, gritty harmony sound, that great thing that happens in country, bluegrass and old time singing. What did you like about it, David?

David: I was drawn from the time I was very young to story songs of any kind. I didn’t hear much country music, but some of it made it to the radio during that time period. I was in Rhode Island and you heard Jim Croce songs thinking this was music I liked. I spent a lot of time outdoors. Summers I spent a lot of time fishing by myself and singing these songs in my head. I can probably still sing ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ and any of those story songs from the seventies by heart. That’s what I did. I discovered Neil Young and I discovered Bob Dylan – which at that time was pretty old music. From there, I heard ‘Nashville Skyline’ which takes you to country - which takes you to bluegrass…. You just chase the source back.

Gillian: Because you want the purest, you want the strongest stuff you can get.

David: For both of us, it stopped there. It stopped in the thirties in this country. I know people who followed the path that we follow and ended up loving Irish music.

Gillian: They then went across the Atlantic to chase that music.

David: …and came back wearing jackets with elbow patches.

Gillian: We’re decently well versed in this style of music, but it’s kind of opportunistic in a good way. I listen to find what I can use and see what I can take from it.

Doug: Like cowboy pirates

Gillian: Yep. This is related to what Dave’s saying where, as much as I love James Joyce, I kind of stick to American authors unless I’ve got loads of time and feel I can just goof off because the language and the settings are good for my brain.

Doug: When you talk about American authors, do you mean authors from the same period as your musical interests – like Steinbeck?

Gillian: I do, but I read from all different periods. I usually read a lot of Kerouac too which is good for my head. James Agee….

Doug: These are a mixture of rural and urban voices. There’s also a pronounced influence of the deep south whereas I think of Steinbeck as a Californian voice.

David: Well, we’ve lived there for about twenty years now. It’s pretty hard to have that thing – the surf punk thing – in the media that represents something that happened 25 or 30 years ago. It’s ridiculous to have it out there as something we have to talk about. So, having lived down south for so long, it’s kind of confusing to give such attention to what was just a little blip really. We’re on the road a lot and have seen a lot of country.

Gillian: But, the South does figure prominently for us. It’s kind of the cradle of our work. It’s where we first started to sing as a duet. It’s where the tradition of the duet with The Stanley Brothers, The Munroe Brothers, The Blue Sky Boys on into the Everly Brothers – that whole rural acoustic tradition - got its start.

David: And, it meant something to us that Doc Watson recognized us, or that when we went to see Ralph Stanley at his festival and he invited us to come up and sing a song with him and then invited us to come back and play next year. This is a tiny little festival at his home place.

Gillian: Just tiny – maybe 700 people

David: And, we were the only people who stood outside of Stanley Brothers type bluegrass who were invited there.

Gillian: We’re okay up there (with them) because they hear us coming out of the hardcore bluegrass duet tradition.

David: We used to sing Blue Sky Boys songs a lot and really early on before we had a record, we went to see some friends on Whitetop Mountain…

Gillian: In Virginia

David: We sang a couple of Blue Sky Boys like we often did, and this guy came up to us and said, ‘I’m touched. I haven’t heard anyone sing my uncle’s songs like that in so long. He was a guy named Glen Bullock who became a friend of ours. We were accepted by that community long before…..

Gillian: Yeah, Ralph Stanley, the Blue Sky nephew, Doc and that community….They were the first ones to kind of say ‘wow, you guys have a cool sound.’ So, we just kind of kept on with it. We had a lot of pressure when we first started out. People wanted to put us with a band and they wanted us to sound a lot more Nashville. I feel like for a good solid two years, we just went around saying ‘NO’ to everybody.

David: Everybody hated me.

Gillian: They thought if they could just pry us apart, they could put me with a country band.

David: You can’t blame them. If you look at that time – the early nineties – at what was going on in Nashville…. Part of the reason we moved there was because of the New Traditionalist movement that was happening. Townes Van Zandt was there, Steve Earle was there, John Prine was there, Emmylou was there.

Gillian: Nashville was swinging.

David: Sammy Kershaw was there. Randy Travis. Dwight Yoakam. There were some pretty decent records coming out. So, we thought, ‘Okay, cool. Let’s go down there and as soon as we got there in ’92, Garth Brooks hit and BOOM it all changed.

CD Review - Hymns by Mike Angus

2011-07-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

Review by Doug Heselgrave

Wheatpool guitarist’s first solo album is an unexpected dark gem

“Broken English
And French braids
American cigarettes
Spanish ashtray
Italian sunshine
Playing off her shoulder blade”

- from ‘Italy’

Haunting is one of the most overused adjectives in music journalism, but if there’s another word that describes the songs on Mike Angus’ debut album - the aptly titled ‘Hymns’ - I’m open to suggestions.

The eight tracks that Angus recorded for this project aren’t so much songs as skeletal cries, maps argued in sand with sticks at the riverbank, the reflection in the water. Sometimes – as in the third track ‘Oh Rodeo’ - the mood he conveys is light and loose, an openended invitation to confession hangs in the air. But, underlying the minimalist scoring there’s a density, an infusion of regret. These are songs of intermittent pitch; dark with mottled light speckling through. Whatever these songs are, they elude easy categorization and they are absolutely captivating and totally absorbing. To say that I was unprepared for the journey through the heart of these songs would be an understatement. They are worlds away from the guitar drenched opuses and rousing heartland rock and roll that Angus has previously recorded as part of the great prairie band, ‘The Wheatpool’

With song titles like ‘Swallow It Whole’, ‘Scaffold Christ’, ‘Cold Cold Ground’ and ‘What does it mean?’, it’s obvious that ‘Hymns’ wasn’t envisioned as ice cream parlor music, still I was surprised to see them described as ‘pop gems’ on his website. I don’t know what kind of hurting universe would be full of people who enjoyed listening to these songs between sips of Pepsi at the mall. I guess 'Hymns' is pop music insofar as there was a great deal of polish, taste and restraint exercised in decorating these ghosts Angus conjured up from the floorboards of his psyche. Thankfully, he is a great singer with all of the instincts about phrasing and timing to pull these songs off. The instrumentation is utterly perfect throughout. Sometimes Angus’ guitar creates a wash that bathes the listener in an insulating blanket, but often the strings have no more body than the tap of wind swept branches against a window pane. There is a Cohen-ish hush to the whole proceedings that not only works, but is immensely appealing.

‘Hymns’ is an album that has caught me completely by surprise. It is truly an unexpected diamond in the rough that behind its indie trappings offers private, contemplative music of the highest order. Highly recommended.

This posting also appears at www.nodepression.com
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Thievery Corporation - Culture of Fear

2011-07-10T19:12:00.000-07:00

Thievery Corporation - Culture of Fear

(review from PasteMagazine - read here in its original format - http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/06/thievery-corporation-culture-of-fear.html)

When Eric Hilton and Rob Garza came together to form Thievery Corporation in 1995, the two Washington D.C.-based musicians and DJs were breaking new ground. Taking inspiration from British trip-hop artists like Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead, Thievery Corporation successfully combined downtempo electronica grooves with reggae and R&B sounds to create songs that were both musically challenging and great to dance to. In addition, more than any other band since U2, Hilton and Garza have always written lyrics that reflected the duo’s radical politics while still maintaining a groove that makes their missives palatable.

Culture of Fear is Thievery Corporation’s sixth album, and the collective’s old fans will likely find a lot to enjoy on it. Their trademark mixture of real instruments, electronic textures and phrases that encapsulate everything from Brazilian bossa nova to old-school Jamaican dub are solidly intact. The juxtaposition of grooves is still profound and disturbing when it needs to be and light and dreamy when the going gets tough, but repeated plays of the new disc also reveal a band in a holding pattern. And, while that’s not necessarily a bad thing—if something isn’t broken, why fix it?—there is sometimes a creeping sense of sameness to the tracks on the new album that has never been present before.

The title track is by far the best song on the album. Voiced by hip-hop artist Mr. Lif, the song encapsulates all of the politics and justifiable paranoia that have been Thievery Corporation’s stock and trade from the outset. It is a crucial, cutting edge song that is, by itself, reason enough to buy the album. Still, one wishes that the rest of the songs lived up to the high bar set by Mr. Lif. But sadly for the most part, the remainder of the tracks, even though they are uniformly well produced and sung, fail to generate much excitement or interest.

This isn’t to say Culture of Fear is a bad album. There is some great guitar work from Frederico Aubele and Robbie Myers that gives some dimension and immediacy to the electronic sounds. TC regular LouLou Ghelichkhani adds some lovely vocals, but even her silken voice can’t take songs such as “Where it all Starts” beyond the predictable boundaries the duo charted years ago. Similarly, rising Nigerian superstar Sleepy Wonder contributes some very impassioned vocals to “Star Gazer,” but it’s not enough to shake the feeling of having heard it all before.

At their best, Thievery Corporation created a true cultural melting pot of sounds. Their music never came off as gimmicky when they plundered West African or Indian classical themes. The fluidity and grace they demonstrated on album after album truly set them apart from other musicians working in the electronica field. Collaborations with the best artists in world and alternative music—including Femi Kuti, Anoushka Shankar, Perry Farrell and David Byrne—elevated Thievery Corporation to a level of musical integrity that few electronic musicians have ever achieved, much less maintained throughout their careers.

In the end, Culture of Fear is a good album, but it doesn’t push any boundaries or claim any new ground. The burst of the unexpected that was once de rigeur with The Thievery Corporation is sadly missing on this place-keeper of a record. The grooves are still powerful, dense and spiritual, but they don’t take the listener anywhere new on this surprise-free record.

‘Not done with this yet’ - A new interview with Sam Parton Part II

2011-07-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

‘Not done with this yet’ - A new interview with Sam Parton Part II

By Douglas Heselgrave

Since the first part of this interview was published, Sam Parton, Frazey Ford and Trish Klein – the core members of the turn of the millennium alt. country/folk/blues outfit ‘The Be Good Tanyas’ – got together to rehearse for their appearance at Vancouver’s 125th birthday concert on July 8th. After that, the group will head to the Winnipeg Folk Festival before playing a few select shows in the States.

As you’ll read here, Sam was really nervous about getting together with her old bandmates to see if the old magic could be rekindled. I got home the other day and found a Facebook message that read ‘First band rehearsal in 3 years. 16 songs. Everyone in high spirits, love in the air. Nice.’ Sometimes, it is worth lifting the lid to see what’s inside, and maybe that old saying isn’t true and you can go back home again.

Here are some more excerpts from our conversation.

DH: Hi Sam. Are you ready to keep on down memory lane? I think we left off somewhere between 2003 and 2007.

SP – Oh, the lost years!

DH – I think a lot of people were surprised when your third album ‘Hello Love’ came out. It seemed to come out of the blue. After the years of acrimony you described, and all of you doing your different things, I never thought it would happen. And, when I did read about it, I thought Nettwerk – your record label – had just compiled some outtakes or live tracks or something to cash in on your popularity. But, then I heard it and it’s a real record.

SP – I think a lot of people were just as surprised as you were. Me, too.

DH – You told me that you’d been listening to your music to get ready for the upcoming tour. So, how does ‘Hello Love’ stand up in your estimation? What do you hear and remember when you listen to it?

SP – We had a different rhythm section than on the other records. We had John Raham on the drums. And we had Mark Beaty on bass – who’s not only dreamy, but is classically trained - so that kind of deepened the sound. So there was a huge difference in the presence of the bass on that record. He plays cello on one track, and bowed bass. And we were working separately a lot, because we hadn’t been hanging out together or touring that much. We were all kind of doing our own thing.

DH – Yeah, at that time the joke was that you were doing a Crosby, Stills and Nash and travelling on separate buses – or Lear Jets – and only getting together on stage.

SP – Ha Ha! Not quite...

DH – I’m just being a shithead.

SP – You are just being a shithead! But it does kind of get to that point. We did do one tour where Frazey had her own RV – she had her son with her on that tour. But yeah, it was hard. I’m surprised we made that album. I’m surprised we did it.

DH – It doesn’t sound like you were phoning in performances from separate ends of the country or anything like that –

SP – No, we weren’t. When we’re in the studio together, not as much of that interpersonal stuff comes into play. The priority is always getting the song right. We might fight like hell in the studio, but it’s all about the song and making things sound right.

DH – So, is that where you meet as people? Serving the music….

SP – Uhhh…..Yeah, I’d say in a very big way that cuts through everything. We’re all very obsessive – like most musicians. We all have our own things we pay attention to and hear, and we all hear different things in the studio- so that can be difficult. I’d say ‘No, don’t you hear that! It’s so important that it’s not like that…” and someone else would say, “ I don’t hear that at all. Let’s do this.” But, what brings us together is that we all really care a lot. Caring. Caring. Caring…. oh, I’m excited for these shows coming up. But, bring me back on track.

DH – So, yeah, there’s ‘Hello Love’ and another song on a dog movie….Oh, what’s its name?

SP – ‘Because of Winn Dixie.’ That was so much fun! That was the first and only time we were ever commissioned to do something or write something for a film.

DH – Dave Matthews is in that movie as a singing pet store employee or something…my kids watched it and I heard your music on it…

SP – Yeah, it was really fun. Our music was featured in the opening scene of the movie.

DH – And, at that point, you hadn’t been playing much. Did you record that after ‘Hello Love’?

SP – No, that came out between ‘Chinatown’ and ‘Hello Love.’ It was really interesting. It was a whole other way of thinking about music. I remember flying to LA to talk to the music director. She showed me the scene, talked about what they liked about our music, and sent me off with a VHS tape of the clip.

DH – So, did you watch the video and time the melodies and rhythms to the movement on the screen?

SP – Yeah, that was really the best part. It’s so interesting to think about tempo in visual terms. I loved that. The main character was riding her bike in the scene that they assigned us, so I counted off the pedaling and that gave us the tempo. We took this old blues song and rewrote it. It was a lot of fun. I wish we could do more of that. That’s one of my favourite things I’ve ever done musically – to sit there in front of a TV with no sound, with a guitar in hand, making music to a scene. It felt really great. It’s a totally different way of making music.

DH – Watching the scene over and over. That must be where your obsessive nature comes in handy.

SP - Ha. For sure. For sure.

DH – So, we’re going all over the place. Let’s get back to ‘Hello Love.’ You toured on that record just like for the other two. And, from an outsider’s perspective, it looked like things were going better than ever. You did very well in the UK and played at the Royal Albert Hall.

SP: We played the Royal Albert Hall!

DH: That must have been pretty amazing.

SP: It was, and it was also totally nerve wracking. I was so nervous that I did something I totally regret – and I have very few regrets in life! Maybe I only have one, and it’s this - they had a grand piano on stage - and I’m not used to playing a grand piano. I felt intimidated by it, and I told the promoter ‘I don’t think I can do the grand piano at Royal Albert Hall. Can you get me a beat up old upright? That’s what I’m used to.’ He said, ‘absolutely.’ He made the calls immediately, and the next day, when it came time for the gig, I wondered what the hell I was thinking. We got to the venue and they’d packed up the grand piano. Instead they gave me this crappy little –

DH: Saloon piano?

SP: Not even. It was like a student piano from a music school. It was a shiny black upright...I suddenly had second thoughts. I called the promoter and said ‘Bring back the Steinway. Bring back the Steinway!’ And they told me it was too late. I still think about that, and wonder what I was thinking... So anyway...Royal Albert Hall. My mother came, my sister, my aunt - they all flew over. We had a bus for the first (and only) time...that was really interesting.

DH: That was near the time we usually talk about as being the end of the band – at least of that incarnation.

SP: Yeah. We didn’t do much after that. I mean, it was hard to tour, with Frazey raising her son – someone would have to come along as childcare – and I’m sure it was very hard for her to focus both on being a mom and on working.

DH: Hard to cut loose into the music –

SP: Yeah, there was a little bit of that. It was hard sometimes to balance everyone’s needs as it became a bigger operation. Though it wasn’t like we all wanted to party all night every night. None of us are really very big partiers...

DH: So, you’re going out on tour again in the next couple of weeks. Can you talk a bit about how this has come about?

SP: Well, I wouldn’t really call it a tour - we’re doing a few shows. We’re all very nervous and excited. We haven’t played a show together in three years.

DH: Have you gotten together to rehearse yet?

SP: We are getting together for the first time this week, and will definitely be putting some time into rehearsing. We haven’t played a lot of those songs in a long time. We want to play some songs from ‘Blue Horse’ that we never really did play live very much.

DH: Such as –

SP: ‘Broken Telephone’ maybe, ‘Only in the Past’ - we never really played those. I hope it will be fun. I’m looking forward to it.

DH: Are you working up full shows or opening length sets?

SP: Mostly full shows. We’re doing two shows opening for the Carolina Chocolate Drops – Seattle and Portland - I mean - we started talking about doing shows, because a year ago we decided to put ‘Blue Horse’ out on vinyl for its ten year anniversary. We thought that we had to do something special, maybe put together a little songbook, some extra artwork, try to make something beautiful. Then we thought, well, if we’re going to do that, we should maybe play some shows to support it, otherwise it’s just going to sit there. Then our wonderful manager, Mandy, got a call from the city of Vancouver to celebrate the city’s 125th anniversary and we all said ‘yes’ and it went from there – then the Winnipeg Folk Fest came up...

DH: There’s some funny geography on this tour. I see you play Seattle, Denver, and then Portland in that order.

SP: I know. Well, for a short time out like this, it’s cheaper to fly – especially in the US. The Denver show just came up at the last minute. And we had the night off - and touring is expensive, so we thought - why have a night off and pay for a hotel and a rental van and everything that comes with that, when we can go and play a show somewhere. So, we went for it. It’ll help defray the costs of the tour - and it’s a great venue and a nice promoter, and we haven’t played much in Denver - it should all be really fun.

DH: Do you have any expectations about the tour? By that I mean are you all testing the waters with each other? Is there a feeling that everyone wants to make this work?

SP: Yeah, for sure. It would be great to go to the UK again. It would be wonderful to go to Europe, which is something we haven’t done very much. It’d be nice, but we’re very…. You know, we want to make sure that it’s cool.

DH: …and if you’re going to the UK, the next logical thing to do is have a new product and –

SP: …it snowballs from there. Well, I know. That’s what Nettwerk is already saying. The thing that we all have made a commitment to is that it has to be fun and we have to enjoy ourselves. We have to get along and connect with the music and the audience. It’s got to be fun for everybody. We’re not going to go out there and put on a half-assed show after this long.

DH: Any ideas about what else you’ll play? Are there some songs you don’t want to do or that you especially would like to play?

SP: We’ll probably work up a few new songs, but I don’t know yet if we’ll go into any of our solo or outside materials. We’ll probably keep that separate. Mostly, it just has to be fun, it has to be positive. I mean, it’s all about that, at this point. I think we’ve all really grown as people since we last played, too.

DH: I find it hard to approach situations openly if I have history with something – a person, a place. I know that with everything in life, you still bring some kind of expectations – both good and bad. It’s hard to truly approach anything with a blank slate.

SP: You’re right. You kind of carry this stuff in your bones, in your energy somewhere. The past...it’s hard to change the way we respond to situations. We’re all so easily triggered. But, I think we’re probably all doing a lot of thinking about it and are determined to do this with a little more intention than we’ve done in the past. I’m trying to do that in my whole life in general – be a little bit more deliberate.

DH: You’ve been very lucky.

SP: Yes, I have. I’ve been cultivating this really odd sense of gratitude for everything in my life these days. I haven’t always had that. I remember coming back to Vancouver after living in New York for two years, and feeling like I’d won the booby prize - but now I feel like I’m lucky to live in this most amazing place. And my family’s here – though they were a part of why I left – I needed to escape a lot of family drama that was happening - but now they’ve actually become a big part of the reason to stay.

DH: Isn’t it funny how that happens.

SP: So funny, and such a relief.

DH: So, just before you go, I’d like to go back to where we started so many hours ago at the beginning of this conversation. We were listening to Gillian Welch and talking about when you and the Tanyas started out. What do you think was going on in the culture that created such an audience for your type of music? It couldn’t have happened if you’d tried it in 1985. Not in the same way it has in any case.

SP: It wasn’t conscious. None of what we did was deliberate or planned. People always say it was the ‘Oh Brother, Where art Thou?’ thing, but that came out after we started. There was a real zeitgeist going on. For myself, that’s the type of music I’ve always been into. It’s not like all of a sudden..

DH: It’s like that old Neil Young quote, ‘if you get far enough behind, eventually you’ll be on the cutting edge’ –

SP: That’s exactly it! I wish I’d said that. Exactly. I missed the nineties musically. I never even heard Nirvana. I was listening to Big Bill Broonzy and Bessie Smith. I was really deep into the history of American roots music - Woody Guthrie and all that stuff.

DH: While other people scattered all over the place were doing that at the same time.

SP: I guess so. I didn’t even realize that. But, if anyone had recorded what Frazey and I were doing together in Nelson in the early nineties, it was the same sound. It was just really kind of weird timing that everything broke at the same time. Gillian Welch was just putting out her first record around then. And Iris Dement, Emmylou...Frazey and I were singing songs like ‘Don’t That Road Look Rough and Rocky’ years before it was the ‘thing’ to do.

DH: So, what do you think is the appeal of this music we’ve been talking about? You know, the Harry Smith Anthology of Folk Music dark stuff, the weird old America music?

SP: It’s just so deep. It has such history. Personally...I remember when I went to Kerrville, it became very clear to me, just being around so many songwriters, what my particular needs were musically. I knew what I needed to hear in a song for it to resonate with me. It needed to be grounded in history in some way. It didn’t have to be overt or obvious. It was the Boston or Austin thing. People from ‘Boston’ would play with two capos at once and go for some really weird tuning and slap their guitar for percussion. And people from Austin were all ‘three chords and the truth.’ That’s where my heart lay. I was with them. I felt there was blood and soil in that music, and coming out of treeplanting, it felt natural. I don’t know what it is in me and in Frazey and in Trish that needs the sense of continuity...it’s a feeling of belonging to a lineage of music and harmonies where you can hear what’s come before. For me, harmonies are the most important thing in music. And, where do you hear more beautiful harmonies than in roots music? It’s simple. There’s lots of room for it. I mean, I love all music – I love Bjork, and you hear all kinds of harmonies there, too – of course I tune in to harmonies in lots of different styles of music. But, it’s a different aesthetic.

DH: It is and the effect that is created is very different. It’s less about people sharing and more about creating an enveloping sound.

SP: Yeah. But as far as why everybody was suddenly playing ‘roots’ music, I used to have a theory that it was because there was a real change happening in the culture in general towards digital. The Internet was coming on, and the earth was shifting on its axis - a bit too quickly - and people were thinking ‘Wait! We’re not done with this stuff yet. We’ve got to carry it with us into the future.’ I think it’s very important to do that. And, I’m so grateful for people like Gillian Welch who do it so brilliantly.

DH: She does. I just love how she’ll take something from say a Dock Boggs song and use it to sing about something in her life. Other people do that, but she does it so so well.

SP: Lots of people do the old songs. They wear porkpie hats and they do it in a way that’s kind of hokey and turns the song into a museum piece. That I can’t stand. For me, the real folk process is where you incorporate it into now and feel totally present in the song. These stories are so now. You know, all those babies dying in those songs…

DH: Yeah, it always strikes me that we talk about how bad the world is today, but listen to Woody Guthrie or songs like Omie Wise and it doesn’t take long to realize there was a lot of horrible, dark shit that happened back then, too that the songs bear witness to.

SP: Look what’s happening where The Old Crows are writing songs about the meth epidemic. Songs like that report what’s happening in our lives, in our times. I like to find ways to tell these stories. I need substance to sustain me, and those old songs, the ones that have survived, have that substance. Yesterday, I was digging this massive blackberry bush from my garden. The roots went everywhere. When I finally got it out, I held up this mass of roots and thought - this blackberry probably covers the entire continent! It reminded me of how we’re all connected and how all the music we hear, if you go back far enough, is connected in the same way. Follow the tendrils, and you can find hip hop, country, jazz, or whatever. It’s all different, but all music is connected, and it all goes back to the same tap root, if you follow it far enough.

DH: What a perfect place to finish.

SP: Right where we were at the beginning. Thanks for this. It was lovely to talk to you.

This interview originally appeared at www.nodepression.com

A new interview with Lee 'Scratch' Perry

2011-07-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

Rise Again – Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Bill Laswell

Two Way Mirror: Doug Heselgrave interviews Lee Perry interviews Doug Heselgrave

You’re never sure what’ll happen when you interview Lee Perry. Since 1999, I’ve spoken with the reggae originator at least half a dozen times and every time we’ve connected has been different. The first few times we spoke, Lee rarely broke out of character – almost everything he said was outrageous, stream of consciousness, an exercise in performance art. I thought that’s all there was to the public Mr. Perry. Then, while speaking to Clinton Fearon, the former Black Ark bassist and member of the original Gladiators, shared this with me, ‘If you get past the joking, Scratch is a very sensitive man. A sensitive intelligent man.” I think I always knew that, but had accepted that I may never meet the real Lee Perry and only ever have the chance to meet ‘Scratch.’ Like Bob Dylan, another septuagenarian genius, once said ‘I’m only Bob Dylan when I have to be’, I sensed that Mr. Perry insulated himself from the public by hiding behind his ‘Scratch’ persona. Really, after more than four decades in the music business and the inane questions most journalists ask, who could blame him? But, in recent years, something has shifted. I don’t know whether it’s tied into Perry’s decision to quit smoking pot or if his advancing years have made him more careful about communicating clearly in order to preserve his legacy, but the last few times we’ve spoken, Lee has been patient, clear and sincere – and full of gratitude that his music has survived and found a whole new generation of listeners.

Over the past half decade or so, Lee has been recording and touring with a vengeance. Collaborations with State of Emergency, Andrew WK, Adrian Sherwood as well as ‘Rise Again’, the long awaited collaboration with Bill Laswell give evidence to a late career renaissance that has few parallels in popular music. (Johnny Cash’s prolific series of albums with Rick Rubin recorded in his final years come to mind) I recently arranged to speak with Lee from his home in Switzerland. Here are some excerpts from our conversation.

DH: Lee, it’s good to finally get you on the phone. How are you?

LSP: I’m doing fine. I was inside the bath last time you called me. I am sorry, I didn’t hear your call. I was making holy water. But, this is a good time to talk. Which of my records do you want to talk about?

DH: (Ha Ha) That question says a lot in itself. There aren’t many other artists who put out as many records as you do. It must be hard for you to keep track. I wanted to talk to you about ‘Rise Again’ – the new record you did with Bill Laswell.

LSP: Oh! Bill Laswell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…… that man. Hmmmm. Perhaps it’s better that you tell me what you think about this record. To tell you the truth, I’ve only heard it one time.

DH: Once! I’ve been listening to it for weeks.

LSP: Then, I am listening to you now. Tell me what you think.

DH: Well, you know Bill Laswell –

LSP: Yes, he was recommended to me –

DH: I really like what he does. He has obviously been influenced by your music. Is that something you picked up on?

LSP: Hmmm…. Tell me more.

DH: His delays, the incongruous sound collages remind me of some of your work with The Congos. You and Bill sound very well suited to each other – which certainly hasn’t always been the case when you’ve worked with other producers. Do you work with each producer a little differently, or does your vision take over the project and the producer is a kind of facilitator? Or, how do you approach collaboration? You spent most of your career in the producer’s seat.

LSP: Ha Ha….That’s right. I was the producer, so I work the same with every producer who comes to me.

DH: So, let’s talk about your record with Bill Laswell. It sounds like a very successful collaboration that really mirrors the best of both of your approaches to music.

LSP: OK. Yes, this was the first time I worked with him. It was a practical decision. I would say it was an enjoyable experience because I don’t want to be considered just as one type of artist or to work with just one type of artist. I want to be an international artist. So, ‘Rise Again’ – this is like a dream come true because I wanted to do some music that would reach out past Jamaica and work with musicians who aren’t from Jamaica to reach the international community. I wanted something a little broader.

DH: And, Bill Laswell works with a lot of musicians from Africa, India, America – probably people you wouldn’t normally have the chance to work with.

LSP: Yeah. I need international exposure and international flavor. This is a man of good taste. If this record became a hit, it would make me very happy.

DH: It would make me happy, too. My favourite track is the collaboration with Gigi, the Ethiopian singer. I love her work and the two of you sound very comfortable singing together.

LSP: Who is Gigi?

DH: The Ethiopian woman who sung on ‘Orthodox’

LSP: Does it sound good? You tell me for - let me tell you the truth now. What happened is that I listened to the record one time. When we were recording it, I was on tour and would stop off for a few days and do some voicing. Since then I haven’t dealt with it or listened to it. I haven’t had much time. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m interviewing you now. So you tell me what you think about it? Ha Ha

DH: Well, on that track I love when you sing ‘I’m an orthodox.’ Is there anything about you that is orthodox – you know in the usual sense?

LSP: I’m an orthodox! Orthodox! Hehehe….. The reality is that Ethiopian orthodox – have a huge knowledge - are the original force from Africa. Everything has been copied from Africa. Things have expanded since then. It would be too boring to see only one set of people, but now all the people can get together to form one new group of people. It is wonderful.

DH: It is wonderful. I find it very interesting that you’ve only listened to ‘Rise Up’ once. You must have been very busy. Are you recording again? Touring again?

LSP: I’m not thinking about the next one already. It is no problem for me to have ideas for new songs, but I want to give this one a run of time so people can listen and give me their idea about whether they like it or not, so I can think about what to record in the future. So, let me interview you about that some more – Tell me about this record some more!

DH: What I think is that the songs sound more like classic Lee Perry than we’ve heard in a long time. A lot of seventies sounds and Congos type vibes – I think Bill did his homework before he got together with you. He has obviously listened to and understood your music. He recorded some hard hitting sounds for you to sing over.

LSP: Yeah yeah – good. This is one of those records that comes out that I never got to know exactly what goes on as it was being made, so I got to listen to it only one time. I came in to voice it and I had only one day, then I went on tour, and then I toured a couple of weeks, got a message, got a copy of the music, got to sing it and then toured a bit again. It was so busy a time, but if you tell me that you love it, I’m so glad that you love it. You’ve listened to my music for a long time, I think -

DH: Coming up to 35 years

LSP: Thank you very much.

DH: You know, it is a very good piece of work. Let’s talk about lyrics. Do you walk in with them to the studio, or do you hear the lyrics and improvise around them?

LSP: Well, the sound and I made a positive connection during the creation of this record. The songs sometimes sang their melodies to me. When the songs sing their melody to me, the songs give me the words to sing. So, there was a creative force working with me that telling me the words and I went in front of the mic and the songs told me what to sing, what to say. I am overblessed actually. I am well blessed.

DH: So, like you sing – the lyrics come from a higher level!

LSP: They come straight to the ears. I hear the voice I hear the melody. I hear a special blessing. That’s why I work. That’s how I work. I told this to Bob (Marley). Open yourself up. And after I stop smoke and drink alcohol, it all comes to me very clearly. That’s the power of the self, and if you disobey, you’ll be cut down. Your soul will be cut off. You’ll go to the demons.

DH: I remember you told me once that you used to think smoke and alcohol gave you the lyrics –

LSP: No probably never as far as alcohol. Alcohol never gave me no lyrics. I had to stop the alcohol by making a sacrifice. In the Black Ark studio we did too much alcohol and cigarettes and Godless smoking, so then I had to make a sacrifice because the smoke and the alcohol made so I couldn’t hear the words clearly and it all was confusion. Mixed the holy spirit into music because the holy spirit is the opposite of alcohol. The holy spirit below and the alcohol allows – you’ve got to be careful….. It’s like I had to do something or commit suicide to stop the voices. The wrong voices. Cigarette and alcohol and beer and wine – God himself is a spirit. God is pure and God is clear. So, to see God as a spirit, you have to put the alcoholic spirit away.

DH: Amen

LSP: The spirit is negative. Don’t want to talk to the devil, me want to talk to God. So you got to put the demon away, so you can understand God fully.

DH: You say you’ve been blessed, and in terms of creating a body of work, you have been overblessed. When you look back over your career, are you satisfied with what you’ve brought to life?

LSP: Yes, satisfied. Yep, you could be producing good songs and bad songs because you just want the money. You have to decide these things. You can produce some very bad music and make money, but you have to decide and understand that God will provide and that you don’t have to make bad music. Start to think about the prophets like Moses and the powerful ones and understand what God has given to those prophets. What you need. When you try to reach for that, if you’re open to the music, the door will open for you. You find the words you are looking for and the words will have power that will endure. You go into the lock and open the lock. I opened the lock and I don’t need the dreadlocks any more. (uncontrolled laughter)
I have the words. I opened the lock and trimmed the dreadlocks. I came to the understanding that dreadlocks themselves cannot rule because dreadlock have become a fashion for many people. It’s a hairstyle. All the singers in Jamaica are dreadlocks. All the musicians are dreadlocks. It’s a hairstyle! It’s a commercial.
Jah didn’t tell people that to be holy you need dreadlocks. To be alive man is what you need. I give thanks to Bill Laswell and his idea about me and his ideas about the facts of life and revelation.

DH: Something we’ve talked about before is that you’re very hard for some people to pigeon hole. By that I mean that you’re a very serious artist in a lot of ways. What you’ve contributed to our understanding of mixing, sampling has changed music, but I don’t think you’ve received the attention you deserve because you might sing about God and piss and shit in the same song. Do you think people miss the message because of your weird sense of humour?

LSP: Yes, I think that’s true, but I also think I talk about nature, too and that is serious. Nature is what we have and what we are losing. Nature is life and part of nature is that we must have to pee pee. Pee pee. You understand ‘pee pee’

DH: It’s part of life, but why sing about it?

LSP: Pee pee – without it, life would be very bad or very sad. You can’t do nothing then. Jah comes to me with music everywhere – on the toilet. On my toilet I hear rhythms. I wrote ‘Duppy Conquerer’ on my toilet. I wrote the words on the toilet.

DH: So, did you hold onto the lyrics for a while, or did you write them on toilet paper and run right to the studio to record?

LSP: First time, me have to have a book to write inspirations down, so then I had to think like a computer. I remembered the words – the first ones and wrote them on toilet paper. Kept the toilet paper….

DH: laugh

LSP: It makes you laugh! Good! So as far as lyrics, we are creative computers. It is a system. The next words came after the first words. You have to think like a computer. The first word is A and the last word is Z. So, you can take A-Z-A and call it AZA. I told Bob this about songwriting. You can create your own words. I want to say that ‘A’ is the alphabet opened and ‘Z’ is the alphabet closed. I don’t tell nobody else this – it’s how a computer works. I’m explaining it to you. Think like a computer to write songs. So, you say AB and Z again and you have ABA - AZA ABA
So you can say ABBA, Jah Jah.Jah Jah – Roger – Ro Jah. Allah AJA. Allah ABA. That’s a computer. That’s a new song! So, you try –

(some interactive word play between interviewer and subject. Lines continue to blur between them)

LSP: Well, you can construct words like that. Even Bob can’t show that – you are the first one to grasp that. Ha ha. He he. We have some new songs.

DH: Just like that! The thing that impresses me so much every time we speak is how awake and alive you are to creative opportunities in each second of life. I can feel you vibrating over the phone lines.

LSP: I’m never so happy in my life before. Thank you very much for telling me what you think about the record. I want to be able to take this all to the next level.Do you like Bill’s music – in itself?

DH: I do for the most part – depending on the project. His sound reminds me of yours with the paint stirred a little more thickly. He brings out the best in you and you bring out the best in him.

LSP: I think that is true. OK! You take care. Jah bless you.

DH: And you!

LSP: Until the next!

This posting also appears at www.unitedreggae.com