So it’s late at night I’m tired maybe I should turn on the TV and fall to sleep to its glow, what could go wrong…….maybe Steve Goodman can tell us….. in a song that always brings a smile to my face no matter how many times I hear it!!
Ok so on Wednesday, my wife moved closer to that magical life milepost the big 60! I won’t say how close she is because if I did she’d say “Well, I’ll still never be older than you!” And she’s right because as you may know, I passed that mile post a couple of years ago! Anyway over the last couple of weeks I keep flashing back to the folksingers that I have loved over the years. This morning I remembered the said passing of Steve Goodman and on this date but in 1973, Jim Croce died in that tragic plane crash.
From NPR
So the other day I wrote, that folk music describes the human experience, and very few people did that as well as Bill Morrissey did! Bill was a great songwriter, who viewed each song as a mini-movie. He created scenes and people of all walks of life in his songs
Stephen Holden, for the New York Times, wrote, “Mr. Morrissey’s songs have the force of poetry…a terseness, precision of detail and a tone of laconic understatement that relate his lyrics to the stories of writers like Raymond Carver and Richard Ford Wikipedia biography. I found an article by Carol (Badrick) Seymour at Bill’s website, published in early 1997 in the Portland [Oregon] Songwriters Association’s newsletter. The author describes a workshop she attended, led by Bill:
So last night as I worked burning, washing and sieving asphalt and its component parts, I listened to two fine folk albums. The first was the latest release from Cal Scott Carved Wood Box and the second was Walk Along John from Canadian mandolin virtuoso John Reischman. Currently, Cal Scott’s album is number 29 on the Folk DJ Chart and Reischman is number 4!
According to his website, Cal Scott is..
a singer/songwriter and composer of music for film and television. A master of many styles, his specialty is scoring to picture: creating the right music to tell the story. In addition to his dramatic orchestrations, he has developed a feel for folk music of many cultures, helping a film establish a sense of place and time.
My musical day today started with a mix of folk music from the iPod, first there was a song from Jesse Winchester’s Gentleman of Leisure album and then a Mark Erelli song, a track from Les Sampou, I haven’t heard her voice in a while! As my thoughts rambled through the list of musicians whose music could come on next, they landed on Darryl Purpose, whose music I’ve loved since around 2000. I thought about his latest album, his first album of new material since 2003. In 2005 he set down his guitar shut down his music making and according to his website he…
So the other day I put several albums on the IPod to listen to, one I’ve already written about Tiger Maple String Band’s Coming Home and last night on the way to Target and back home I had a chance to listen to part of Nels Andrews latest Scrimshaw.The thing about listening to an album like this in the car is that you need to pay attention more to the road than to the music, when in fact the music demands more attention!! From the not real great listen that I gave the album, I could tell that it’s special. So special, that Jim Blum at NPR’s Folk Alley picked ‘Scrimshaw‘ in his top records of 2012 and Dutch popmagazine Heaven put Scrimshaw in its top 10 for 2012. writer Pieter Wijnstekers places it in fine company, with Iris DeMent, Phantom Limb, Rose Cousins, Glen Hansard, Husky, Gretchen Peters, Anais Mitchell and Kathy Mattea.
So to enjoy most singer-songwriters you don’t need to be all that Culturally Literate, not so with Ben Bedford. With Bedford it’s always a good idea to have Google or Wikipedia fired up so that you can find out more about the subject of many of his songs. Take the song “Cahokia” from his latest album What We Lost , when Ben sings…
Cahokia what secrets do you keep, your bones buried deep inside the hills,
Cahokia the river runs it course, Mississippi’s swollin force is never still.
So this afternoon I listened to three really good folk albums by artist that I found last night on the Euro-Americana Charts. They were: Patrick Brooks: Rust and Weeds, Darryl Holder Crooked Hearts, Johan Örjansson Melancholic Melodies For Broken Times. Of the three on the first listen I liked Patrick Brooks album the best. Brooks is a native of Ohio now in Austin and sings songs about, well the loses of the Rust Belt While got his musical start from his Dad these days he says… “I listen to the troubadours of the past and present: Townes, Guy Clark, Slaid Cleaves, Mary Gauthier, Woody, Peter Case etc., and hope that I’m doing our tribe justice” and I think he does! Here’s the first track on the album “Another Cigarette”
So today was a busy day in Rock history with many events that touched my musical roots among them were:
First, in 1970 Chicago releases their single “25 or 6 to 4.”
Then in 1969 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young give their first live performance at the Fillmore East in New York.
Finally In 1965 – Dylan is booed for going electric at the Newport Folk Festival
But maybe the most important to my musical roots was the birth in 1943 of Steve Goodman! From 1970 on Steve’s music has constantly been on whatever musical playback device I’ve had at that time. From the first time I heard his voice and music I was a fan!
So I just finished a run, that you will get to be bored with after I take a shower and have dinner, but for now let’s go into the night with some music. The album that I was listening to through most of my run ended just short of the end of the run, so for my cool down I needed some new music. For some reason the other night the album and song Waltz of the Wallflowers popped into my head, so I turned it
on! I picked up the album by Small Potatoes, the Chicago based folk duo of Jacquie Manning and Rich Prezioso several years ago and loved the album! The title track is one of the most inventive songs ever, in my opinion as two wallflowers try to figure out what to do at a dance! The rest of the album is filled with quirky, fun songs and a few touching ones especially, “1000 Candles, 1000 Cranes”. They even touch on “Lather” by the Jefferson Airplance and do a nice job with a favorite of mine, Pete Seeger’s “Old Devil Time” .
