An Interview with Tom Paxton

In a career spanning more than half a century, GRAMMY®-winning folk legend Tom Paxton has composed a veritable goldmine of American music. Instilled with an activist’s passion and a storyteller’s finesse, his songs—which have been covered by the likes of Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and Willie Nelson—resonate with melodies as endearing as nursery rhymes and narratives affirming an intimate conscience.

With his latest album, Boat in the Water, Paxton, 79, continues to articulate his craft in such inimitably empathetic ways.

Can you sense how your songwriting has evolved over the years?

Well, that’s an interesting question. I’ve always likened myself to a farmer with a field, and each year he plants a crop in that field and with luck harvests it in the fall. In my case, I plant different crops but it’s in the same field and it’s the same farmer. So I don’t find that I write different songs from the ones I wrote at the age of twenty-five, but I hope that now and then I write a song that I was not capable of writing at the age of twenty-five. But they’re not that different. They’re still the same sound to them, people tell me.

The writer is the last one to be able to identify his own songs, but they tell me that a song can be recognized as being likely from me. I accept that’s true because I can certainly identify a song as probably written by Dylan or probably written by Leonard Cohen. There’s a style, there’s a sense to it. So, I don’t think I write differently—it’s the same brain, the same right hand—but perhaps there might be a depth to the songs now that there wasn’t then. I don’t know. I certainly don’t try to write differently than I wrote [back then]. I don’t know what that would sound like.

When you’re writing a song, do you have any audience in mind?

Oh, sure. Without being able to put a face to it, it’s the same group of people I’ve sung to for fifty-six years. They’re good people and we see a lot of things through the same lenses, and it’s really primarily for myself as a singer that I write the songs. But it’s also [for] the people that have been with me for years and years and years that I write. If not for them I might just keep it to myself and say, “I don’t have to write it. I already know that.” It is for the people who come to my shows that I write the songs.

Is it disillusioning if the audience doesn’t quote, unquote “get it”?

No, it does not. I feel like I’m responsible for what I do and what I release and I’m not responsible for how it’s received or poorly received. And so, I don’t worry about that. I just worry about getting it right for myself, to make sure it’s clear and musical and I hope entertaining, but at least engrossing; that people know that it’s sincere, that it’s a deliberate work of art. It’s not the work of a dilettante. It’s the work of someone who’s been doing it a long time and cares very much about doing it well.

You are revisiting some of your older songs on Boat in the Water. What was the reason behind that? What did you think you could bring to them at this stage in your life that maybe you didn’t the first time around?

Well, part of it was a conversation I had with producer, Cathy Fink, who’s an old, old friend. She said, “I’d like to hear these songs again.” She’d been listening to a bunch of my old records and she said, “You know, that song ‘Life’ is a wonderful song and I’d like to hear it again. Let’s put it on here.” I said, “Sure.” And I did the same thing with “Evry Time,” [which] is a song I think I wrote in 1962. It’s certainly one of the oldest recordable songs that I have, and I’ve sung it in a lot of soundchecks and a lot of dressing rooms. So I said, “Let’s take another shot at this one.”

Did it resonate any different with you?

Oh, I love the song. To me the song is really an evocation of my early love for the songs that Burl Ives used to sing. He used to sing lots of songs that did not have a steady beat to them, a lot of the old Appalachian songs that he used to sing. It was just kind of my homage to that kind of song and I’ve always loved it. It’s just a very simple song. It only has two verses to it, but it seems like a complete song to me.

In light of some of the songs you write that are critical of certain social or political ills, how do you manage to salvage the compassion and sense of grace and beauty that comes through in some of the other songs you write?

That’s not too difficult, actually. Each song is its own message. Each song has its own parameters. I don’t bring a political sense to a personal song. I also write songs that I hope will amuse a seven-year-old child. You bring the tools to the project that the project requires. And if you’re writing a song to amuse a seven-year-old boy, you include irreverence and a sense of fun, a sense of the ridiculous. You don’t bring a sharply tuned social mind whereas, if you’re writing a song satirizing a president who is an egregious liar, you don’t bring the same vocabulary that you use with the seven-year-old boy’s song. You bring a different vocabulary, a different sensibility. They’re all different songs and I tend to take them as the ideas come to me. The idea will come to me of something ridiculous and fun and rather innocent and I’ll go ahead and write that song and hope that it finds that seven-year-old boy or girl and amuses them. If I’m satirizing the president, I’ll use a different box of tools. Each song has its own perfection that you strive for.

So, writing a song in which you would satirize the president or critique certain social ills doesn’t compromise the compassion that is required to write the other songs?

No, I never write a song that denies the other songs I write. There’s no underlying similarity. I mean, they all come from the same fella, and I’m not going to write a song that directly contradicts any other song I’ve written. There’s got to be a consistency. Even if I’m writing a funny song for kids, I’m not going to say something in that song that I don’t believe.

Is songwriting a discipline that you return to all the time? Are you always receptive to new ideas?  

Yeah, I find the ideas come pretty regularly. There’s a kind of a receptive frame of mind that I seem to be a little more able to slip into now than maybe I used to be. I know that working with [co-songwriters] Jon Vezner and Don Henry is good for me. We just finished four dates out in the West and shortly before those dates I heard a melody from Jon. I said, “Give me a tape of that.” And I turned it into a song which we put in the shows out in California and it really went down beautifully. And while we were sitting in a dressing room in Berkeley, he was doodling around on the ukulele and he struck a chord and I said, “Whoa, what was that?” He played it again, and I sang a silly little phrase that is turning into a delightful little ukulele song. I’m always on the lookout, so to speak.

Do you ever fear giving too much of yourself away in what you write?

Oh, no. No, I don’t feel that at all. I do write personally but it’s usually not as Tom Paxton. I use the first-person singular a lot because it’s more suitable for songs, I think, to be personal like that. But it’s very seldom that it’s Tom Paxton who’s being personal. It is the narrator in the song who’s sharing, but of course it’s always the writer who is easily identifiable. But I think I just kind of shrink from making Tom Paxton the subject of Tom Paxton’s song. It seems to me to be such an egotistical thing to do. I just thought of a way of putting it: I’m a ham, but I’m not a show-off.

Read on...

In Memoriam: Merle Haggard - The Lost Interview

Merle Haggard never said he was immortal. Still, the country music icon, who died this week on his 79th birthday of complications from pneumonia, knew as well as anyone that his music would endure. He’d lived not only to see so many songs he’d written be appreciated as classics, but to perceive his influence on succeeding generations of artists who, frankly, owe him everything.

In 2010, Haggard was riding especially high with a new album, I Am What I Am, his first since beating lung cancer the year before and one of the most optimistic works of his entire career. Drawing on themes of love and trust (with moments of uncertainty along the way), the album is the unsparing testimony of a man humbled by his blessings.

Calling from his Northern California ranch that year, Haggard (73 at the time) echoed much the same sense of positivity. Still, as he proved throughout the conversation—unpublished until now—discontent had by no means eluded his thoughts altogether.



This album could have gone in a completely different direction. 

You know, I’m glad you pointed that out. I hadn’t really thought about it. I haven’t written any “poor me” songs, but you’re right. It could’ve went in that direction.

A lot of artists have had health scares and their subsequent works were kind of dark.

It’s easy to fall off to that side of things, but it really don’t do no good. As bleak as it may look, coming out of lung surgery with your life and no chemo and no radiation is quite a joy if you look at it from the right perspective, I think.

In the overall themes of the album it seems you’re not only expressing love and gratitude, but also relief—relief that you’ve found this contentment.

I think that if you believe in yourself and if you believe in love and happiness, then the assessment of my life would be that I’ve come pretty close to that mark.

In a sense, you also seem like a man still learning about love. Or is this just something you’re more willing to admit now, that you still have things to learn?

Well, I think that love is something that you give. I’m not sure that love is something that you get.

Are you still learning about how to give it?

I don’t think you have time to worry about getting it. I think you have to give it and it has to be unmerited. There’s no judgment on it. There’s no saying how much you’ll give, how little you’ll give. You’ve got to just keep giving. If you ever change your attitude about that and look around and start looking for something to come back in your direction you’ll probably leave, throw your stack and start writing blues.

I’ve heard people say they’re only so many chords and, after a couple hundred years of people making music, to find something original to say lyrically as well as musically is a challenge.

Well, there’s three main chords. From there you can go anywhere, but you’ve got to come back sometime in the future to those three chords.

It’s what you do in between that distinguishes you.

I guess so. I don’t think there’s any end to it. I don’t think that there’s a time when we’ll use it all up. I think there’s just as much available… Ah, man, there’s more available than is being used. I’ve found that the melody depends on the story, and the attitude of the story. That’s where I come with the melody, in trying to present that.



As far as your songwriting is concerned, is everything you experience fair game for you as a lyricist? Do you fear giving away too much of yourself or of those you may write about?

There are songs that I write that are too profound to release. And they’re good and they’re probably hit songs, but because of better judgment I don’t release them. I write into an area that I’d be too involved with my belief and probably shouldn’t get into that area too much. Then again my belief says I should be overflowing with that.

There’s a lot of illness with a person my age. I’m 73 years old and I could tell you some sad stories. I had a friend die yesterday at five o’clock, a buddy I’ve had here the last three or four years, Sonny Langley, passed away with stomach/liver cancer yesterday. Ex-pug, had 141 professional fights, lost one fight. He fought people like Willie Pep, some of the greatest fighters of all time. He died yesterday at five o’clock. God, it’s just everywhere I look. My best friend died last May. It’s in that period in my life and to find something happy, you really grab onto it and if it’s a subject worth writing about you’d just kind of write too many songs probably.

It’s a harrowing experience to endure.

It is. And everybody has to. And everybody has to have two sides to their life. You’ve got to have this business side and go on and if you intend to succeed you probably should portray a positive attitude.

When you’re not going through positive or uplifting times, do you owe it to yourself as a songwriter to convey that?

Probably do. Probably do. And when I die there’ll be an archive of material that will come out that will be probably more personal than this album here. It may not be as happy, but it’ll be more personal. I think that’s one element of the reason why this album’s doing well is because of the personal. It gets down into the part that most people don’t talk about.

In “Bad Actor,” for instance, you convey a lot of self-consciousness. When you're in love you’re not always cocksure and confident. 

When you’re in love it’s a fight to stay afloat. It’s something you’ve got to work on every day. People are so different and people change. Life’s a bitch and then you die, really. [Laughs]

Do you approach songwriting with the feeling of, “I have something to prove,” or perhaps, “I have something to say?”

I write from all perspectives, from all urges that you might have, but I usually eliminate things that I regard as out of the realm of usability. You know what I mean? There are some things that are too sad, some things too personal, some things overbearing, that with good sense after evaluating you just discard.

What perspectives do you bring as a songwriter at 73 that you didn’t have at, say, 43? 

At 73 you bring more wisdom than arrogance, and at 43 it’s the flip-flop.

That reminds me of an interview Bob Dylan gave on 60 Minutes during which he said there were things he couldn’t do anymore as a songwriter, but that there were also things he could do that he couldn’t have done when he was younger. 

That sort of says what I said about arrogance and experience. One’s on one side when you’re 43 and it flip-flops when you’re 73. I’m a little older than he is, but I think he’s more intense about his writing than I am. He’s Bob Dylan—he’s number one. He’s very serious about his writing, I can tell you that. He’s very much to himself. He doesn’t do anything except work and write. Work and write.

As songwriters you each present your aesthetic in different ways. You write in rich, almost literal narratives and Dylan uses a lot of metaphors and obscurities.

I’m not sure there’s any paragraph to describe what he does different, but I understand what you’re saying and we both know what we’re talking about. But there may not be a way to sum him up. [Laughs]

What was the original catalyst for you to write your own lyrics as opposed to being a musician who covered other people’s songs? 

I don’t think it was any intelligent thing that I developed in my life. I think it’s a gift. I know in my conscience I can remember realizing that Johnny Mercer wrote “On The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe” and I knew that Hank Williams either stole or wrote the songs that he claimed he wrote. Over the years it’s been debatable about some of them. I feel certain that Bob Dylan has written all of his songs. Then there’s other great writers. Paul Anka comes to mind, and then Hank Cochran and Fred Rose and Tommy Dorsey. Somebody said to me, “Merle, singers come and go, but writers live forever.”

Other than your memoirs, have you ever had the desire to expand into other areas of writing like prose or poetry? 

I’ve written a lot of poetry. I’ve written some really good poetry, I think. Probably come to the surface when I’m gone. I had a little old book that I stole on the road, don’t know what happened to it, but it’d be wonderful to have around now on the website.

That you wrote in?

Yeah, I remember writing something about catching a big bass. It was all about this fight between this bass fisherman at night and he had this big bass on and he fooled him with a live waterdog. He had him hooked deep in his throat, and with one minor lunge he was gone and pulled him about half out of the boat. And it goes on like that.

Then there was a thing that I was involved in writing, this really poetic—I guess poetic’s the right word—called The Four Dogs. It was where I impersonated an Irishman. I said [in thick, Irish accent], “Hi, lassies and laddies, I’m the man in the hills with four dogs, and recently in from the old country with different speech and we make customs and all. Makes me appear strange when they see me on the mountainside with me four dogs.” That thing’s nine minutes long and each dog... One dog is Love, one dog is Hell, one dog is Hope, and one dog is Faith. Faith is blind, and he doesn’t use much Hope. Finally Love goes away and Hell is the only thing that’ll stick around. That’s kind of chilling. Hell stuck around.

That’s not one of the ones you lost, is it? 

No, I have that. It was recorded less than perfect. It’s nine minutes long and it’s a classic. It’ll come out someday. They’ll have some magic way of fixing it all.

One of my favorite songs of yours is a duet you did in the ‘80s with Ray Charles, “Little Hotel Room.”

Oh yeah. It wasn’t a hit but it was an interesting recording.

Did you record that in the same studio with him?

We were together on that, as best I remember. Things run together. I’ve been in the studio a couple times with Ray and I don’t remember whether it was when we’d done that. We might have done it at two different places and still been together a couple times in the studio. I’m not sure. Seems to me like we were together we we’d done that. We’re talking about thirty years [ago].

That song as well as your early Epic hits were when I first discovered your music as young kid. On a personal note, you’ve been my father’s favorite artist since the ‘60s, and as I grew up I learned to appreciate your music through him—and it’s been so rewarding. You’re such a wonderful talent.

Well, it’s a wonderful gift, and I just try to maintain. I have this wonderful family and I have this wonderful career, and they don’t mix very well. I have a son graduating June 4th [from high school], and I’ve got this beautiful date that they want me to play, this spa down here in Santa Barbara. They want to give us all golf games and facials, all that stuff. It’s one of the greatest spas in the world. They want me and Bennie [Haggard] to come down and play for them. I said, “No, we can’t do it. It’s his graduation.” He’s got things two days in a row. He graduates on the fourth, and on the fifth we’ve got a party for him. Then the Prairie Home Companion wants me on the fifth. They don’t want me on the eighth. They want me on the fifth. Both of them are extremely prestigious jobs that people would kill to get, and I’ve had to turn both of them down.

When you have to draw a line between the two, your kid’s going to win over another gig.

You bet. I’ll never be sorry that I did that.

Read on...

Write on Music's Dozen Covers to Love 2015

The best of people playing other people’s songs... These are Write on Music’s dozen covers to love from 2015:

“Come and Get It” – The Hollywood Vampires
Album: Hollywood Vampires (UMe)

To merit its inclusion here, this selection needs an alibi of sorts — this cover needs a “cover,” if you will: Originally a #1 US (#4 UK) hit by Badfinger as the theme to the 1969 Peter Sellers/Ringo Starr film The Magic Christian, the song was written by Paul McCartney when The Beatles were convening to record Abbey Road. While McCartney recorded a one-man-band demo at the time (which was ultimately released in 1996 on The Beatles Anthology 3), neither he nor the Fab Four ever released a proper studio version of this song.

And so that’s what qualifies this version of “Come and Get It” as a cover. But the synergy between McCartney and the Hollywood Vampires — the band includes Alice Cooper, Joe Perry, and Johnny Depp, with Macca’s drummer Abe Laboriel, Jr. holding down the fort on this particular session — is what makes it magic. 



“(I'm A) Roadrunner” – Paul Weller
Album: Saturns Pattern (Warner Brothers Records/Parlophone)

The Modfather’s love of Motown is a fundamental one, infusing everything from The Jam’s “Town Called Malice” to solo cuts like “Above the Clouds” and “No Tears to Cry.” On this 1965 Jr. Walker & The All Stars rave-up, Weller brings a piano to the forefront (as opposed to the Funk Brothers’ primary guitar-and-saxophone combo on the original) which gives the song a bit slower but steadier pace — holding down the groove like the vintage chassis of a Detroit muscle car hugging the open road.



“Harper Valley PTA” – Squeeze
Album: Cradle to the Grave [Deluxe Version] (Caroline Records)

Life is simply all the more enjoyable when there is new music from Squeeze in the world. And the beloved British band certainly doesn’t disappoint with Cradle to Grave, which often recalls Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook’s quintessential chemistry as masterful pop songwriters even as it strives for fresh exuberance. The 16-song deluxe version of the album is the one to get, not least for its inclusion of a Difford-led acoustic cover of Tom Waits’ “I Don’t Want to Grow Up” and a full-band romp through this Jeannie C. Riley classic (written by Tom T. Hall), which with its storytelling lyricism and unbridled quirkiness sounds like it could’ve been yet another Squeeze classic in an alternate universe.



“A Spoonful of Sugar” – Kacey Musgraves
Album: We Love Disney (Verve Music Group)

Since hitting the big time with her 2013 LP Same Trailer Different Park (and its lead single “Merry Go ‘Round”), Musgraves has lit a spark (and a couple of joints, at least in her songs) under the male-dominated Nashville establishment, demonstrating the sort of serious craft and colorful kitsch that feels reminiscent of classic Dolly Parton or Loretta Lynn records. Her talent and ties to such a fabled tradition continue to flourish on her latest album Pageant Material while, on this most-adorable rendition of the Mary Poppins gem, Musgraves is downright supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.



“Don't Think Twice, It's Alright” – Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard
Album: Django and Jimmie (Legacy Recordings)

Including a Bob Dylan song on a “best covers” list almost seems compulsory by now, but this rendition is more than a little special, and not least because of who’s doing the rendering. It was always a kiss-off song anyway, but here Nelson and Haggard evoke a shared wistfulness that could only come from each man having lived his own life on his own terms, tempting and sidestepping perilous, sacrificial fates with not always equal success. Call it reasoned contempt or maybe just chock it up to a certain kind of wisdom, but Dylan could not have foreseen such impressions emerging from this song back when he was writing it as a much younger man — at least not like this.  



“Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” – Allison Moorer
Album: Down to Believing (Entertainment One Music)

Whether she’s written a particular song or not, Moorer is better than most at getting to the essence of whatever emotion or experience she’s singing about. Maybe that comes from having a low tolerance for bullshit, or maybe it just comes from knowing what needs to be said and how to best get that across. Chances are she’s blessed with both attributes, and on this Creedence Clearwater Revival classic (written by John Fogerty), Moorer invests all of her soulful Southern heart and leaves you feeling like you appreciate the song, and maybe even yourself, a little better.  



“Up Above My Head” – Rhiannon Giddens
Album: Tomorrow is My Turn (Nonesuch Records)

“This is a pillar of American music,” Rhiannon Giddens told Write on Music last year in reference to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the too-often-unsung yet seminal vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist behind this and so many other groundbreaking songs. “It’s like, you cannot deny her influence and yet people don’t know who she is. That’s a problem for me because it continues to reflect the narrative of American music where the black artist is the innovator and then gets forgotten about.” Consider the inclusion and praise here of Giddens interpreting Tharpe with such sanctified jubilance — the performance is but one highlight of an album teeming with them — as a nudge in the right direction. 



“Peace Like a River” – Jerry Lawson
Album: Just a Mortal Man (Red Beet Records)

Pure and simple, 2015’s finest debut album was a half century in the making. As the lead vocalist of the legendary a cappella group The Persuasions for more than 40 years, Jerry Lawson has sung the works of, well, everyone — from The Beatles and Bob Dylan to Curtis Mayfield and Solomon Burke. Indeed the group, which got its big break courtesy of Frank Zappa in the late ‘60s, has also sung on albums by the likes of Joni Mitchell (Shadows and Light) and Stevie Wonder (Fulfillingness’ First Finale), among many, many others. 

Just A Mortal Man, released last April, is Lawson’s first as a solo artist, and it’s nothing short of brilliant. The man lives and breathes in these songs with consummate authenticity and soul, giving moments like “Time and Water” and the aching ballad “Loving Arms” a shiver of sheer vulnerability. To open the album and in some ways to set the tone for it throughout, Lawson gives Paul Simon’s “Peace Like a River” a renewed sense of gravitas and grace, instilling it with the resilience of one who has withstood time’s adversities to now stand triumphant.



“Love is the Answer” – Rumer
Album: Love is the Answer [EP] (Nightowl Records)

Over the past half-decade since her debut LP Seasons of My Soul (and its immaculate breakout single “Aretha”), Rumer’s gorgeous talent has entranced an ever-growing amount of listeners the world over, including some of the very artists that first inspired her own musical pursuits and passions. Both as a songwriter and an interpreter, Rumer (born Sarah Joyce) has often reflected a retro elegance in her music, whether inspirited by the works of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Jimmy Webb, or the ‘70s singer/songwriter scene in California’s Laurel Canyon. 

In fact, her sophomore LP Boys Don’t Cry found Rumer interpreting songs originally written by such fabled ‘70s singer/songwriters as Neil Young, Townes Van Zandt, and Todd Rundgren, whose “Be Nice to Me” was among the album’s highlights. With the title track to her recently released EP Love is the Answer, Rumer revisits Rundgren with similarly breathtaking results. 



“Love Don’t Love Nobody” – Boz Scaggs
Album: A Fool to Care (429 Records)

“I can’t think of any genre of music that doesn’t fascinate me in terms of a vocalist and a melody,” Boz Scaggs told Write on Music in reference to the vintage R&B and the urbanized rock ‘n’ roll he performed on his 2013 LP Memphis. “A singer and a song is just a fascinating study for me.” A similar (and similarly rewarding) experiment continued with last year’s follow-up, A Fool to Care, which includes such standout interpretive moments as the Impressions’ “I’m So Proud,” Al Green’s “Full of Fire,” and, especially, this soul-coated masterclass of the Spinners’ “Love Don’t Love Nobody.” 



“Sorry Seems to Be The Hardest Word” – Diana Krall
Album: Wallflower (Verve Music Group)

As some moments chronicled the dissolution of lyricist Bernie Taupin’s first marriage, Elton John’s 1976 double LP Blue Moves was often somber to behold. Yet with her melancholic vocal tone and rich phrasing, Diana Krall takes that album’s most recognized track to new emotional depths. Where Elton sounds damn near desperate to hold onto what he’s got – “What do I do to make you want me?” – Krall sounds like the end is already a done deal. 



“Why Try to Change Me Now?” – Bob Dylan
Album: Shadows in the Night (Columbia Records)

Maybe there’s a connection between being able to write great songs and being able to recognize greatness in the songs of others. If so, Bob Dylan could safely be said to have singular insight on the matter, and with Shadows in the Night he not only underscores the craft of Sinatra’s repertoire but so too the emotional architecture he inhabited within it. At the same time, particularly in moments like this, Dylan brings his own baggage and, in ways not unlike those of Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, summons a moment of utter transcendence.

Read on...

DVD Review: 'Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued'

The task at hand was enough to make even the most self-assured songwriter wither in excruciating insecurity: Set to music assorted lyrics and poetry by Bob Dylan from 1967 — a box of the music legend’s handwritten texts dating back to his infamous refuge with The Band in Saugerties, New York had at long last been unearthed — and record the songs for a new album.

Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued tells the story. Directed by Sam Jones, the documentary (which premiered late last year on Showtime and is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Eagle Rock Entertainment) chronicles and contextualizes the making of the 2014 LP, Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, for which producer T-Bone Burnett recruited a select group of artists — Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Marcus Mumford (Mumford & Sons), Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Rhiannon Giddens, and Elvis Costello — to rise to the challenge.

The backstory of The Basement Tapes is adeptly underscored throughout, not least of all with new and incisive commentary from Bob Dylan himself, whose reflections overshadow the documentary’s narrative much like his songwriting overshadows the efforts these musicians are shown to make in composing music to his words.

Indeed, what begins as a relatively informal songwriting workshop in due course evolves into an intense, often intimidating endeavor as everyone involved at some point finds their talents being tested beyond their comfort zones. The very idea of making an album that in any way shares some piece of history or perspective with one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most mythologized episodes had to have thrown them all for a mind-boggling loop on some level. Even Burnett, whose own storied career includes a stint as guitarist on Dylan’s 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue, acknowledges the surrealism at play. 

“The chance to collaborate with a 27-year-old Bob Dylan, now, with 50 years of hindsight,” he says with a modest, nervous grin, “was... interesting.” 

Whether the songs these artists brought to life compare to the insouciant, never-intended-for-release performances on The Basement Tapes is beside the point, really. The album has more than enough highlights — particularly from Giddens (“Lost on the River #20”) and James (“Down on the Bottom”) — to stand on its own.

That, in the end, is what this film illustrates and affirms the most.

Read on...

Album Review: Bob Dylan - Shadows in the Night

Perhaps it’s ironic that Bob Dylan, who revolutionized the craft of popular songwriting in the Sixties onward and thus delineated it from that of the standards so prevalent in prior generations, should on Shadows in the Night (Columbia Records) engage the Great American Songbook with such striking sincerity. Incongruous though it may seem, however, the mercurial legend proves himself surprisingly suited to these ten songs which Frank Sinatra recorded toward the middle of the last century. 

Dylan sustains a noirish, pensive conceit from the opening strains of “I'm a Fool to Want You” to the closing crescendo of “That Lucky Old Sun,” underscoring this, his thirty-sixth studio effort, like a solemn cinematic motif. Aside from the music’s lingering melancholy and even the dulcet subtleties of Dylan’s five-piece band on these arrangements, though, the most obvious distinction here — indeed it’s the very first thing you notice — is Dylan’s singing. Though his voice has attained a certain resonant depth and insight with age, it has not sounded this consistently fluent and impassioned since Blood on the Tracks, maybe even since Nashville Skyline, at once suggesting the unmitigated effort these performances require as well as Dylan’s sheer reverence for the material. He is most affecting when a lyric calls for unadorned vulnerability, as manifests in moments like “Full Moon and Empty Arms” and “Why Try to Change Me Now,” which bridge the emotional distance between auspicious pining and futile, forsaken desire. 

Read on...

Interview: Barb Jungr on Interpreting Songs of Dylan and Cohen

Barb Jungr is no stranger to the music of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, having performed their works to both critical and popular acclaim throughout her near-forty-year career. Yet with her latest album, Hard Rain (The Songs of Bob Dylan & Leonard Cohen), on which the British vocalist collaborated with pianist and album producer Simon Wallace in arranging eleven songs that share some thread of timeless political or social import, her familiarity with the material didn’t make the task of interpreting it any easier or less daunting.

Of the title track in particular, Jungr recounts, “We recorded that over a period of about four months because we had at least five versions that we didn’t use. I went back and back and back to it and then I’d listen to it a week later and I’d go, ‘I’m not getting this right. This isn’t right. This isn’t right.’ It was a feel, an intuitive thing. You go, ‘This isn’t right. This song’s not right. I’m not singing this song right.’”  

Such dogged determination ultimately served the album well overall as Jungr’s performances, which through moments of jazz sophistication and cabaret panache are strikingly prescient. In their own way, as well, they yield illuminating perspectives on the canons of two of popular music’s most iconic and mythologized singer/songwriters. 

How difficult was it to marry the works of Dylan and Cohen as you’ve done with this album?

It was really easy. It was remarkably easy. The choices of the songs were effortless. They fell in at their own accord. I’m familiar with both sets of repertoire, but picking the songs really wasn’t difficult in any way. What was extraordinary for me was how very married the themes were but from a very different point of view. That was interesting.

Dylan’s known for having written many of his early songs very quickly—“Blowin’ in the Wind” took him twenty minutes, he’s acknowledged—while Cohen has a reputation for having taken years writing much of his work, yet it’s striking how well they complement each other.

Absolutely, and I think you can hear the difference. For example, “Chimes of Freedom” to me is just a mammoth, extraordinary song and, for me, it shows Dylan at his most humane. There’s a humanity about that song that’s startling for me. It’s a wonderful song to sing for that reason, but it’s a sort-of torrent of imagery. You can almost feel it emerging as you sing it; the song emerges itself. Then you take a song like “A Thousand Kisses Deep,” and what I love about Cohen is the way he’ll use words again, he’ll use phrases again, but their repeated use is utterly deliberate. I don’t mean because they’re choruses; that’s not what I mean. He’s playing with threads all the time. It’s a very fine, fine work he does; it’s finely honed and it’s very different to the way Dylan works. I love that about both of them. 

***

Dylan has said, especially about early songs like “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and “Chimes of Freedom,” that he was not the prime force behind those songs, that they were instead channeled through him.

I love that he says that. I love that in his autobiography—in that first volume, the only volume of the three that we’ve ever seen—he talks about when Daniel Lanois comes to him and says, “Can we have another song like “Hard Rain?” and Dylan says, “The spirits that gave me those songs aren’t with me anymore.” I thought that was incredibly self-aware. There’s something very, very astonishing about understanding that and carrying on. 

Dylan seemed to have a grasp on the world around him right from the beginning, whereas Cohen’s grasp seems to have evolved more as he’s aged—and maybe that’s simply because he started later as a recording artist—particularly with albums like The Future. 

But again, who cares how you get to the top of the mountain? You went up the challenging path with crampons; you walked up the easy slope. It doesn’t matter. What matters is you got there. That’s very interesting, I think, in the comparison of those two: how they go about getting there. They both get there. They both get to something profound and spiritual and deeply-connected, profound human observation and questioning. They’re questing.

What, in part, gives this album such a compelling character is how you’ve taken liberties with the arrangements in ways that make the performances your own. You’re not copying these songs; you’re interpreting them. For instance, in a song like “It’s Alright Ma” you have an upbeat arrangement that seems to play against the ominous subtext of the lyrics. Did you intend for those sorts of paradoxical moments?

When that happens that happens by chance rather than design. When we’re arranging, I never go into arranging thinking, “What I want this song to do is…” I go into an arrangement thinking, “What could happen with this song if we listen to it differently?” We ask questions. We try things and we ask questions of the song. We sit the song down at the piano and we go [to the song], “How do you feel if we do this? How do you feel if we moved that section about?” And the song is very clear. The song will go, “Yeah, I like that,” or, “What are you thinking? Don’t be an idiot.” We know that straight away from the song. 

The songs are like live things—living, breathing things. We’re talking about real songs here, songs that Dylan channeled, songs that Cohen crafted, those kinds of songs; songs that come from something really deep that’s to do with the art of songwriting, those songs. They’re alive in the world and when they come to me—and they do come to me—and they knock on my door and ask me to sit with them at the piano with Simon Wallace in this instance, then we have to be awake and alert to what they’ll accept. 

***

Considering the sociopolitical context that binds these songs on the album, did you ever consider recording Cohen’s “Democracy?”

Yes, I did. I couldn’t make it work. The song didn’t want to come. We brought the song to the piano and the song sat on the piano and said, “Get lost.” [Laughs] Interestingly, into the live collection we put “The Future.” That song sat down at the piano and jumped about like a pea in a pod. It was fantastic. We found a great way of working with the song and the song comes out live and rips people out of their seats. I do it after “Masters of War,” and it’s a very interesting juxtaposition of those two songs together. 

In singing songs in which the lyrics are not transparent—particularly ones that have been open to interpretation for many years now—do you have to form some meaning for yourself in order to deliver it with conviction?

Two things about that… I tend to be drawn to and songs are drawn to me—that is, it’s not a one-way street—that I feel can resonate for me. I don’t like analysis because I have to be an instrument for the song—I have to be a singing instrument for the song—and I play by the text. So my technique is the amount of vocal quality I can bring to the text that the text will ask in any given moment. The second part of it is that if I stay completely out of the way, if I do not impose my will upon the song—if I don’t use the song to tell you what I think, but I let the song tell me what it thinks—then the audience will get what the song thinks. And that’s far more interesting. 

So that means in every singing of the song I get something different because the song’s always got something new to tell me, because with songwriters like Cohen and Dylan the work is Shakespearean. It’s multifaceted and it’s mysterious. It isn’t a clear thing. It’s not, “This is a song about traffic control.” It isn’t simple. These are songs about the human condition. 

Hard Rain (The Songs of Bob Dylan & Leonard Cohen) is available now on Kristalyn Records. For more information on Ms. Jungr, please visit her official website.

Read on...

British Vocalist Barb Jungr Covers Dylan, Cohen on New LP

More than a decade since she released a critically hailed collection of Bob Dylan covers, British vocalist Barb Jungr is set to offer six new interpretations of his songs alongside five others composed by Leonard Cohen. Hard Rain: Songs of Bob Dylan & Leonard Cohen is due March 24 on Kristalyn Records. Check out the track listing and the video for Jungr’s version of Cohen’s 1974 classic “Who By Fire?” below.

1. Blowin’ In The Wind  (Bob Dylan)
2. Everybody Knows  (Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson)
3. Who By Fire  (Leonard Cohen)
4. Hard Rain  (Bob Dylan)
5. First We Take Manhattan  (Leonard Cohen)
6. Masters Of War  (Bob Dylan)
7. It’s Alright Ma  (Bob Dylan)
8. 1000 Kisses Deep  (Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson)
9. Gotta Serve Somebody  (Bob Dylan)
10. Land Of Plenty  (Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson)
11. Chimes Of Freedom  (Bob Dylan)

Read on...

New Book on Bob Dylan Examines 50 Years of Relevance and Resilience

“There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music,” President Barack Obama said of Bob Dylan earlier this year at a White House ceremony in which the music legend received the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award.

With a new album in the offing—Tempest, his 35th studio effort, is slated for a September 11th release—and a new round of North American concert dates lined up with Mark Knopfler, it’s fair to say there is arguably no other living artist as relentless in his musical pursuits as Dylan either.

Dylan’s seemingly unwavering resolve and resilience underscore journalist Jon Friedman’s forthcoming book, Forget About Today: Bob Dylan's Genius for (Re)Invention, Shunning the Naysayers, and Creating a Personal Revolution.

Having steered clear of writing a conventional biography, Friedman instead examines his subject, according to the author’s website, with an emphasis on “understanding the factors that have made Bob Dylan so successful throughout his astounding five-decade-long career.”

Forget About Today will be published by Perigree Trade on August 7.


Tweet

Read on...

Concert Review: Lucinda Williams Brings Her Joy to Jannus Live

Lucinda Williams at Jannus Live, 10/19/11 (photo by Donald Gibson)

Last week Lucinda Williams was honored by the Americana Music Association with its Lifetime Achievement Award for songwriting. This past Wednesday night at St. Petersburg’s Jannus Live she proved why she deserved it, delivering a musical masterclass of heartbreak, remorse, and redemption for nearly two solid hours.

Her aching, windswept voice resonating rich and vibrant in the open-air venue’s crowded courtyard, Williams delivered each song with distinct consideration and purpose. Early highlights included the Car Wheels on a Gravel Road gem, “Drunken Angel,” and a honky-tonk-tinged rendition of "Well Well Well," from 2008's underrated Little Honey. “Steal Your Love” and “Essence” came off gutsier, grittier than their recorded counterparts, thanks in no small measure to Williams' ace band (and opening act) Buick 6.

“Side of the Road” and "Blue" – the former a plaintive lament; the latter a mournful masterpiece – were rendered with unmistakable poignancy and charm.

Williams premiered two as-yet-unreleased tracks, one original and one cover, both of them solid performances. Her own “Stowaway in Your Heart” featured a funky rhythm that in a way recalled "2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten," its lyrics bearing the refrain, "Thank you for giving me a place to hang around.” Then came an understated take on Bob Dylan's “Trying to Get to Heaven,” which Williams recently cut for a forthcoming Amnesty International project – like the 2007 set of John Lennon covers, Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur – that will include various artists covering his songs.

“This one goes out to those marching in the street, the 99 percent,” Williams said before an extended, rambunctious version of “Joy,” her fist held high in solidarity with the Occupy protests around the country. Two well-selected covers, "It's Not My Cross to Bear" (Allman Brothers) and audience favorite "For What It's Worth" (Buffalo Springfield) continued in the same defiant vein to close the show, but it was with the encore-opening title track to her most recent album, Blessed, that Williams made her most lasting, heartrending impression. "We were blessed by the forlorn, forsaken, and abused," she sang in its final verse, offering a silver lining of hope in what can often feel like a hopeless world.

Read on...

An Interview with Daniel Lanois

GRAMMY®-winning producer Daniel Lanois has worked with some of music’s most significant artists, but in collaborating with Neil Young on this year’s explosive Le Noise, he found a kindred spirit.

“I was always embarrassed of being a hard worker,” Lanois says. “I never paid attention to weekends or holidays or anything. Christmas? I’m working. [Laughs] And we talked about it. [Neil] said, ‘I’m the same way.’ He said, ‘Why should we operate by the markers of time as decided by somebody else?’ He’s not disrespectful to other people’s ways, but he’s a non-stop engine.”

In making the album, which recently earned three GRAMMY® nominations, Lanois not only gained greater insight as to Young’s artistry, but to his integrity as well.

“There’s nothing like getting to know somebody as a friend to find out what it’s all about,” he says. “We’re both Canadian, and I know we’ve traveled the world plenty, but it’s always comforting to be with someone from your own backyard. There’s an awful lot that gets spoken without words.”

What was your objective as far as what you wanted the album to sound like?

Well, the objective changed as we went along. It started out as an invitation to record ten acoustic songs and to film him, because I’d been making these little vérité films where the lens captures the performance and no crosscutting between cameras; just one camera, one lens for the magic take. He liked that a lot and said would I do that for him? And I said okay. And he came in with a nice batch of songs. Out of that session came the two acoustic songs, “Peaceful Valley Boulevard” and “Love and War.” Then some other nice ones, a few on piano. Then before when he was getting ready to leave, he said, “Well, I’ve got an electric one. Let’s try one electric one.” And we recorded “Hitchhiker,” and it was pretty much a balls-to-the-wall [song]. Then he went home. We worked for three days under the full moon. He went home and I listened to everything and I thought the two main acoustic songs were masterpieces. I told him that and I told him that “Hitchhiker” was fascinating and might he have another electric [song] or two for the next session? So then he brought in “Walk with Me” and “Sign of Love,” and they turned out great.

And I said to him, “Something is happening in the riff department here that I really like with these songs.” There’s always some action in the bottom, very riff-built, as is the case with “Walk with Me.” I said, “Okay, we have a chance to be lean and mean here, rockin’, even in the absence of a rhythm section, because the natural inclination would be to bring in a drummer. We thought about it, but then I resisted suggesting that because I found something cool about just one man standing — even though we’d strayed from the acoustic idea. Then we agreed: no overdubs, just sounds. Sonics are allowed, not overdubs. And we found a few cheap tricks that worked in our favor. There’s this automatic bass machine that I plugged in, seemed to work a good half of the time. It’s just really an octave machine. Then I supplemented that with wherever the bass machine had been tracked with another box that I had here, these old Taurus pedals that I had, and I mimicked the sound of the bass machine on the Tauruses… I meticulously went through all the tracks and popped in the right notes. Consequently there’s this great bottom on the project, but you don’t get the sense that there’s a bass player going for it.

There is a percussive push to it.

Yes, there is a percussive push to it, like on “Walk with Me,” especially, [like] little jolts of bass without having a bass part. And he loved it all. The more I did, the more he loved it. [Laughs] He said, “Do more! Do more!” And I came up with that crazy ending of “Walk with Me.” That’s a completely fabricated thing out of my dubs… The opening chord, that’s [from] about halfway through the song. I decided that that’s the spot where the energy really rose to the surface. [I said], “Why don’t we just start there?” And he said, “Well, I’ve never had anybody edit my songs before.” He was pining for some of the lyrics that I’d chopped out so we put them at the end. He was happy with that.

You’re known for working with some rather mercurial, headstrong artists: Young, Dylan, Bono, Peter Gabriel. As a producer how do you work with that kind of artist without extinguishing their creative spirit and vision?

Well, they all have something in common: They all like surprises. And they’re all people who are innovative, therefore searching for a new form of expression. Nobody wants to make the same record they made on the last one. Sonic surprises are safe territory. You’re not challenging anybody on content at that point. You’re just providing color. Oftentimes a gadget, a sound, a riff, something fundamental will make for a really great icebreaker. It becomes a point of interest for everybody in the room. It might be as simple as bringing in a cool pedal for the guitar player. And everyone crowds around like looking at the engine inside of a car. Oftentimes it’s like that where everyone can huddle up and have a bit of fun. Then it becomes part of the menu. I like to make a menu for each record. You can’t plan out a menu. You can make a menu relative to what’s available in the room, what people are coming up with. I find by paying respect to what people bring to the table, a nice exchange builds. People’s backs aren’t up. It should never be a competition.

Experience must dictate a lot of this, but when do you know when to say, “This isn’t working?” or “This other idea is better?” How do you know when to switch gears to reach some common ground?

Well, I usually encourage all ideas to be brought to conclusion, if you have the time, especially if you’re with a group of folks who want to experiment. Somebody’s got an idea, see it through. It just costs time. And then a few days from the work, everybody listens and it becomes clear what rises to the surface, what the strongest ideas are, and go from there. People are smart so they’re not going to be supporting a weak result. You never know about an idea until you bring it to conclusion. I try to say yes to everything, but in the end my commitment and my care — I think people really feel that I care about them and their music — so I might give some ultimate advice on content, as I did with Neil.

We had an excess of material. I said, “Neil, believe it or not, I think this should be an eight-song record. It should be 39-minutes long, just like the vinyl days. You’ve already got your two slow songs; the rest should be rockers.” So we had to put five or six songs into the coral that he loved, and I loved too. It would have weighed the record down. It would’ve made it a soft record, which I felt served him badly. So in the end he said, “You’re the man. You’re my editor. You’re my curator.”

So we should look for those tracks on Archives, Volume Two?

I think so, yeah. There’s some beauties there. There’s one that I loved called “For The Love of Man.” It’s got a little Roy Orbison in it.

Did Neil surprise you at all with what he brought to the table?

He surprised me with my requests. I would say, “Hey Neil, do you think you can come up with another riff rocker or two?” And he’d say, “Well, I’ll sit on the edge of the rabbit hole and see if the rabbit comes out.” But he always came up with them. It’s kind of a record-maker’s dream that you would send off the writer and he comes back with what you asked for.

And yet he doesn’t really write songs by instruction; he sort of waits for them to arrive.

Very much so.

He’s not a Brill Building kind of songwriter.

No, but he gets inspired easy. Some everyday little thing or encounter will provide him with the inspiration to write a song. Just saying hello to somebody on the street, he’ll find something in that encounter that’s fascinating enough to write a song about. One he wrote, “Someone’s Gonna Rescue You”... When he was in Hawaii, he met a fan on the street who said, “Hey, aren’t you Neil?” And they started talking and that fan was saying, “Man, music today leaves me lost. I feel like I’m lost.” And as he walked away Neil said, “Someone’s gonna rescue you before you fall!” A 30-second encounter turns into a song for Neil. Gotta love him.

Read on...