Tag: Andre 3000

MIXTAPE: Bridget Kearney’s Photographic Memories

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

From my early days of being photo editor of my high school newspaper to my current tour hobby of photographing bizarre regional potato chip flavors in their native lands for @chipscapes, I have long held a fascination for photography. As life rushes by us at a mile a minute a camera has the ability to freeze the frame for a second, capture a moment in time, and provide photographic evidence that the moment actually existed. Though the waves may have crashed into your impossibly magnificent sand castle, you can keep it standing forever in a photo. And though time may have drowned out a love that once burned impossibly bright, a security camera may have accidentally captured the most blissful moments of that love and if you can track down the footage and find those moments, you could potentially kick back on the couch and watch those moments on infinite loop forever.

This is the premise of my song, “Security Camera,” from my new album Comeback Kid. Beyond that song, the subject of photos, memories, and trying to hold on to a moment for what it was, to love that moment forever in spite of its ephemeral nature, weaves its way through the album as a common thread. I put together a playlist of songs on the theme of cameras and memory and it turns out a lot of my favorite songwriters and biggest influences have also been fascinated by this subject. Recorded music is basically the audio version of a photo/video, so it makes sense. Hope you enjoy these songs as much as I do. – Bridget Kearney

“Kamera” – Wilco

Jeff Tweedy seems to be using the camera as a self-revealing truth teller in this song. He’s lost his grip on reality and only a camera can tell him “which lies that I been hiding.” I have loved Wilco for a long time and have a very specific visual memory of listening to them on headphones in college: I was on a semester abroad in Morocco and I was going for a run along the beach in Essaouira and came upon these big sand dunes. I spontaneously decided to run up to the top of the dunes and then bound down them into the water. This joyous discovery of dune jumping on a perfect sunny day will always be soundtracked to Wilco’s song “Theologians” in my mind.

“Kodachrome” – Paul Simon

Paul Simon was always playing around the house when I was growing up and this song has a particular significance to the origin story of my band, Lake Street Dive: We were on one of our first tours and we were driving my parent’s minivan around the Midwest. The only way to listen to music in the van was through the CD player. It was in the pre-streaming era where we all would have had a big library of digital music on our laptops (probably illegally downloaded from Napster or the like). So we decided to co-create a mystery mix CD by passing around someone’s laptop and letting each of us put in songs one-by-one, not telling each other what we’d put it in. Then we burned out the mystery mix CD and listened to it together.

As four students studying jazz at a conservatory we had mostly listened to Charles Mingus and The Bad Plus together thus far, but the mystery mix exposed all four of us pop music fiends. Song after song kept coming on and we’d go, “Oh my god, you like Lauryn Hill too?!” and “You also know every lyric to David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’?!” This culminated in the moment when the mystery mix played Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” THREE TIMES IN A ROW! That was when we knew we should be a band forever. The groove on this song is also part of the inspiration for the song “If You’re Driving” from Comeback Kid.

“Hey Ya” – Outkast

Not actually a song about photos and you’re not actually supposed to shake Polaroid pictures, but Andre 3000 is one of the greatest musicians of our time and I’ve learned so much from him about music and language and spirit! Also this song is a total jam.

“Security Camera” – Bridget Kearney

I live in Brooklyn and there are security cameras everywhere here – at the bodegas, at the clubs, on the rooftops. Their purpose is to capture criminals in the act of committing a crime, but they are also capturing so many other things. Everyday things and extraordinary things. Moments of extreme beauty and moments of extreme pain. The idea behind this song is to track down security camera footage of the very best moments of your life so you can watch them on repeat.

“Pictures Of Me” – Elliott Smith

I went through a huge Elliott Smith phase in college and had an instrumental Elliott Smith cover band. His harmonies and melodies are so good that you don’t even need the lyrics, but adding them in, of course, makes it all the better. This one seems to say that pictures can lie to you, too.

“Picture In a Frame” – Tom Waits

This is one of those songs that seems like it has existed forever. “Ever since I put your picture in a frame” sounds to me like he is saying, “Ever since I decided to love you.”

“Body” – Julia Jacklin

My friend Michael Leviton (a great photographer and musician!) told me about this song and its passing but gutting reference to a photo. We were talking about how I had realized that a lot of my songs are about cameras and photography and how funny it is to look back at your own songs and see patterns and discover what you’ve been obsessed with the whole time. Michael said his thing is “curtains,” which appear over and over again in his songs.

“Bad Self Portraits” – Lake Street Dive

A song I wrote for Lake Street Dive years ago about what happens when the person you want to take a picture of steps out of the frame. What you’re left with and how to make the most of it.

“Videotape” – Radiohead

I always thought this song was about when you die and you are at the pearly gates of heaven, they are deciding whether you get in or not and watch back videotapes of your life to see if you were good or bad. I don’t know if that’s what Radiohead meant, but that’s my interpretation! The production is so cool, the way the drum loop is slightly off tempo and moves around the phrase slowly as it cycles around. Damn, Radiohead is so cool!!

There are a few songs on Comeback Kid that are directly Radiohead influenced. “Sleep In” is like Radiohead meets Ravel (or that’s what I was going for!) When I graduated from Iowa City West High School, I arranged a version of “Paranoid Android” that some friends and I played instrumentally at the graduation ceremony. In retrospect, that is a really weird song for us to have played at graduation! But I think it’s cool that they let us be brooding teenagers and go for it.

“When the Lights Go Out” – Sarah Jarosz

The song that gave Sarah’s brilliant new record its title, Polaroid Lovers. I feel so inspired by the music that my friends make, and Sarah’s songs from this album really knocked me off my feet when I heard the album and even more so when I heard them live!

“People Take Pictures of Each Other” – The Kinks

A festive little song about taking photos of things to prove that they existed.

“I Bet Ur” – Bridget Kearney

This is a song from the album I put out last year, Snakes of Paradise. The narrative is built around seeing a picture of something that you don’t want to see, letting your imagination fill in the details, and learning to accept it as truth.

“I Turn My Camera On” – Spoon

Groove goals. The camera here puts a bit of distance between you and the world.

“Photograph” – Ringo Starr

A song about photographs by my favorite Beatle? Yes, please!

“My Funny Valentine” – Chet Baker

I love Chet Baker’s singing, his pure, dry, affectless delivery, his deadpan panache. And I love the way this song manages to rhyme “laughable” and “un-photographable” and stick the landing.

“Camera Roll” – Kacey Musgraves

Photography has been around for a long time now but carrying thousands of photos of our lives organized in chronological order in our pockets at all times is relatively new. And both wonderful and terrible.

“Come Down” – Anderson .Paak

Just a passing reference to pictures in this song, but I had to get Anderson .Paak on the playlist because he’s the best!

“Obsessed” – Bridget Kearney

A song about falling quickly, unexpectedly, insanely in love with someone and trying to understand how it happened. You look back at the pictures as evidence trying to gather clues, see the train of events that led to this madness.

Photo Credit: Rodneri

MIXTAPE: Gangstagrass’ Standard Setters

Posted on by Editor

As purveyors of genre crossing, we like to recognize standouts within a genre that innovated simply by epitomizing a sound with particular skill: tracks that demonstrated what virtuosity could do within a genre, that pushed the genre to new heights (or at least new places) for us, tracks that maybe we used to judge what came afterward. We could list a lot of classics, but this list is really about the tracks that were the standard setters for each of us personally, making a mark in how we thought about a genre or sound. For our Mixtape, we selected a few songs and described the impact the tracks made. — Gangstagrass

Flatt & Scruggs – “Foggy Mountain Special”

Earl’s fast, regular picking in songs like “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” made his three-finger rolls, like the Foggy Mountain roll, iconic. But this heavily-swung tune, while not a slow song by any standard, really explores the bluesy side of bluegrass banjo. The syncopated banjo kick, with the band entering on the second beat, throws off the listener’s perception of time. The main lick itself deserves to be as iconic as any fast-flowing Scruggs roll. And that solo! From the single-string bends to that chromatic octave line, Earl knows to keep playing it just a little bit longer. You couldn’t go back and redo any part of this any better, not in a hundred years. They nailed it.

Norman Blake and Tony Rice – “Little Beggarman/Gilderoy”

Tony Rice sounds his best on duo albums, whether it’s with country superstar Ricky Skaggs on a journey to reconnect with his bluegrass roots, or songster Norman Blake, whose clear-as-a-stream picking and earnest vocals are augmented by Tony’s unparalleled rhythm work and rich baritone. On this instrumental track, guitar and mandolin trade breaks and, unusually, trade tunes. Because they’re both in A, with similar chords and melodies, you almost don’t notice the transition, except that the tune Blake plays on mandolin is minor, while Tony’s guitar tune is major. It’s a beautiful, subtle effect that showcases both artists and enhances the sound of each instrument.

The Steeldrivers – “Ghosts of Mississippi”

Before Chris Stapleton was Chris Stapleton, he was in a band called the Steeldrivers. The mainstream music audience has rightly picked up on his powerful vocals and formidable songwriting, but arguably his best work has been with this band that gave him a perfect setting. From the smoldering growl of the banjo to the searing whine of the fiddle, the sound has not been surpassed by either Stapleton’s pop work or by any other bluesy bluegrass band. This track in particular sets the bar, serving up equal parts groove, emotion, and one hell of a catchy melody.

Béla Fleck and the Flecktones – “Hole in the Wall”

The Flecktones represent Béla’s furthest ventures outside traditional bluegrass, and this late track on their second album, Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, is a representative example of their early sound. Of note, Howard Levy’s keys get more room than on most other tracks which tended to feature more of his admittedly superlative harmonica work. Near the end, there’s enough sonic buildup to justify a fantastic extended banjo solo with fluidly shifting time signatures and tonalities. Banjo players who have tried to emulate this piece will have noticed that, like many Béla tunes, it centers around a particular lick, in a particular nonstandard key, played in open G tuning. But as with magic, sometimes understanding the trick doesn’t make it any less exciting to see it performed right in front of you. — Gangstagrass

Pharoahe Monch feat. Black Thought – “Rapid Eye Movement”

Every now and then there’s a collaboration that you just know is going to be dope just by the parties involved. “That’s what I figured when I saw these two MCs on a track from Pharoahe Monch’s 2014 album P.T.S.D. I wasn’t prepared for HOW DOPE, however,” says R-SON. Pharoahe Monch drops bars about being in a relationship with his ammunition and then filing for divorce and releasing his “ex-calibers.” Not to be outdone, Black Thought starts his verse with the last two lines of Pharoahe’s and goes on to “send shots to ancient Greece to pop Socrates.” Black Thought’s line “the ex-slave sado-masochist/who gave massa my ass to kiss” is, as R-SON puts it, “just another example of Black Thought’s conscious swagger that laces every verse that he blesses a track with.”

Black Star – “Thieves in the Night”

Mos Def and Talib Kweli came together on the Black Star album and created gems but this was the standard for R-SON. Their distinct flows built two very different parts — Kweli’s recounting what his man Louis said and thought and how those thoughts affected Kweli. Mos Def’s verse, on the other hand, had a breakdown of the hook where he responded to the things said in it. The song ends with one of the great lines in the genre’s history: “I give a damn if any fan recall my legacy, I’m tryina live life in the sight of God’s memory.” R-SON notes that “in my younger days the song brought tears to my eyes and I’m happy to say that it still does.”

Mos Def – “Mathematics”

We cannot think of another time when someone counting from 1 to 10 (Dolio the Sleuth on “Ain’t No Stopping” aside) has had more meaning. Mos raps, “5 dimensions, 6 senses, 7 firmaments of heaven and hell, 8 million stories to tell, 9 planets keep orbit around the probable 10th, the universe expands length….” He continues his “…numbers game, but shit don’t add up somehow,” speaking of the number of bars he has to do what he does, and the minimal amount of money he gets from it all. “6 million ways to die for the 7 deadly thrills / 8-year-olds getting found with 9 mils / it’s 10 p.m., where your seed, he’s on the hill/….pumping crills to keep they bellies filled.” His word (and number) play is immaculate.

UGK – “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You)”

A seminal “posse cut” that unites two legendary duos of Southern hip-hop, UGK and Outkast, exhibiting four distinct flows and approaches to the subject of being a “player.” Each emcee delivers a memorable verse complete with the stunning street poetry they’re known for, with cadences that ride the beat (or the lack of beat, in the case of Andre 3000’s intro verse) that samples heavily from Willie Hutch’s “I Choose You” from the soundtrack of 1970s Blaxploitation flick, The Mack.

Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys – “Nobody’s Love Is Like Mine”

Rench was listening to 1970s-era Clinch Mountain Boys when he started putting Gangstagrass together as a sound. There’s been a good deal of attention to the Stanley Brothers, but the sound was developed and refined to a new level with the addition of Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley. The vocal harmonies are tight and the full string section is on point in a way that epitomizes the best of classic bluegrass sound.

Stuff Smith – “Serenade for a Wealthy Widow”

Stuff Smith is one of the few truly iconic jazz fiddlers. His style is on Charlie Parker’s level. “In an alternate reality, where we weren’t so hung up on jazz’s horn players, I feel Stuff would have been one of the fathers of bebop,” says Brian. Stuff’s style pulls from such a diverse array of influences, from Stéphane Grappelli to the Western swing fiddlers like Bob Wills. The gruffness of his tone and clarity of his lines point to the meld between the character of string band/blues fiddlers players before him like Clifford Hayes and Robert Roberson, and the progressive harmonies that took over jazz after bebop. Stuff is the perfect example of harmonic personality over the harmonic intellectualism that followed. “This track is one of the more off-beat compositions that I love to surprise folks with,” Brian adds.

Slam Stewart – “Oh Me, Oh My, Oh Gosh”

“I feel much the same way about Slam as I feel of Stuff; his musical voice is synergistic of the eras before and after him,” Brian says. The way he rides the rhythm comes from an era of bassists mimicking the sound of tubas in marching bands, indicative of players like Bill Johnson, Wellman Braud, and Pops Foster. His style foreshadows others like Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford, and Ray Brown with their strong solo personalities. This tune is a favorite; it’s a slick lyric and showcases what Slam can do on all fronts.

Outkast – “Rosa Parks”

This one came out of left field in 1998 — when Southern rap was growing into national attention — and planted a flag with the trademark quirkiness of Outkast style, including a harmonica breakdown in the middle of the song. Their fast-flow style is undeniable and surgical here, while their unabashed Southern drawls in this radio hit opened the floodgates for Southern hip-hop to start dominating the charts.

Wilson Pickett – “Hey Jude”

This has a lot to do with the way the Swampers in Muscle Shoals epitomized the soul sound of the ‘60s in the best way, but this track in particular pushed boundaries by including what would later become familiar Southern rock sounds, courtesy of a young Duane Allman. Of course, the wicked Mr. Pickett kills it with a prime example of soul vocals just owning the track.

Photo credit: Sean Aikins