Tag: blues

ARTIST OF THE MONTH: Tedeschi Trucks Band

Posted on by Editor

Our March AOTM is Tedeschi Trucks Band: the powerhouse ensemble that just delivered their newest album, Signs. During a tour stop in Nashville, the blues-inspired band zeroed in on the vibe in the room without concern for over-the-top stage effects or eye-catching set design. As Derek Trucks explains it, “I think our MO is always that – it’s always the music and the musicality. That comes first and everything else is in service of that.”

Next week, BGS will post back-to-back interviews on the band – as Susan Tedeschi and Derek Truck both share their perspectives on the new music, as well as the foundations that have brought them here. Although they both pay attention to politics, they had a different idea in mind with Signs. As Tedeschi explains:

“I feel like I have a lot of responsibility being in front but I don’t feel like it’s my position to be political. I feel like it’s more my place to make people feel good. So I try to help people with the stress of everyday life and all of these problems. And I try to make music that is hopeful, and try to make people feel. And if I am angry about something, or something’s going on that I think is really unjust, then I can throw it in there, in a song, or I might make a comment, like ‘Hey, help out your neighbors.’”

For now, get primed for the month ahead with a collection of some of their best work in our new Essential Tedeschi Trucks Band playlist on Spotify.

Illustration: Zachary Johnson

LISTEN: Roses and Cigarettes, “California Going Home”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Roses and Cigarettes
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Song: “California Going Home”
Album: Echoes and Silence
Release Date: February 22, 2019

In Their Words: “‘California Going Home’ was written about a relationship that didn’t work out but the love there remains. Not everyone will stay forever and this song is about appreciating that person for who they are and where they are, even if it means your heart is broken in the process.” — Jenny Pagliaro

“This was the last song we wrote for the album. We were over at Jenny’s house, and we were talking about needing one more rockin’ song for the album. I sat on her couch and summoned Janis Joplin to help us out. The chords literally poured out from my hands. Jenny and I looked at each other and she immediately grabbed her phone, a pen, and we recorded the first draft. The song came together fairly quickly. Jenny created this beautiful scenery and imagery with her lyrics and I just love the story she tells in this song. We’ve all been there, and have felt those feelings before.

“We took a lot of inspiration from The Allman Brothers, John Mayer, and Susan Tedeschi for ‘California Going Home.’ After recording our debut album in 2015, I knew I wanted Album 2 to have a song with harmonizing guitar parts. I really had fun playing my Fender Telecaster on this track! Jenny and I both wanted a jam song and a sing-along on this album, and we are so thrilled with how this song turned out! Our producer and bassist, Michael Lyons, really dug deep to create a beautiful production on this song that truly grasps that down-home, sparkly, Americana vibe Jenny and I had envisioned when we wrote it. We were very honored to have Ryan Lipman mix this album, and he really hit it home on this track. Chris Lawrence (pedal steel,) Bobby Victor (keys,) and Vic Vanacore (drums/percussion,) completed the circle with their great energy and musical vibe in the studio to make the song a real jam! — Angela Petrilli

Photo credit: Rachel Louise Photography

16 Stories to Celebrate Black History Month

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: black history isn’t just American history, it’s American roots music history — they are inseparably intertwined. As such, one month out of the year simply cannot do this cause justice. To mark the occasion we’d like to travel back over a year’s worth of writing and reporting to revisit just a few of the incredible black artists, creators, and activists whose indispensable perspectives and awe-inspiring work moved us.

 

Angelique Kidjo’s reimagining of the Talking Heads’ landmark album, Remain in Light, was not only one of our top albums of 2018, it was the subject of an exhaustive deep dive for an edition of our Small World column, which points out the stunning amalgamations and consistencies that made the record a perfect vehicle for Kidjo’s singular talents and sensibilities.

 

For Canon Fodder, we examined the remarkable success of Tracy Chapman’s self-titled, debut album. In 1988, Chapman appeared as the culmination of pop’s newfound social engagement, and the record captures the sound of a young artist clinging to her optimism, even in the face of so much cynicism.

 

Our inaugural season of The Show On The Road, hosted by The Dustbowl Revival frontman Z. Lupetin, included many black voices, including husband-and-wife duo, Birds of Chicago. Their special brew of soulful rock and roll and goosebump-raising secular gospel is a much needed shot of pure positive energy.

 

Alt-folk singer/songwriter AHI answered five questions and gave us five songs to go with them in an edition of BGS 5+5 that touches on Bob Marley, Thunder Bay, and oh so much more.

 

Writer, storyteller, historian, and songster Dom Flemons released Black Cowboys in 2018, an album whose depth and breadth rivals that of a museum exhibition. For our Shout & Shine interview he unpacked the forgotten histories and untold stories of black identities that shaped the American “Wild West,” and thus, the country as a whole.

 

The Journey, the latest album from Benin native, guitarist Lionel Loueke, tells stories of migration historic and modern, with musical textures and flavors that demonstrate our world — musically, culturally, and otherwise — is entirely interconnected. We featured Loueke in our Small World column.

 

Guitarist and songwriter Sunny War gave us a stripped-down, stunning rendition of “He Is My Cell” for a Sitch Session, showcasing her unique picking approach and the complicated emotions channeled through her writing.

 

Kaïa Kater’s most recent album, Grenades, was an exercise in self-love and self-learning. Our Cover Story unpacks how the project spans generations, hemispheres, and textures, and left the singer-songwriter “swimming in her own shadow.”

 

In 2018 we lost one of music’s brightest lights and most ethereal talents when Aretha Franklin passed. We did our best to tribute her everlasting legacy by diving into her best-selling album, Amazing Grace, for an edition of Canon Fodder.

 

Americana duo Nickel&Rose premiered their EP, aptly titled Americana, on BGS after being inspired by touring across Europe, noting the way international audiences reacted to and consumed American roots music. They offer their own personal musings on perseverance, loss, and compassion without empty promises that everything is going to be okay.

 

Charismatic, dynamite performers the War and Treaty (AKA Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Blount) told us the stories that led to the making of their latest album, Healing Tide — from the beginning, with a piano in Saddam Hussein’s palace basement, to the pair meeting at a festival, to the present, as their music and mission of love gain steam across the country.

 

In another edition of Small World, we take a look at cellist and songwriter Leyla McCalla’s brand new album, The Capitalist Blues, and the myriad themes and influences from around the globe that went into the writing, production, and execution of the songs and stories therein.

 

Gospel singer/songwriter Liz Vice balances intensely personal experiences with universal ideas like the Golden Rule on her album, Save Me, and our conversation with Vice gets into the nitty gritty of that balance and the personal growth and reckonings behind it.

 


Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton made his case for why down home blues and old-time American music are not simply relics of bygone eras in his Shout & Shine interview. He is not merely a preservationist mining bygone decades for esoteric material or works that fit a certain aesthetic or brand. He simply takes music that is significant to his identity, his culture, and his experience and showcases it for a broader audience.

Host Craig Havighurst spent some time with Cedric Burnside on his podcast, The String, where they discuss the blues, soul, and regional folk’s growing influence and representation within the Americana community — as well as Burnside’s own commitment to the spread of Hill Country blues.

Legendary song-interpreter Bettye LaVette’s first major label release since 1982 focused on the work of one artist and songwriter, who just happens to be Bob Dylan. In our interview LaVette gives us a frank and engaging peek inside her mind: “Oh, honey, I am 72 years old. I basically don’t give a fuck. Nothing at this point wears me down. I know that all of this going on right now, either it’s going to pass or we’re going to pass.”

Photo of Kaïa Kater: Raez Argulla

Small World: Leyla McCalla Makes a Statement with ‘The Capitalist Blues’

Posted on by Editor

Many seeing Leyla McCalla’s performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival last May had a bit of a surprise midway through the set. It wasn’t just that the musician and singer, generally associated with cello and banjo, strapped on an electric guitar. And it wasn’t just that the guitar was poised precariously over her very pregnant belly (she would give birth to twins three weeks later).

It was the music she and her band launched into that provided the shock, intentionally: A powerful new song, dense in structure, forceful in rhythm, marked by her despairing vocals and distorted guitars.

“You were like, ‘Wow, this is different!’” she says now.

The song, “Aleppo,” captures deep emotions she had while watching in-the-moment accounts of the horror experienced by those caught in the 2016 siege of the Syrian city. It was a dramatic departure from the largely acoustic Haitian/Louisianan/Delta/etc. inspirations of the rest of her set and of the two solo albums she’d released to that point, as well as from the African-American string band renewals she’s done in the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

But it’s also a sonic center, if an extreme one, of her new album, The Capitalist Blues. Working with producer Jimmy Horn, a.k.a. the formidable frontman of New Orleans’ rowdy ’n’ raw R&B stompers King James & the Special Men, she broke into new territories while staying firmly grounded in her musical and personal histories. The whole of her is here: being raised in New Jersey by her activist Haitian-born parents, spending two teen years living in Ghana, staying with her grandmother in Haiti during childhood summers, and now living in New Orleans as a concerned citizen and mother.

BGS: “Aleppo” really is quite different from anything you’ve done. How did that come about?

McCalla: I was watching Facebook Live testimonials of the people in Aleppo during the siege of 2016. People basically saying, “I exist. I’m here. This is what’s happening in my city.” It was really surreal… I had the line come into my head: “Bombs are falling in the name of peace.” That opened the doors to exploring the idea, not just the idea, but exploring how violence is seen as a way to peace in our society, how backwards that is, how messed up. I wanted it to sound angry and frustrated and devastating. I think we got it!

It’s not a surprise that you’d take on social issues. You’ve done it before, of course. And the title of the album and the first song is “The Capitalist Blues,” after all.

A lot of my songs come from a very personal place. And then I start to realize that my personal experience is related to many others’ experiences. I started writing that song several years ago when I was really just starting my [solo] career. It was new to me having an agent and a manager and discussing publishing deals and the business of music. It was a conflicted feeling of making music and being an artist. And I saw how many people can’t even find jobs, and the housing market is out of control and gentrification is everywhere. I sat on the words a long time and one day just came up with “I’ve got the capitalist blues,” and very quickly realized that it would be the title of the record.

You made it at Preservation Hall in the French Quarter in a traditional New Orleans jazz mode.

I’d always imagined it as a brass band, but didn’t know how I’d pull that off. It was such a dreamy experience to record it at Preservation Hall with basically the original Palmetto Bug Stompers band featuring [drummer] Shannon Powell and [banjo player] Carl LeBlanc.

The move into new sounds seems a natural progression.

[On my earlier records] I was inspired by field recordings, before there were amplifiers and electric guitars. But I was listening to Coupé Cloué, one of the forefathers of konpa music, Haitian dance music, what bachata is to the Dominican Republic. The origins of konpa are in Haitian troubadour music, music I was inspired by. A lot of these songs talk about social and political issues, metaphorically in coded language.

I was listening to [Cloué] and Trio Select records, same concept musically but with electric guitars. Magical music. I thought about the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, everything being plugged in, Bob Dylan at Newport. My band has been cracking me up — “We’re like the Band for you!” Yeah, and it’s 2019 and people might still be upset about this! But it’s a natural extension of what I did before. I’ve never been a purist.

“Heavy as Lead” is as personal as it gets.

I wrote that song in one day. All the words came down and, Boom! it was a song. My daughter had elevated lead levels in her blood and I was devastated with that. I don’t like to think of our home as unsafe, but I realized all my friends with young children have that experience. This is a systemic issue.

You have three cover songs on this. The calypso “Money is King,” originally by Neville Marcano, and the Haitian “Lavi Vye Neg,” by Gesner Henry, are familiar territory for you. But “Penha” is Brazilian, with you translating the Portuguese lyrics into Kreyol and English, something a bit different.

That’s a Luiz Gonzaga tune. I’ve been a big fan of Brazilian music since I was a teenager. My dad introduced me to the [1993] album Tropicalia 2, by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. Then I got into Caetano and saw him perform when I was 15, blew my mind, how he mixed indigenous Brazilian music with rock ’n’ roll. I hear the same chord changes and inflections in Kreyol music, not just in Haitian music but Louisiana and Cape Verde and all over Latin America, Trinidad.

The original title of this song is “Baião da Penha” — Baião is rhythm and Penha is the statue of the Virgin Mary. I loved the sentiment of it, believing in peace. I found the lyrics in Portuguese online and I went on Google Translate to translate the lines. I liked the melody but had no idea what it was really about. Then I thought, “Oh, this would be so cool if I could also sing this in Kreyol!” And that’s what I did.

You’re fluent in Kreyol.

I grew up with a lot of people speaking Kreyol around me, but not necessarily to me. Spent the summer with my maternal grandmother in Haiti in ’95, and after that was fluent, but after that I lost it. My comprehension has gotten much better since I’ve been exploring Haitian music, and spending more time in Haiti. I was 10 with my grandmother there. She was very determined to make me love Haiti and help me develop a Haitian-American identity. I think she thought me and my sister were spoiled brats and needed to come experience what other kids were like. That had a huge influence on my life path.

I can’t really talk about why I’m influenced by all these different kinds of music without addressing the oppression of Haitians and black people in the world and why that exists. I live in this. I deal with racial bias on a daily basis. It’s endlessly fascinating, not something that will be solved. I try to puncture the glass ceiling of preconceived notions of what it means to be Haitian, what it means to be black, what it means to be Kreyol, what it means to live in Louisiana. All that becomes part of my music.

You close the album in Haitian parade mode with the band Lakou Mizik on “Settle Down.” How did that happen?

I got really lucky. They played at JazzFest this past year and in 2017. When I recorded with them it was the spring of 2017. I was listening to NPR and they were talking about people protesting at the inauguration who were arrested. They want us all to settle down and fall into place and be complicit to whatever political motives they have. I was thinking about what it means to protest, what it is to march in the streets, how powerful that experience can be. They were putting anti-protest legislation on the table. They just want us all to settle down. So I knew I wanted the song to be part Kreyol and heard it as a rara tune. They [Lakou Mizik] have those instruments and play that style, that’s how they started as a band. It just magically worked out. Hard not to feel it was meant to be, it was written in the stars.

Photo credit: Sarrah Danzinger

The Show On The Road – Sunny War

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Z. speaks with folk/blues guitarist and singer/songwriter Sunny War.

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS

Turns out that while Sunny War was playing her poetic brand of punky blues on the rowdy boardwalk in Venice Beach, host Z. Lupetin was living just up the block and walking past her every day without noticing. She’s come quite a long way since those days, having released three albums since 2014, culminating with 2018’s breakout, “With the Sun.”

LISTEN: Belle Plaine, “Squared Up”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Belle Plaine
Hometown: Saskatchewan, Canada
Song: “Squared Up”
Album: Malice, Mercy, Grief and Wrath
Release Date: October 19, 2018

In Her Words: “‘Squared Up’ isn’t about grief, but it is about the choices that musicians make to follow what they love into the world and leave their families. We give up routine and stability to do what we love. I wrote it for my friend Zachary Lucky specifically, but it’s become a song that I sing for all my friends who tour. We’ve become each other’s family – putting each other up when we cross paths, setting up shows, and calling each other for support. There’s as many conversations with my music friends that end in ‘I love you- as with my relatives.” — Belle Plaine

Photo credit: Little Jack Films

BGS 5+5: Cedric Burnside

Posted on by Editor

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

The artist that influenced me the most: Well, of course my “Big Daddy” (R.L. Burnside). He just had a great stage presence. And even though people loved his music, he played with so much passion that most of the time I don’t think he noticed! One of my favorite memories on stage was when my Big Daddy didn’t know there was a smoke machine on stage, so he stopped in the middle of a song and was about to run off stage, lol! That was a funny moment, lol!

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

Earth is my favorite element. I love nature, I love sitting on my porch listening to the birds, walking in the woods. It helps me think, it helps me be creative. A few rituals I like to do – I like to play my guitar a little and I like to meditate and pray before I go on stage.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I would say one part that helps me would be dancing, because when I see people dance to my music, it makes me want to write more. My mission would be to put as much love as I can into my music and spread it around the world.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

The toughest time I had writing a song was when my brother died. Normally I still could, but when he left me, it was just hard for me. Years ago, I hid behind a character when I wrote. But now I just try to stay true to myself, and tell it like it is.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Music and food! I would say eating a plate of pinto beans, and listening to a little of my Big Daddy and a little Fred McDowell! I knew I wanted to be a musician at a young age, since about 6 or 7 years old, from seeing my Big Daddy, my Daddy and uncles at house parties. That’s when I knew I wanted to play music for the rest of my life.

Photo Credit: Abraham Rowe

WATCH: Abbie Gardner, “Don’t Be Afraid of Love”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Abbie Gardner
Hometown: Jersey City, New Jersey
Song: “Don’t Be Afraid of Love”
Album: Wishes on a Neon Sign

In Their Words: “This song was the result of challenge called Real Women Real Songs, where 14 women across the U.S. endeavored to write a song a week for a year. The prompt ‘fear’ came up about 30 weeks into the project. I was a bit tired of all my feelings by then, so I grabbed the ukulele and wrote this little bluesy tune. I snagged the bass line from the album version of the song and developed a solo Dobro arrangement.

While making the record, I became enamored with the big empty room full of light next to the recording studio (Big Orange Sheep in Brooklyn). I remember thinking that it would be the perfect place to film a simple video with a live recording of just me and the dobro. Videographer Michael Croce had me run the tune about four times, while the original engineer from the CD (Chris Benham) recorded through a single condenser mic… the cable fed right through a hole in the wall to his studio next door!” — Abbie Gardner

Photo credit: Jeff Fasano

WATCH: Larkin Poe, “Bleach Blonde Bottle Blues”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Larkin Poe
Hometown: Atlanta, Georgia
Song: “Bleach Blonde Bottle Blues”
Album: Venom & Faith
Release Date: November 9, 2018
Label: Tricki-Woo Records

In Their Words: “’Bleach Blonde Bottle Blues’ is a punchy little number that lends itself to a stripped-back performance. We really had fun working it up just the two of us — this is the first time we’ve ever sung three-part harmony with Megan’s slide joining in as the third vocal! During the writing process, the rhythmic imagery of the lyric came so naturally to me that it almost felt like this song wanted to be written; it feels like a reminder of the importance in choosing to vibrantly live our lives while we have them: ‘You’ve gotta ride, feel the fire like a first kiss… you’ve gotta ride at your own risk.’” — Rebecca Lovell

Photo credit: Robbie Klein

Canon Fodder: Aretha Franklin, ‘Amazing Grace’

Posted on by Editor

Listen to Aretha Franklin sing “Amazing Grace.” The hymn was nearly 200 years old when she tore into it on her 1972 double-live gospel album with the same title. Her version is nearly eleven minutes, and she spends most of that time wringing those lines of every emotion that has ever been felt in those intervening centuries. Aretha delivers those lines like she’s preaching, and the congregation answers in kind: applauding when she hits that high note on “a wretch like MEEEE” and voicing their excited approval when she locates untranscribable vowels in those simple words “amazing grace.” It is a vibrant collaboration between performer and audience, each pushing the other to new heights of spiritual ecstasy. The Southern California Community Choir comes in like a band of angels, but Aretha isn’t even done yet. Instead, she shakes them off and tests the limits of her upper register.

That is just one of many goose bump-inducing moments on Amazing Grace, which remains her best-selling album as well as the best-selling black gospel album of all time. While it has been overshadowed by the secular albums she recorded for Atlantic Records in the late 1960s and by her unprecedented comeback albums in the 1980s, it remains a touchstone in her catalog, an album that explains her complicated relationship to the gospel world as well as to the pop charts. Beyond that, it’s just an incredible set of music, with all the intensity, all the purposefulness, and all the spontaneity of her own or anybody else’s live albums. Amazing Grace surpasses even her 1971 Live at the Fillmore West, which is saying a lot because that album is a stone classic.

It is, however, an unusual album in her catalog: Title track aside, her voice is often subsumed into a larger choir. She was never one to be upstaged (the only instance I have found is when the violence outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention overshadowed her performance of the national anthem inside), but she slips in and out of the choir, harmonizing with them one moment and soloing the next. The point of the album—the point of gospel, in general—is to share the spotlight with a host of friends and family. Aretha understood that gospel was not a solitary pursuit; the music is not private or internalized.

Rather, it is public, communal: the sound of many voices united in a joyful noise unto the Lord. Even when she is pushing heavenward on “Amazing Grace,” she is no longer the diva she was in the secular world; perhaps this project offered her some escape from the royal demands of pop stardom, the tabloids printing rumors, the endless tours, the complicated business machinations, the physical drain of being the best-known pop singer on the planet. In church, surrounded by people she loved and trusted and admired, with only God as her audience, perhaps she felt at ease.

Nearly fifty years later, the origins of the project are still debated. Jerry Wexler, president of Atlantic Records, claims he encouraged her to record a gospel album, believing she needed to issue a major statement after so many singles-oriented albums. Aretha, however, claims the idea was hers all along, as was the plan to record it live in church. Others claim her father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, pressured her to reconnect with the church, although he had instilled in her at a young age the belief that spiritual gospel and secular pop both sprung from the same well of black history. “If you want to know the truth,” proclaims a very proud C.L. during his short sermon, “she has never left the church!”

Aretha surrounded herself with some of her gospel heroes, including James Cleveland (the King of Gospel to her Queen of Soul) conducting the choir. Also taking part were her brothers and sisters, her grandmother, and her idol and mentor Clara Ward of the Famous Ward Singers. According to David Ritz’s 2015 biography Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin, Wexler “was determined to sneak the devil’s rhythm section into church,” which meant hiring some of the session musicians that had been backing Aretha on her recent records: bass player Chuck Rainey, drummer Bernard Purdie, guitarist Cornell Dupree, and percussionist Pancho Morales. Even that rhythm section is in dispute, however, as Aretha denied the devil had anything to do with the way they played.

And that is where the disputes end, because as soon as Aretha enters on the opener “Mary, Don’t You Weep,” she presides over the album. She is the choir director, the producer, the soloist, the choir member, the preacher. She hammered out the track list with Cleveland in the weeks before the performances, favoring a repertoire that mixed old hymns and new pop songs often in the same arrangements. “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” bleeds so gracefully into “You’ve Got a Friend” that it’s nearly impossible to distinguish Thomas A. Dorsey’s composition with Carole King’s hit. She swaggers through Marvin Gaye’s “Wholly Holy” as well, but the most commanding arrangement is her gospelization of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” which had recently debuted in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel. Not exactly churchly fare, but Aretha and the musicians playing with her find the kernel of spiritual steadfastness in each one. “He walks beside you,” the choir testifies, and she interjects, “He’ll put all of his angels beside you!”

Perhaps she doesn’t mean heavenly angels. Perhaps she means earthly angels: the people up on stage with her and the people down in the pews. In those words are echoes of the Civil Rights movement, a reminder of all the marches and demonstrations that showed strength and righteousness in unity. Gospel was integral to those events; in fact, Aretha performed with Martin Luther King Jr. repeatedly both as a gospel singer and a pop star. Perhaps that connection is what made Amazing Grace so popular at the time; it’s definitely what makes the album so powerful nearly fifty years later.

“Can I get y’all to help me sing?” she exhorts the congregation on closer “Never Grow Old,” and by “congregation” I mean everyone in the church and everyone who ever listens to the album. No one can sing to the heavens like Aretha, but by inviting everyone to sing along, these performances continue to provide an example of how all of America might sing in one beautifully harmonized voice.