Tag: charles mingus

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

BGS 5+5: Lula Wiles

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Lula Wiles
Hometown: Our band sort of has two hometowns: we started the band when we were all living in Boston, but we first played music together as tweens at Maine Fiddle Camp, located in Wabanaki (Penobscot) territory (“Montville, Maine”).
New Album: Shame and Sedition
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Personal nicknames — who’s who should be obvious: Buckles, Burkles, Boms. A rejected bandname that we still joke about… “Monkberry and the Moonlights,” inspired by the Paul McCartney song “Monkberry Moon Delight” off of Mali’s favorite album RAM. We’re so glad we didn’t go with that name… lol.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

Eleanor Buckland: I grew up playing music with my family and looking up to my dad, who is a professional musician, so I’ve sort of had a desire to be a musician as long as I’ve known that was a thing I could be. But, I do remember a specific Crooked Still show in Maine during my freshman or sophomore year of high school that made such an impression on me. During the show I felt almost sick with longing and from then on I knew I was doomed (ha!) for professional musicianship!

Mali Obomsawin: As a little kid I always just wanted to make people happy and make people laugh. I think I always was a performer, and I always loved words, and it just ended up being music that those things came through. I sang and improvised little poems and acted out a lot. When we would play games as kids, I would always come up with little songs and dances… and when we would play fairies or whatever I would always choose to wear this potato sack and be the “troll” character. I liked being the goofy one that got to do mischief and be different. Maybe this is telling… haha. My dad’s a musician too and there have been a lot of musicians in my family for generations… it was just normal to express yourself that way.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Isa Burke: My influences have shifted and cycled in and out constantly throughout my life. I’d say Gillian Welch/Dave Rawlings and Joni Mitchell are probably the most long-lasting influences if I really had to narrow it down. But honestly, I think many of the biggest influences on me have also been my friends, family, bandmates, collaborators, and people I’ve shared musical community with. I also tend to go through phases where I’m really devoted to one artist, and this past year I’ve been really inspired by Fiona Apple. She’s so liberated in the way she creates, it makes me feel more liberated, too. When I listen to her music or read interviews with her, it’s like she’s shaking me by the shoulders and reminding me that I can do whatever the hell I want.

Mali: Like Isa I go through phases… some of my biggest influences that might not be obvious from listening to Lula Wiles are Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus. I got really into “avant garde” and free music at a young age and I think that has shaped my preferences and tendencies as a musician in so many ways. I also think on this album we were able to lean in a little bit more to those sounds that are exciting to me, harsher or more “raw” sounds juxtaposed with atmospheric/gentle/melancholy ones, leaving room in our arrangements for grit and breathability and improvisation. These are all things I associate with Mingus and Ornette — I especially have always been so inspired by Ornette’s gut-wrenching melodies. Just so human. I think Buffy Sainte-Marie had these piercingly honest sounds/qualities in her music too, but I didn’t really dig into her work until more recently. I dunno. These days I’m just loving indie rock, I’m not too proud to admit it!! Really sardonic or sarcastic songwriters like Rufus Wainwright and Randy Newman have been big influences for me. Aaaand, let’s see… Fleetwood Mac?

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

Isa: I’d say my songs definitely draw from fiction and film. I love songs that feel like short stories or films — songs with specific, carefully chosen details that expand in the listener’s mind to create a vivid scene, a feeling, a narrative. I also love dialogue in lyrics — Joni Mitchell is a master of that, obviously. Sometimes when I’m writing, I try to imagine the song as a screenplay, or a film, or a novel. Where would this scene take place, what would the characters say to each other, how would it look and sound and feel? That helps me hone in on which of the various elements at my disposal (description, dialogue, details, images, sounds, melodies) can best tell the story and create the feeling I’m looking for. I also think on a more musical (non-lyrical) level, my sense of rhythm is definitely informed by dance. I’ve always loved dancing and a lot of my most formative musical experiences were based in instrumental fiddle music, which at its root is dance music. I move around a lot when I play and I try to write music that feels embodied, that physically feels good to play.

Mali: So many of my songs have been sparked by specific phrases or ideas in fiction novels and poetry. I get obsessed with the beauty or rhythm or texture of a few words juxtaposed against one another, and I adore word-play, and just sonic patterns or complimentary sounds. Language makes me so excited. It’s nerdy maybe. But sometimes when I read a line in a novel that expresses a specific feeling in a poignant or abstract way, it’s really euphoric. James Baldwin is an example pertinent to this album -– the big inspiration behind “In Dreams” … I’m still working my way through Baldwin’s work now, but I’m also pretty deep in listening to speeches by Black Panthers and other civil rights activists from that time. I think it’s odd how we compartmentalize art/genres sometimes, because these speeches are some of the best pieces of American literature ever created. Anyway, I digress. I think in colors and shapes when I play and compose music, but not specifically in the form of paintings or anything.

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

Eleanor: “Hometown” on our previous record, What Will We Do, was one of my hardest songs to write. I think this was because the story I was trying to tell in the song is so closely connected to my home and the people I love. I found it harder to get to the truth of the song than ever before, because I was so determined to do the story justice. Mali and Isa were both critical co-writers for this song and helped me more deeply understand and stay true to the heart of what I was trying to say.

Isa: I have a song called “Wild Geese” that has been torturing me since April 18th, 2017. On that day, I sat down and wrote a verse and a guitar riff in about five minutes and thought it was one of the best things I’d ever written, but I’ve never been able to finish it. As soon as I wrote it I knew it had to be the last verse of the song, so I’m working backwards. Every so often I’ll pull the song back out and bang my head against the wall for a while, but I can’t seem to write anything that lives up to that one verse. I’ve even finished and scrapped a couple of full drafts (we actually recorded a rough version of one of them during the sessions for What Will We Do). I’ve always ended up getting rid of everything except that one verse. I can’t let that verse go. It haunts me! Maybe it’s just supposed to be a really short song — hopefully you’ll hear it someday.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Mali: Hmmm… the time Tim O’Brien introduced us as Lula Whales? There was another time we made Ellie eat a hot dog onstage in San Francisco on her birthday.

Eleanor: That was possibly my favorite birthday show ever. Isa and Mali surprised me with a hot dog onstage, since I love hot dogs and I am teased mercilessly for it. That same night, we also got pranked by our drummer, who had the sound guy at the Freight & Salvage play one of our TOP van jams, “Twang” by Mason Ramsey (featured in our playlist) as our walk-on music. It was awesome.

Photo credit: Laura E. Partain

Small World: Joni Mitchell at 75

Posted on by Editor

A few years back a video started circulating online, a black-and-white clip of a 1965 TV appearance on a local Canadian show of a young woman from Saskatoon, Joni Anderson by name. She performed two songs: a distinctive original “Born to Take the Highway” and a version of John Phillips’ cowboy ballad “Me and My Uncle,” her demeanor tipping between self-possessed and shy. And then, a few times, she looked sideways into the camera, eyes big, sparkling and mysterious, as if she was saying, “Oh, you just wait. I have some things to show you.”

But even she — you know her as Joni Mitchell — could not have had any idea of all the things that were to come as she would become one of the most individualistically creative and influential music artists of our era, someone who defined, redefined, and refused to be defined by what it means to be a singer-songwriter.

One simply cannot sum up the scope of her life in the arts. Yes, arts plural, as she has long said that she considers herself a painter first and a musician second. But in music, her reach is matched by no other’s, starting early on as she drew as much on theater music and classical forms as on anything that one could call folk, no matter how much she used her mountain dulcimer.

Her first albums were marked by invention all her own, starting with her indecipherable guitar tunings. By the early ‘70s she was tapping top jazz musicians, from slick Tom Scott and the L.A. Express to world-exploring Weather Report to worlds-creating Charles Mingus, to expand her already vast musical world, a decade before Sting did the same. Soon she was reveling in African and Afro-Latin sources, from the Burundi drummers to Don Alias, Alex Acuña and Airto Moreira, for some of her most distinctive work, also years before Talking Heads or Peter Gabriel did similar, not to mention Paul Simon’s Graceland.

And in the larger picture, she still stands as one of the most impactful documentarians and enactors of modern womanhood, placing female perspective in prominence where male views had dominated. Her willingness to reveal herself, with her flaws and vulnerabilities visible, was and remains a courageous act.

(L-R) James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, Graham Nash, Seal, Rufus Wainwright, Glen Hansard, Louie Perez, La Marisoul, Chaka Khan, Brandi Carlile and Kris Kristofferson perform at Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration Live At The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Hence, the seemingly impossible task facing JONI 75: A Birthday Celebration Live at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the two-night, all-star celebration of Mitchell’s milestone birthday presented by the Music Center last week in downtown Los Angeles. How can you capture a singular artist in just a few hours? And how can the particular singularity of this artist translate in full flower through other artists? Mitchell herself — her talents, vision and methods — is inextricable from her music. Mitchell is her art, and vice versa.

Several performances on the second night (her actual birthday) embraced and embodied that concept, and in the process transcended mere tribute: Diana Krall’s performances of “For the Roses” and “Amelia” had the audience members in hushed reverence in their course and had stolen their breath by the end. Seal tapped his inner Nat King Cole to transform “Both Sides Now” and “A Strange Boy” into heights-scaling soul-pop-jazz.

Following an audio clip of Mitchell talking about her passion for exploring the richness of America’s ethnic syntheses, three members of Los Lobos, two of the ensemble Los Cambalache, and singer La Marisoul of La Santa Cecilia — three groups crossing generations of musical leadership in L.A.’s Mexican-rooted heritage — teamed with the stellar house band for “Dreamland,” using the percussion-drive of Mitchell’s 1976 original as a mere starting point. For this grouping, with Los Cambalache’s Xochi Flores on the dance-percussion zapateado, the song was transformed into a Mexican folk song, to the point that “La Bamba” was spliced seamlessly into its middle. (Oh, and Chaka Khan, who did vocal counterpoint with Mitchell on the original, came on stage to spar delightfully with La Marisoul!)

Brandi Carlile (L) and Kris Kristofferson perform at Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration Live At The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Brandi Carlile was just as arresting sticking to the Mitchell blueprint on her version of “Down to You,” which she did following a charming if ragged “A Case of You” in duet with Kris Kristofferson. On the red carpet before the show, Carlile explained her process.

“I try to do it just like she does it,” she said. “Because, out of respect, out of reverence and out of the fact that I don’t think it can be done better than she does it.”

But as an artist, doesn’t she want herself in anything she does?

“Anybody but Joni,” she said, definitively.

Even Emmylou Harris admitted to the daunting prospect of covering Mitchell. Though “an interpreter for most of my career,” she noted, also on the red carpet, that she had only ever recorded one Mitchell song, “The Magdalene Laundries,” for a 2007 Mitchell tribute album.

“We’re all feeling the little bit of pressure,” she said. “You don’t want to take too much of Joni out of this, but on the other hand we have to make it our own. You’ll see most of the artists did an amazing job.”

Harris performed that song (a lament for “women enslaved in convents in Ireland”) at Joni 75, perfectly striking the balance she cited, and also for these shows added the similarly dark “Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire” to her Joni repertoire. Others found their own balance to varying degrees. Norah Jones brought some twang to “Court and Spark” and “Borderline.” Glen Hansard injected his Irish exuberance into “Coyote” and “The Boho Dance.” Rufus Wainwright, a fellow Canadian, added his mannered drama to “Blue” and took “All I Want” to Broadway. Khan in her two spots brought soul-jazz to “Help Me” and “Two Grey Rooms.” James Taylor managed to make “River” and “Woodstock” sound as if they were his own songs, without losing any of Mitchell’s presence in them.

Through it all, the house band, led and arranged by pianist Jon Cowherd and drummer Brian Blade (the latter a veteran of Mitchell’s bands), expertly covered the full range of the music, shining and soaring in particular on the chamber-orchestral middle section of “Down to You.”

Graham Nash, rather than doing a song by Mitchell, did one about her: “Our House,” his portrait of their Laurel Canyon domesticity from so many years back, the crowd singing along on the chorus and sharing the bliss.

Mitchell herself was in attendance on the second night, hobbled but hearty more than three and a half years after suffering a brain aneurysm. The crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to her twice — once as she took her seat before the show, and again when she came on stage for a curtain call, a cake brought out and the assembled cast and crew reprising the all-hands closer, “Big Yellow Taxi,” Mitchell sporting a huge smile, mouthing the words and even dancing a bit.

Did Joni 75 capture the entire scope and depth of Mitchell’s magnificence? Of course not. With her Canadian roots spotlighted in the stage decorations (a canoe suspended overhead, skis leaned at the back, a couple of barrels framing the set), the evening summed up her global embrace of music and art, and the global embrace of her music and art.

(Editor’s Note — Check out this writer’s Spotify playlist, Epiphanies: A Joni Mitchell Deep Dive.)

Joni Mitchell (seated) attends Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration Live At The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

All photos: Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for The Music Center

Squared Roots: Ryley Walker on the Off-Kilter Blues of Ali Farka Touré

Posted on by Editor

Dubbed “the African John Lee Hooker,” Ali Farka Touré rose out of obscurity, in terms of Western recognition, with a little help from Ry Cooder, when the two joined forces for Talking Timbuktu in 1994. Many more collaborations and accolades followed in the wake of that project, but Touré's success back home in Mali was marked by different measures. Singing in a number of languages — primarily Songhay, Fulfulde, Tamasheq or Bambara — he brought communities together and made voices heard. His legacy, musically and personally, lives on in the many African artists who have followed in his footsteps.

American artists, too, tread his past, including singer/songwriter/guitarist Ryley Walker. On his albums, like 2016's Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, Walker incorporates the cyclical, off-kilter rhythms he learned from listening to Touré. Casual listeners to his work might not single out his main reference point, but serious students of the form must surely admire his ability to bridge the gap between here and there, now and then.

I always like to start with broad strokes, so … why Ali Farka Touré, for you? Is he someone whose work you've studied pretty closely?

I first heard his music late in high school. I was kind of a sponge for world music, at the time. African and Brazilian. I was at a really good age to find that kind of music. I've always been kind of fascinated by off-kilter blues that's so present in that music. It's unlike anything else — really innovative. It relies on tradition. West African music is really forward-thinking, really progressive. It's the kind of music that anyone can enjoy, yet it's really complicated and insanely groovy. It's incredibly hypnotic. The number of languages he sings in is really incredible — like four or five different languages.

Like a lot of folks, my introduction to him was the Talking Timbuktu project he did with Ry Cooder. With a project like that, why is it so important to tie the threads together the way they did?

That record's really good. It was a huge record, too. I think it sold over a million copies and got all sorts of Grammys. It's a really incredible collaboration. I think Ry Cooder paid a lot of respect. He was really into it.

There are also the Red and Green records, those two records that were both self-titled, released in '84 and '88. Both of those records were inspired. They have to be some of my favorite records that he's ever done. There's a little Moody Blues saxophone thing on there. It just seems like you could go up to him and shake his hand and be like, “What's up, man?” He just seems so approachable. That's just kind of the scene — somewhere in Mali, just a bunch of guys hanging loose, just a normal day in Mali. And, yet, there are probably four languages on there. It's the rawest, purest form. They didn't try to slick the music up. A lot of his sounds are pretty slick, toward the end of his life. But this is just him, in his prime, making records with no Western audience, at the time.

I haven't seen Feel Like Going Home, the Scorsese documentary that he's featured in which traces the lineage of the blues. But, if American roots music goes back to the blues and the blues go back to African music, what do you hear as the similarities and differences between those forms?

I guess, yeah, it can all be traced back. It's a truly unique form of music. It's really original, the traditions that Ali Farka Touré's playing on. It definitely has some groove in there. But, before that, it was real folk music. It was just played by the baker down the street or the local blacksmith. It was just people. It wasn't a record label thing. It wasn't a monetary thing. It was just for them and their friends. It was real tradition. There's no pretension to it at all. It's just real music by real people.

You could go to a village — I mean, I've never been, but … it's not like you would go to a bar in Chicago and say, “Oh, these are musicians.” Everybody in these villages plays music. It's part of their DNA.

Right. It's similar to, still today, if you do down into the Delta, the old blues men are sitting on their porches and nobody's ever heard of them.

Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And Ali Farka Touré, for me, he's up there with [Jimi] Hendrix or anybody else. And his son is really good, too — Vieux Farka Touré. I don't know if you've heard of him.

I have. Yeah. And I was going to ask … who do you feel is carrying on his work? Obviously Vieux is among them and opening his arms far and wide to interesting collaborations.

He's really bad ass. He played a great concert in Chicago about five years ago in the park. He was absolutely ripping. His band was really smoking hot. He's had some questionable collaborations with American musicians. Because I'm such a huge fan of Ali Farka's, when Vieux's first solo record came out, I was like, “Man, I don't know …” But I think that record was as good as anything Ali Farka Touré's ever done.

I'm just fascinated by the whole circuit. They're born in really small villages, where there's no media or anything. And they could rise above it because they're such innovators that it caught on. That's really magical.

And how much of all that creeps into your music?

I think it really creeps into my music. There's always an off-kilter groove with the drums. It's a very cyclical music, instead of a four-four in American rock music. That cyclical, off-kilter thing where the grooves go into each other … I guess you could find a lot of that in Kraut rock, too. They took a lot from Ali Farka Touré, in terms of groove. Or if you listen to Fela Kuti or any of the big African rock stars. They have that cyclical sound where the rhythm and the temperament and the measurement so seamlessly go into each other without a big fill or stop. It feels really natural. I think I definitely try to incorporate that into my music. I rip off Ali Farka Touré religiously. [Laughs]

[Laughs] You're paying homage. You're doing it right.

Absolutely. I respect the hell out of his legacy. I appreciate the music every time I hear it.

How important is it for Westerners to pick up those torches and help carry them forward?

I don't know if it's important to them. It all depends on the listener and what they want from the music. There's music you can rock to. There's music you can worship, like me, and try to play like it, pay homage to it. I don't know. That's a really good question.

You're shining a light on this hero of yours through your work and through talking about him. So that helps spread his message and, hopefully, people will go back and listen to him. I'd say it's a community service.

I'd love to think of it as a community service. It's some of the most important music up there … like [John] Coltrane or Charles Mingus or Art Tatum or any great innovator. It's definitely important to keep the records on, keep the music going. I don't think I'm going to be in a West African band, by any means. [Laughs]

But I absolutely adore his music, ever since I first heard him. It's so captivating. Really beautiful and pure. The guy was so smart. In America, if you speak Spanish, it's like, “Whoa.” Or if you know French or German, it's more of a hobby. But there, you need to know all these languages for work because you have so many different cultures right around you, like the tribe in the next village with a different language and you need to make money and trade with them. So they learn so many languages and incorporate so many different cultures. There's so much different stuff going on there within 500 square miles and they incorporate that into the music. It's a beautiful thing.

Here is a fun and fascinating Wikipedia fact, which we'll take as the truth: “In 2004, Touré became mayor of Niafunké and spent his own money grading the roads, putting in sewer canals, and fueling a generator that provided the impoverished town with electricity.”

Damn!

That's a hero, right there.

That's pretty amazing. That's Robin Hood vibes. He seems like a good dude. Any footage you see of him playing, he's always surrounded by friends and family. That's really cool to me. And they'd sing along to the tunes, to this music they came up with. I guess he was sort of solely responsible for taking West African music around the world and making it popular. I don't know if it's super popular, but record collectors and fans of old music, he's solely responsible for that, him and a few others.

Love the blues? Check out our interview with Jimmy "Duck" Holmes.

Photo of Ryley Walker by Eric Sheehan. Photo of Ali Farka Touré courtesy of public domain.