Tag: roots music

Blind Boy Paxton: A Culture Between Each Other

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At first glance, everything about Jerron Paxton looks and feels like a journey back in time to the early days of roots music, blues, and American folk. His effortless juggling of instruments — from harmonica to fretless banjo, to guitar, to fiddle — his humorous banter, his rustic stage wear, even his on-stage moniker, “Blind Boy” Paxton, all conjure past musical eras. The songs and stories Paxton presents don’t come from dusty songbooks, obscure recordings, or forgotten archives, though. They were each a part of the soundtrack of his childhood growing up in South Central Los Angeles. In an area most famous for hip hop and R&B, a vibrant musical tradition flourished, starting from the deep southern U.S. and traveling along Interstate-10 all the way to L.A.

Paxton’s connection to these songs — to these nuggets of American, African-American, and working-class cultures — shines through his performances and recordings. 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. Its value does not reside solely in its history or in the authentic replication of that history, but also exists in its present, its relevance to modern times, and its future, as well.

The music you make and perform seems like such a time capsule — a distillate of past eras, past times, and past places. How did you come to appreciate, love, and make music like that, growing up in Los Angeles?

That, right there, sort of brings up my perspective, my reality in the sort of music I play. The reason I play that type of music is because I am from Los Angeles. South Los Angeles is home to the largest Creole and Cajun population outside of Louisiana. It also has around 20,000 Choctaw Indians. Most of the Black people from the areas I grew up in, around South Central, were all from the deep South — usually Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, and Alabama. For us, that’s the music we listened to at the house. That’s just what we called “down home blues.” You couldn’t have a party without down home blues being played. That’s how I was raised.

Most of my friends that play music similar to mine got into it from Bob Dylan or the Anthology of American Folk Music and all that. I didn’t need those things. This music was culturally relevant to me back then, as it is now. I’m starting to realize, as I get older, that I spent most of my youth making friends with older people. Most of them were on their way out. Most of my friends were born between 1916 and 1945. There weren’t any kids on my block, so by the time the first little kid was around, I already had a personality when I was 7 or 8 years old and I already had a type of music I liked, which is what I present to people now. For me, it’s not some cachet in time; it’s the music of my youth, and the music of my present.

People don’t often think of Los Angeles as a place where blues would originate. Why do you think that is?

Well, Los Angeles is way out in the west, for one thing. Most of the nation’s culture is east of the Mississippi, a lot of the time. I think people expect Californians to be a bunch of surfers. We’re a diverse group of people out there. Where I was born, I was closer to Las Vegas and Arizona than San Francisco, so the culture up there was totally new to me. I had never seen such a thing as San Francisco. I grew up thinking there was not much above the 10 freeway. [Laughs]

That’s the road that brought the family from Louisiana to Los Angeles. It made Los Angeles the last stop on the Chitlin Circuit. The furthest west and south you can go on the Chitlin Circuit. There were great artists out there to support it. T-Bone Walker was out there. Lucille Bogan lived for a period out there and was buried out there, same for Johnny St. Cyr. Jelly Roll Morton spent a good deal of the ‘20s out there. We could keep going on and on about great musicians from Los Angeles. It’s a big, diverse place. South Central had some of the best blues and jazz bands in the world. Now we get known for nothing else but hip hop.

Where do you find these songs, besides having grown up with them? Do you ever struggle with finding the right way to care for and curate them in a modern context?

Whew. That’s a big question. [Laughs] I always try to play songs that fit with modern times. My grandmother grew up in the bad ol’ days and very much did not want me to play songs about the bad ol’ days. All of these songs about agriculture and cotton and shit like that, she wanted no part of. She liked all the good country songs. In her generation, songs like “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain” were big hits.

Me, personally, I take her part in that, and I play the songs that are relevant nowadays — about love, about the world, about nature and the beautiful things. Sometimes music doesn’t always have to be so serious. A lot of music is tunes and ditties and things that just put you in a certain place. The blues is a bit serious, which is why sometimes I shy away from playing and singing them for an audience who have no idea what I’m singing about, usually from a cultural basis. I find myself, when I play for a different audience, having to explain things about older songs. Rather than do that, I’d just play some music that they can understand straight off the bat.

That makes a lot of sense. You are going to have those cultural barriers crop up, from time to time.

I don’t have my audience’s perspective. I can’t really imagine what it’s like growing up any other way than how I did. I can’t put myself, culturally, in their shoes. I’m used to the audiences from where I grew up that just dug straight-up music. That’s how I present it to people. I think that’s why I get a reasonable reaction from the crowd — because I treat them and the music as what it is. It’s good entertainment. They paid to see me do my thing. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m not gonna change it up too much just because they ain’t part of my culture. If they start doing things, like clapping on the same beat that they stomp on, I tell ‘em, “That’s against the rules.” [Laughs] “You’re a stereotype, and you should stop that.”

You don’t feel that you get pigeonholed as a novelty?

The only pigeonhole I feel, sometimes, is when it comes to the subject of the blues. I love playing the blues. I grew up playing the blues, but I also play a lot of other kinds of music. Just like the people who get called “blues musicians.” They played every kind of music. I’m more modeled after some of them than some people would think.

People would come to see me sometimes and expect to hear a concert of nothing but down home, Muddy Waters, and this-that-and-the-other. They’d say, “Why do you have a banjo? Why do you have a fiddle and harmonica and things like that? Why do you play 18th- and 19th-century pop songs on those instruments?” And I say, “Cause that’s what everybody did!” They played every kind of music. Back then, in the community, they’d never allow themselves to be pigeonholed as “blues musicians.” They were musicians. They could play any type of dance, any type of function necessary. I try to be the same way. That’s what I’m after. I get invited to blues festivals, and I’ll put on a majority-blues show, but I’ll keep it diverse. I’ll play blues on all my instruments and play it in a way you don’t expect.

Where do you see a place for this kind of music, then? So many genres and formats, whether intentionally or unintentionally, tend to exclude more foundational, vernacular forms of music. It’s so primordial. It gave rise to so many other genres. People kind of gloss over it. And, also, through revisionism, so much of it gets left behind. Especially when it comes to Black identities. The music is appropriated and the history gets left behind. Where do you want to see this music go?

I want to see it get to everyone. And I want to see everybody enjoy it. It would be very nice if people from its culture, like myself, would take it up again. There are very few of us. The ones that do, I find, do well. I feel so happy that Kingfish is out there, and my buddy Jontavious Willis is out there. They destroy the blues. They kill those guitars, and they sing beautifully. I think most of that is from understanding. It comes from a certain place. I come from a maternal culture, and it comes from hearing your grandmother sing things, then your parents respond in certain ways, so you understand it on a very personal, very spiritual level. That’s most of the identity in Black culture, these little things. Most of our culture is between each other. A lot of the best parts of it won’t be televised. A lot of the worst parts of it tend to get exploited, because people want to make money off of it.

I’d love to see [the music] go back into the community and see people of the community value their own folk music. I’ve noticed Black culture is one of the few cultures that hasn’t had its folk music presented in a beautiful and proper way. Go to Ireland, Scotland, and even Appalachia, and watch how they treat their music. It’s everywhere. It’s on the radio. It’s in your face. And people are educated about the instruments — everyone has one — and they’re easy to get. But there were no music stores where I grew up where you could get guitars or harmonicas. There was just one or two, and they’ve since gone. A lot of those other places get government help for their arts, to push the arts forward. That’s why you can still have fiddle competitions all over those parts of the country. But there hasn’t been a fiddle contest in South Central for a hundred years. It’s a doozy. And I know the audience also won’t understand it from a cultural level because, to most in the audience, it’s considered throwback music. I think that’s one of the biggest barriers getting it to cross over — that the popular audience, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, consider it throwback music that doesn’t really exist as a living, breathing thing anymore.

One thing you touched upon earlier — how did you put it? It’s a funny thing. I hope I don’t upset people [saying this], but it’s a funny thing being one of the exploited peoples in American culture. It’s this crazy paradox in that the real Black music, the music of protest that’s yours and you think of as apart from American culture is so much a part of American Culture that when America uses its mighty power to reach the ends of the earth with its influence, you’re wrapped up in it! Your little folk pride and joy, one of the many cultural musics you’ve put into the world — blues — has gone global. That’s funny enough. It’s a paradox having music that is so foundational to all of American music, that influences people as far as the eye can see — made by a very small, oppressed group of people.

You’re based in New York City now. You’re playing the 10th Annual Brooklyn Folk Festival coming up. How does the New York scene connect with the community that you had in L.A.?

I didn’t have much of a career in Los Angeles. I left Los Angeles, when I finished high school. My career has been in New York City. I moved to New York to play stride piano. It was my favorite kind of music. I’d play stride piano and six-string banjo in a lot of orchestras around here. Hot jazz, ‘20s jazz, is a big thing in New York — still is — and I play it every chance I get. Then my solo career took off, and now I get to present to people the music from when I was a little kid — the down home music I learned at home, sitting on the back porch. I take it all over the place in New York.

I didn’t have a lot of faith that people wanted to hear the music like this. Some wonderful places have opened their doors to me saying, “Oh, no, we dig what you do.” I get a kick out of playing for New Yorkers — they’re very ethnic. They have an accent. They have a culture all their own. They’re their own sort of people. I get a good kick out of playing the blues for them. They have no damn idea what I’m doing, half the time, but they dig it, because they’re people. That’s the thing about what they call “ethnic people.” Ethnic people get to be real people — that’s why they’re ethnic. That’s why Cajuns and Creoles are like that, Appalachian people are like that. Down home Black people and Chicanos, they’re all like that. They can accept the music. That’s what I like best about all branches of folk music. They get it.

Photo credit: Bill Steber

Tommy Emmanuel: Swinging for the Fences

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There’s a moment at the beginning of “Saturday Night Shuffle” — one of 16 duets from Tommy Emmanuel’s new album, Accomplice One — where the song’s guest, Jorma Kaukonen, turns to his host and says, “You’re a badass cat, man.”

It’s a nod of approval from one guitar great to another. Accomplice One is filled with those unplanned exchanges: a shout of encouragement here, a surprised laugh there. Raw and real-sounding, the album feels like a jam session between friends, mixing off-the-cuff solos and first-take performances with the virtuosity of an instrumentalist who’s been doing this for a long, long time.

Emmanuel began touring more than a half-century ago, hitting the Australian circuit as the youngest member of a family band. Now 62 years old, he still plays 300 shows a year. He doesn’t use a pick. He doesn’t use a regular amp. In a world whose most well-known guitarists — Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Chuck Berry, and the like — inevitably tend to be electric players, Emmanuel has remained true to the acoustic guitar. He’s the king of the unplugged.

With appearances from 20 guests, Accomplice One shows just how far the king’s empire extends. Americana poster boy Jason Isbell joins Emmanuel on the album’s opening track, a soulful reimagining of Doc Watson’s “Deep River Blues.” Bluegrass heavyweight Jerry Douglas stops by to swap solos on Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.” Mark Knopfler, Ricky Skaggs, and Rodney Crowell all make their own cameos, too. Recorded in studios across the world, these songs nod to the core ingredients of American roots music — Emmanuel’s bread and butter — without losing their global perspective.

“I grew up with music that came out of America more than the music that came out of Australia,” says Emmanuel, who was raised in New South Wales. “It was a combination of sounds that were coming out of Nashville, Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, and New Orleans. I love all kinds of music, but that’s still the stuff that really touches my soul.”

Those childhood influences resurface on Accomplice One. “Saturday Night Shuffle” flips the Western twang of Merle Travis’s original on its head, sounding instead like the funky work of a New Orleans jazz band. Madonna’s dance-pop hit, “Borderline,” is turned into a lilting folksong with help from Amanda Shires. Emmanuel trades country licks with banjo phenom Charlie Cushman and blues-rock guitarist J.D. Simo on “Wheelin’ & Dealin’,” then bounces between Celtic shuffles and barn-burning bluegrass on his Clive Carroll collaboration, “Keepin’ It Real.”

It’s during “Djangology,” though, that the album truly goes international, with Emmanuel and his guests looking far beyond the Lower 48 for inspiration. A tribute to Django Reinhardt’s laid-back, jazzy phrasing, the song was recorded alongside Frank Vignola and Vinny Ranioloa in Cuba, during the middle of the country’s first-ever guitar camp.

“I was teaching 120 international students — everyone from 18 years to 80 years — for four days, and playing shows at night,” Emmanuel remembers. “One of the days, we went to the studio where they recorded Buena Vista Social Club. All the original microphones were there. We brought in some plastic chairs, and all the students sat in the main orchestral room. We had mics set up in front of us, and we worked out the arrangement in front of the kids. Then we recorded it twice and played it back, so they could hear it. The second take was the best, so that was the one we kept. It was very simple.”

Remember Santana’s Supernatural and its biggest hit, “Smooth,” which paired the guitar legend with Matchbox 20’s Rob Thomas? That song was inescapable for years, but it never truly sounded believable. Did anyone actually think Santana and Rob Thomas hung out together? Could anyone imagine them co-leading a guitar camp in Cuba?

That’s what makes Accomplice One so compelling: It’s believable. There’s fret noise on these tracks. There’s studio chatter between the musicians, all of whom are fans of one another. During the Cuban recording, you can hear someone tapping a foot on the studio floor, unable to resist keeping time with the music. The imperfections that would’ve been bulldozed by Supernatural‘s high-gloss production are, instead, put on a pedestal and celebrated by Emmanuel, whose album emphasizes feeling and intention over perfection.

That said, there’s a good bit of perfection here, as well. Emmanuel attributes his refined playing to a lifelong Chet Atkins obsession, which brought him face-to-face with — and eventually under the wing of — his idol during Atkins’ later years.

“Chet lived a life with a lot of great experience,” says Emmanuel, who became friends with the guitarist in 1980. “He had a lot of great people around him. He didn’t just make great music; he made the people around him great, too. He taught me a lot, not just about music, but about human nature. That’s the stuff I can write about.”

Nearly two decades before they met in Nashville, Emmanuel first head Atkins on the radio in 1963.

“It was a sound that I knew, deep in my soul, was what I wanted to make,” he remembers. “I wanted to sound like that. I just wanted to be like that. I think it’s nature’s way that all of us start out emulating somebody.”

If Emmanuel’s approach to the guitar began as emulation, it’s since grown into something signature. Like a one-man band, he’s learned to simultaneously pluck out a song’s melody, underscore it with a walking bass line and beef up the mix with accompanying chords. Listening to “Deep River Blues,” it’s easy to assume that Emmanuel and Isbell are tag-teaming the song’s guitar duties, filling its verses with blue notes and densely stacked chords. But that’s Emmanuel playing alone, with Isbell opting to leave his guitar in the case and, instead, channel his inner soul singer.

“When Jason started to sing that song, you’ve gotta imagine the chicken skin I got,” says Emmanuel, happy to refocus the spotlight on Isbell’s voice rather than his own playing. “I was doing the thumb-picking Doc Watson part and, when you add his voice to mix, it’s totally a soulful experience. It’s real, and that’s what I love about playing music.”

The feeling appears to be mutual. Accomplice One is filled with the sympathetic interplay of musicians who want to be there and that’s what elevates it above the usual catalog of guitar-heavy duets. Filled with covers, originals, (“Rachel’s Lullaby,” a Beatles-inspired song written for Emmanuel’s baby daughter, is one of his most compelling compositions in years.) and top-shelf playing, the album is for guitar nerds and casual Americana fans, alike. It’s the sound of a roots music lifer who, a half-century into the game, is still swinging for the fences.

Lede illustration by Cat Ferraz.

Using Music to Blast Away Holiday Stress

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Somewhere between going to your sixth holiday party, second school Christmas performance, 12th crowded mall, and 38th traffic jam, you realize you’ve come down with it yet again this year. Even though you vow every year you’re going to somehow escape it, organize your way out of it, downsize your experience of it, or simply consume wine by the case, at some point between Black Friday and Christmas morning, you realize you once again have come down with a nasty case of the Holiday Blues — an exhausting kind of stress that causes you to loathe the season which is supposed to be rooted in joy, love, and generosity.

Holiday stress is impossible to escape. It doesn’t matter if you’re the town Scrooge or a devout atheist, holiday stress and strain grabs everyone by the throat and doesn’t let go till we’re popping the Tylenol on January 1. There are too many people trying to accomplish too much in the same crowded spaces in too little time. And it’s not like work and family duties just evaporate at this time of year. Rather, like everything else, they multiply and magnify until we fantasize about becoming a contestant on Naked and Afraid … because wouldn’t covering up with oak leaves and eating berries for dinner just be so much easier than tackling that insane to-do list?

To make matters worse, health experts offer lots of facile advice around this time of year about how best to combat it: Slow down. Take a hot bath. Remember what’s important. Meditate.

As though anyone has time for any of that!

Here’s another, easier solution: Listen to your favorite music.

There’s an impressive amount of scientific research on how effective music is for changing our brain state and reducing the experience of stress.

It used to be thought that classical music held a monopoly on this, but more recent research suggests any music you find pleasurable will create positive brain changes — improved memory, improved mood, and improved immunity, to name just a few benefits.

Here are five easy ways you can use music to de-stress during the holidays:

Keep Your Favorite Playlist Handy

While all music provides neurological benefits (except for music that’s jarring or harsh), researchers have found that music which gives you pleasure has an even greater impact. So, as a Christmas present to yourself, go ahead and create that playlist with your crazy-favorite tracks — the songs you truly love and feel inspired by. Whether it’s a song you were recently turned onto, or something you’ve been belting along to for years, pull together your “A-Team” playlist of songs that make you feel really good.

Listen to Music While You’re Out and About

Thanks to technology, we’re in a time where — short of implanting music directly into our brains (which we assume is coming soon) — music could not be more accessible, more customizable, and more portable. Every cell phone and pair of earbuds can become your own personal stress-busting therapist.

Take advantage of this. Without sacrificing safety or tuning out your surroundings, listen to music while driving, walking through crowded sidewalks, picking up snacks for the holiday party, or waiting on line at the post office. The same situation that might previously have left you furious or fed up can have the opposite result if you’ve been listening to music you find physically energizing or spiritually uplifting. And feeling good is contagious. If you’re tapping your toes while dealing with that frazzled store clerk, your smile and positive mood might just rub off on her, as well.

Sing Along

Singing with emotion has been shown to release oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone.” Oxytocin is a natural human hormone associated with empathy, trust, and relationship-building. So, when you sing along to a song that makes your heart swell, you might just end up wanting to give a hug, as well as a dollar, to that Santa shaking his cup outside the department store.

Topping up your oxytocin reserves means it’s also more likely you’ll be loving and patient with family members, even as the proverbial holiday kaka hits the fan. There’s nothing worse than raging at your spouse or kids just because you’re trying to bake gingerbread cookies with one hand and wrap gifts with the other. Sing along to Mavis Staples as you’re baking, and you might be much more charitable when you’ve discovered your three-year old has just poured molasses all over the sofa. (Though, in truth, the fact that “You Are Not Alone” is a big part of the problem!)

Use Music in Emotionally Challenging Situations

Some research suggests that music which impacts you emotionally has the ability to help process old emotions. These are emotions which — though stored deep in the subconscious — nonetheless influence our present-day mood and behavior. Do you have one of those dreaded family dinners coming up, which inevitably serve up extra helpings of drama and tension alongside the mashed potatoes? Listen to your favorite “sad song” on the way home. Those tears you shed while listening will likely be linked to your old emotional wounds. The sense of clearing and release you feel will be beneficial, even if you aren’t clearing or releasing the original emotional hurt.

Give the Gift of Music

Most of us get financially stressed during the holidays. We live in a consumer culture that worships expensive high-tech offerings while downplaying simplicity. One of the great things about roots music is that it crosses genres and is universally appealing. That playlist you created to help you stay sane during the holidays? Consider burning a CD of it, spiffing it up with a pretty bow and attaching a heartfelt note for a quick, easy gift for multiple people on your list. Like cookies made from a cherished family recipe or a lovingly hand-knit sweater, receiving a “mix tape” consisting of a loved one’s hand-picked songs is like receiving a part of that person’s heart and psyche. People are moved by it. Rather than appearing cheap, it looks unique and thoughtful.

If you want to make it a little extra special, fill a mason jar with epsom salts from the drugstore and offer it alongside the CD with a note expressing your wish for them: peace, relaxation, and (if they’re lucky) maybe even a good cry.

No one has to know it’s the same ol’ playlist you’ve been listening to all season long as your own personal Xanax!

Heather Juergensen is a health and wellness consultant based in Los Angeles. Her company, The Strong Woman, devises natural, non-pharmaceutical solutions for clients dealing with myriad physical and mental health issues, including depression. Find more of her favorite ways to de-stress on her blog.

Lede photo credit: _spy_ on Foter.com / CC BY-SA

Cary Morin Picks His Piece

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“Let there be no question of who’s wrong and who’s right. There should be no compromise. We all stand up and fight in the dawn’s early light,” Cary Morin sings on “Dawn’s Early Light,” written in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe during last year’s protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“A friend of mine was doing a show [at Standing Rock with the Indigo Girls] and she had asked me, just in passing, if I would write a song for the Standing Rock movement,” Morin explains. “I felt like there were a lot of people writing songs about that, at that time, and I wanted this one to be a little different and stand out a little bit, so it was really more concentrated on the activism, in general, and not so much Standing Rock, but just the whole idea of people coming together to promote clean water.”

“Dawn’s Early Light” is one of the poignant original songs featured on Morin’s latest album, Cradle to the Grave. In order to lend his perspective, Morin tapped into his experience growing up as a Crow tribal member near the Missouri River in Montana.

“When you think about roots music in America, it’s a culmination of so many things. It’s all the stuff blended together, much like the culture in this country is people from all over the world that end up here and create a unique situation,” Morin explains. “With my Native heritage, I could say that I’m really the only finger-style Crow guy on the entire planet. That’s unique. But we all can say that, to some degree. We all have unique things that make us who we are, and I’m really thankful to have grown up in the area that I did, surrounded by the people that I did.”

Morin came to the guitar by way of the piano, which he first began playing around the age of 10. When he picked up a guitar a couple years later, he was enamored. He played by ear, emulating the sounds he loved from his parents’ and brother’s record collection: Chet Atkins, James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Neil Young.

“I grew up in the ‘70s so, at that time, [there was] no Internet, there was very little TV, mostly radio. And the local music scene was really pretty folky and a lot of bluegrass, so I really grew up in the pursuit of flat-picking and [was influenced by] popular bluegrass bands at the time — David Bromberg, Norman Blake, Tony Rice,” says Morin. “I had really fantastic examples of what the music should be, but then I kind of mashed everything up into a combination of bluegrass and finger-style stuff, mostly from Leo Kottke, which turned into this thing that I do now.”

Morin moved to Colorado just out of high school and formed the Atoll, a world-beat band that he toured with for more than 20 years. “I played electric guitar [in the band], but I continued to mess around with the acoustic guitar,” he says. “Once I stopped doing [the band], my focus was really just acoustic guitar and a lot of practicing — just hours and hours of sitting around and playing. To this day, I try to play quite a lot. I’ve been introduced to open-D tuning by a friend of mine, and it took me about a year to get it going and figure out just the basics of it. But then, once I got it going, I just found it to be really fascinating, and I continue to learn new stuff all the time with that tuning. I just love the way it sounds. There’s a fullness and richness to it that I can’t seem to get out of standard tuning.”

Morin’s reconnection with the acoustic guitar led to the release of his most recent string of solo acoustic albums. Cradle to the Grave is the fourth in the series showcasing his adept fingerpicking style and warm, inviting vocals. An amalgamation of bluegrass, country, rock ’n’ roll, and blues, the album features eight original tunes and three cover songs: Willie Brown’s “Mississippi Blues” and, perhaps more surprisingly, Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and Phish’s “Back on the Train.”

“Phish is one of my favorite bands … I think that Trey’s playing has just really been inspiring and just the whole feel of the band and the approach they take. There’s so much freedom in what they do, and I used that as an example with my band, when I was rolling around playing clubs and festivals,” Morin explains. “A lot of times we’d play five songs without stopping. We’d just roll from tune to tune, and the whole point of that band was really dance music, just to provide an outlet for people to go out and have fun and dance.”

Morin uses the same ethos in his current performances touring behind his solo efforts.

“As a solo player, I can do whatever I want. I can play in whatever key. I can speed things up or slow it down, or just kind of make things up as I go along. And I really dig that freedom to just do whatever I want on stage,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll try stuff and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But when it does, it’s a great feeling, and then it’s gone forever.”

While solo spontaneity on stage leads to such ephemeral moments, Morin has a solidified team off-stage that serves as his backbone — and they’re not going anywhere. From recording to promotion, it’s an organic, family affair.

“What I like about these four records [is that] the recordings are all done live in the studio with no headphones. I’ll sit and play these songs, and just play and play and play them, and a friend of mine has recorded all these albums,” Morin explains. “We’ve gotten together, I think, a pretty successful team with Maple Street Music and [my wife] promoting the live shows and the recordings, and Rich [Werdes] recording them, and we have the same person that’s been mastering and mixing the CDs, too. It’s just like the perfect combination of people and I like to think that I promote one guy, one guitar. People still are interested in such a thing … I just really enjoy being able to stand on stage by myself being able to do what I do.”

Photo credit: Timothy Duffy

Canon Fodder: Cowboy Junkies, ‘The Trinity Session’

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“Roots” is an impossibly broad term that reasonably encompasses every strain of American music, from folk and country and gospel to bluegrass and blues and rock, from hollers, reels, and jigs to ballads, anthems, and laments. That makes for an incredibly diverse catalog of songs and albums that fall under that heading. Each month Stephen Deusner examines an album that lies either in the center — or more often in the margins — of what might be considered the roots canon … if there even is such a thing.

Let’s get the formalities out of the way first: The Cowboy Junkies’ second album was recorded at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto in November, 1987. The church was initially reluctant to let a secular rock group hold sessions there, so the band broke the ninth commandment and bore false witness: They said they were a gospel act called the Timmins Family Singers and they were recording a holiday radio special. Many of the songs were captured with the band playing around one microphone, with Margo Timmins’ vocals broadcast over the church PA. It took either one day or several days, depending on who’s telling the story.

When fans talk about The Trinity Session, they almost always foreground the circumstances of its recording, as though that setting demonstrates the album’s authenticity — as though authenticity were objectively demonstrable. Overshadowing the music, the story of the album has become the album, and even the band is complicit: In 2007, they celebrated their breakthrough’s 20th anniversary by rebooking the same church, inviting some popular fans inside (including Vic Chesnutt and Ryan Adams), and re-recording the album song for song.

The music gets lost in that tale, so that it becomes easy to ignore the mood that the church itself went so far to create. It obscures the fact that this is an album that dramatically rewrites its folk source material, that conceives of personal and professional troubles (touring, romance, the usual) as the raw material for folk tunes, and considers Elvis Presley and the Velvet Underground to be folk artists. For many listeners (including yours truly), it was their first introduction to the folk process, years before Uncle Tupelo and others were revving up the Appalachian tradition to define alt-country. The Trinity Session is a seminal album, if it can ever escape the church.

The Church of the Holy Trinity did do one important thing: It created a sonic palette for these songs, eschewing the clinical silence of the studio for something with an audible ambience. It’s there in the a cappella opener “Mining for Gold,” a cover of a song by the Canadian folkie James Gordon. As Margo voices the worries of someone whose life is spent underground, you can hear the soft rumble in the background, a thousand small things coalescing into a roomy thrum: distant traffic, footsteps, whispers, birdsong, exhalations and inhalations, the bustle of Toronto just beyond the sanctuary. If you wanted to be romantic, you might say it’s the sound of a ghost in the room, a spectral musician accompanying Margo’s performance. But perhaps it’s something more: The entire world hushed so that the singer can get inside her own head for a few precious moments. That sound is the sound of sanctuary.

Reviewing the album in 1989 for Spin, Erik Davis described it as “a combination of Quaaludes and honey.” In this aural soup, the instruments take on lives of their own. Alan Anton’s bass doesn’t enter through your ear; rather, it already exists in your head. The harmonica leaps out of “I Don’t Get It,” almost like a jump scare in a horror movie. Michael Timmins’ guitar solos seem impossibly delicate, especially on “Dreaming My Dream with You.” His sense of timing makes the music all the more immersive; you lean in to hear his notes. Most of all, it’s the way these sounds collide and combine that reinforce the idea of the Cowboy Junkies as a band, which is crucial. They sway into oncoming traffic on “Walking after Midnight,” they swing delicately on “Blue Moon Revisited,” they jam industrially on “Working on a Building.” The church becomes a place of musical communion.

Margo Timmins sings “Mining for Gold” like the song wasn’t written but passed down through generations, and introduces a compelling strategy the band will deploy on most of the songs that follow: It uses the folk tune as a metaphor for band life. The Cowboy Junkies are miners searching for a rich vein of gold, and they persist despite the dangers such an enterprise entails. She may sing of silicosis (and who else could make that disease sound sing-song-y?), but the travails they face are more spiritual than physical. There is a sly nod to fellow Canadian Neil Young, who famously had “been a miner for a heart of gold,” but there are sly nods to so many performers here: the swaggering sex appeal of Elvis Presley on “Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis),” the horrific isolation of Hank Williams on “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” the heroic stoicism of Patsy Cline on “Walking after Midnight,” even the unexpected compassion of Lou Reed on “Sweet Jane.”

These artists are the veins they’re mining, which inform the handful of originals on The Trinity Session, in particular “200 Miles.” At first, it plays like a rounder’s anthem or a trucker song, but it becomes not only a description of life in a touring band but a declaration of intent — an explication of why the Timminses might choose a life on the road: “I got Willie on the radio, a dozen things on my mind, and number one is fleshing out these dreams of mine.” It’s no coincidence that they follow that song up with Waylon Jennings’ “Dreaming My Dreams with You.” “I hope that I find what I’m reaching for, the way that it is in my mind.”

The Cowboy Junkies are not only running toward some dream they can only vaguely define. They are also running from something. Death stalks every song on The Trinity Session, whether in the form of black lung or a car collision or some unknown fate that befalls every one of us. “I want to make sense of why we live and die … I don’t get it,” Margo sings on “I Don’t Get It.” And, just in case you think this album is without humor, she remarks grimly, “I ask my friends if they understand, but they just laugh at me and watch another band.” Music is one means by which we might understand life and death — or at least the Junkies hope so.

Are these songs receptacles for the dead and the doomed? Do they contain the ghosts of Hank, Patsy, and Elvis, and now Lou and Waylon? Nearly every artist they cover has died, which means that, 30 years after it established them as one of Canada’s most daring rock acts, The Trinity Session isn’t so much an album as it is a séance — a means by which they can contact and interrogate the dead.

Squared Roots: Pieta Brown Gets into the Rickie Lee Jones Groove

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There are some artists who defy every convention and expectation we attempt to impose upon them. Rickie Lee Jones is one of them. Right out of the gate, she played by her own rules and danced to her own very groovy drum. Her eponymous debut in 1979 — with stunning songs like “The Last Chance Texaco” and “Weasel and the White Boys Cool” — set her apart from and, really, above the fray, and that’s where she has stayed for her entire career which, thankfully, is still going strong all these decades later.

Similarly, Pieta Brown has followed her own artistic instincts to pursue a career in music outside the shadow cast by her father, folk master Greg Brown. With her past few releases, she has focused on a quieter, simpler sound anchored in atmosphere. Her seventh (and most recent) album, Postcards, continues to explore that form as well as the function of collaboration with other artists, including Carrie Rodriguez, Calexico, Mason Jennings, and others.   

What are the characteristics you think of first, when you think of Rickie Lee Jones?

Experimental. And open. And non-linear, I think. I guess those are the first few. Then, really, very individual and unique. Extremely.

Those are all perfect. Adventurous and feisty come to my mind, along with fearless.

Yeah. Fearless. That’s awesome.

That was something Tift Merritt and I talked about in regard to Linda Ronstadt. Is fearlessness just something that women have to have, no matter what they do?

Maybe. Or maybe it’s more that you might be really scared, but you’re willing to cut through that anyway. I was going to say, for sure, in the music industry, but I don’t think it’s particular to that at all, really.

Yeah. I thought about that, too.

It’s a very good question.

We won’t get to the bottom of it today, though. [Laughs]

[Laughs] No.

It struck me in reading up on Rickie Lee that her self-titled debut was released in March of 1979. She was on Saturday Night Live one month later and played Carnegie Hall three months after that.

Wow.

And then came her Grammy wins, six months after that. Success doesn’t get much more overnight than that.

Yeah, she hit it right out of the gate, for sure.

Can you imagine being thrown into the belly of the beast that quickly?

No, I can’t. Speaking of fearlessness … there must be some fearless streak and I’m not sure how deeply it’s hiding in me, but I was so shy that it was like breaking down major walls just to start even doing a show. So, no, I really can’t imagine that.

I do know, from talking to Iris [DeMent], it was a similar thing for her, in terms of her putting out her first album and being rocketed into the light. She said that was pretty wild, on a certain level.

I bet! Another thing that struck me was the fact that a quirky, jazz-tinged singer/songwriter had that kind of success, hit number five on the Billboard album chart. There’s no way that would happen today.

No. It wouldn’t. It’s interesting, isn’t it? I can’t even imagine how that would happen now. I think it could happen, but not to people who are presenting themselves as a singer/songwriter, even if that’s what they really are. It’s in another disguise, these days, it seems like.

Geography, also, for her … she moved around a lot and it seems to add a lot of colors to her palette.

I think that’s maybe something I intrinsically related to without realizing it. I moved around a ton, as a kid. In fact, the reason I was thinking about Rickie Lee Jones, when I got asked to do this … the thing I flashed on was, I think I must have been about 9 or 10 and I had moved around so many times by the age of 10 — I must’ve lived in 12 or 13 different places by the time I was that age. I had moved down to Alabama with my mom, but then for about eight months when I was 9 going on 10, I moved up to the Twin Cities with my dad.

And I’ll just never forget — it’s just burned into my mind as one of the strongest memories of my childhood — I came across a cassette that was in a pile. While we were living in the Twin Cities, I think we moved two or three times, just in that nine months. But, at this particular time, we were living in this upstairs apartment and there was an attic where I could go hang out by myself. I had a Walkman and I put that tape in. It was Rickie Lee Jones. I didn’t know anything about her. Nothing. And I was so mesmerized by her sound. I remember I played the song “Walk Away Renee” for an hour or two. I just sat up in that attic. It was kind of an emotional time for me because my parents were all haywire, and everybody was coming and going so I didn’t know what was going on. I don’t know why that song … I mean, the lyrics are pretty simple, but her sound and those words, it opened up another dimension for me or something. That’s why I chose her.

But, geography-wise, like you were saying, I moved around so much, too. And you can hear that in her music, like you said. So many textures and conversations and layers going on every time she sings. It’s super-cool.

I’m always fascinated by how geography informs an artist’s work For her, she grew up in Chicago, Arizona, and Olympia, then Southern California, New York, San Francisco, Paris, back to L.A., back to Tacoma … I think New Orleans is in there somewhere. You can hear all of those places coming through.

Yeah. It’s super-fascinating. I think another thing, for me at that age, a lot of the music I was hearing was in my family, of course, and the stuff that was on the radio. My mom liked jazz a lot, so I got a lot of early influences like Billie Holiday and stuff like that I heard. But I think hearing Rickie Lee Jones was the kind of thing where it’s like, “Okay, here’s this lady who sounds like no one else I’ve ever heard.” And she had all these different elements, but it didn’t sound confused. It sounded pure and really clear.

Did that bridge a gap for you, between your mom’s love of jazz to what you were hearing on the radio? Was she the in-between?

Yeah, I think so. And that family thing, with my dad being a songwriter, and my great-grandfather played the banjo and my great-grandmother played the pump organ. My grandmother played guitar. It was very rural. We got together pretty big family jams and it was a very rural sound. In fact, I found out later that my great-grandparents used to go down to North Carolina. They lived in southern Iowa. They would go down to North Carolina to jam, and bring that music back. So I always associated that kind of bluegrass sound with southern Iowa because that’s what I would hear and dance around to as a kid with my hat turned upside down. It was like, “Okay. This is what music sounds like.” So there was something about Rickie Lee Jones … I don’t know, just one of those moments in time.

I think, too, because I played piano. That was my first instrument from when I was really little. By that age, I was making up a lot of instrumentals and weird songs on the piano, but it wasn’t something I heard. So, when I heard this woman … I think, too, she has a childlike quality in her voice. So I thought, “Okay. Wow. This means this is possible.”

You’re right. It’s such an interesting juxtaposition between the simplicity and innocence in her voice and the complexity of the arrangements and compositions.

Yeah, right.

Then there’s just the pure creativity racing through her veins, to make a record like The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard in which she improvised her own impressions of various Biblical texts. Who would think of that?

[Laughs] It’s amazing. I got to see her play for the first time last year. It was a great show. The room was elevated. It was all those things. And another big thing for me is, she’s got the groove. She’s got that super-deep groove thing. She picks up her acoustic guitar and the groove is present as soon as she starts playing. So some of that is mixed in there, too. It’s very natural and real. It was great to hear her play live.

What’s your favorite album or era?

I love Traffic from Paradise. There’s a song on there called “Tigers” and I’ve listened to that album so much, in different periods. I went back yesterday and looked at the credits of that because I hadn’t listened to it in a few years. But that was engineered and mixed by a woman.

Julie Last.

Yes. Julie Last. Do you know about her?

I do. I know her, actually.

You know her?! I hope you tell her thank you for me because one of the reasons I love that album is because it sounds so good and so huge. It’s great. It sounds so good. I thought, “Who engineered that? I gotta find out.” I was excited to find out it was a woman. In all my record-making, I haven’t come across a ton of female engineers who are engineering and mixing the albums. And that record sounds so gigantic. It’s just so cool.

LISTEN: The Gage Brothers, ‘All You Are’

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Artist: The Gage Brothers
Hometown: Akron, OH
Song: “All You Are”
Album: The Gage Brothers
Release Date: May 5, 2017

In Their Words: “A song about the gradual end to a love full of doubt, fear, and perceived flaws, it touches on the idea of taking more than what is given and the harm that can follow.” — Zach Gage

Photo credit: Ernie Joy

LISTEN: Three Legged Fox, ‘Another Year’

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Artist: Three Legged Fox
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
Song: “Another Year”
Album: Watch the World
Release Date: March 31, 2017

In Their Words: “‘Another Year’ was born out of the same questions that most of our songs are: ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘Why is it so hard to remain grounded and simple in what brings us joy?’ So whether it’s our addiction to the smartphone, or the relationships we forge or neglect with each other, we tried to deliver some kind of introspection while keeping the music light and cheery.

As a band, I believe the fundamental message of the song (finding genuine value in our short time here) resonates deeply and equally with all of us.” — Kory Kochersperger

Photo credit: Giorgi Anastasov

Fairground Saints, ‘All for You’

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State fairs might be one of the greatest long-standing American traditions: the rides, the food, the out-of-control-sized vegetables. It's weird, colorful fun that reminds you of the charm you can find outside of city slickin' life. It's fitting, then, that the also-charming Fairground Saints allude to it in their name. We've got a new tune from the Los Angeles-based trio who, at their shiniest, recall This Side-era Nickel Creek on "All for You." The song is big and sweet, with amibitious male-female vocals that complement each other beautifully.

“I think we’ve always enjoyed melodies that felt magically timeless, and that’s what we were aiming for with this song," says Mason Van Valen, the band's guitarist.

The song will catch you by surprise as it swings from a gently lilting melody into a big, bursting chorus. Later on, the band adds elegant orchestral flourishes — they're swinging for the fences here, and it pays off. Their debut self-titled record comes out August 21.

‘Bittersweet’

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Five years in the making, Kasey Chambers' Bittersweet marks a change of direction for the Aussie native (who's already won considerable accolades for this record from scribes back in her homeland). It starts at the crossroads where Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska meets Emmylou Harris's '70s sweetness then picks its own path, barrelling down the road with the sincerity of Southern roots music, the veracity of '70s punk, and the shiny-object swankiness of American pop radio.

The opening cut, "Oh Grace," is a perfect archetype of the Harris-in-Nebraska observation, a sparsely populated song of bittersweet love set against a simple guitar strum, brushy drums, and a beautiful fiddle solo by Ashleigh Dallas. But then Chambers unveils "Is God Real" and adds a contemporary chime to the whole affair. It's an urgent appeal of uncomfortable agnosticism over a pulsing electric guitar, delivered in the voice of a lost little girl, with unbounded urban energy. "Wheelbarrow" turns in three directions in a New York minute, evolving from a gospel a cappella tune to a banjo-balanced back porch sing-along to a thrashing rock tune in a matter of about eight bars. Later, Chambers sticks close to the folkie format on "I Would Do," channels her inner Alphabet City punk on "Hell of a Way to Go," plays things a little on the bluesy side on "House on a Hill," then closes the record with the full-on Springsteen harp and hustle of "I'm Alive."

Though the influences here are broad-ranging , all the tunes work together — a testament to Chambers' compositional fortitude and producer Nick DiDia's steady hand. Like some other solid records we've heard this year from Hannah Miller, Laura Marling, and Jessie Baylin, this is what roots music sounds like at the most inventive edges of the genre.

Listen to the record here.