Tag: the meters

BGS 5+5: Dan Knobler

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Dan Knobler (Producer, Engineer, Mixer)
Hometown: New York, New York
Latest Album: Friends Play My Son’s Favorite Songs, Vol. 1

Which artist or producer has influenced you the most … and how?

Artist: There are a million I could cite for different reasons — Rodney Crowell, Guy Clark, Ray Charles, Lucinda Williams, Blake Mills, Derek Trucks — but probably the two that changed my musical path most dramatically are The Meters and The Band. My dad took me to see The Meters when I was a young teen at a time when I was really digging into the guitar and finding my voice. I was deep into the classic rock and blues legends and seeing that show and then exploring the early instrumental Meters records opened the floodgates for all sorts of groove-based and improvisatory music.

I followed that stream to the fertile soil of New Orleans music: brass bands and Mardi Gras indians (check out The Wild Tchoupitoulas if you don’t know) and Allen Toussaint-produced records. From there my horizons widened to other classic funk/soul/R&B which was hugely influential for me — Stax, Motown, James Brown, King Curtis (and all their respective rhythm sections) — and then onward to soul jazz like Jimmy Smith and Lou Donaldson and big bands like Count Basie and Thad Jones / Mel Lewis, then to various eras of Miles Davis and classic Blue Note and Impulse! records like Blues and The Abstract Truth and A Love Supreme.

Later on, during my early college years, I fell under the spell of The Band’s first two records. They too drew influence from a lot of the same soul and R&B records that I had come to love, but imbued it with elements of country and folk and the songs told stories with depth and mystery and characters that felt real. I followed their influences back to classic country and country blues, aided along by an impeccable playlist that my then-girlfriend-now-wife, Carrie Crowell, put together when she first took me to Nashville. Slightly later I started to follow the influence of The Band forward to great modern Americana records and songwriters, many of whom are now friends and collaborators.

Producer: Again, a million past and present who I respect and admire: John Simon, T Bone Burnett, Blake Mills, Josh Kauffman, Russ Titleman, Lenny Waronker. But the one who had the most direct influence on me is Joe Henry. The man is an artist and a poet and a songwriter of the highest order, but has also been at the helm of so many records that have shaped my musical sensibility. The one that looms largest for me is Solomon Burke’s Don’t Give Up On Me. It’s mysterious and deep and heartfelt and immersive and every single musician is playing with nuance and grace.

And that’s true of every Joe Henry record, whether his name is on the front or the back. He casts the room with the right players and emboldens them to be their best selves; he dismisses pretense and genre archetypes and leaves room for light to slip in through the cracks. Particularly with engineer Ryan Freeland at his side, Joe makes records that envelop you. I told him once that his records feel like a well-appointed lounge with the door left slightly ajar — if the listener feels so inclined there is an open invitation to walk in and sit down and feel welcome.

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

I love any well-told story, be it a movie or a novel or a great TV show. I do really love a great TV show. Any time there are characters and a world that continues to feel real in your mind and soul after you’ve put the story down is magic. I like photography; I like impressionist paintings; I like interesting architecture and great trees. I love a good meal.

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

I’ve been lucky enough to sit with Joe Henry and sip negronis, so I can check that off my list. I’m also extremely grateful to be surrounded by world-class musicians and songwriters here in Nashville. I’ve shared studio lunches and falafel plates and had late-night hangs with some of the finest folks to be making music in this town. I suppose I’m gonna dream, I’d love to split a belly ham pizza at City House with Randy Newman.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

I hope I can spend my life making the kinds of records that people carry with them through the years, records that can be revisited and grow with you over time. There are certain albums and artists that were particularly meaningful or influential during certain eras of my life that take on a whole new meaning for me now. I want to make music that captivates and surprises people, with great people playing great songs; I want to create a sonic world for those people and those songs to live in that reflects their light most powerfully. I want to make records that the artist thinks is their finest work, that open doors for them and enable them to move through the creative world with more confidence and resources. I want to make records that I want to go back and listen to. I love making records.

What’s your favorite memory from being in the studio?

Here’s a smattering:

• The first time I ever played with Jason Burger. Not in a studio, but through the chaos of young musicians trying to prove themselves in a big open jam session at a Berklee summer program, Jason, bassist Zack Rosen, and I felt a magical rhythm connection that sparked years of playing together. Though Zack passed in 2019, Jason and I carry that spirit into every record we get to make together: a knowing that the sum is greater than its parts, a simultaneous summoning of interlocking rhythms, an endeavor to channel the deep power and beauty of communication through music.

• Setting up a makeshift studio in the unfinished basement of my in-laws’ house in upstate New York and making my college band Flearoy’s first record. It was winter and we were wearing coats while we recorded. We had bought a Leslie on the way up and left it in the back of keyboardist Matt Porter’s minivan for isolation, cables running through cracked windows. Carrie joined us and made meals and we all sat around the fire in the evening and laughed.

• My son, Willoughby, “drawing the sound of the song” in chalk on the studio patio while Anthony Da Costa and I were recording “Here Comes the Sun” for an album I made called Friends Play My Son’s Favorite Songs, Volume 1 and the feeling of listening to the songs I would record for him in the car on the way to school and have him request them on repeat.

• Any time I walk through the doors at Sound Emporium. That place is one of the world’s great studios; it sounds amazing, it feels amazing, it has been home to countless records I love dearly. Every single time I work there I feel deep gratitude that this is my job and a childlike giddiness that not only do I get to work in that particular sonic temple, but I feel at home there.

• Recording “Joyful Motherfuckers” for Allison Russell’s record Outside Child. That whole record was an incredibly beautiful and spiritual experience and every musician on the floor knew it was special from the first downbeat, well before there was any label support or critical praise. While we tracked “Joyful Motherfuckers” all those feelings were particularly palpable. It was the only song on the record that Alli’s partner in life, songwriter JT Nero, played and sang on. At first I thought it should maybe just be the two of them but I had all the musicians stay in their stations — instruments in hand — and said, “If you feel compelled to play, play.”

While Alli and JT sang and all the musicians in the room had their eyes closed, a spell had been cast. Drew Lindsay bravely played a few choice notes on piano at the end of a verse and somehow everyone else in the room just knew what to do: on the downbeat of the bridge we all came in, gently, subtly, but with deep power. As the take ended no one wanted to say anything because once we acknowledged what had happened, the spell would be broken. Most of us cried listening to playback. Luckily, one of the beautiful things about making records is that when you care to revisit a piece of work you get to experience it both as its final form but also as an opportunity to relive the memory and chapter of your life when you made it.

Photo Credit: Melody Walker

The Show On The Road – Leo Nocentelli (The Meters)

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, we dial into New Orleans for a fascinating talk with master funk-guitarist and songwriter Leo Nocentelli. Discerning listeners may known him as the chief groove-creator behind the legendary group The Meters with Art Neville on keyboard, George Porter Jr. on bass, Zigaboo Modeliste on drums. There is no mistaking his soulful dagger-sharp signature sound leading often-sampled treasures like “Sissy Strut” and “Hey Pocky A-Way” (The Beastie Boys were big fans) — or even his slinky masterful backing of Dr. John’s classic Right Place, Wrong Time. But a new generation are learning of Nocentelli from last year’s surprise release of his first and only solo record, the acoustic folk-driven Another Side, which was resurrected and marketed by Light In The Attic Records nearly fifty years after Leo first recorded it.

 

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You don’t usually put your first record out when you’re zooming past your 75th birthday. The story of how Another Side still even exists is quite a yarn (one that Leo goes into great good-humored detail about in the taping) from the master tapes being lost in damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, to a master-copy being found almost impossibly after a storage-unit got foreclosed and the music was traded at a local swap-meet. Hearing him tell it, finding these songs from his younger days, was like finding an essential, lost piece of his soul. The record isn’t polished, but the sense of youthful exploration shines through. He’s searching for his voice in real time.

You wouldn’t think a rock-funk maven like Nocentelli would be inspired by songwriters like James Taylor or Elton John — but in many ways, it was the softer, more yearning, poetic side of rock-n-roll in the early 1970s that intrigued him most when he began writing songs like “Thinking of the Day” in 1972, wondering if his place in the world, his “tomorrow would ever come.” Other standouts like “Riverfront” told the stories he couldn’t tell while penning the Meters’ funky (but often instrumental) dance anthems. With his Meters mates chugging beside him in the studio, he can tell darker, more personal tales about his hard-working friends, like Aaron Neville (who he grew up with in the 7th Ward), and how he used to haul bananas off the boats in New Orleans to get by.

Nocentelli has had his share of ups and downs as a lifer who has rode the tempests of the ever-evolving music industry. It’s a “brutal brutal business” he says at one point — and Leo shares that he had to sell some of his favorite guitars to keep going through the years. The song “Getting Nowhere” leans into the sense of helplessness and frustration many talented session players and touring side-men like him went through when royalties and fame and fortune passed them by as others rose to prominence.

Some things really haven’t changed in fifty years. But only a generational talent like Nocentelli could create sparkling guitar backdrops for artists as diverse as Dr. John, Otis Redding and even Jimmy Buffett, and keep his passion long enough to see new crowds packing houses on tours in 2022. It must be quite the feeling to finally be able to perform his own solo work — a half century after the songs first emerged and were almost lost forever.

3×3: Harp Samuels on Cissy Struts, Beating Hearts, and Rainy Days

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Harp Samuels
Hometown: Melbourne, Australia, but in-between Australia and USA at the moment.
Latest Album: Wanting
Personal Nicknames: Eddie, Addy, Eddie-boy, Edwardo (My given name is Edward.)

If you could go back (or forward) to live in any decade, when would you choose?

Gosh, 1920s, I think!

Who would be your dream co-writer?

Great Question. I’m going to say Glen Hansard. He’s so deep, and Once is one of my favourite movies.

If a song started playing every time you entered the room, what would you want it to be?

Hahaha. Okay, hmmm. “Cissy Strut” by the Meters.

What is the one thing you can’t survive without on tour?

My beating heart. Literally.

What are you most afraid of?

I’m going to say total failure.

Who is your celebrity crush?

Depends on the day! I just saw Baby Driver, so I’m going with Lily James. She’s gorgeous and super talented.

Pickles or olives?

Both, but mostly olives.

Plane, train, or automobile?

Train all the way.

Which is worse — rainy days or Mondays?

I love them both, actually. If you put a gun to my head, I’d say Mondays because I love rain!

MIXTAPE: Dustbowl Revival’s Myriad Musical Influences

Posted on by Editor

We’ve always liked stirring the pot in the Dustbowl Revival — bringing a lot of genres into our own out-of-left-field soul-roots sound. With our unconventional eight-piece instrumentation (a string section with a brass section) and two lead singers (and a lot of cooks in the kitchen), deciding what songs would make it when we were going into the studio in January was quite a challenge. 

Luckily, we reached out to Ted Hutt, a lovely British producer now living in our hometown of L.A. and he jumped in to steer the ship. As one of the founders of Flogging Molly and a Grammy-winner for producing bands we love — like Old Crow Medicine Show and the Dropkick Murphys — Ted was like having a really pleasant pirate calling us on our bullshit and bringing forth the bluesiest, funkiest, and most emotional tunes we’ve ever laid down. While there is a soul flavor to a lot of these songs, we think it was more about finding the raw root of each story and getting after it. Here are some tunes that I was inspired by when I wrote much of the album. — Zach Lupetin

Old Crow Medicine Show — “Brushy Mountain Conjugal Trailer”

This song is kind of how we found Ted to produce the record. He did several of Old Crow’s albums, and I love the fatness to the sound on this — the bass is just thumping so sweetly and the mean groove contrasts with the winking humor in the lyric. We pretty much asked him, “Can get some of THAT on our record, too?”

Al Green — “Love and Happiness”

It’s a tune I can never get enough of, honestly. As the soul theme started to permeate the songs we were linking together on the record, I kept thinking I wanted something like this Al Green classic. “The Story” definitely comes from this. 

Shovels & Rope — Tiny Desk Concert

Liz and I aren’t married like these guys, but I always try and match the deep connection that can happen between male and female vocals totally in sync. Every time I see them, I get goosebumps.

The Meters — “Fire on the Bayou”

Josh, our drummer, always encourages us to listen to these classics, and I always love the repeating groove here. “Call My Name” which opens our album was a straight 12-bar blues until we twisted it around and funkafied it. Ted loved the “row your boat” repeating refrain as a call to arms … and we rolled with it.

Creedence Clearwater Revival — “Born on the Bayou”

Also one of my all-time favorite tunes, it’s hypnotic and mean and catchy as hell. CCR seemed to always merge spooky folk and blues elements into their own sweet stew, and our tunes like “Leaving Time” and “Don’t Wait Up” definitely spring from this. If I could have one voice, it would be Fogerty’s. 

Wilco — “How to Fight Loneliness”

Being from Chicago, I was lucky to have Wilco as one of my favorite groups from like age 16 on. Jeff Tweedy’s imperfect voice always sounds equally sly and vulnerable to me — and this tune always hits me hard. The way Wilco incorporates electronic and ethereal elements into folk songs always inspired me. 

Amy Winehouse — “You Know I’m No Good”

As I started writing tunes for Liz to wail on, I kept thinking how awesome and complex the compositions were for Winehouse, mixing vintage soul with her own vulnerable approach. The way the horns sneak in and out on this track is so cool. 

Mary J. Blige — “Family Affair”

I probably had this song in my head for like five straight years. When we were brainstorming on a groove for “If You Could See Me Now,” we went out of the box a bit and thought of this groove. So nasty good.

The Cavaliers — “Oh Where Can My Baby Be”  

There is definitely a morbid fascination in old country and rock songs with young people dying or losing each other. I’ve always wanted to write a mournful type of song like this, but one that questions the tragedy … like how could something so sweet like being young and in love go so wrong so fast? 

The Dustbowl Revival — “Debtors’ Prison”

This is how it all comes together.