Remembering Paco Malo...A Man For Others

Remembering you, Jim, on your special day. Here is a song that was written days after the Class of 75's Forty Year Reunion. I know you would have been the first to give me encouragement with regards to the outcome of the writing, recording, and production. I will never forget your support for my music...for all music...for all art...for people, in general. I dedicate this song to you on what would have been your 58th Birthday. Your life epitomized what this song is about...you were truly "a man for others".

Great Music, Great Friends

  The other night, I received a rather serendipitous email from a close friend of Jim's. It tells the story behind a Gold Coast Bluenote post that dates back to 2005. I thought it would nice to share the story as a post on it's own, complete with links to the original post, as well as to the music of Alison Krauss, who's beautiful voice inspired it.

It's funny how our lives weave together disparate elements, and make them inseparable. I was listening to some tunes last night. The music got me thinking about Jim, and GCB, and that in turn made me think of you.

Here's the back story behind an old post on GCB:(http://goldcoastbluenote.blogspot.com/2006/12/all-my-answers-turned-out-to-be.html). Alison Krauss and Union Station were scheduled to play Lakeland in Dec 2005. I wanted Jim to go see them, and to cover the concert for GCB.

Why? Union Station is the tightest band I have ever seen. Every member is a master musician. Some bands sound great on an album, but just so-so live. Union Station delivers the goods live, every time. Alison Krauss was then (is still) one of the best singers in the world. And she also has the instrumental chops to play with Union Station. Jim had never seen them; I wanted to fix that.

I knew Jim was a bit tight on funds, so I bought him a ticket. As we exchanged emails, it dawned on me that he had no way to get from Tampa to Lakeland and back. In for a dime, in for a dollar. I bought another concert ticket, and a plane ticket, and arranged to fly in from NC so that Jim and I could see the show together. One of the best nights of my life, by the way.

As Jim put it

First timers think they are just going to a concert; but after they listen to these musician’s musicians, they leave the show, just having found that Yahweh cuts us sinners a break now and again.

Digging around on youtube I found a great concert recording of AK/US. It's about three years before the show we went to, but has a quite a bit of overlap with the show we attended. I saw this 2002 tour in Durham NC, and it made me a fan for life. Sometime when you have an hour or so, read Jim's post, open a cold one, and give this a spin: http://youtu.be/HKgTra0QldE

Just one thing though. The concert Jim and I went to had a different encore, as mentioned on GCB. It gave me chills. Here it is, as performed on the Leno Show:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5gmVzbjxwl4.

later bro,
drc

Steve Earle Covers His Mentor's Best: "Townes" : "Pancho and Lefty" (2009)

Backstage before going on at a gig with Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan explains why Townes Van Zandt's song Pancho and Lefty is a national treasure:

He's (Townes) is like a philosopher-poet. He gets to the heart of it in a quick way; gets it out. It's over, and just leaves the listener to -- think about it. 

Here Steve Earle covers this superb, truly American song.

Stephen Stills' "Manassas": "Both of Us (Bound to Lose)" (1972)

In the spring of 1972 perspective, Stephen Stills' band Manassas, Crosby and Nash, and Neil Young shared the Top Ten Billboard LP charts with three separate releases. During this record dominance by former members of the shattered supergroup, Rolling Stone found it "reassuring to know that Stills has some good music still inside him". (RS (109). Manassas stands by far as the best of what those artists released in '72. And with this record Stills expands on his original song structures.

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes established Steven Stills as a composer who could take three shorts songs about his ex-girlfriend and form an exquisite suite. On Manassas, each of the double albums four sides consist of a multi-song suite. Below is the track Both of Us (Bound to Lose) that closes the side one -- Suite: The Raven. On this track Stills not only gets to show off his harmony vocal prowess with Chris Hillman, but the song also closes with a fine latin rock movement powered by Joe Lala's percussion. Stills' deft electric lead guitar is on display throughout.

Yep, it was 1972.

(Manassas percussionist and Tampa native Joe Lala passed away this month. This one's in memory of you, Joe.)

"I Feel Alright Tonight"

Steve Earle (1996)

"I feel alright tonight!"

Townes Van Zandt , "Dead Flowers" (Jagger, Richards; 1971) (live)

As Keith might say, 'I think you may know some of this one.' Iconic Texas singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt tackles the Stones country classic. Townes' cover ends up closing out, brilliantly, the Coen Brothers The Big Lebowski (1998).

Townes' demons got the better of him and he's passed on. His influence most certainly has not.

"Methamphetamine" - Old Crow Medicine Show (redux; studio version)

Since Ronnie Van Zandt of Lynyrd Skynyrd died, I have been waiting for someone to pick up this fallen torch and run with it. Neil Young has kept the flame alive -- take the acoustic version of "Keep On Rockin' in the Free World" from his album Freedom, for example -- but now Ronnie's heirs are on the job.

Old Crow Medicine Show will. "... [r]ock You Like A Hurricane, Meth-am-pheta-meeeen" -- and this story is set in the poorest part of Appalachia, with roots down to northern Florida. You can beat the South at Appomattox, but stubborn hillbillies, crackers and rednecks (me included) just won't sign up for most of the Yankee agenda.

It's only too late if you think it is -- give a spin to "Mother's Little Helper" (Stones), "That Smell" (Lynyrd Skynyrd), "Keep on Rockin'" by Neil, and "Meth" by our young Medicine Show friends. And "Don't Forget this fact, we can't get [David Ruffin] back, Cocaine." (-- J.J. Cale classic song broken by me to honor the late Temps lead singer.

In this drug war, just who is the enemy? Eh?

Emmylou Harris - "Plaisir d'Amour" from "Stumble into Grace " (2003)

Emmylou Harris - Plaisir d'Amour 

(traditional; The McGarrigle Sisters, harmony vocals)

This traditional French song turns up twice in classic cinema of the late '40s and '50s -- once "performed by" Montgomery Clift and once by Deborah Kerr, brilliantly in Tea and Sympathy. Emmylou's is by far the definitive interpretation.

"Money's Tight, Nothin's Free, Won't Somebody Come and Rescue Me; I am Stranded, Out in the Crossfire"

"Everyday takes figuring out all over again how to fuckin' live."

-- Calamity Jane

Stevie Ray Vaughn
(sings the title quote like he understands what it means)

Sullivan's Travels (1941; dir. Preston Sturges)

(film the Coen Bros. tipped their hat to with O Brother Where Art Thou)

[Written May 2012 through November 2012]

In the place where you are born and grow up, you begin to learn the things all men must know. Although they are the simplest things, it take a man's life to really know them. And if you are to be a writer, the stories you [tell] will be true in proportion to this knowledge of life that you have ... [of] the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, the people, the places, and how the weather was. (Except from narrative introduction in the 1963 film Ernest Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (dir., Martin Ritt) (Introduction by E. A. Hotchner -- 1968).

 When, despite your best efforts to keep things in balance, the money runs out and your Seven Spanish Angels are away for an audience with the Man with the thunder, changes simply must come.

My offline financial exile shattered my attempt to keep things fresh over the past five years of writing and editing Gold Coast Bluenote.

Here are of few of the treasures I've enjoyed during my break from the online life:

- Steve Earle Live From Austin TX (DVD of an Austin City Limits gig from 1986, New West Records, 2004) .... [with The Dukes]. Steve and his band turn in a crack performance that made one friend of mine wonder why he "didn't make it big." Whatever the answer to that question, the full Austin City Limits concert is first class -- what Gram Parsons would call "cosmic American music."

- The Dixie Chicks, Taking the Long Way (CD, 2006). I've written about this album here before, so I'm going to reprint part of one of two GCB posts on the record:

A friend of mine put on an album the other night, one I hadn't written about since it took home five Grammys and tore up the charts in 2006. The Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way still sounds great these five years later.

As an aging hippie, the idea that a band would stir up so much controversy by exercising an artist's right to criticize American foreign policy from overseas is more than a little disconcerting. I grew up at the height of the era where protest music and musicians speaking their minds were badges of honor. But judging on the first decade of this century, a band now puts its future on the line by stepping out of line. As I think about it, I guess its always been risky to oppose those in authority.

The Dixie Chicks are still thriving with a smaller fan base, having lost many of their more conservative, mainstream country fans. But they are still going strong, and their cathartic album Taking the Long Way stands as one of the decade's most important protest records.

- Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie and George C. Scott in The Hustler (DVD, 1961; dir. Robert Rossen). You will find a full post on this film here.

- Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake in Sullivan's Travels (1941; dir. Preston Sturges)

- White Shadow by Ace Atkins (historical novel, 2006). It's a vast over-simplification to say that White Shadow is Tampa, Florida's The Godfather. This noir novel is drenched in local color and the Mafia-drenched world of Tampa and Havana, Cuba in the mid-1950s. 

I was born in '57. Nobody talks anymore about the history this book is filled with, from the Latin and Sicilian mobsters who ran the city's underworld to the task faced by honest Tampa cops of trying to chip away at a granite mountain of corruption and decadence. Atkins takes the Pulitzer Prize nominated research on an unsolved mob murder in the fifties and spins an accurate, engaging tale of the darker side of life in my hometown. It's one of the finest historical novels I've found since discovering Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Deadwood: The Complete Series (DVD set, copyright 2004, 2006, 2007; created by David Milch)

 As reader's of Gold Coast Bluenote would expect, there was a good deal of rock 'n' roll that matters on the home jukebox while I was offline. Let me mention a few of these classics that were in heavy rotation:

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Derek and the Dominoes (1970; produced by Tom Dowd)

Exile on Main St, The Rolling Stones (1972, produced by Jimmy Miller)

The Chess Box: Chuck Berry, (3 DVD compilation, 1988)

The Bootleg Series, Vol. IV, The Royal Albert Hall Concert, Bob Dylan (the acoustic side, 1966). Especially Dylan's live version of, arguably, one of the greatest songs ever written, Visions of Johanna.

 If these albums, DVDs, or books are gathering dust in your collection or you haven't acquired the more recently released archival material, well, double clutch your mojo back into gear and let the good times roll. A little time offline did me a world of good. To quote Chuck Berry:

"C'est la vie, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell."

Can a Classic R&B Cover -- by a Townes Van Zant Protege', Steve Earle, Performing "Down in the Hole" -- also ring Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom"?

You betcha! It's been a wild ride as a Christian hospital put the last nail in the coffin of my personal independence by cutting my bipolar meds to way under a therapeutic level, inter alia.

"Peace, Love and Revolution" (Lucinda Willimas).

Sorry for the delay between posts here at Gold Coast Bluenote (GCB). I rationalize the delay due to nature of the last ten days of my life. But I heard Dylan's Chimes of Freedom, ringing for us all: truly, loudy and clearly.

E' Vero.

Just too Good for the Basement (from 2008 post, reworked): "The River 's Gonna Run" (2006)

Four years ago last Thursday, four years after Vol. No. 1 of Gold Coast Bluenote, this was the post of the day. I ran across the two weeks ago, and it blew me away, again.

Sam Bush on mandolin and lead vocal, Emmylou Harris covering duet and harmony -- with Emmylou reminding us she can play sultry chanteuse with the best of them. (As to her real life, she made it clear at a gig I saw that dressing up was nice but she likes the comforts of home: dog poop scoopin' for her private, back yard, stray dog refuge / home placement facility.)

Ms. Harris is quite a spiritual and kind woman -- I meet her once briefly but semi-privately (so we could talk) after her first gig at Tampa's most historic, restored and quite unique roaring 20s-era movie palace.

Another artist I recognize on this track and video is master guitarist Buddy Miller -- the only other musician on stage with Emmylou that magical night that I saw her at the Tampa Theatre. Oh, and Buddy Miller wrote this song.

This track gets my mojo workin'; how about giving her a spin?

Sam Bush's video for The River's Gonna Run

Occupy and Stay! -- "The Revolution Starts Now!"

This one goes out to my brothers and sisters on the front lines of the Occupy Movement.

The Revolution Starts Now! (2004) -- Steve Earle

Addendum: One reader reported having a problem with the track player above. You can find a lower fidelity but fine copy of Steve's protest anthem on YouTube at: Steve Earle, "The Revolution Starts Now!"

Caught in the Dark Fires of Love: "We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning" -- Gram Parsons (with Emmylou Harris, 1973)

While wrestling yesterday with both my new post research and also, invariably, my powerlessness over the sublime but often uncontrollable darker side of love, I found a shining glimmer of insight in my music collection yesterday. From Gram Parson's first solo album, GP (1973), here's We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning (written by Joyce Allsup; harmony vocal by Emmylou Harris).

This song makes me feel a little less alone, a little less like I'm the only guy who ever traveled this burning highway. Gram, Emmylou & Co. surely helped yesterday, as Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Lou Reed, Dylan, and Johnny Cash (with June) have helped me steer through this "Ring of Fire" before.

We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning (Gram Parsons, GP, 1973)

R.E.M.: Requiem for a Heavyweight Band

I was listening to Lucinda Williams from her 1993 Live at the Filmore (West) yesterday morning early, watching the birds out my back door. I was on one of my reveries, this one about lyrics, Lucinda's Reason to Cry and Fruits of My Labor.

And then the news I'd caught by accident a few days earlier hit home: R.E.M. was gone.

The band announced via its website that as of September 21, 2011, the band would "calling it a day as a band". (Hilton, Robin (September 21, 2011). "R.E.M. Calls It A Day, Announces Breakup" NPR.org.)

A year ago. The end of carrying on since Bill left for his farm in 1997. And all this time I thought they might be hunkered down in a studio. The obits pile up too quickly these days

Think of it this way. We were shiny, happy people in our glory days.

R.E.M. & Kate Pierson rehearse Shiny Happy People - 1991 (for SNL)

And some of us are angry:

Orange Crush (live in Germany, 2003)

And often reflective, as I was sitting yesterday morning, having my coffee and watching the birds in the early morning light.

Nightswimming (Michel Stipe vocals, Mike Mills piano;
Undated, Live in Jool, Netherlands)

Yeah, reflective, like the mood I'm in now. Michael, Peter, Mike and Bill -- to your band R.E.M., Requiescat in Pace.

"Get Low" (2009): A New Classic Film from Robert Duvall and Company

You want to see a contemporary film masterpiece you haven't seen: check out "A True Tall Tale" of a real American in 1938, Get Low (2009), starring Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek -- a new addition to the canon of great American films.

A colleague, the Paullinator, recommended the film to me for the music by The Steeldrivers, Alison Krauss, and Jerry Douglas -- as well as the film itself. Robert Duvall was one of the producers, working with Dean Zanuck, the third generation of the Zanuck family film production dynasty. Bill Murray and Lucas Black co-star in fine supporting roles.

The story is loosely based on the real life tale of Appalachian eccentric Felix Breazeale --"Felix Bush" as played by Robert Duvall -- who wants to have his funeral "party" before he dies, for a very special reason. The film left me entertained and spiritually moved to tears. A female friend of mine was was equally moved, identifying strongly with Sissy Spacek's character Mattie -- a strong woman who in maturity must recalibrate her life's compass because of past events and a lost love surging to the surface of her life.

Indeed, I've talked to 4 people about this film and all were deeply moved. As the Paullinator put it, "What I think is refreshing about the film is that it deals so frankly with the human condition – with humility." Another couple was not only spiritually moved but also mystified as to why this film had never made it big at the box office. In my view, Get Low will certainly find its audience with it's good word-of-mouth and stirring, heartfelt themes.

This film is everything a classic should be -- entertaining, rich is detail right down to the visuals, excellent writing and acting, incredible music, and it's stirring, understated themes. In short, a new essential with a moving story that will move most anyone with a heart.

MusiCares 2010 Person of the Year: Neil Young

I caught the MusiCares broadcast of exerpts from it's 2010 award gala on VH1-Classic last week -- a show honoring Neil Young for his career as a performer, songwriter and philanthropist. Before I get to a one of the gala's highlights below, here's the MusiCares mission statement.

MusiCares provides a safety net of critical assistance for music people in times of need. MusiCares' services and resources cover a wide range of financial, medical and personal emergencies, and each case is treated with integrity and confidentiality. MusiCares also focuses the resources and attention of the music industry on human service issues that directly impact the health and welfare of the music community.

I want to do my part by showing you this clip and encouraging you, if you can, to make a donation here.

Now to a highlight -- my favorite was John Fogerty, Booker T., and Keith Urban covering Neil's Rockin' in the Free World ...

Let me mention two other performances I loved and can't find clips of: Dave Matthews doing Needle and the Damage Done and Elvis Costello beautifully reinventing The Losing End.

Congratulations Neil, you earned it, man.

Emmylou Harris: "Born to Run" (1988)

This Paul Kennerley song originally appears on Emmylou's 1981 studio album Cimarron. She re-recorded it with Buddy Miller, Darryl Jones, and company on her 1988 live album Spyboy. Here she is giving Dave a treat while touring to promote that record.

I picked this tune because I'm moving this week. I needed the inspiration.

Alison Krauss and Yo Yo Ma: "Slumber My Darling" (Stephen Foster)

Here is a beautiful "old school" folk song reinterpreted by folk's best modern vocalist with a world class string ensemble.

Beautiful Dreamer, a 2005 compilation album of Stephen Foster's work, won the Grammy that year for Best Traditional Folk Album. Here are Alison Krauss and Yo Yo Ma performing Slumber My Darling -- their track appearing on this all-star collection.

The Dixie Chicks: Still "Not Ready To Make Nice"

A friend of mine put on an album the other night, one I hadn't written about since it took home five Grammys and tore up the charts in 2006. The Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way still sounds great these five years later. (Judge for yourself with the video above; as always, my apologies for the ad across the bottom.)

As an aging hippie, the idea that a band would stir up so much controversy by exercising an artist's right to criticize American foreign policy from overseas is more than a little disconcerting. I grew up at the height of the era where protest music and musicians speaking their minds were badges of honor. But judging on the first decade of this century, a band now puts its future on the line by stepping out of line. As I think about it, I guess its always been risky to oppose those in authority.

The Dixie Chicks are still thriving with a smaller fan base, having lost many of their more conservative, mainstream country fans. But they are still going strong, and their cathartic album Taking the Long Way stands as one of the decade's most important protest records.

Emmylou Harris w/ Willie Nelson - "One Paper Kid"

About eight years ago, I got my first chance to see one of my favorite artists, Emmylou Harris. I was prowling around the soundboard before the show and asked her sound man if One Paper Kid, from her album Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town (1990, reissued 2004), was on the set list. Her sound man told me she hadn't done that song live in quite a while.

The concert that night was superb -- all my highest expectations were met. As I was leaving the theater, I saw a short line of fans gather around her tour bus. As it turned out, everyone in that shout line would get a chance to meet Emmylou after she got back to the bus.

Ms. Harris turned out to be gracious and compassionate person in our brief meeting. For no reason I can remember, I'd stuck the CD liner notes to Quarter Moon in my pocket. And that was what she signed for me, now my prized souvenir of the concert. After our short discussion she told me she was going to write a little phrase on my liner notes she hadn't used in a long time. So my post today contains two things close to my heart: the song One Paper Kid above and, from Emmylou to me to you, "Happy trails."