Mavericks

Last night, my wife and I went to the Mavericks show at the Iroquois Amphitheater. The 9-piece band sounded terrific and it was a beautiful night for outdoor music. The band included not only standard guitarist, drummers, and keyboard musicians, but also men who played the accordion, sax, upright bass, and two trumpets. Two!

Mavericks at Iroquois Amphitheater pic.twitter.com/pHhs90mOS8

— Rodger Payne (@rapayn01) April 28, 2018

Singer Raul Malo is very talented. Back in the day, he could have replaced the lead singer of virtually any given Americana or alt-country band -- and improved their sound.

Strangely, despite these strengths, the entire top section of the venue was nearly empty. This could have been because Louisville is a week out from the Kentucky Derby and there are many competing events all over town.  Yet, I suspect the Maverick's history and set list played a part.

The band was at its peak in the 1990s, so their fans are starting to age out of concerts. The crowd was definitely old for a rock show and few people were singing along with the songs -- very different from how the crowd behaved at the Old Crow Medicine Show performance we attended last year in the same venue. Granted, OCMS was performing Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, but the crowd knew the band's songs too when they eventually played some hits.

Trampoline, which may be the Maverick's best recording, was released 20 years ago. Within a few years of that recording, the band took a hiatus for about 7 years. Raul Malo had a solo career and sang as part of Los Super Seven. Oh, yes, I have their fantastic Heard it on the X CD -- but all these facts likely made it tough for the Mavericks to sustain a fan base.

The band's set list was kind of strange as well. They apparently had some top 40 (country) hits back in their heyday, but I'm not sure they had a specific single that everyone knows and associates with the band. I recognized most of the songs last night, but I have three of their CDs and am a fan.

The crowd did know (and sing along with) the handful of covers the Mavericks played -- including songs written or made famous by Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, the BeeGees and the Drifters. See this, this, this, this, and this. These songs tended to highlight Malo's voice and some were played acoustically with minimal backing from the rest of the band.

Prior to the show, I talked to a number of people who were unfamiliar with the Maverick's music, so I started thinking about how to describe their eclectic sound. I finally ended up with Roy Orbison meets the Buena Vista Social Club. Los Lobos might have sounded like the Mavericks if they had been from Miami instead of LA.

So, about those empty seats: What a Crying Shame! 


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Jason Isbell

On Wednesday night, some friends and I attended the Jason Isbell concert at Headliner's. It was a terrific show -- and longer than I expected. The venue holds just under 700 people and it was packed with fans.

However, this was the first time I had seen Isbell fronting his own band, though I did see him twice when performing in the Drive-By Truckers. I blogged about one of those shows back in 2006.

The Isbell song "Outfit" was a highlight of that Truckers show and became something of a running joke on Wednesday night. Isbell told the crowd that he played "Outfit" every night, but that he never played it when someone in the crowd yelled out the song title. Of course, fans had been calling for it throughout the night -- and continued to do so after his warning.

I only own one Isbell CD -- "Live from Alabama" -- but this "Southeastern" show offered several songs from his new recording, including "Super 8," which has now been stuck in my head for a couple of days.  It doesn't appear that this show featured his full band, the 400 Unit.

Holly Williams, grand-daughter of Hank (and half sister of Hank III) was the warm up act and she was OK. Her sound was fine, but I didn't find much of distinction in her music.


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Local Music

Last Saturday night, while playing our regular monthly Texas Hold 'em game, Roots 'n' Boots host Michael Young and some other players talked about local band Houndmouth. Mike pointed out that the band is from across the river in New Albany, Indiana, and another guy noted that they are performing at Headliner's Music Hall this Saturday night at 8 pm.

Mike has been playing their song "Penitentiary" on his weekly radio program. In case you haven't heard it, check out this video from their Youtube channel:

On Friday night at 9 pm, a somewhat older band, Bodeco, is playing in Louisville at the Palace Theater. Here's a video from their 2011 appearance on WFPK's Live Lunch:

I'm going to try to attend one of these home-for-the-holidays shows. I have a Bodeco CD, so I can listen to them anytime... Hmmm.

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Springsteen

Just one night after headlining the Hurricane Sandy relief telethon, Bruce Springsteen was in Louisville performing live at the Yum! Center downtown. My wife and I attended with some old friends. We previously saw Springsteen shows together at Rupp Arena in Lexington on November 14, 2002 (with 2 of the same friends), and at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California on May 3, 1988. I also saw him before we were dating at the Cap Centre in Landover, Maryland, August 26?, 1984. She saw him without me in 1980, perhaps at this show.

Last night's concert was fantastic. Though Springsteen is now 63, he played for more than three hours and demonstrated all the enthusiasm and energy of a much younger man. I found concert reviews at the Courier-Journal website and in Lexington's ace weekly paper.

This is the setlist:

Shackled and Drawn
Lonesome Day
Hungry Heart
We Take Care Of Our Own
Wrecking Ball
Death to My Hometown
My City of Ruins
Spirit in the Night
The E Street Shuffle
Streets of Philadelphia
Atlantic City
Because The Night
She’s the One
Growing Up
Open All Night
Darlington County
Waitin’ on a Sunny Day
The River
The Rising
Badlands
Land of Hope and Dreams

Encore

Rocky Ground
Born to Run
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
Dancing in the Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out

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Rumours

Saturday night, my family headed out to The Rud for dinner and to see a group of local musicians perform Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" LP live from start-to-finish (plus a few other hits as encores). Show video here (yes, I'm in the front row for the early show).

The performers were danny flanigan, Kimmet Cantwell, Brigid Kaelin, Todd Johnson, Tim Halcomb, and Ray Rizzo. Rizzo and his beard were channeling Mick Fleetwood, Kaelin and Cantwell sang and looked a bit like Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks, bassist Halcomb played the role well of John McVie, and guitarist Johnson has an angular face and the look of eventual solo-artist Lindsey Buckingham. Old friend danny flanigan didn't really look like a member of Fleetwood Mac from the Rumours period (they had 5 members for that recording), but he could have been representing founding guitarist Peter Green -- or maybe eventual solo artist and former member Bob Welch.

The evening created a flood of old memories from the late 1970s. My long-time college roommate had the album on 8-track tape and I recall borrowing it before a big date my freshman year -- and playing it a lot.

Oh, and "Don't Stop" reminded me of the 1992 Clinton campaign. The song made me feel kind of depressed about promise lost.

In all, it was a fun evening and the music was very entertaining. Unfortunately, the Falls City Pale Ale I had during the show was not as good as other local brews.


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Campus "songtalk"

Bernice Johnson Reagon, who describes herself as a "songtalker," will be delivering the annual Anne Braden Memorial Lecture on Friday, November 5 at 6pm in Comstock Hall (School of Music): “The Civil Rights Movement and Students: Creating a Vital, Transformative Change in the Struggle for American Freedom.”

The event is free and open to the public.

Here's a sample of her singing an American classic tune:




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Berry, LeCure and the Bats

Yesterday, I went to Louisville Slugger field a bit early to check out honky tonk singer Johnny Berry as part of Budweiser's $2 "craft beer" promotion. Berry sounded great, but he stopped playing at 5:30 even though the game began at 6:05.

In the game, pitcher Sam LeCure dominated the visiting Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees. He was perfect through 4 innings, but then walked 2 batters in the fifth when it appeared that he had lost his rhythm. Unfortunately, I had to leave the game at that point to have dinner with my oldest daughter, but I caught some of the game on the radio and learned later that LeCure threw a 1-hitter rather than a no-no. The final score was 5-0.


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Back in the USSR

Saturday night, my daughter unexpectedly invited me to join her for the Louisville Orchestra's performance of Haydn's Symphony No. 82 and Shostakovitch's Tenth Symphony.

Predictably, the Haydn literally put me to sleep. In my family, I'm notorious for dozing off at various choral, orchestral, or operatic events. Haydn was like a lullaby to me.

The Shostakovitch piece, however, was terrific and I didn't miss a note.

Conductor Daniel Hege introduced the piece by telling the audience about the composer's personal history -- and about the four movements to come. He described a classic struggle between an artist and a brutal regime and made the audience eager to hear the artist's personal description of the tale.

My ears heard a resounding critique of the Soviet state -- emphasizing the brutality and illegitimacy of Stalin's rule, the composer's personal misery under that state, and the (somewhat tentative, but hopeful) elation at Stalin's death. It's hard to imagine that anyone in the west listening to this piece during the cold war ever doubted the inevitable demise of the Soviet state.

A couple of weeks ago I watched the far more popular Dr. Zhivago, which addressed some similar themes. Shostakovich's 10th symphony, however, told the tale much more efficiently -- and effectively, to my mind.


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Americana music 2008

As usual, I must outsource my music "best of" list. Once again, my friend Michael Young, host of the local "Roots 'n Boots" public radio program, recently posted his top 20 American albums of 2008. Note that I've deleted Mike's comments about the CDs, so you'll want to visit his post for his justifications:

1. Hayes Carll - Trouble In Mind (Lost Highway)
2. Chris Knight - Heart Of Stone (Drifter’s Church)
3. Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (New West)
4. James Intveld - Have Faith (Molenaart)
5. Malcolm Holcombe - Gamblin’ House (Echo Mountain)
6. James McMurtry - Just Us Kids (Lightning Rod)
7. Watson Twins - Fire Songs (Vanguard)
8. Chatham County Line - IV (Yep Roc)
9. Avett Brothers - The Second Gleam (Ramseur)
10. Miss Lana Rebel - All I Need (Wantage)
11. BoDeans - Still (He & He)
12. Tift Merritt - Another Country (Fantasy)
13. John Mann - Evening News (self-released)
14. Lucinda Williams - Little Honey (Lost Highway)
15. John Mellencamp - Life Death Love And Freedom (Hear Music)
16. Dave Insley - West Texas Wine (self-released)
17. Todd Snider - Peace Queer (Aimless)
18. Peter Cooper - Mission Door (Red Beet)
19. Alejandro Escovedo - Real Animal (Back Porch/Manhattan)
20. Grayson Capps & The Stumpknockers - Rott-n-Roll (Hyena)

It's difficult for me to evaluate this list since the only CD I own from the list is the one by Hayes Carll. Of course, I've heard singles by virtually all these artists on Mike's show or on XM radio.

My owning the Carll CD registers my assent because I bought it in the summer and have been playing it all year. No Depression's review includes a video of his "She Left Me For Jesus."

I did see James McMurtry, Tift Merritt and Alejandro Escovedo (#1 on the No Depression year-end list) perform live this year. Stupidly, I skipped Carll on a cold and wet night in Louisville this December.

Previously, I've seen the Drive-By Truckers, the BoDeans (nearly 20 years ago in Evanston, IL), Lucinda Williams, John Mellencamp and Grayson Capps perform live. I can vouch for some of their prior albums.

You can hear Michael's show on WFPK every Sunday night at 5 pm ET (live stream). That's right, this year, his show expanded by an hour.


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OCMS

I don't have any Old Crow Medicine Show CDs, though a couple of their cuts appear on Americana compilation CDs that I own. Tonight, my wife and I went to see them in Louisville and the show was entertaining.

OCMS play traditional music, much of it bluegrass.

I'm not a huge fan of that genre, but this show definitely wasn't exclusively bluegrass music. At times, OCMS sounded like Neil Young, Pure Prairie League, or BR-549.

Warmup band The Felice Brothers sounded really good to me. Check 'em out.


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McMurtry and Escovedo

Last Wednesday night, my wife and I went out to see James McMurtry and Alejandro Escovedo. Though Escovedo played last, we were more interested in McMurtry's set and the crowd seemed to be mostly his as well. Lots of people were singing along to McMurtry's songs, the club was somewhat less crowded during Escovedo's set, and the biggest cheer of the night came following McMurtry's delivery of these lines from "We Can’t Make It Here":

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I’m in
Should I hate ‘em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away

According to a story I read in The Washington Post while on vacation,

Stephen King called McMurtry's first foray into political songwriting the best American protest song since Bob Dylan's epochal "Masters of War."

Escovedo's band was first-rate (including fiddle player Carrie Rodriguez) and his set was very entertaining.

More than twenty years ago, before I'd ever heard of James McMurtry, I used to listen to Escovedo's "cowpunk" band, Rank and File. Yes, I still own the vinyl records.

I'm not sure Headliners was filled to its 600-person capacity, but it was very crowded and I kept running into people I know -- a colleague from Sociology, another from my Department, a DJ friend, and a couple of former students.

It was a fun night.


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Ameripolitan?

Thirty-five years ago, musician Dale Watson would have been a country artist. These days, however, he rejects that label because he doesn't sound much like the "country" artists working in mainstream Nashville. "To me, it automatically means crap."

Watson prefers the term "Ameripolitan" to describe his music, which may mean that he's not happy with Americana either.

Today, I was in the studio audience for a one hour "Live Lunch" featuring Watson, broadcast live on WFPK-91.9, Radio Louisville. Once they put in on-line, the entire show can be downloaded and burned.

Watson's voice is great -- classic, gulp, country -- and his songs have a reliable Honky Tonk groove. Of course, I felt like I needed a beer throughout the show. Maybe two.


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Misery and pain

Singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams was in Louisville tonight and her show was terrific. She's a great lyricist, she sings with excellent conversational phrasing and her backing band is first-rate.

She opened solo with "Passionate Kisses" and closed with backing from warmup performer Carrie Rodriguez on "Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings" (inspired, she says, by Paul Westerberg). Williams played lots of great tunes in between, though I kind of thought the extended version of "Joy" sounded eerily familiar.

I guess my only complaint is that the show included too much material from "World Without Tears," which I like least of the five Lucinda Williams CDs in our house. The title of this blog post comes from her cut on that CD: "People Talkin'." Williams is known for her depressing lyrics, so she joked about that a few times and pointed out that she is currently engaged and happy. She even played a new "up" song.

Don't fear fans, "there's plenty of misery," she says, "in the well."


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Four Horsemen

Tonight, my wife and I went to a great concert put on by some terrific Americana singer-songwriters: Guy Clark, Joe Ely, John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett. This was the first time we'd seen Clark and Hiatt, though we've been fans (particularly of Hiatt) for a long time. I bought "Bring the Family" back in 1987 and was quite pleased that "Memphis in the Meantime" was in the setlist (and "Have a Little Faith in Me"). He changed the country singer reference in the original lyric: "I dont think Ronnie Milsap's* gonna ever Record this song." Milsap was replaced with Kenny Chesney.

We previously saw Ely in Chicago at the Lounge Axe back in about 1989. That was a lone guy with a guitar show, and I remember being a little disappointed that he didn't have a loud band. Tonight, he played a terrific version of "Honky Tonk Masquerade," which is an old favorite, but he didn't play "My Baby Thinks She's French." I look forward to his promised song about Dick Cheney.

Lovett we've seen a couple of times previously, including in the same venue with his Large Band. It was great to see that he's a terrific entertainer even when stripped down to a simple guitar (with occasional assistance from the other Horsemen, including a fine set of guitar riffs from Hiatt). I think the highlight of Lovett's night was "L.A. County," though every song he played was very good. On a couple of songs about relationships with women, I kept thinking "this guy was once married to Julia Roberts."

I'm not sure that Clark played any tunes that were familiar to me, though I own a couple of his CDs. Unfortunately, he also forgot his lyrics a few times during the set (once because of a distracting noise from the audience). His lyrics tell memorable stories and the long-time fan Lovett covered what was ostensibly Clark's first song.

It was a great show. Check them out if they play near you.


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Grayson Capps

Last night, my wife and I ventured out to see a musician that our neighbor (part-time DJ Michael Young) has been promoting on his radio program and to his friends: Grayson Capps.

Mike was right! Capps puts on a terrific show and his songs (and storytelling) are very entertaining. Capps quite obviously won the crowd quite early and I'm happy to report that Mike hopes to lure the musician back to Louisville for an outdoor Waterfront Wednesday show. We bought the latest Capps CD on the way out the door.

Catherine Irwin of Freakwater was the solo warmup act and she was very good too. If you are interested, I recommend her band's excellent "Springtime," which I've enjoyed for years.


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Filed as: Americana music

Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose

I saw Dwight Yoakam last night at the Kentucky State Fair and he put on a great show. Over the course of two hours, the singer performed a broad sample of his hits and a diverse array of covers (many by his friend and hero, Buck Owens).

The weather was great, especially for the Ohio River Valley in August, but it was not a perfect show. Dwight Yoakam may be a performer near the peak of his artistic career, but the sound system was not especially good (at least where I was sitting) and his voice lacks some of the range and force of his youth.

The title of this blog post is a track title from Yoakam's 1990 CD, "If There Was a Way." It's a song about a guy trying to use (loud) music to forget a "memory that's driving me lonely, crazy and blue." It was one of the most inspired songs Yoakam sang last night. His voice effectively conveys dispair and loneliness, and I don't think the guy in the song is able to overcome his pain.

Indeed, as Marty Rosen wrote in his published review, Yoakam "ventured off the trail into places of primeval madness — 'Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose' dissolved into soft yips and barks that might have come from a den of wolf pups."

Primeval madness. Hey, that reminds me of somebody else...

In fact, the song's chorus reminded me, author of this political blog, of a post I did not complete yesterday about another guy in trouble and his most recent pathetic attempts to deflect his suffering.

Did I mention that Yoakam began the evening with "Blame the Vain"?


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Filed as: Yoakam

(Pop) culture update

I went to a club the other night to see Philly's Marah, but by 11:40 the band still wasn't on stage and we had a babysitter deadline pending. Meanwhile, "warmup" act Jackie Greene was terrific -- kind of a cross between Delbert McClinton and Bob Dylan. He's a versatile multi-instrumentalist in a porkpie hat, singing blues, rootsy folk, etc.

Saturday, I ordered Greene's latest CD, which was produced by Steve Berlin. In the '80s, many of my favorite albums either featured, or were produced by, Berlin, a veteran of Los Lobos and the Blasters. Greene's act and the entire "Americana" genre owe a lot to "American Music."

Greene will be back in Louisville Wednesday June 28, performing a FREE live show as the headliner down on the Waterfront.

I did finally catch about half an hour of Marah. They were OK...but too loud.

If you don't have a chance to see Jackie Greene, find out if "Inside Man" is still playing at a (likely second run) theater near you. It's a Spike Lee heist film starring Denzel Washington, Jody Foster and Clive Owen. Good stuff.

"A Prairie Home Companion" was much better than I expected. I have not read Garrison Keillor or listened to his radio program, but went to see it because I'm a big fan of other Robert Altman films. The film was quite entertaining: thumbs up!


Update: This entry has been expanded a bit since it was originally posted.

In comments, Ryan Clark Holiday points listeners to StreamJackieGreene.com. You can select the songs you want to hear in any order.

Dylan skeptics: give "Talkin' Midtown Woman" a listen.


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Filed as: pop culture

Culture update: May 2006

Tonight, with blogger Rob Farley of Lawyers, Guns and Money (and University of Kentucky), I attended the WFPK Listener Appreciation Concert featuring Alejandro Escovedo, the Yonder Mountain String Band, Alexi Murdoch, Dr. Ralph Stanley and His Clinch Mountain Boys, and the Drive By Truckers.

All were entertaining, but the Truckers were quite special. They are a rock band on the top of their game, singing personal songs reflecting a slice of American social, political and economic life.

They are a southern band, from Alabama, arguably with their finger on the pulse of red state America. The people in their songs are used to living with guns, working at Walmart, marrying young, taking crystal-meth, having lots of children, etc. Many of the characters in their songs talk about economic class, and the "rich folks" aren't necessarily to be envied.

These are some of the lyrics to their song "Outfit," in the voice of a father to a son:

I learned not to say much of nothing and I figured you already know
but in case you don’t or maybe forgot, I’ll lay it out real nice and slow

Don’t call what your wearing an outfit. Don’t ever say your car is broke.
Don’t worry about losing your accent, a Southern Man tells better jokes.
Have fun but stay clear of the needle. Call home on your sister’s birthday.
Don’t tell them you’re bigger than Jesus, don’t give it away.

The second time they sing that chorus, the "accent" line is changed to "don’t sing with a fake British accent. Don’t act like your family’s a joke."

The people in Trucker songs are Walter Russell Mead's Jacksonians.

Many Truckers songs have overtly political lyrics -- and the band is apparently not happy with the way things are going.

If the Truckers come to your town, check 'em out.


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Filed as: Drive By Truckers