Red Molly - The Red Album: Review

This article was first published at Blogcritics

If, like me, The Red Album released back in May is your first acquaintance with Red Molly, a vocal trio that has been around for a decade, we have missed a lot, but at least there is one consolation. We have ten years’ worth of what promises to be excellent music, a half dozen albums, waiting for us.

Red Molly—Laurie MacAllister, Abbie Gardner, and Molly Venter—is an acoustic band that lives on the border of country and western and folk music. The ladies, often praised for their supple vocal harmonies, play a variety of instruments and write more than their share of impressive music. While five of the songs on The Red Album are covers, the rest of the 13 track set are originals by one of the Mollies. They clearly, each and every one of them, have a fine tuned sense of the kind of musical soundscape best suited to their aesthetic.

A tune like “Willow Tree,” written by Venter and Eben Pariser, could well have been a traditional piece handed down from generation to generation, it has both a musical and poetic authenticity. Venter takes the lead vocal and the others the harmony; Gardner plays dobro. On the other hand, a tune like Mark Erelli’s “Pretend” gives the trio an opportunity to show off their feel for the swinging Dixie vibe. MacAllister takes the lead on this one and trombonist Herb Gardner—Pops—makes a cameo. Gardner takes the lead on her gospel rocker “Lay Down Your Burden.” The ladies make sure to share the lead vocals.

They do an interesting arrangement of the Simon and Garfunkel hit, “Homeward Bound,” but it is their treatment of Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” that is the highlight of album’s covers. And I guess that should be expected, after all as the liner notes point out, it is from this song which Gardner first heard  in Del McCoury’s version at a Berkshire bluegrass festival as a child that the trio  takes its name. Fittingly, each of the ladies takes the lead on one of the tune’s three verses.

Whether the dark “Clinch River Blues” which opens the album, the  lullaby “Sing to Me” Molly sings with a tear in her voice, or the jumping “My Baby Loves Me,” The Red Album shows off the band’s variety. And for effect, they close with a beautifully harmonized a cappella version of “Copper Ponies.”

Music Review: Phoebe Hunt- "Walk With Me" (featuring Connor Forsyth)

This article was first published at Blogcritics.

“The Many Sides of Phoebe Hunt” might be a good alternative title for Walk With Me, the fine new album from singer/songwriter Hunt and The Gatherers due for release later this month. She does pop. She does country. She does folk. She can swing with a touch of jazz or sell an emotional ballad. And she does it all on the new album, and she does it all with style and vigor.

There might be some who see this as a scatter shot artist in search of herself. That would be a mistake, this is a talented artist who won’t be pigeon holed. And she shouldn’t be. If you can do it all, why accept limits. And if there’s one thing to take away from Walk With Me, it is that Phoebe Hunt can do it all, and do it all remarkably well.

Joined by multi-instrumentalist Connor Forsyth, she runs through a set of 11 tunes that spotlights both the singer’s different vocal personalities and her mastery of a variety of genres. There is the vulnerable innocence of “Warm Summer’s Evening,” and the worldly experience that rises almost to an anthem in “Before I’m Done.” “Long Gone” is catchy pop with an infectious hook that sticks with you. “Walk of Angeline” channels Cajun country with Hunt’s fiddle and Forsyth’s accordion, while “Flee Fly Flow Flum” is free flowing, ‘giant’ killer country pop. The album’s title song is classic country.

The album opens with some exciting brass infused swing in “Darkness,” and closes with “Send Out Your Love,” a quiet ballad sung with touching emotional honesty. She does a breathy, flirty “You Can Love,” a tune delivered as though it could have been taken from the Great American Songbook. “Song For Jacquelyn,” on the other hand, is a haunting folk ballad.

Phoebe Hunt is a talent that deserves to be heard, and Walk With Me is an album that ought to get her the attention she deserves.

Music Review: Harry Belafonte - Sing Your Song

This article was first published at Blogcritics

The first Harry Belafonte albums I ever bought must have been back in the late fifties.  There were two of them­­--Belafonte and Calypso.  At the time I was into The Weavers and Leadbelly and Harry Belafonte was another voice in the folk singing army that was beginning to make itself heard around the country.  I remember tucking the LP's in next to a well worn copy of The Weavers at Carnegie Hall.  The first time I ever saw him perform was on the stage of a Brooklyn night club called the Town and Country.  I remember thinking at the time that this was kind of a strange venue for a folk singer.  Later the Town and Country became the home base for a troop of female impersonators called the Jewel Box Revue, definitely not the place for a folk singer. 

I bring this up because it seems to me that back then at the time he was making a big name for himself, there was a sense among some of us in our ignorance that there folk singers that were activists like Seeger, Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman, and Belafonte wasn't one of them.  There was a sense that there were folk singers who were authentic like Leadbelly, and the sweet voiced Belafonte wasn't one of them either.  Next thing you know he's in Hollywood making movies and he's a movie star, again not quite what we had come to expect from the typical folk singer.

Of course, it turns out that one thing that never seems to have concerned Harry Belafonte was playing to other people's expectations.  So when he turns up marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. and we discover that he's been a civil rights activist all along, those of us who really knew little more about him than "Matilda" were kind of shocked.  The extent of what many of us didn't know, or maybe didn't want to know, is made abundantly clear in the HBO documentary, Sing Your Song aired earlier this October.  Not only was the man a fighter for civil rights in this country, but he was a humanitarian involved in the struggle for social justice around the world. 

In conjunction with the documentary and the release of an autobiographical memoir, My Song, Sony Masterworks has released Harry Belafonte: Sing Your Song: The Music, a compilation of some of his most prized recordings which serves as a kind of musical companion to the film and the book.  The album's 16 tracks feature selections from his earliest efforts through to some of his later work.  It includes classic Belafonte like the "Banana Boat Song," "Sylvie," and "Jump Down, Spin Around."  There is the plaintive lullaby like "Scarlet Ribbons" and the raucous "Man Smart (Woman Smarter)."  There are the calypso favorites "Jamaica Farewell," "Mama Look A Boo Boo,"  "Cocoanut Woman," and of course "Matilda."

The set includes "My Angel," a duet with Miriam Makeba sung in Swahili and a comic duet, "A Hole in the Bucket," with Odetta from his 1959 TV special, Tonight With Belafonte.  "Island in the Sun" was written for the film in which the singer starred.  The latest songs included are the title song and "Can't Cross Over" from his 1977 Turn the World Around album. 

For those unfamiliar with the singer's work, this album has a generous selection of his best.  You couldn't ask for a better introduction.  For those of us who have loved him for years, it offers a good opportunity to replace some of those worn down scratched LP's with the sounds of our youth.  Either way this album is a joy.

Saying Goodnight to Irene

Article first published as Saying Goodnight to Irene on Technorati.

With the whole east coast evacuating their homes or hunkering in fear awaiting the arrival of what will have to be, at least for awhile the storm of the century, albeit the century is still young, it takes a folk singer to look for the pony in the proverbial room full of horse manure. In this case the pony comes in the form of a folk song first popularized back in the 30's by a black ex-con with a haunting voice and a name to reckon with, Leadbelly, and then made really popular in the 50's by a group of left leaning radicals, the Weavers. The folk song in question of course is the iconic "Goodnight Irene," and what more appropriate as the lady herself makes her way up the coast from the Carolinas to Battery Park and beyond.

Along comes Christopher Paul Stelling, and either in an attempt to get a little publicity for his ingenuity (which he probably deserves) or with an almost post modern irony he offers up a cover of the classic perhaps as a talisman akin to the old chestnut, "Rain, rain, go away. It's either too cute by far, if you have no sense of humor or a one of the neatest puns of last few days.

So here is the link to Stelling, often praised for the emotional impact of his vocals, doing his cover of the Leadbelly classic.

And here for even more juju is the link to Leadbelly himself.

Music Review: Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan In Concert Brandeis University 1963

Article first published as Music Review: Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan In Concert Brandeis University 1963 on Blogcritics.

While Bob Dylan devotees will be thrilled with the release of a previously unknown live recording of the young singer taped at Brandeis University's First Annual Folk Festival in May of 1963, more casual fans may be less impressed. The concert tape was discovered in the archives of music critic and Rolling Stone founder, Ralph Gleason, by his son a little more than a year ago after the death his mother. Only twenty one at the time of the concert, Dylan was yet to establish himself as one of the luminaries of the folk scene. Although he was recording with Columbia records, his first album, Bob Dylan, which contained very little original material hadn't been particularly successful. His second album which included some of his soon to be iconic songs had yet to be released. Festival headliners were Pete Seeger and Jean Ritchie; Dylan was the equivalent of an opening act.

The concert tape contains two sets and seven songs all of which are available elsewhere in studio recordings. There are three talking blues: the "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," "Talkin' World War III Blues," and "Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues." The first is a satirical attack on the anti-communist lunatic fringe, which was later to create some controversy when Dylan was not allowed to sing it on The Ed Sullivan Show. All three show the singer still in the Woody Guthrie phase of his early career. There is a foreshortened version of "Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance" which was to be included on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The "Ballad of Hollis Brown," as intense a composition as anything in Dylan's early canon, is the longest of the songs on the album. "Bob Dylan's Dream," sung with a kind of lyric clarity that no longer seems to interest the seventy year old singer, and the plaintive protesting "Masters of War" are probably the highlights of the two sets. The latter, which ends Dylan's first set, gets a really enthusiastic reception from the audience.

Liner notes for the album are written by Michael Gray author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia and Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan. They provide an interesting prospective on the singer and his repertoire at this early stage of his career. The concert, Gray points out, was not a momentous performance. "It reveals him not at any Big Moment but giving a performance like his folkclub sets of the period: repertoire from an ordinary working day."

DVD Review: Dylan Revealed

Article first published as DVD Review: Dylan Revealed on Blogcritics.

The most disappointing thing about Joel Gilbert's documentary Dylan Revealed now available on DVD in time for Dylan's 70^th birthday is that in all of its 110 minutes there isn't even one sample of the man singing, let alone a complete song. There is plenty of concert footage, but it is always film accompanied by talking head voiceover rather than the music. When there is music, it seems from the credits to be the music of a tribute band.

While a documentary about a musician that fails to include the man's music may not make a lot of sense, what the film does have is a lot of film from the singer's long career that it claims has never been seen before. Unfortunately the quality of much of this film is not always up to par. More often than not, it is taken from home movies shot by amateurs. For example there is film of Dylan on his 1966 Electric World Tour which was taken by drummer Mickey Jones who does the bulk of the narration about this period of Dylan's career. In the first half of the concerts Dylan would do an acoustic set, and Jones would go out and film from the audience. He'd get one of the roadies to film the second half when he was on stage. This is supplemented by film of Dylan and his entourage as they travel from country to country. Some of it is interesting, but after awhile it's like watching your brother-in-law's vacation movies. I mean "Bob Dylan visits Elsinore" and D. A. Pennebaker in and out of his top hat leave something to be desired.

The film is less a biography than it is a look at various more or less significant moments in the singer's career, although by no means all significant moments. It begins in 1962 with his Columbia recording contract, the dismal sales of his early recordings, and the problems this caused for legendary producer John Hammond. It jumps ahead to the Dylan goes electric period, and essentially makes the point that those who think he was selling out for the money are wrong. In fact, the poor reception his electric sets got from audiences cost him fans and money. Mickey Jones describes the cat calls and booing that greeted the electric portion of the concerts, a description that has been echoed recently by Robbie Robertson as he makes the talk show rounds in support of his new album.

Other aspects of Dylan's career that get major attention are his Rolling Thunder Revue Tour, his support of Reuben 'Hurricane' Carter, his born again period and his return to his Jewish heritage. And although the documentary's title seems to indicate that there are revelations in store for the viewer, I don't know that there is a whole lot that is new here. Clearly Dylan's preaching from the stage after his Christian conversion rubbed many concert goers the wrong way. As critic, Joe Selvin, points out, his audiences expected something quite different from him. If this conversion didn't last very long, those people who discuss it seem to feel it was an honest commitment. His return to Judaism may well have been honest as well, but the footage of his appearance on a Chabad telethon is downright embarrassing.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this film is the insight into the way Dylan worked with the other musicians he played with. Violinist Scarlet Rivera talks about the freedom Dylan gave her to develop her own ideas. Bassist Rob Stoner talks about the disorganization of recording sessions. Drummer Winston Watson describes his sink or swim audition for Dylan's band. In general, the picture of Dylan that emerges from their accounts is of an artist who seems more concerned with spontaneity and creative surprise than he is with rigid control.

Dylan Revealed is a very conventional documentary about a very unconventional artist. It does call attention to what might be considered the many faces of Bob Dylan, but certainly not as creatively as Todd Hayne's I'm Not There. It does tell you something about Dylan in the sixties, for example his 'supposed' motorcycle accident, but not in the detail that you get from David Hajdu's Positively 4^th Street. It does talk about his electric apostasy, but it really gives little insight into what if anything he was trying to accomplish. Unfortunately the DVD doesn't include any extra material. A director's commentary on the making of the film would be welcome. It would be nice to know why there is no film with the man actually singing. It would be nice to know why little is said about the singer's early relations with Joan Baez. It would be nice to know why Mickey Jones is the only member of The Band interviewed for the film. In the end what Dylan Revealed reveals is that there is still much about Mr. Dylan that needs revealing.

Book Review: Positively 4th Street, by David Hajdu

Article first published as Book Review: Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina by David Hajdu on Blogcritics.

Marking the tenth anniversary of its publication, Picador is issuing a new edition of David Hajdu's delicious portrait of the 60's folk scene as it was embodied in two of its greatest lights and two of its lesser luminaries--Positively 4th Street. In some sense this is the story of a quartet of unusual people, the queen of folk, Joan Baez, the prince, soon to become king, Bob Dylan, the queen's little sister, Mimi, and the court jester, Richard Farina. But in their story, there is the story of a decade of social and cultural mutations that were to make a shambles of the Leave it to Beaver picture of the country. This is the story of four people who were right for the time, a time that was right for them.

Although Hajdu does pay some attention to their earlier lives, it is the 60's that is the focus of the book. Folk music which had long been thought of as a niche music form for a limited audience of folklorists and socialists had begun finding a broader audience in the fifties. A group like The Weavers was finding its way onto the pop charts. Harry Belafonte was singing calypso. The Kingston Trio’s first album came out in 1958. People were singing "Irene," "The Banana Boat Song," and "Tom Dooley." The scene was set—all that was needed was some fresh blood to take advantage of it.

And along came Joan. Come from California with her family to Belmont, Massachusetts, she quickly gravitated to the Cambridge coffee house scene, at first joining with the singers from the audience and then moving up to the stage, captivating audiences with her shy soulful soprano. At times she sang duets with her sister, but Mimi was still in high school and not yet ready to compete for attention. Besides it was likely, Joan had little desire to share the stage. There was Farina, a student at Cornell, not really a musician, but ambitious and filled with youthful confidence and braggadocio. He wasn't yet but could be a writer, novels, essays, poems, songs—name it, he knew he could write it. Then there was Dylan, up from Minnesota with a "jones" for Woody Guthrie looking to make a name for himself in Greenwich Village. Hadju discusses at length the arcs of their careers, their inter-connections both professional and personal. It's all there: Joan's championship of Dylan's music, their love affair, Dylan's transition to the electric guitar, Farina's novel and his instrument of choice, the dulcimer, his secret marriage to Mimi in Paris and their emergence as a musical duo. And this doesn't begin to scratch the surface. He talks about their appearances at everything from Gerde's Folk City to the Newport Folk Festivals. He talks about their tours and their records. He discusses Joan's commitment to social and political activism, and Dylan's movement away from political protest. He describes Farina's poetry and his song writing. He shows how Mimi was relegated to a back seat in their professional relationship, despite her superiority as a musician. He summarizes some of the critical reaction to their work and does some evaluation of his own.

The book is filled with juicy gossip. Joan may have stolen her original material from the act of a friend she had teamed up with for awhile. Farina liked to tell people that he had been a gun runner for Castro, that he had fought with the IRA, that he had an steel plate in his head. Mimi was dyslexic. Joan was jealous of her beauty. The first time Dylan met the Baez sisters, he was more interested in Mimi. Dylan picks all the meat out of a stew Joan has made for a dinner party. And on, and on—plenty of little tidbits for all appetites.

He is not particularly interested in writing hagiography. They are not always portrayed as very nice people. Dylan is moody and is not beyond humiliating those around him. He seems to feel no obligation to anyone. Baez is jealous and controlling. Farina is boastful and reckless. Mimi, perhaps the nicest of the bunch, comes across as a naïve romantic, still she is all of 21 when the book concludes, so what can one expect. Perhaps these are the sins of youth, perhaps it is simply the self centeredness necessary for success in the music world, whatever it is, it can be disturbing to see that one's saints may well have those proverbial clay feet.

Now ten years old, the book is still a compelling read. But it is ten years old, and it is filled with references to people, places and events that could use some explanation. Even for those of us around at the time, a little help from our friends jogging our memories would be nice. For younger readers, the addition of explanatory footnotes couldn't hurt. If you're going to do a new edition, why not do a little editing. Sure it's only ten years, but memories are short.

Music Review: Acoustic Project Laura Cortese

This article was first published at Blogcritics

Acoustic Project is an eclectic seven track EP for a most unconventional string quartet put together by fiddler, vocalist Laura Cortese. The other musicians are Natalie Haas on the cello, Brittany Haas on the five string fiddle, and Hanneke Cassel on the fiddle. Cortese wrote the music for five of the songs, as well as the lyrics for two. The varied tracks echo with traditional fiddle Blue Grass and Cajun influences as well as pop and jazz lines. Lyrics cross genres as well, with nods to traditional folk ballads as in "Wade on In" and pop disillusion in "Overcome." Cortese has a voice that can drip with ironic sweetness or soar with driving passion at times complementing the pulsating strings, at times struggling against them. Her EP is a masterful blend of sound and sense (with apologies to Alexander Pope. Acoustic Project is the work of a true artist.

Two of the tracks are instrumentals: "5 Tune" which features Brittany Haas' five string fiddle and "Du Petit Sarny et Reel a Deux" two pieces in the traditional mode by French Canadian fiddler, Eric Favreau. There are also some nice opportunities for solo work in the arrangements of many of the other tracks. The traditional "Greasy Coat" ends the EP with a kind of homage to the fiddle's Blue Grass roots. "Women of the Ages" contrasts prettily plucked strings with John Beaton's bleak lyric spoken by mothers who have lost sons, widows, and women who have been left pregnant. "We're the women of the ages," wails the chorus, "wooed to walk the aisles of grief;/we're the wear on well worn pages/where posterity retraces deeds of men in bold relief."

Corteses' lyrics can be equally bleak. "Overcome" is the quiet assessment of a relationship when the passionate moment is over. The lover has left the bed and remorse has set in. Ironically the singer listens to the traffic "whispering my indiscretion" as the lover gazes out the window looking for an answer that he can't find. "Wade on In" is a seduction ballad that looks back in its dialogue form to the Middle Ages and the Popular Ballad. "Perfect Tuesdays" is a kind of modern plaint over loneliness and sham relationships:

                   To all you strangers out there listening
   In vintage suits, printed tees and straight fit jeans
   It's not the same when I know it's just game
   You're not the one just the boy of the weeks it seems.

According to her press release, Acoustic Project is the second release in a three part EP series to be followed by a full length album. The first of the series Two Amps, One Microphone came out earlier this year. Cortese teamed with Jefferson Hamer and recorded a program of "Celtic-influenced American rock songs" after a year of performing together. Hamer's website says that the EP, which contains nine tracks, is only available as yet at live concerts. The play list includes Cortese's "Wade on In" and "Overcome" as well as songs by Hamer and Gram Parsons' "A Song For You." Some of the songs from the album are available free on the "KCBS In-Studio Performances Podcast" from iTunes.

You can check out "Perfect Tuesdays" on Cortese's website as well as one of her duets with Hamer: "Let's Get Rowdy." Check it out. If you like the fiddle, if you like modern folk rock, hell if you like music, you'll like Laura Cortese.

Birdland Turns Sixty

Legendary jazz club, Birdland, celebrates its sixtieth anniversary on December 15. Originally located on Broadway near 52nd Street, the famed club was host to nearly every great jazz musician playing through the second half of the twentieth century. Birdland was the place to be if you wanted to listen to the finest in jazz throughout the fifties . Named in honor of one of the most innovative saxophonists of the era, Charlie 'Bird' Parker, and made famous in George Shearing's classic standard, "Lullaby of Birdland," the club was in Parker's words, "the jazz corner of the world." It was the place for "flying high."

The one time I actually managed to get into that famed corner was in the early sixties—money was tight then, and even a tiny cover charge and a two drink minimum was a bit high for a graduate student on a budget—was to see the Oscar Peterson Trio. I don't know how many times I had longingly passed by that club entrance on Broadway on my way to that other jazz landmark, the Metropole. There you could stand outside the plate glass window for hours if you wanted and listen to the Dixieland on the stage behind the bar. But still it wasn't Birdland. Dixieland was nothing to sneer at, but it wasn't the cutting edge of modern jazz. That was Birdland. Birdland had the mystique. Birdland had the best. And Oscar Peterson, that night, didn't let us down. He was worth every penny, even if the drinks didn't quite match the music.

A short history of the club with a link to original memorabilia is available at Birdland website. Check out the opening night picture with Lester Young and Charlie Parker on the bandstand. Read the names of the legends who played there: Thelonious Monk and Art Blakey, Erroll Garner and Stan Getz, John Coltrane and Chet Baker. Take a look at the lyrics to Manhattan Transfer's "Birdland."
Sixty years old on the fifteenth—instead of "Happy Birthday: join with Ella Fitzgerald and sing "Lullaby of Birdland. "

Memorial Service for Mary Travers

A four hour memorial service for folk icon Mary Travers, who had died of complications from chemotherapy she had received for a bone marrow transplant after she developed leukemia in September, was held at historic Riverside Church in Manhattan on Monday evening, November 9. Noted for her social consciousness, she was always ready to raise her voice in support of the progressive causes she believed in, and many of those who had joined with her were at the church to honor her memory. There were the folk singers like Pete Seeger and Judy Collins. There were the politicians, John Kerry and George McGovern. And of course, there were her cohorts, Peter and Paul.
Their trio was responsible for interpreting many of the songs that defined their generation: "Blowing in the Wind," "Puff, the Magic Dragon," "If I had a Hammer," and of course her own show piece, "Leaving on a Jet Plane." They were all noted for their social activism. Pictures of the three of them at the head of protest marchers and on stage at rallies are legion. According to the account in the New York Times, Whoopi Goldberg said of the group: "They said: 'This belongs to you. This land is your land. If you don’t like what’s going on, get up and say something. Get up and sing. Get up and march.'"
A video of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and a stage filled with other singers and friends singing the Woody Guthrie anthem,'This Land is Your Land," is available on You Tube.