I think I come by that honestly. My experience is that my appreciation of music is always connected to some element of having to figure things out. I’ve mentioned before that, growing up, I was around a lot of music but I also found it intimidating. I had the feeling that everyone else understood it better than I did, and I sometimes liked it and sometimes found it boring, and there was an element of arriving in the middle of a conversation. I was trying to figure out something which already made sense to everyone else.

But that had a permanent effect on my tastes. When I started listening to more pop music, I enjoyed much of it, but I also found myself missing some of the spirit of the folk music I grew up with and continue to return to.

So, from either direction, I’m used to sense that my favorite music involves a little bit of searching and finding things in odd corners. I don’t expect that I’m going to be the target audience for most albums; as a listener I’m usually hanging back a little bit, waiting to see what I’ll make of something. So I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I saw on YouTube that Suzy Bogguss released an 2011 album of American folk songs.

Boguss was a successful Country artist in the early 90s, with one platinum album (Aces) and 3 gold records. In the late 90s she had declining sales and was dropped by her record label and has continued to release independently. This album came from memories of her childhood songbook.

“Every night he (Garrison Keillor) would get thousands of people to sing along with him. It really moved me. It made me think about growing up in the Midwest and the good fortune I had of being able to have music in my school, how it was the highlight of my day,” said Bogguss. “I decided I needed to do all the oldie songs from my fifth grade songbook. That’s basically where I started.”

She couldn’t find the childhood book anywhere, even calling her old music teacher in Aledo, but remembered the songs and the line drawings and stories that went with them telling about the song. She has now not only revived many of the songs, but has also included sheet music and stories in the release, out last month in Cracker Barrel restaurants. The CD will be available through digital and retail outlets later this month. The song list also includes “Rock Island Line,” “Get Along Little Doggie,” and “Wayfaring Stranger.”

“I’ve done school concerts and it saddened me to see that kids think that they have to sing like American Idol now,” Bogguss said. “If they don’t sing like a star, they don’t want to sing — they’re embarrassed. That’s just sad to me. Singing is not just for singers — it’s for people to express themselves,” she said.

That’s a nice sentiment, but it can easily go wrong, in a variety of ways. So I listened to one of the songs, without expecting much, and it was good. I kept listening and I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. The spirit of it seemed, remarkably, to speak directly to my own memories.

I’m excited to say that it’s very, very well done. It’s almost confusing to listen to something which fits my tastes so well. It sounds great; she’s working with good musicians and the playing feels alive. It isn’t either show-offish or too mannered. You never get the feeling that she’s trying to balance, “I want to play traditional songs but it should also sound like a Suzy Boguss album” she seems completely comfortable in that idiom.

There are some limitations of the project; it may not be for everyone, but I’d highly recommend it. For people with children, it would be a great way to introduce the music. For people with older parents, I’d encourage you to play it for them and see how many of the songs they remember. It would probably be good for a road trip; if I’d heard of the album four weeks earlier I would have encouraged to add it to his playlist and see if he could get Kate to sing along.

It feels like a very personal project, and I’m not the only one who responds to that. There are comments on YouTube like

Never thought anyone could sing a cowboy song better than my mother did 60-something years ago. Suzy brought me to tears.

or

My great grandmother used to set me on her foot, hold my hands and sing this song to me. I was 3yrs old then, she pasted[sic] away when I was 12 now I am 70 and still believe my great grandmother was the finest woman who ever lived

I wonder if it’s too straightforward for broad appeal. While listening to it, I was conscious that for all of the songs I already I knew I enjoyed her versions; for the songs I didn’t know I didn’t connect with them as strongly (but I expect that if I listened to it 5 or 10 times I’d come to appreciate them just as much).

I would very much appreciate any readers who are willing to listen to a few of the songs and let me know what you think.

It’s interesting to contrast it with Richard Thompson’s 1000 Years Of Popular Music — one of my favorite albums by one of my favorite musicians. His selections are a little cheeky

The album was originally conceived after Richard Thompson, along with many other artists, was asked by Playboy magazine to nominate his choice of the best songs of the millennium in anticipation of the year 2000. The magazine intended the use of the term “millennium” to be hyperbole … In an act of malicious compliance, Thompson followed these instructions exactly as they were worded, and produced a list which did span 1000 years of music, including the oldest-known English-language songs, a medieval Italian dance tune, and various other folk songs, alongside slightly more contemporary fare.

He ended up recording a CD, releasing a DVD, and touring for the album. Take his version of “Shenandoah” one of the stronger tracks. There’s nothing ironic in his performance, but the audience has to be wondering if there will be an element of irony. It’s easy to imagine people sitting in a theater listening and thinking, “how is strange it is to be in a crowd listening to “Shenandoah”; and it’s lovely.” He’s consciously performing for an audience who may not have thought about the song in many years (if ever).

Boguss’s recording has none of that feeling. She’s just singing the song and in many ways she sings it better, with a lighter touch, but it does less to grab the attention of someone who might be skeptical.

But that approach can be wonderful. Her version of “Banks Of The Ohio” finds a great balance between the weight of the story, and making clear why it’s a song people enjoy singing. (I had most recently heard the song from ’s piece on Porter Wagoner)

If I were going to criticize a bit, some of the songs could be funnier. Her up-tempo numbers are a lot of fun, and some of the highlights of the album but, for example, this is a song which can be quite silly, and a lot of fun as a children’s song.1

Ultimately the remarkable strength of the album is that she isn’t trying to produce a definitive version of any of the songs. You get the sense that if someone thought, “that’s nice and all, but the version of the song I know goes differently . . . “ she’d be happy to encourage them to play the song their way.

My memory of music as a child was people sitting around in a circle and someone would play a song or two and then let someone else play. Bogguss’ album flows well and is easy to listen to as a set, but also has the spirit of music which is designed to flow around the circle. If she is sometimes too restrained that goes along with a wonder lack of ego. It never feels like she’s trying to prove that she’s the best person to sing these songs; she’s offering them to the group and someone else could just as easily sing the next one.

Rebecca writes about her goal to move as best she can in the direction of her moral goals. In this case, acting on her qualms about eating meat driven by two independent concerns; the moral harms of factory farming of animals, and the ethics of eating another conscious animal.

The post makes a number of points but, to my reading the key elements are: (1) that it’s important to emphasize the selfhood of animals that we eat:

When someone asks if I have any dietary restrictions, that is, I tell them, “I don’t eat the chickens and the pigs”.

I’m aware this locution makes me sound weird! But weirdness can make people stop and think. And I’m a big believer in taking the useful hit on little things like this. What I mean, of course, is that I use this locution to remind myself and other people of the obvious fact that chicken meat and pork meat comes from animals. It comes from particular animals.

(2) The specific decision to avoid eating chickens and pigs reflects an attempt to move in the direction of her moral goals based on her self-understanding.

Like most people, however, I sometimes struggle to do the right thing when it collides with my strong desires. And one of my strongest and most easily fulfillable desires, now that I live in America, is to eat great cheeseburgers. This is in addition to my long-time strong desire to eat great steaks. And I’ve found, so far, that I can very easily prevent myself from eating the chickens and the pigs, as long as I permit myself to continue eating the cows. Indeed, as I write this, I realise that as long as I can continue to eat the cows, I could probably quit eating all the other animals much more easily than I’d previously thought! Except for the seafood.

(3) That one important factor in the decision is the number of animals being consumed and Lowe specifically contrasts that with common intuitions which justify meat-eating based on the intelligence of the animals.

But a general meta problem, for me, about these ‘animal capacity arguments’ is that I’m unconvinced that any human could ever know enough about non-human animals to make these kinds of distinctions sufficiently reliably — particularly in terms of ruling out the possibility of a particular animal having such capacities. I mean, “Hey, don’t worry, Rebecca, that particular animal hasn’t told us that it’s conscious or sentient, so you can definitely conclude that it isn’t!” (I’ve even argued this kind of thing about electrons.) Moreover, while I do know what people are trying to get at when they say things like ‘less sentient’ or ‘less conscious’, nonetheless the ontologically and morally crucial thing, for me, is whether an animal is sentient or conscious at all.

In other words, if I could be certain that some particular animal was the kind of thing could never be conscious nor sentient, then perhaps that information could play a decisive role in my decision-making about eating meat. But for now, I’ll accept that I can’t use this kind of reasoning to justify eating the seafood over the mammals. And that I’d be on shaky ground even trying to use it to conclude that it would be ‘morally better’, if I did.

All of those are good arguments but what’s interesting for me is that in my own reductions of meat-eating I have made the opposite choice; cutting out beef, while continuing to eat chicken and pork. I’m not sure that’s the best choice, but reading that made me think through some of my own arguments.

Before stepping through my own logic, I want to make one response to the essay on its own terms. What I’m about to say may sound absurd, but I wanted to pull one one of the logical threads. Lowe puts a lot of attention on the question of the number of animals involved. I’m aware that part of my own intuition is some idea of placing less weight on animals which display less consciousness (thinking mainly of chickens). Lowe pushes back strongly against that idea, in a way that makes me wonder if she considers or accounts for the bacteria living within the animal. Famously humans have about as many bacteria as individual cells. Of the various food animals cows have the largest and most complicated microbiome.

The original post anticipates this question with the note about consciousness. There is no reason to think that bacteria are conscious. But, how much confidence do we have in that statement. Wikipedia has a page on Microbial Intelligence providing some examples of complex adaptive behavior, and fungus display qualities of intelligence.

Take the proficiency of fungi at problem-solving. Fungi are used to searching out food by exploring complex three-dimensional environments such as soil, so maybe it’s no surprise that fungal mycelium solves maze puzzles so accurately. … Other researchers have set slime mould loose on tiny scale-models of Tokyo with food placed at the major hubs (in a single day they reproduced the form of the subway system) and on maps of Ikea (they found the exit, more efficiently than the scientists who set the task). Slime moulds are so good at this kind of puzzle that researchers are now using them to plan urban transport networks and fire-escape routes for large buildings.

I wouldn’t take that as demonstrating consciousness but, it does raise the question of how comfortable should we be saying that, in counting consciousness, a shrimp or a cow each count as 1 and the more than 40,000 species of bacteria in a cow collectively count as 0.

I ask this because one of the fundamental questions about morality is who and what we see ourselves as acting in relationship with. I would argue that describing a choice as immoral implies that it either falls short of a legitimate obligation or responsibility, or imposes unreasonably on some other entity. So we have to make some evaluation of what entities are relevant.

The biggest argument against eating cows, of course, is their impact on climate change and land usage. Our World In Data offers a convenient chart comparing different sources of protein:

More recently I was impressed by ’s book We Are Eating The Earth which argues convincingly that land use is major constraint, that we need to make decisions about which land uses to prioritize and that, in the very short term reducing the amount of land used for cattle would have significant policy benefits.

So if I think about myself as part of a global ecosystem, rather than focusing on the individual animals that I am eating, I think there’s a strong argument against raising cows for meat.

Additionally, part of my moral intuition is that it’s worth thinking about opportunity costs1. Lowe is absolutely correct that the conditions in which most chickens and pigs are raised are terrible. I should, do more to advocate against those practices, but I don’t think that eating chicken and pigs, by itself, impedes that advocacy. The success of various state initiatives to improve animal welfare is a sign that advocacy is having an impact2. I can support those efforts politically and not feel like my food choices are undermining that support. By contrast, eating cows feels more directly tied to the harms to climate and the required land use.

As I make that argument I’m not sure whether Lowe would find it convincing or relevant. She describes herself as a “non-consequentialist” and I’d be genuinely curious if concern about whether one choice conflicts with other priorities is inherently consequentialist but, in my mind, it is important to consider the immediately foreseeable effects of ones choices.

Having said all of that, I would commend the original post for both the clarity of recognizing that a choice doesn’t have to be perfect to be morally preferable, and to think about what elements go into those moral preferences and judgements.

I’ve come to develop an appreciation for instrumentals. I still don’t feel like I have a good vocabulary for explaining those tastes, but here are three that have caught my attention and are worth sharing. All three are acoustic recordings but, beyond that, they reflect very different moods and I’ll be very curious what people find most interesting.

I: Gordon Bok & Carol Rohl — “Como Llora Una Estrella”

Gordon Bok has been part of my musical landscape for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I would sometimes listen to “Peter Kagan and the Wind” as a bedtime story. That’s a song which is indelibly imprinted in my memory.

This track is a duet with his partner Carol Rohl from a 1998 CD. Smithsonian Folkways notes, “We waited a long time for Gordon to make a recording that featured Carol Rohl on harp.” This feels both calm, spacious, and intense. The melody is beautiful. Sometimes that phrase is used to convey something that feels effortless, in this case, it feels like it has strength. As they track goes along and they add more rhythmic elements it doesn’t feel like embellishment, but rather adding weight.

The title translates to “how a star cries” it was composed in 1915 by Antonio Carrillo who was 23 years old at the time. Reportedly “Carrillo composed the melody under the light of a candle on a bandolín accompanied by the guitar of a colleague” It didn’t have a title, they played it for priest (who was also a poet) who provided the name.

Rohl’s bio says, “Carol began playing her grandmother’s 1912 Clark Irish harp in 1986 and now performs with a 34-string Triplett Celtic harp. She plays traditional Scottish, Irish and South American tunes as well as music by contemporary folk composers. In 1989 she studied Paraguayan harp at the Edinburgh Folk Festival.” She learned this tune from Bill Morgan’s recording Patterns Of Paraguay.

I was curious to look up more information about Paraguayan harp music (which sounds interesting) but, in the process, I got distracted by a different recording.

II: Omar Acosta Quartet — “Pajarillo”

As I was looking at a couple of different lists of South American music, this cover caught my eye and, listening to some of the music I really enjoyed it:

Omar Acosta is a flutist and composer, originally from Venezuela. He has played with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and the Venezuelan Symphony Orchestra, and has served as flutist and musical director of the National Ballet of Spain.

Both this album and his previous album were nominated for Latin Grammy awards for best instrumental album. He talks about the group that he worked with for the album.

The majority of the music featured on this album has been performed in my concerts with various ensembles: duos, trios, quintets, and more. Until I capture it on an album, I don’t feel entirely at ease because I believe it hasn’t fully come to life. . . . Flutists are melodic musicians who, although we can make music alone, depend on the frequencies of other instruments. We need them to fill all the sound space that we cannot cover, and the combination of flute, cuatro, piano/keyboards, and double bass is a very rich formation both melodically and harmonically.

…

In this album, I have a luxury team. I consider that the final result of a musical piece lies in the hands of the musicians who participate in it. Each member brings their unique influences and personal style . . . In the quartet, I am accompanied by Miguel Siso (winner of a Latin Grammy in 2018) as a cuatrista and producer. Miguel is extremely musical and meticulous; it is a great fortune to have him in production. Then there’s Johnny Kotock, an authentic musician who works magic with the piano and keyboards. Completing the quartet is Manuel Alejandro Sánchez, a wonderful double bassist and orchestra conductor.

That album is described as "a stunning fusion of Venezuelan folk [and] classical music." My favorite track is “Pajarillo.” There’s a video of them playing it, and it conveys their skill and also flair for the dramatic.

Watching it, I have the sense that they are pushing each other a bit. When Acosta comes back in after the cuatro solo he does so with some extra intensity. I think, perhaps, they give up a little bit of emotional expressiveness in favor of showmanship, but it’s so much fun. I’m not familiar with traditional Venezuelan music, but the flute as the lead instrument fits with my impression of South American music and, adding to that, the arrangement and performance is full of clever ideas. It never settles into repetition; it keeps shifting to highlight different elements.

Going to a very different style, this is one I first heard several months ago.

III: Gwenifer Raymond — “Bleak Night In Rabbit’s Wood” (live on KEXP)

I clicked on this knowing nothing about her, but something had caught my eye. I noticed that below the video there was a icon indicating that it was part of fundraising week for KEXP. I realized that if they were highlighting a solo acoustic guitar instrumental set as part of fundraising week, that was a sign that it might be something special. It was.

I don’t listen to much new music, but her set on KEXP is my favorite recording of 2026. The thing that impresses me is not just that she goes hard, as they say, but that it requires motivation to arrive at that sound. Nobody would pick up the guitar thinking they could make it sound like that.

As an introvert I appreciate performers who give the impression that they have their own internal standard for success, and what they want from their music, and I definitely have that reaction to her playing.

There is a very good interview with her on substack

And when did you get into blues or folk music?

It was a cross-pollination, with partly Nirvana to blame. I was a big Nirvana fan when I was a teenager—I still am, but especially as a teenager. On Unplugged (1994) they do that Lead Belly cover, and it’s a pretty straight cover that’s really close to the Lead Belly version. I love that song. Then with my parents listening to things like Bob Dylan and Velvet Underground, I heard early blues music. There was also music I liked that cited it as an influence, so I thought, “Okay, maybe this is for me.”

You used to get these really cheap CDs, maybe a few quid, it was like: The Blues Roots of So and So… and it was just a bunch of good tracks they’d scourge together. Got one of them, and it was like Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James—a great exposure to that pre-War blues. Especially players like John Hurt and Blind Boy Fuller, they’ve got that alternating thumb thing, that country blues kind of ragtime technique. I was completely convinced that it was more than one player. Discovering that it wasn’t, I was like, oh shit, I want to learn how to do this for myself. So that’s what set me down the path for all that stuff.

I recommend the whole performance, but my favorite is called “Bleak Night In Rabbit’s Wood”

It is, first and foremost, easy to read. It’s well written; clear, engaging, and easy to pick up in 15 or 30 minute stretches. It is constructed out of a series of stories and descriptions of scientific investigation, and while it expands on the themes and ideas over the course of the book, each stands on it’s own.

For a book with the subtitle, “The fraught and fascinating biology of climate change.” I was surprised at how little time it spends on climate change as a concept. It probably won’t change your overall level of concern about climate change at all; that isn’t the goal of the book. What it does quite well is demonstrate how much there is to learn in the stories of individual species and habitats.

Most stories about climate change present it as a story of humans imposing conditions on the world. There are good reasons for that but Hanson is more interested in showing humans trying to understand the world. Notably, for almost all of the research described in the book Hanson personally tries to replicate the experiment, goes looking for evidence of the phenomena in his local environment, or speaks directly with the original researcher. This emphasizes the specific over the general and, as much as anything, it’s a book about looking at the world and paying attention.

It’s also a very tactile book. He’s good a quickly sketching the experiences of being in the outdoors. For example this description (in the process of exploring how the timing of specific seasonal events are shifting).

I had the tiny islet all to myself. At little more than an acre in size (0.5 hectare), with a rocky shoreline rising just a few feet above the waves, it wasn’t exactly a popular destination. But I’d stopped there on a botanical survey years earlier, and I knew that its tiny meadow contained the plant I was looking for as well as a healthy population of the only bee known to pollinate it.

Walking up the narrow path from the beach, I passed under junipers and willows bent low from a lifetime of fighting the coastal winds of the Pacific Northwest. But it was a calm day now, and sunny — the perfect weather for bee watching. And as the trail opened out into the meadow, I could see that my timing was perfect too. There scattered among the grasses, stood dozens of spikes of the creamy white flowers known as death camas. The name comes from the plant’s famed toxicity, a bane to sheepherders as well as the occasional hiker or camper who mistakes its lily-like leaves for something edible. . . . When the time came for an updated Latin name [scientists] gave it what amounts to a taxinomic exclamation point: Toxicoscordion venenosum var. venenosum, “Poisonous bulb poisonous poisonous”!

In his descriptions throughout there’s a sense that people are not separate from the world; they are larger than some objects of study (like bees) and smaller than others (orca or spruce trees), but we are all sharing space and the climate (and weather) affect everything.

The basic framework presented in the book is that species can respond to environmental pressure by moving, adapting, or dying, and there are examples of all three. But those broad categories are never given priority over the specifics of individual experience.

Fence lizards and spiny lizards belong to the genus Sceloporus, and they rank among the most common reptiles in North America. Dozens of species inhabit deserts and other warm landscapes from Mexico north almost as far as Canada. I remember trying — and failing — to catch them as a child. . . .

In the language of science, fence lizards and there kin are known as heliotherms — they regulate their body temperature by basking in the sun. This explains why one often sees them stretched out in full view, particularly in the morning or on cooler days when they need a thermal boost to get moving. Too much sun, however, can quickly push them past their thermal maxima, they they never stray far from shady refuges. Moving into and out of direct sunlight is the lizard equivalent of adjusting the thermostat, allowing them to maintain a comfortable and safe body temperature in a range of conditions. As the climate has warmed, lizards have responded by doing what they’ve always done on hot days — spend more time in the shade. And that’s where the trouble starts.

… Whenever lizards are forced to take refuge from the sun, they give up valuable time that might otherwise have been spent hunting for food. Those lost calories add up, particularly for females during the breeding season. “If it gets too hot, they stop reproducing,” [Barry Sinervo] told me. “It’s really simple. They just don’t have enough energy.” Sinervo and his colleagues found this pattern so universal they were able to calculate a precise tipping point: when the lizards consistent retreat into the shade for more than 3.85 hours per day reproduction stops.

There’s also appreciation for the persistence involved in scientific curiosity. For example this anecdote forming part of a story about the range of Joshua Trees.

“The hardest part was figuring out current distribution — where exactly do Joshua trees grow?” [Ken] Cole recalled. For such a famous species, surprisingly little information was available, and he couldn’t afford to hire a field crew to go out and conduct surveys. But Cole refused to give up, and he eventually hit on a solution that wasn’t just low cost, it was no cost: real estate ads. By searching through online property listings Cole began amassing a huge dataset about potential Joshua tree habitat. Every time a house or plot of land came up for sale in and around the Mojave Desert, he got a new datapoint with a precise address. And since the listings always featured photographs, all he had to do was scan through the picture gallery and look for a familiar shape. “It was pretty easy to tell if there were Joshua trees there.”

After eight years of doing research on the cheap, Cole realized that he had enough data to analyze and publish his findings, without ever having received a grant. . . .

If the style of those excerpts are appealing, I would encourage people to look for the book. It is engaging throughout. Finally, at the risk of tying this to a specific, contemporary concern, I was stung a bit by a line I saw quoted by Noah Smith (from Clifford Sosin), “Talk to Fable 5 for an hour, then talk to your ten smartest friends. Which one is smarter?” I’m not convinced, and I would argue this book is a wonderful argument in favor of the virtues of hearing stories from someone who is smart, knowledgeable, and very clearly human.

It’s not clear to me how much that description resonates for other people. Not many people have responded with their own examples (and I’m still interested, a would enjoy putting together a post collecting some selections). So I was thinking about what other artists I would describe that way. One of the names that came to mind is Rosanne Cash.

She’s better known, and is more mainstream than either John Hartford or Stacy Phillips & Paul Howard. She grew up in the industry, as the daughter of Jonny Cash, and has plenty of experience with the ups and downs of fame (including being married to and then divorcing fellow musician Rodney Crowell, who had produced her most commercially successful albums — much more information int the footnote)1.

The album of hers that I’ve listened to most in The River and The Thread from 2014, and when I watch video of her post 2010 (or so) she comes across as someone who’s found a really good balance between her music and her life.

She’s clearly a veteran performer and has the ability and understanding of how to be “on” for a performance but, at the same time, you don’t get the sense that she’s doing it for the adrenaline. Here’s her and husband John Leventhal performing “Modern Blue” from The River and The Thread — a love song.

This is a bigger performance, but her duet with Kris Kristofferson in 2009 on “Long Black Veil” is fantastic, and she has the sense of authority of someone who’s connected to the legacy of country music.

Reading more about her life, This anecdote expands on my impressions of her finding a balance between music and life.

She elaborates on this theme in “The Long Way Home,” a song about coming to terms with a South she thought she had escaped—if not when she moved from Memphis to California at age 3, then when she moved from Nashville to New York at age 35. “You thought you’d left it all behind,” she sings. “You thought you’d up and gone. / But all you did was figure out / How to take the long way home.”

In a remarkable coincidence, Cash’s former husband and producer, Rodney Crowell, has a similar song with a similar title, “The Long Journey Home,” on his new album, Tarpaper Sky. “We’ve both reached an age,” Crowell says, “where in the rearview mirror this journey called life has more stacked-up mileage than out the front windshield. Which is the reason we are both wringing twice as much out of life—and therefore art—as when we were in our 20s and 30s.”

Still friends, Crowell, Cash and Leventhal co-wrote “When the Master Calls the Roll,” the most ambitious story song on The River & the Thread. It had begun as a possible song for Emmylou Harris but was completely revamped by Cash’s renewed interest in the South and the ultimate Southern story: the Civil War. It’s the tale of a Virginia woman who advertises for a husband in a newspaper and finds the perfect match, only to watch him march off to battle, never to return. It’s Cash’s most skillful use of narrative arc and character development in song. (She annotated the lyrics for the print version of Smithsonian.)

More on that song:

Cash [A first draft written by Crowell] was a completely different story. We kept the first four lines that Rodney had—it was an actual 19th century personals ad. I wanted to keep that and then turn the rest of it into the Civil War song, where she found him through a personals ad. It’s based on two of my own ancestors. I researched them and we wrote it together. He came over to my house, we wrote part of it at the table, and then we wrote part of it by email.

How did you wind up incorporating the stories of your ancestors?

Cash Our son was studying the Civil War, and I went on the Civil War database to show him that he had Cash ancestors on both sides of the war. And this picture of William Cash was on the database. He happened to be a Union soldier, but there were also William Cashes from Virginia and Georgia who were Confederate soldiers. I really didn’t want to say which side he was on in the song. I thought that in itself was a metaphor for the Union, and also because it was a record about the South, I did not want to get into that about the Confederacy.

But he was a real person. The one on the website was from Massachusetts, but I didn’t say that [in the song]—I said he was from Virginia. And then my daughter, who’s kind of a Civil War buff, she said, “Mom, you know Virginia went both ways during the war.” So I thought that was even better. And Mary Ann Cash was a real person too—she was about 20 at the start of the Civil War. I don’t know what happened to her, but I put them together.

Finally, another song from the album which, actually, wasn’t one of the songs which caught my attention originally, but is a lovely story and this is a great performance (and seeing the title say “1 mic 1 take” caught my attention.

Cash and Leventhal wrote the tune about the 64-year marriage of Marshall and Etta Grant. Marshall Grant played in Johnny Cash’s band for more than 25 years, and Rosanne Cash has described the bassist as “a surrogate dad.” Marshall Grant died in 2011 at age 83 after complications from a brain aneurysm and stroke. According to Songfacts, “The song starts with the line, ‘What’s the temperature darling?’ Rosanne explained to Radio.com: ‘She (Etta) told me, after Marshall had had the aneurysm, ‘We’d wake up every morning of our lives and say, ‘What’s the temperature darling?’” And I thought, what a practical, solid way to start the day. On all levels, metaphorical and practically. And John said, ‘oh my god, that’s a great first line for a song.’””

I am still in a stretch of being busy at work. I may be slower to respond to comments, and I feel sorry that I have not been able to keep up with other people’s posts as much as I normally would, but I was glad to be able to follow this idea a little bit father.

[Edited to add] After writing the post I saw this exchange which made me think, again, that my perception of the album and Cash's relationship with music and the industry are solid.

Roger Catlin (Songfacts): You must be pleased with the reaction to the new album.

Rosanne Cash: I'm really, really pleased. I'm not necessarily seduced by it. I'm too old to be seduced by it. Who doesn't love when their work is recognized and praised? It's nice. It's really nice.

First practicing the argument for why reading is important for undergraduates (and everyone)

I don’t think it’s a purely technical change, e.g, just an inattention to early literacy that has led to the later loss of a concrete skill, or the displacement of reading by some other skills or activities. There’s something deeper going on that is correlated with but not solely caused by digital technologies. There may even be a sort of epiphenomenal side effect of philosophical shifts that weren’t centrally intended to make an impact on reading.

For example, the shift away from thinking about authors as coherent, masterful sovereign individuals who minds were the origin of and explanation for what they wrote—the so-called “death of the author” argument that saw texts as complex outcomes of material and cultural infrastructures of writing and reading, that re-situated interpretative authority in readers and audiences, that saw “the author” as a story we told to nail down property rights in creative work. All of it true in its way, and part of a wider abandonment of the modernist understanding of selfhood, but maybe that had a downstream effect on reading as an act.

… I was struck recently by a thread on Reddit where the original poster, almost certainly just looking to get a rise out of everybody, asked why anybody still bothers to read long-form nonfiction. Since it’s just information, he said, why can’t we just boil down all nonfiction to its informational core and communicate that instead? However exaggerated or deliberately provocative that question was, there was some emotional truth to it, such that we have accidentally (or deliberately) created a sense that text is just communicative and that anything that goes beyond the necessary minimum of communication is TL DR.

…

[H]ere’s where I’d start in trying to sermonize about the ongoing necessity of reading. I’d like to hear if there are appeals you would make instead or in addition.

That meaning is not reducible, semantics are not extractable, that a text is not just information. That even simple texts mean differently each time you read them, and that exploring meaning through interpretation is how information becomes knowledge. A summary or extraction kills the lively potential of a text.

Second on the decline of pop stars:

Pop Stars are Disappearing

Earlier this year, my sister put on some music when we were hanging out. I was really vibing with one of the songs, so I asked her who the artist was. “I,” she paused, “I don’t know.” I don’t expect my sister to have encyclopedic knowledge, but this was a song she specifically saved on Apple Music. “What do you mean you don’t know?” I asked. “You’re the one that put it on.”

She quickly explained. She heard the song in the background of a TikTok. She clicked the song, and then pressed the button within the app to save the song on Apple Music. From that point forward, she only heard it when she was shuffling her saved songs. In other words, she wasn’t lying. She both enjoyed the song and had no idea who performed it.

…

Even the physical copies of albums that you purchased were packed with context. My copy of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run not only lists the musicians that performed on each track and the instrument that they played but miscellaneous information about where the songs were recorded and who designed the cover art. The credits listed inside my copy of Queen’s A Night at the Opera are just as exhaustive but also packed with personality. Freddie Mercury, for example, is credited with “vocals, vocals, Bechstein Debauchery and more vocals.” The group also notes that the album was created with “No Synthesizers!”

…

Can you still find information like this today? Of course. From the glossiest magazine to the lowliest blog, music writing is in absurd supply. And Wikipedia has got more information than even the most thorough album notes. But these sources are divorced from the music itself. Because songs are often separated from larger context it can leave artists as anonymous cogs. Tech platforms are largely to blame for this.

My Take

One of the great pleasures of listening to and writing about music is how common and easy it is for people to share a mutually understandable enjoyment. Even if you and I have different background information and tastes — both musical and personal — which affect our understanding of a given song, we can still generally find that, if we like the same song we probably have similar reasons.

The word I use to describe this is “portability.” A song is remarkably (but not entirely) self-contained. It contains a musical idea which can communicate with people all over the world. It takes some knowledge and skill of music appreciation to make sense of what is happening in a song but, in many cases, remarkably little. Many pieces of music make sense quite quickly.

But, that portability doesn’t include much information about the person who wrote the song, or performed it. We often hear music in a context, as Dalla Riva describes, which encourages us to be aware of those people, but it isn’t required. As someone interested in folk music, there are many famous songs which aren’t associated with any specific person. Part of the conceit of Joe Jackson’s “The Man Who Wrote Danny Boy” is the juxtaposition of the immortal piece of music with the anonymity of the person who wrote it.1

Full books are also portable and also travel around the world, but less so than music. They require more effort, they often more strongly embedded in specific genres or styles of writing2. They are complex enough to allow for many different readings and interpretations3. But, as Burk mentions, they are also one of the best tools to create the experience of a sustained exchange with another mind. Because they are long, and require more engagement, it’s easier to get a sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the author; the ways in which they are at their best, the parts that they are filling in with tropes or received wisdom, and the ways in which they are just weird.

One reason that music fans have such affection for the album, while technology has offered various different ways to package and group songs, is that it also invites additional attention and engagement with the creative act (and also often makes the listener aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the artist in a different way than just hearing the singles).

I think both Burke and Dalla Riva are correct that we’re at a moment in which there isn’t a single default way in which music or writing is packaged and enjoyed, and that it’s worth being conscious of the trade-offs involved.

In general I celebrate that portability as a wonderful achievement which speaks to the power of art, but I don’t want to feel like that is at the expense of creating a sense of connection and continuity across works which makes us aware of and appreciate the creator and the effort and skill in creation.

Finally I would mention that has been writing about the songs on his recent EP, and he’s been quite conscious of the fact that his author’s commentary exists separately from the song. He offers his emotional associations with the song, but with the expectation that those are not part of the package that is the song itself. They may add something for a reader, but the song remains it’s own thing. As he puts it, “I don't like saying “This song is about…” because then you don't really need to hear the song. But I'll tell you some stories adjacent to the meaning or thoughts I had about them.”

For example.4

In her review of Demolition, Katie pointed out that a lot of the songs on this record are about time in one way or another, which tracks, but was something I'd never really comsidered. Time has always been important to me looking back on it. I’ve always worn a watch, even when I was a little kid; always made it a point to know what time it was; and the thing I dislike more than anything else on earth is my time being imposed on by things that seem wasteful that aren’t my choice. I remember hearing Prince say once that “Time is an illusion” but I don’t think that’s right. Time can be measured.

Trying to figure out how to explain what makes the album so special for me, I realized that it has some commonalities with the John Hartford album I recently praised. Both cases feature talented musicians who have a really appealing relationship with the music. In Hartford’s case I described him as reaching the point of being “completely comfortable in his own skin” as a songwriter and musician.

In the case of this album I think of a moment in the documentary about Steely Dan making Aja. Paraphrasing from memory, one of the musicians describes how they would rehearse until they could play the songs perfectly, and then keep rehearsing and allow some of the imperfections back in. I wasn’t able to find the clip, but one site offers a quote from one of the musicians, “They went further than just perfect. They made it natural.”

That is exactly the feeling I get from Phillips & Howard. They sound like they have enough command of the music to offer their own interpretations of the music and sound like they have no anxiety about either their ability to play what they want, or how it compares to other versions of the songs. As a result their version are extremely compelling and just sound natural.

One element of music appreciation that is highlight subjective and varies from person to person is identifying the desired balance between surprise and predictability; experimentation and tradition. There’s no easy answer. In one song Hartford writes

And I tried real hard not to make this song sound like some other song that I might have written before
And if I did, that’s because it’s my style and style is based on limitations

I tried real hard not to make this song sound like some other song some other singer-songwriter might have written before
And If I did, that’s ‘cause it’s music and music’s based on repetition

He sings the words “limitations” and “repetition” with affection. He can try to create something new and, ultimately, it wouldn’t be music, and he wouldn’t be a songwriter without some form of structure.

For myself, I enjoy recordings in which there’s a clear sense of a core meaning and identity to the song and, within that, you can hear the artist making choices about how they approach it, what they chose to emphasize, and what elements they most enjoy and connect with.

This album combines charming playfulness with serious engagement with the music. The tunes are clear and easy to follow while the playing still offers plenty of surprise. I’ve picked four of my favorites, but the other tracks are just as good as the highlights. You can listen to the entire album here. Click on the song titles for the individual songs. For most of the songs below I lean on their liner-notes to provide context.

I: “Blue Prelude”

The album opener, they write, “We learned Blue Prelude from a 30’s recording by the Bob Wills western swing band. I dig the way a slide resonator guitar curls itself around slow tunes in minor keys. If you have patience you’ll eventually hear how Paul’s voice does the same.”

II: "Perry Mason Theme / Sleigh Ride"

This was the track that lead me to discover the album. There was an exchange between and in comments on Steve’s post about covering classics and I mentioned how much I enjoyed this medley.

The liner notes say, “These tunes form our Americana Medley. If I wrote for 100 years I would never come up with a melody that even faintly resembled the Perry Mason Theme. I assume that Mister [Fred] Steiner would never have considered a Dobro for this tune if he thought about for 100 years! I hope that it will take you only a couple minutes to with us that it makes a cool jazz-waltz.”

“Mister [Leroy] Anderson was a master of such confections as The Typewriter Song and Holiday for Strings. When stripped of its usual glitzy showbiz arrangements, Sleigh Ride has a chord progression that is fun to run. “

It starts out slow and picks up energy along the way.

III: “Sermonette”

They write, “Sermonette is one of the finest tunes recorded by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, a gifted jazz vocal trio. I was taken by the lyrics and the possibilities it suggested for chordal soloing on my slide. Sermonette is dedicated to the memory of Pat Udell”

IV: “Walkin’ One And Only”

The wildest song on the album; the liner notes simply say, “What exactly do the lyrics of Walkin’ One and Only mean? Dan Hicks comic book character studies and cynical humor make him the R. Crumb of latter day swing composers.”

This was the first version I heard and I was captivated by the mix of humor and undeniable coolness. At one point, unable to find their recording I listened to a number of recordings on YT. The one other recording that I felt also captured the spirit that I enjoyed is this clip of a local artist playing on TV in Vancouver. Though Maria Muldaur’s cover is more famous, I was taken by Sue Clayton’s commitment to the song, with enough of a wink to acknowledge the silliness of it.

I believe had a Dan Hicks story, but I no longer remember what it was, perhaps he will be willing to share again.

Extra

I highly recommend recent EP Demolition. His notes touch on some of the same themes that I am thinking about in terms of the evolving nature of a performer’s relation to the music — both the challenge and the satisfaction.

This was the record I was trying to make when I released the singles I did in 2025, but I wasn’t there yet . . . . To make this record, I had to do it the old way. I remember the 5 or 6 times I tried recording this EP before I really had these songs under my fingers and it was hard. Frustrating. So that’s one of the things that makes this EP finally hitting the street so satisfying to me, that it’s a milestone for my own abilities as a musician and singer.

Finally, I would be curious to collect examples from other people of songs that they thing of as sounding “comfortable in their own skin” and compile them in a follow-up post(s). I’ll reach out to some people on notes but if you’re reading this feel free to DM or e-mail me and I’ll start collecting.

I mean, is Styx’s “Babe” all that different from Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing at All”? Both are ballads about being on the road and missing your lover. Is this triggering an idea for a Five For Friday topic, Emm as in Music?

A few of these are songs I’ve shared before, but that’s a great theme to group them together. I’m not going to say much about the individual songs, because they are mostly familiar, but all ones I really enjoy and, collectively, a good demonstration of how well the formula works.

For me, the starting point and one of the classics of the genre is:

I: “Come Monday” — Jimmy Buffett

Looking it up, I see a video which includes a few remarks from him about making the music video for the song in which he says, “There’s really wasn’t much needed ... this was where I lived, the people I lived with, and the girl I wrote ‘Come Monday’ about.” (I’m linking to the album version because I think the sound is slightly better, but you can click through to see the video).

II: “Super Trouper” — Teddy Thompson (ABBA cover)

This is one I shared earlier as a bonus song in a post about Teddy Thompson’s debut album, and it got most positive comments than any of his original songs. It’s a great performance, and worth promoting again:

III “Please” — Mary Gauthier

This is one of my absolute favorites, and it combines two classic song structures; the loneliness of the road and the excitement of a new crush1.

IV: “Leaving On A Jet Plane” — Lake Street Drive & Tiny Habits (John Denver cover)

Someone shared this with me last year, and it’s a really fun cover and a well done video — cinematically it really nicely uses their placement around to the room as a way to highlight the different parts (and, of course, thanks to the magic of editing you can hear everybody equally clearly).

V: “Little Rock and Roller” — Steve Earle

This departs from Steve Goldberg’s original description because it’s a song about missing a child, rather than a partner. He has a nice story about the song:

"Johnny Cash came up to me in 1986 or 7 and then said, "I love that song 'Little Rock 'N' Roller' of yours," it was a huge compliment, but then a truck driver came up to me about three weeks later and told me he loved that song, and that's when the light kind of went on that it was kind of the same experience for Johnny Cash and the truck driver. They both miss their kids when they are gone, and so do I. That's what the job is to me, it's empathy."

Extras

Another song which is delightful and close, but not a perfect fit, is Nanci Griffith’s “Spin On A Red Brick Floor”2 about being on tour and the pleasure of travelling through familiar settings.

And I’ve gone crazy on this road
With all of this travelin’ alone
But the asphalt is burnin’ tonight

Oh, here comes a little spin on a red brick floor
It’s a crazy ol’ bar and Tim’s locked the door
The wall’s are ringin’, the strings are gonna bend
It’s a buss on the cheek from all my old lovers again

Finally, I’ll recommend my post on covers of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain” which is partially about missing someone while on tour but can be about a range of different emotions as these version show.

Edited to Add: In comments Richard Scholtz suggests “Long Monday” by John Prine which addresses the same emotions from the perspective of the person staying home while their partner is on the road. It’s a nice choice; it isn’t framed as a contrast, but as the same feelings from a different angle.

So here is my introduction to Hartford offering a sample from his early career and the remarkable evolutions that lead him to his 1976 album Mark Twang — one of my favorite albums of all time and one that, if you are so inclined, could be a good choice this July. I am including more songs than I normally do in a post, because I think it’s interesting to hear his evolution.

In The Beginning

Hartford was an accomplished musician as a teenager and an aspiring songwriter. He moved to Nashville in 1965 and recorded an album. You can hear his love of wordplay, bluegrass influences and, I assume, an attempt to catch the folk trends of the day2. I’m particularly fond of “Corn Cob Blues.” The opening verse is a model of exposition. Notice how efficiently is introduces the situation: “Well the cowboy promoted the wedding you know / Between the songs on his rock and roll show / The groom was thin and the bride was a tease / They courted to the sound of his latest release / They both were members of the backup crew.” It is not a surprise that he would end up working with the Smothers Brothers later in the decade.

His second album had some songs which prefigure some of his later work like “Good Old Electric Washing Machine” (“Well I cry when i see that brand new automatic washing machine / Cause I'm sentimental for that old machine still yet”)

Also the song which would become his big hit, “Gentle On My Mind.” I am not particularly a fan of the song, but my favorite version is his recording from a tribute event for Steve Goodman:

It was a hit for Glenn Campbell, and recorded by several of the biggest artists of the day. Royalties on the song gave him financial freedom and, after a couple of years, he used that to step away from the music industry and work on steamboats and barges on the Mississippi River.

Newgrass Evolution

After completing his contract with RCA with a couple of disappointing albums, Hartford signed with Warner Brothers which apparently offered him creative freedom. He put together a band with some of the best bluegrass musicians around ( Norman Blake, Vassar Clements, Tut Taylor, and Randy Scruggs). Wikipedia offers this description of their creative process.

The sessions were controlled but relaxed, as Taylor commented, “John let us play what we wanted to play. ‘Cause that’s one of the beautiful parts about it—he just let us get in there and pick.” Producer David Bromberg recounted, “We’d sit around and smoke pot and play “Sally Goodin” for an hour and a half. That approach kind of became, after a while, newgrass.”

The resulting album combined hippie and bluegrass aesthetics. It sold poorly at the time, but has acquired a strong reputation (and has an iconic) cover photo. You can hear the experimental side on this up-tempo number.

He could also write beautiful stories, like this one thinking back on an early crush. This verse is a fantastic bit of writing, which feels casual but captures both the characters and the feel of memory — the pickup truck, for example, feels like sort of image that catches in the mind. “Now you used to play the guitar / We worked in a country band / I hung out down on the river bank, on Sunday / Your brother was my closest friend / He drove a pickup truck / He used to bring me home sometimes, from high school”

His next album was recorded with just him, Norman Blake, and a jazz bassist, Dave Holland. The playing is great, and it feels more relaxed.

Mark Twang

I include all of those songs to make demonstrate Hartford’s skills as a songwriter, musician, and creative force. In my opinion all of that is overshadowed by Mark Twang which is an absolute masterpiece. It sounds like an album made by someone who is (finally) completely comfortable in his own skin. He isn’t experimenting with new sounds. All of the tracks are recorded solo in a single take (the percussion is provided by Hartford tapping his feet on a piece of particle board with a pick-up).

One of my favorite tracks, “Long Hot Summer Days” opens with Hartford mentioning that he just heard about a friend who gave his new son the middle name “Hartford” in tribute. It feels like a sign of how in the moment he is for the recordings. There’s no self-consciousness to the comment; he’s just sharing happy news and good song.

That pleasure in friendship and community suffuses the album. “Julia Bell Swain” talks about a steamboat, and all the people that he knows from working on the river. (“Now the Julie Belle Swain is a women’s lib boat / The first I ever knew / We got girls in the pilot house and girls on deck / And a lady in the engine room / Now Donna, she’s got her license / And Cindy’s learned to steer / And little Julie keeps Moon out of trouble / By wandering off everywhere / By wandering off everywhere”)

This is represented most expansively in his tribute to bluegrass music “Tater Tate & Allen Mundy” which opens with celebration of acoustic music (“bluegrass music it don’t butt in / don’t need a nail and don’t plug in”) and turns into a list of almost every bluegrass musician he can fit in.

Even the sillier (and maybe self-indulgent) tracks feel warm and friendly. Here is his stoner parody of the Lord’s Prayer (in which he offers forgiveness to “those who have dressed up against us”). It’s short — only 44 seconds — but charming, and fits with an album in which he’s just doing what he wants.

You can decide whether that will be part of your July 4th playlist but I consider John Hartford an wonderfully American artist.

Front Row & Backstage

Tune Tag #147 with NickS (WA), Pt. 5: Roberta Flack, Richard Tee, Cindy Kallet, The Monkees, I'm With Her, Jim Pepper, Jamie Cullum

Tune Tag Welcomes Back NickS (WA) of Earnestness is Underrated…

Read more

3 months ago · 41 likes · 79 comments · Brad Kyle and NickS (WA)

I wanted to take the opportunity to share a few more things I discovered in my research. There are some interesting connections between the musicians that show up in the middle of the Tune Tag. I don’t have a specific story to tell, or conclusion to draw, but it was interesting find out more about them.

At the middle of the Tune Tag are Roberta Flack, Richard Tee, and a collaboration between Jim Pepper and Amina Claudine Myers. I ended up thinking that their stories connect in interesting ways. They are similar ages; Pepper was born in 1941, Meyers in ‘42 and Tee in ‘43 (to locate that historically, that made them about the same age as the Beatles — John Lennon was born in 1940, Paul McCartney in ‘42, and George Harrison in ‘43). They came from different parts of the country; Pepper was born in Oregon, Meyers in a small town in Arkansas, while Richard Tee had a New York story; born in Brooklyn and continuing to live and work in New York. All three of them crossed various musical genres.

In various ways Jim Pepper is an outlier; the other three are all African American pianists whose musical styles intersected with Jazz in different ways. It is, therefore, not surprising that all of them ended up in New York at various times1. Tee was born in Brooklyn and spent most of his life there. Flack and Myers both grew up in the South and moved to New York.

Flack was, of course, the most successful. From Wikipedia, “For 40 years, Flack had an apartment in The Dakota building in New York City that was right next door to the apartment of Yoko Ono and John Lennon; their son, Sean, grew up calling her “Aunt Roberta”.)

They each had different styles. In the Tune Tag Brad included a video essay about Tee. One of the highlights is a clip of him playing “Bridge Over Troubled Water” with Paul Simon in 1992.

It’s interesting to compare that to Flack’s version (which may be my favorite rendition of the song)

The Outsiders

Myers originally found a place in the music scene in Chicago before moving to New York in 1975

The most important musical relationship that Myers forged in New York was with Lester Bowie, a trumpeter from St. Louis who was best known as a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. They knew each other from Chicago, and both had been among the few non-Chicagoans in the [Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM)]. Both were also keen to fuse the freedoms and innovations of the avant-garde with gospel, blues, soul, and other Black vernacular traditions. At the time they reconnected in New York, Myers was preparing Ain’t Misbehavin’ for its move to Broadway. She wanted to play jazz but still didn’t imagine herself as a professional touring musician.

“I was very insecure, so I was shocked that Lester came over to my house to ask me to play with him,” she recalls. “But when Lester asked if I wanted to go to Europe, I immediately said yes and let Ain’t Misbehavin’ go. That first trip was to Rome. I’ve been back twenty-eight times since then.

After learning that, I read a review of Afro Indian Blues which changed my sense of the album -- which was released posthumously, 15 years after the original performance took place [emphasis mine].

Why now? Why review a recording of a concert that happened fifteen years ago? For one, because it’s taken this long for anyone to get around to releasing the performance on CD. But even more importantly, because this is a major event and should get all the exposure possible. In 1991, at the time of the gig, Pepper was already sick with the cancer that would kill him within the year. But he’s in strong form throughout, delivering his signature “Witchi Tai To” with a freshness that belies two decades of performing it on stage. Pepper had learned from the masters before him – Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Miles Davis, Albert Ayler, Charlie Parker and, perhaps most of all, John Coltrane – to play the lines that lay behind the lines, as well as the spaces between the notes.

Myers for her part mesmerizes with her piano and vocal accompaniment. She brings us into the world of latter day “Witchi Tai To” – an anthem for stylists of all stripes, from all cultures and from all over the world.

“Witchi Tai To” is actually the third of four songs on the CD. The second cut is another of Pepper’s classics, “Comin’ And Goin’.” Myers crafts a subtle accompaniment behind Pepper, until he turns the attention on her and she delivers a powerful solo (that sounds like it brings the audience to its feet.) While Pepper sings “It’s good where we’ve been/And where we’re going,” Myers’ piano actually takes us to those places.

...

This collaboration is a great way to introduce yourself to Amina Claudine Myers and Jim Pepper – and particularly, to the natural and easy chemistry between two progressive artists, as they make their way through a barely (if at all) rehearsed repertoire of classic blues and jazz, along with their own edgy compositions. Both musicians honed their skills through the turbulent 1960s and 1970s

African Blues

It is interesting to learn that Myers’ most famous recording was an improvised performance of “African Blues’ on a 1980 Bessie Smith tribute.

In June 1980 Amina Claudine Myers was in a New York City studio, recording a tribute to the great blues singer Bessie Smith, when she began to improvise a theme on the piano: slow, stately, swelling with emotion. Myers is a deeply religious woman, and as she played she felt as if a spirit had entered the room. Joined by the bassist Cecil McBee and the drummer Jimmy Lovelace, her rhythm section on the album, she started to accompany herself with wordless vocals, at once mournful and yearning. “The voice just came,” she told me earlier this summer, when we met at her apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. It took possession of her for nearly fifteen minutes, until her last cries faded into silence.

Leo Feigin, her producer, broke into a sweat when he realized how long the track was. (He later discovered that the stopwatch he’d been using to record was a stopwatch for horse racing, with a dial designed for thirty seconds rather than a minute.) But “African Blues,” the final track of Myers’s classic recording Salutes Bessie Smith, turned out to be one of the most memorable vocal performances of the late twentieth century. It’s as riveting, and as singular, as Abbey Lincoln on “Triptych,” on Max Roach’s We Insist! The Freedom Now Suite (1960), in which her screams and shouts gave expression to the agonies of Black American women from slavery through Jim Crow.

An affirmation of resilience in the face of suffering, “African Blues” is plaintive and consoling: far from the desperation and ferocity in Lincoln’s performance. But the song’s origins were equally political. On the morning that Myers recorded it, she told me when we spoke in June, she had been thinking about the “sorrow in South Africa” and the struggle against apartheid. “You didn’t need any words to express the hurt and disappointment of the African people. Just singing sounds was sufficient.” Those sounds—“feelings with sounds,” she sometimes calls them—ranged from the moans of the sanctified Church to a kind of nasal singing reminiscent of the Senegalese vocalist Baaba Maal. Not only do they stir the listener, they unfold with inexorable narrative logic, evoking, almost inhabiting, the experiences of a people in sorrow, yet ultimately envisioning the dawn of liberation. James Baldwin told an acquaintance of Myers that he played “African Blues” whenever he grew despondent.

Legacies

It is a sad coincidence that Pepper and Tee both died young around the same time -- 1992 and 1993 from lymphoma and prostate cancer respectively. That performance of “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” above is, like the recording on Afro Indian Blues, from the year before Tee’s death. There’s also a notable performance of “Strokin’” from 1990.

Like Myers, Pepper’s musical connection to New York was complicated

Most jazz musicians sooner or later feel the need to prove they can survive in New York where Pepper moved in 1964. Getting his “bop chops together”, he jammed and became friends with Larry Coryell, Randy Brecker, Bob Moses, Dave Liebman and other hot young lions of the day. He worked with Coryell’s jazz-rock group Free Spirits, with Charlie Haden‘s Liberation Music Orchestra, with Paul Motian‘s quartet. His own album, Pepper’s Pow Wow, produced by Herbie Mann for ABC, had “a fair amount of success” and his first singing effort, “Witchi Tai To”, an update of a Comanche song he used to hear his grandfather sing, became a To-40 hit in 1968. (The Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek still includes it in his repertoire.)

When he met the trumpeter Don Cherry, who is part Choctaw, he had another “skin” to blow with. “Indians say ‘skin’ like blacks use ‘brother’. I was always looking for Indians who can play jazz. Hey, we’re a really small minority.”

...

In 1971 he left New York “for six months and stayed away for 11 years.” He taught school in Portland, worked odd gigs with bands in the Northwest and fished for a living in Alaska, where he began to do social work with Indian children.

He also found more of an audience in Europe:

Jim Pepper was the most important jazz musician ever to come out of Portland, Oregon. This may not be a shocking statement to European audiences, who loved him madly, nor to musicians familiar with his work. But it strikes me that here in his hometown, knowledge of our celebrated Native son is a mile wide and an inch deep. He created a unique synthesis of Native American music with the language of modern jazz, a fact of historical significance for which he will be long remembered. In addition, as a saxophonist and composer in the jazz idiom itself, he was a major player on the international scene.

I still recommend Comin’ And Goin’ as Pepper’s best studio album:

Myers is the only one of the four who is still alive and released an album last year (at age 83).

The record is slow, expressive, powerfully ruminative—and disarmingly simple (which is not to say naive). Next to Solace of the Mind, most music sounds showy and cluttered. It’s as if Myers, who recently turned eighty-three, were zeroing in on the essence of her art. “I wanted the music to give some kind of warmth and inspiration, or bring people back memories of their ancestors, of their past, of love,” she told me. “This isn’t jump-up-and-down, rhythmic kind of stuff. My agent said it was dark, and I can understand that.”

I was recently looking up the band to find out what they had done since and was amused to learn that they were extremely successful (and, amusingly, the capsule description of their career starts 4 years after the album that I was familiar with).

Over the years the Gipsy Kings—whose members hail from the gypsy settlements in Arles and Montpelier in the south of France—have included singers and guitarists from the Reyes (Canut, Nicolas, Pablo, and Patchai) and Baliardo families (Diego, Paco, and Tonino)1. Lead singer Nicolas Reyes is the son of famed Flamenco singer José Reyes, who, with Manitas de Plata, sold millions of records in the 1960s and ‘70s. The band’s vigorous guitar work and passionate vocals are the trademarks of an indigenous musical tradition known as “rumba flamenca.”

There are no other examples of a non-English speaking band (the group’s language is the Gypsy dialect of gitane) with such a consistent winning streak in the US, where the group is the biggest-selling French act ever. Since the 1987 release of the international hit single “Bamboleo,” from their platinum-selling eponymous debut album, the Gipsy Kings have dominated the world music charts and sold more than 14 million albums worldwide—more than four million in the United States alone. Their platinum compilation, The Best of the Gipsy Kings, was on the charts for more than a year.

I saw they they are also criticized for producing the sort of music which you might hear on a cruise ship or at a celebratory brunch — skillful but bland. However, I was curious about one of their later albums Roots:

In the band’s first acoustic outing since 1990s Allegria, the Gipsy Kings … [travelled] near the town of St-Andre-de-Bueges in France’s Languedoc region, where they took over a 17th-century farmhouse and turned an old storeroom into a makeshift studio. The unique location—in the Gipsy Kings’ home region, surrounded by their culture’s social traditions—contributed greatly to the authentic, stripped-down style of the record.

The producer for the album appears to be casting shade at their other work.

Street says, “These guys are really amazing musicians and you didn’t get to hear that that much on other discs. For all intents and purposes, what you hear on this record is exactly what happened in that old storeroom. The Kings played live, sometimes with a little isolation for the singer or bass or a bit of percussion overdubs.”

I’m happy to say that it’s really good. You can tell that the band has a well-honed sense of crowd-pleasing entertainment. It might have a touch less personality than Luna De Fuego, though I can’t make a fair comparison because I’ve spent so much less time with it, but it sounds great and has the feel of a band really enjoying themselves, and it could also be good music for writing. I can happily recommend

A love song:

A lovely instrumental

An up-tempo dance tune:

I’ll close with a bit of a show-off piece simply titled “Rhythmic”:

It’s been a good Spring

At the end of April I wrote a post for “Vital Records” series highlighting three live albums I hold dear — Enduring Takes.1 A number of great writers have contributed to the series; I was honored to be part of it, and really enjoyed the discussion and feedback, with several people talking about their own favorite live albums, and interest in the records I’d selected.

This last week I had a lot of fun contributing to ’s five-for-Friday series; trying to find songs that would be new to her or, at least, unfamiliar enough that they would benefit from a fresh listen. It ended up being a nice opportunity to discuss music, and follow interesting themes. As I described it we ended up with, “songs that cover regret, desire, why you shouldn't trust Cupid, but should enjoy your vices.”

Also, I have an upcoming Tune Tag with which will drop in two and a half weeks. I’m very excited to share that, and also a little nervous. As a long time fan and reader to Tune Tag I have a sense of what tends to play well in the format and . . . that’s not exactly what we did. In my opinion it’s delightfully exploratory, but that means it sometimes ranges far afield. I would be very happy if it sparked some interesting conversation, so I encourage all of my readers to keep it in mind. In fact, let me formally invite all of you . . .

Please Join us for Tune Tag #147 on June 2nd

Tune Tag is sometimes framed as a competition, like chess or tennis. I would suggest a different metaphor for this week

Imagine that Brad and I have constructed a path for the reader to explore. Standing at the trailhead, it appears to disappear into the woods, but if you join us for a stroll you’ll find out that it offers some lovely views.

The trail loops through a meadow, into the woods, where it opens up at a hidden waterfall. It then follows the river downstream. Just at the point at which it may feel like you’ve been walking for a while, and are starting to lose track of landmarks, it takes one last turn and emerges, surprisingly, close enough to the starting point that you can see where the cars are parked at the beginning

A Tune Tag episode is comprised of eight songs; for that week you can make the argument that no two of them are in the same genre . . .

Closing with some musical recommendations. In the spirit of the post, one of my most enjoyable musical discoveries of the year was finding out that Chrissie Hynde recently released an album of duets, covering classic songs with a range of collaborators. They’re fun, and it gave me a different appreciation for her as a singer. Her work with the Pretenders is fantastic and offers pure Rock-and-Roll swagger and energy. It’s fun to hear how well she does in different moods and genres. Two of my favorites are:

“My & Mrs Jones” (with k.d. lang)

“Can’t Help Falling In Love” (with Mark Lanegan)

I also just discovered that, several years ago, she contributed an excellent track to a Caetano Veloso tribute album.

The Empty Boat

Fantastic!

Work is likely to be busy for the next few months, so I will be posting less frequently, but I’m very glad to feel like part of a community and have chances like these to work with friends on this platform.

I’m with Her consists of Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan. They each had independent careers but have known each other a long time. From Wikipedia,

When Sarah Jarosz was nine years old, she met Sara Watkins at a festival. Both of them grew up with bluegrass music. Jarosz began playing the mandolin when she was ten, and Aoife O’Donovan noticed her when Jarosz was fifteen. O’Donovan said about Jarosz, “You were this amazing young person. You just had so much confidence and skill but you were never, like, ‘Look at me, I’m so good and I’m so young, heh heh heh.’ You always seemed like a peer.”

Sarah Jarosz

Of the three of them, Sarah Watkins (Nickle Creek) is the most famous, but I was first aware of Sarah Jarosz, having liked her second album Follow Me Down, released when Jarosz was 20, about which Rick Anderson memorably wrote, “others may suspect her of suffering from Elvis Costello Syndrome (which causes spoon-bendingly talented musicians to get tired of doing what their talents have made easy for them and to begin pushing the boundaries of their gifts, with sometimes embarrassing results)” (he thinks that description is incorrect). My favorite tracks off the album are the Byb Dylan cover “Ring Them Bells”2 and her adaptation of the Edger Allen Poe short story “Annabelle Lee”

She is also known for doing bluegrass version of pop songs in concert. For example, this cover of “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley is a treat:

Sara Watkins

As I mentioned before, Nickle Creek was composed of Sarah Watkins, brother Sean Watkins, and Chris Thile. They were an extremely well-regarded band which I’ve enjoyed but never got deeply into. This gives some sense of their abilities as performers — tight and assured. An impressive performance.

One of my favorite songs that I’ve come across from her is this performance with Sean, of a song from Disney’s Robin Hood (the old animated movie). It’s clear that they are quite familiar with playing the song together. It’s feels nicely lived in; there’s a comfort to settling into the song together.

Aoife O’Donovan

I was least familiar with Aoife O’Donovan as a solo performer and lead singer for the band Crooked Still, but listening to a few recordings for this post I am impressed. This is a great performance of “Ain’t No Grave”

And a wonderful Joni Mitchell tribute

I’m with Her

Part of what’s so fun about digging into I’m With Her recordings is that they look like they really enjoy playing together, and they lookin comfortable in a range of settings (not surprising given their collective experience). For example here’s an official video for their cover of the Nina Simone song “Be My Husband”

and here’s a live performance “in the round” at the Telluride Bluegrass festival

Even More

This just turned up for me recently, and is a great introduction to a new artist and album that look great. Tenille Townes3 has had a successful career and her new album represents a change in her process.

Townes self-produced the entire album from her home studio, playing instruments and handling the mix herself. The result is intentionally raw and unpolished. Recorded largely on a single microphone, the project leans into its imperfections, creating a live, intimate listening experience.

“All these lead vocals are untuned,” she says. “I just sang it until the emotion felt right.”

The album wasn’t initially intended to be self-produced. What began as simple demo recordings evolved organically into the final product. “I didn’t set out to produce this whole record,” she admits. “But I’m really proud of how it ended up.”

This track with backing from I’m With Her is gorgeous.

Below is the basic story (lightly adapted from the information on Wikipedia) which I’ll follow with some discussion of why I found it so interesting and some of the names I recognized.

Oh, the year was 1974

After Makem’s departure, the Clancy Brothers began scaling back their busy touring schedule. When not touring with his brothers, Liam Clancy started performing solo. In late 1974, suffering financial setbacks because of misreported taxes, Clancy filed for bankruptcy and moved his family to live with his in-laws in Calgary, Alberta. Clancy’s brother-in-law, Leo Cote, began producing a series of successful local solo gigs for him. Clancy’s concerts in Calgary caught the attention of a television producer, who signed him for thirteen episodes of his own syndicated music and talk show for the Spring season of 1975. The show was a hit and was renewed for twenty-six more episodes for the 1975–1976 season.

At the same time, Makem was also achieving success including a Canadian television series of his own.

Makem and Clancy both performed as solo acts at the Cleveland Irish Festival in July 1975. According to interviews, the two of them had to keep meeting with each other to make sure the other did not sing the same songs at each other’s separate gigs. They decided to team up for a one-time performance together at the festival. Soon after, Clancy invited Makem to appear on the final show of the season of his Canadian television series, “The Liam Clancy Show”. That won an Emmy Award for Best Half-hour Entertainment in a Variety Show and led to the two of them being signed together for the 1976–1977 season making “The Makem & Clancy Show”.

In February 1976, Makem and Clancy announced a Canadian tour. Clancy toured with the Clancy Brothers at least one last time in March 1976 before officially leaving the group and joining Makem full-time.

In the autumn of 1976, the television series premiered. During the run of their show, they invited Scottish folk singer Archie Fisher to appear as a guest performer on an episode. Fisher told Makem and Clancy he wanted to produce a record with them; that became their debut self-titled album, Tommy Makem & Liam Clancy, released in December 1976.

With Maurice Cassidy as their international manager and Makem’s wife Mary Makem as their manager in the United States, the duo began touring full-time, performing at all the major venues and festivals in North America, Ireland, the UK, Australia, and appearing on all the major talk shows outside the U.S. as well as their own television specials. Usually, they would tour the British Isles in January and February, and for six weeks in June, July and August; Australia in May; North America in March and in the autumn. They regularly toured with two backup musicians. In the 1970s and early 1980s, they were usually Archie Fisher on acoustic and bass guitar, and Allan Barty on fiddle and mandolin.

Musical Connections

At this point I’m going to play my own version of transatlantic Tune Tag. Liam Clancy & Tommy Makem recorded a number of songs by contemporary songwriters, some of whom I recognize. It’s interesting to see how some of those songs entered the repertoire of Irish music.

I think it’s noteworthy that they were living in Canada at the time, but most of the people I recognize are not Canadian. I would be interested if any of the Canadian music writers I know on substack can fill in more of the details or have a different perspective on their influence in Canada — , , do you know any more?

The longest lasting connection may have been between Archie Fisher and the Rogers brothers Stan and Garnet. In 1979 Stan recorded Fisher’s song “The Witch of the Westmorland”1

And, in the 80s Garnet Rogers and Fisher toured together for several years, and collaborated on two albums2. Researching this post I see that Garnet credits Fisher with being a positive influence for him after Stan’s death.

I don’t know what possessed me to write to Archie and invite him to tour together, except I sensed I was slowly coming to a halt. I needed to do something while I figured out my life. I know the gist of my letter was, “:Hey. I have a dependable car, and a wonderful agent. What would you say to coming over for a tour and I’ll be your driver and back you up on flute and fiddle.” And to my amazement, he took me up on the offer, our only other contact having been at Mariposa back in 1976 or so. After a few shows Archie had quickly diagnosed the problem, and now he was lecturing me, with those fierce dark eyes boring into mine, and a long finger poking me in the chest. “This is an honourable and ancient profession. What you’re doing is important. You can’t stop. It would be a disservice to everything you and Stan have built over the years. “

Well, it sounded like a lot of bollocks to me, and I just didn’t fucking care at that point in my life. I was sick with grief, and depression, and booze, missing my sweetheart, and living in a constant state of fear that one more goddamned injunction was going to drop down on my head.

He leaned over and pulled something from his jacket pocket. He held up a purple velvet and satin guitar strap with yellow embroidery along the outside edge. “Here. I’m giving you this. Purple is the bard’s colour. Wear it and honour it. It’s your job,. It’s your calling.”

His eyes got more intense. “ Take it. I won’t take no for an answer.”

Clancy and Makem were supportive of other songwriters. They recorded Eric Bogle’s “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” and it was a hit — quite possibly the reason the Pogues would record it years later3:

Chicago songwriter Michael Smith wrote “The Dutchman” which had previously been covered by Steve Goodman. Reportedly, “Smith has credited Goodman's performance of "The Dutchman" with propelling his songs to a higher degree of visibility than prior, emboldening Michael to ask Liam Clancy ("the greatest ballad singer of all time" according to Bob Dylan) to record it.”4

They recorded two songs by New Hampshire songwriter Bill Staines (whom they describe as “a friend” in the introduction in the first link ), “Place In The Choir” and “Roseville Fair”. I think it reflects their influence that both have been recorded by Irish musicians in this century (I particularly like the version of “Roseville Fair” below).

They also recorded three songs by Maine songwriter Gordon Bok (“Hills of Isle Au Haut”, “Peter Kagan and the Wind”, and “Clear Away in the Morning” ). Researching this post I see that he was also a guest on their TV show multiple times. If you go to 8:14 in the video below it’s fun to see the contrast in styles between Clancy introducing Gordon Bok, and Bok introducing his first song; Bok immediately slows down the pace and takes control of the mood in the room.

Bok also recorded songs by Archie Fisher (in the liner notes Bok says, “Archie Fisher said that he wrote this song after seeing a couple of perfectly good steel trawlers rusting away on the ledges ("skerries") outside a harbor in northern Scotland, and was told by the fishermen that they were drove there by their owners because, even with the government subsidy to help the fishermen, the fishing was so poor they still couldn't make a living, and the men didn't want to see them cut into scrap by the ship-breakers. In other lands, you'd suspect that insurance might have something to do with it - but who's to say? It's not hard to miss your harbor in the fog.”)

And a tune inspired by him (“Three stray tunes of mine. The first was written thinking about Archie Fisher, and how he was always flaming around whenever I saw him. It's properly called "Archie, Take Your Boots Off and Stop Chasing Yourself Around." "Namagati" (a direction of wind) is a dance from "Song for Vela" which appeared as a guitar duet with John Pearse on Another Land Made of Water (Folk-Legacy FSI-72). "Odivair is a Lonely Man" is one of the many tunes I put to the old Shetlandish saga : The Play of the Lady Odivere .“)

As well as songs by fellow Scottish songwriter Dave Goulder

It’s fun to learn that part of why Clancy, Makem, and Fisher formed these connections with Northeastern singer-songwriters was their presence and work in Canada.

I hadn’t listened to it in almost 20 years, and I’d occasionally have snippets of it run through my head. Last year I finally tracked it down and I’m convinced that, from the right perspective, it’s a perfect song.

The construction is more formal than most of the music that I gravitate towards. A fairly strict verse/chorus structure, and straightforward use of language. Throughout we view the characters from the outside. It’s not a surprise to read that the song was inspired by a TV drama.

And yet, within that formal structure, I can’t see any way that it could be improved upon. The pacing is perfect, the tune is gorgeous, the harmonies are sublime, and every word is precisely chosen.

It was originally written for George Jones and Tammy Wynette, but I will stick with the version I heard first.

The song tells the story of a young couple. We meet them shopping for a ring

In a pawn shop in Chicago on a sunny summer day
A couple gazes at the wedding rings there on display
She smiles an' nods her head as he says, "Honey, that's for you
It's not much, but it's the best that I can do"

In the second verse they’re getting married

In a little wedding chapel later on that afternoon
An old upright piano plays that old familiar tune
Tears roll down her cheeks and happy thoughts run through her head
As he whispers low, "With this ring, I thee wed"

(If I’m being picky I’d say that “happy thoughts run through her head” is the weakest line in the song. All of the imagery intentionally evokes cliches, but that’s the one time that it feels like a placeholder, without any real weight. But I mean that as a compliment to the rest of the writing).

Then the next verse visits them an indeterminate time in the future when the marriage is fracturing.

In a small two room apartment as they fought their final round
He says, "You won't admit it, but I know you're leavin' town"
She says, "One thing's for certain, I don't love you any more"
And throws down the ring as she walks out the door

You can understand my praise for the writing in that verse. It’s such a graceful sketch, that tells us everything we need to know, and feels like it’s about two specific people without needing any details of what’s gone wrong.

The final verse is a repeat of the first. I’ve seen some people describe that as implying that the cycle will repeat itself. I hear it slightly differently. The song has shown us this couple at the their moments of greatest optimism and despair. For the the reprise functions as a pulling back; signaling that the song will leave them some privacy as they each deal with the aftermath of this story which started “in a pawn shop in Chicago on a sunny summer day.” (and, there’s the earworm. if you’ve listened to the song, you hear the tune reading that line).

Looking up more information about the band, you can get a sense of their personality in this live performance of “Jesus On The Mainline” which opens with a long story about how people in the city misunderstood the song because they didn’t recognize the mean of “the mainline.” Opening with the comment, “We once played in this part of Kentucky called New York City . . .” and then explaining the history of rural electrification.

The song itself has some impressive picking:

I’m only somewhat familiar with Gauthier. I know that is a fan. Between Daylight and Dark made a strong impression on me, but I haven’t listened to her other albums as much. She’s a great songwriter; sometimes I feel like her songs are too emotionally challenging, and that I’m not easily ready to enter that mood. But this one, for me, strikes a perfect balance.

Her voice has some roughness to it, and is well suited to conveying the weariness of life and a sardonic sense of humor. This song has both of those qualities and a lovely sense of space to sit and reflect.

The structure is simple, each verse offers a reflection on someone, or some figure who could “use some mercy now.” They are brief sketches, with only a few words for each one. The first time I listened to it, I got halfway through and then went back to the beginning because I felt like the rhythm of the song had clicked for me, and it seemed astonishingly beautiful.

I’ll pair it with something else which has gotten stuck in my head this week; Kathy Mattea talking about aging. I found it deeply endearing. Watching it, I just had a sense of, “I like her.”

I had to think about why I wanted to include these together; they are different moods which don’t immediately connect, but it did make sense to me. There’s a phrase, which is sometimes overused, about “being comfortable being uncomfortable.” I interpret that to mean that life inevitably offers difficulties, and sometimes the best way to respond is to recognize that the experience is uncomfortable and accept that in your life. Mary Gauthier’s songs often live in that emotional space.

I have the impression that it comes less naturally to Kathy Mattea. In particular, I have the sense that she is temperamentally disinclined to want to make her audience uncomfortable. I recognize this in myself as well; I am often conflict-averse, and I can hear the ways in which she’ll phrase things in a way that softens the edges or minimizes the discomfort for the listener. Mattea also seems like someone generally inclined towards positive feelings.

And yet . . . she does it. There is a fundamental sense of sincerity and honesty in her story of recognizing that aging has taken things from her and then, nevertheless, being happy to be where she is and to take pleasure in it. It’s been cut as a PSA, it’s only a few minutes long, and well told.

For several years there were two main ways that I got albums. For myself, I ended up finding BMG music service genuinely helpful. Music clubs have a bad reputation but I could frequently get CDs for $5-6 each ($11-13 in current prices). I read a lot of reviews on Allmusic, and would look for the career albums from notable groups, and I was able to get a general introduction to a broad range of important music3.

The other route to getting new music as gifts and, in particular, I got a number of folk albums from people that my parents knew and liked and were aware that I wouldn’t be likely to buy on my own. Sunsets I’ve Galloped Into was one of those, and ended up as one of the albums that I listened to most in my last two years of college.

Listening to it now, I associate it with a very specific mood. It’s a great late evening album. I’d put it on when I was starting to feel tired; and not expecting to talk to anybody that evening but not in hurry to go to bed. It was an album that could nicely stretch out that mood. It’s funny, going back to it now, to see that so many of the songs are about aging and feeling slowed by time, but it was a wonderful album at that period of my life as well.

The other thing that strikes me, looking it up, is that there are almost no reviews online. Allmusic has a brief review which generally praises the album and gives it three stars, and there are couple of stray comments in reddit threads like, “Archies, ‘sunsets ive galloped into’ produced by Garnet4 is a masterpiece.” It is an album which seems likely to exist in obscurity because there’s no reason why anybody needs to have it. Having by opened by talking about my own music buying, it’s not an album which is essential or important5. But it’s also lovely and produced with care.

This album spans twenty years of songwriting by myself and a few friends. Every song has had a season and holds a special place surrounded by its particular memories.

So, it seemed the most natural thing to bring them together as a gathering of old friends and introduce them to you.

Ashfields And Brine

The opening song of the album. Fisher describes the inspiration, “A new industrial estate now covers the old Inverness landfill on the Moray Firth which because of garden waste used to support a myriad of herbs and flowers despite the barren surroundings of cinders and sea.”

The opening two lines, "Maybe ashfields and brine will grow flowers rare / Thyme and sweet columbine with brighten the air.” are a great introduction to the sound of the album. Sweet and worn at the same time.

Merry England + The Great North Road

Fisher pairs these together in his liner notes saying, “MERRY ENGLAND and THE GREAT NORTH ROAD are what used to be called ‘road songs’ back in the 70’s. There were a lot of them about.”

“Merry England” is my favorite song on the album and has a line that’s so good it’s remarkable that it hasn’t become a cliche (which Fisher smartly uses as the opening line of the chorus, because it’s worth repeating). “Merry England though your heart is warm, your hands are cold.”

“The Great North Road” opens with a lovely image to convey the way in which age and travel broaden his experience of the world. “Although I’ve changed my mind about bitter beer and barley wine / Home brewed ale will still taste good to me”

All That You Ask Of Me

Fisher says, “There was no better way to end the reunion than with ALL THAT YOU ASK ME from the prolific pen of Keiran Goss of Newry.” A love song.

“All that you ask of me is that I remember / That I remember what we’ve been through / All that I’m saying is that I remember / That I’ll remember you”

I hadn’t planned on having a theme, but as I was considering options I realized that I had several which were, in some way, about difficult, or unruly desires, so we’ll collect them all here.

These will start with a fairly intimate recording and expand to full-on rock.

First, I’ve always liked the song “You Say” from Dore Freeman’s first record. This is a live version and I particularly like Nicholas Falk’s accompaniment on a hand drum.

First, the Wailin’ Jennys do an amazing job covering one of the stand-out tracks from the Emmylou Harris album Wrecking Ball, “Deeper Well”

That is a powerhouse performance which feels like it gets deep into the song. But, after listening to that, I found an Emmylou Harris performance which is even more extraordinary.

Wrecking Ball reflected a change in sound for Harris1. After the album she formed a band to take it on the road2. That ended up forming the basis for a live album, which wasn’t necessarily planned3 and captured the band in full flight.

Embarrassingly I have that album, Spyboy, and it didn’t make much of an impression on me until I saw video of the performance. It felt too loose and messy but, watching them on stage I can see the intensity, and communication between them and it’s mesmerizing. Here is how they describe the performance:

“Deeper Well,” in particular, was different every night. Harris and Lanois built on the original version by the late, great David Olney, and on the Spyboy tour, it grew into wild new shapes. “I always just sort of let the boys go wherever they wanted to go rhythmically and instrumentally,” Harris says, “and I just would figure out where it was time for me to step up and sing the lyrics.”

The documentary’s recording lingers on Miller and Blade, whose guitar and drums lead a frenzied churn until Harris comes back in. “Emmy is the kind of bandleader that would encourage the band to go where the music takes you,” says Miller.

“You learn if you’re playing in a band, you get the record, learn the record, play it like that,” he adds later. “But that was not what it was with Spyboy. It was, ‘Respect the song, but let’s go see what we got. …’ Playing and playing and playing, and then, here comes that voice.”

Finally, there isn’t video of this, but I had an exchange with which reminded me of this version of “One Way Or Another” by Blondie in which the song is expanded, rocks like crazy, and has an appealingly unhinged energy. One of my favorite Blondie recordings.

Preparing for the Creator Economy Apocalypse (with Chris Gethard)

A discussion of the difficult economics of being an independent comedian when the industry has moved in the direction of (a) promoting hits over careers and (b) people are often expected to put their own money up to produce a special which they can market.

Some of it is specific to comedy, but most of it will be familiar to most independent artists.

When I talk [ __ ] and get angry, all the views go up, you know.

Yeah. I And I do think the back of this conversation will be more positive or more realistically positive. But I do think it is interesting that these algorithms can realize it is fine to platform dissent, but not platform the solutions to the problems. Right? So if we were to put up portions of this on social media, I’m sure the parts where we complain will do quite well. I think the portions where we say maybe we should build fan bases not on social media won’t do as well even though that’s the part that people need to hear.

Yeah, I think you are right. The clip version of this will be very different than anyone who sits and listens to the full version of this. It just will.

The Breakdown – Dolly Parton, ‘The Grass Is Blue’

I didn’t know I needed this. A discussion of Dolly Parton’s first bluegrass album which is wonderfully knowledgeable about both bluegrass and Dolly Parton. It covers everything from the origin of the album; songwriting, the recording process and an interview with Parton herself.

Working For Norah Jones

The shortest of the links, just under half-an-hour. Otis Gibbs interviews Adam Levy who talks about the experience playing guitar with Norah Jones before and after her debut album blew up. He seems very calm and levelheaded which was probably very useful is the strange circumstances of being adjacent to that sort of deluge of fame.

Norah Jones maybe six months after that had this a weekly gig at a place in New York ... a Jewish Community Center they had a performance space in there and Nora had a weekly gig there and we played it to eight people. It was really like a very quiet gig but eight people at that point who wanted to be there. It was different from where we started like with brunch gigs and stuff so you know people who came there to hear the show but they weren’t an army just yet and then at the end of 2001 I think before her record had come out Rolling Stone magazine used to do these ... this is who to look out for next year in music and that is really where the tide started to change. Because the week after that hit the newsstands the gig that had been eight people for weeks and months suddenly they literally were turning people away. I had friends who tried to come to that show and couldn’t get in this free show that had been going on for months. Same band, same tunes nothing had changed except Rolling Stone uh put the put her on the map and put that Weekly gig on the map

The fate of fossil fuel systems in the “mid-transition”

A very interesting conversation about some of the challenges that we may face as renewable energy continues to grow as a key (and hopefully primary) component of the energy system (emphasis mine).

I think that some of the ways that I talk about this may lead into the minimum viable scale thing as the obvious next step, which we hope is also one of these things. This has been the response so far, where half the people are “This is a ridiculous idea,” and the other half of people are “Yes, I can see that happening around me already.”

The minimum viable scale thing that I think is the most interesting is essentially you end up in this place for a while, where the fact that you have one system growing from small and one system shrinking from big means that you have two systems that aren’t big enough to do everything for a while. They need to be working together, but they’re also dynamic.

You end up in this situation where you have a much higher effort period, where both systems need to be operable, both systems need to be adapting to the other, and both systems are constrained by the other. You end up with these strange mal-adaptations at times that are temporary if you assume that this proceeds. One of the things that keeps me up at night is that we could get stuck in this.

Volts

The fate of fossil fuel systems in the "mid-transition"

If the world takes its climate targets seriously, the coming decades will see fossil fuel systems shrinking as clean energy systems grow. In this episode, I talk with associate professor Emily Grubert about the issues that may arise during this “mid-transition” period. She has fascinating new study on the physical and financial cliffs that fossil fuel s…

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6 months ago · 46 likes · 14 comments · David Roberts

Is Your Social Life Missing Something? This Is For You.

Ezra Klein talks to Priya Parker about her ideas about community and building good social events.

I had mixed feelings about some of the ideas. She’s so charismatic and such a compelling speaker that I think she can make things sound easier or less contentious than they would be for someone else, but I think it’s very much worth a listen and it offers a number of bits that are worth thinking about and mulling over.

Finally, it isn’t a podcast, but worth recommending ’s five part series on the musical history which informs the movie Sinners (which I haven’t seen, but still enjoyed the articles):

Sinners, released in 2025, is a Southern gothic horror film set in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932, and it is also, and perhaps more essentially, a film about the ontology of music itself. About what music is, where it comes from, what it costs the person who makes it, and what it offers the people who receive it. These are not incidental concerns of the narrative. They are the narrative. The vampires, and there are vampires, magnificent and genuinely frightening ones, are almost beside the point. Or rather, they are exactly the point, but not in the way a lesser film would make them.

Part One

Göransson used this specific instrument - a physical 1932 Dobro Cyclops, not a reproduction, not a digitally sampled approximation - to record much of the film’s score. This is the kind of decision that seems small on paper and is, in practice, the difference between a score that feels authentic and one that merely gestures toward authenticity. There is something in the resonance of an old instrument, in the particular way its metal cone has aged and warped and settled, that cannot be replicated.

Part Two

This is not a universally accepted argument among musicologists, it should be noted. There are scholars who resist the continuum thesis, who insist on the specificity of each form, the discontinuities as much as the continuities, the ways in which, say, hip-hop’s relationship to the blues is attenuated or mediated or contested rather than simply linear. These are not trivial objections. But what Baraka was identifying, and what the scene in Sinners makes visible in a way that musicological prose never quite can, is something that transcends formal analysis: a shared spirit, a shared purpose, a shared function in the lives of the communities that produced these forms.

Part Three

When the vampires retreat, they perform Wild Mountain Thyme - a Scottish/Irish folk song that entered the Anglo-American musical tradition through the folk revival and has been recorded by Bonnie Dobson, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and others. The choice of song here is carefully deployed. The Irish and Scottish folk traditions are not, of course, morally equivalent to the tradition of white American racial oppression. The Irish, in particular, arrived in America as a people who had endured their own centuries of colonial subjugation, and the relationship between Irish-American and Black-American history is complex, marked by both solidarity and antagonism depending on era and context. Coogler is not flattening this history. He is using the juxtaposition of these musical traditions — the Delta Blues and the Celtic folk song — to map different forms of historical suffering and survival onto each other, to ask what it means that music developed under conditions of oppression in West Africa and music developed under conditions of oppression in the British Isles should arrive, in 1932 Mississippi, in such opposed relationship to each other.

Part Four

There is a post-credits scene.

Chicago. 1992. An elderly Sammie, played by Buddy Guy, who at the time of Sinners‘ production was somewhere in his late eighties, born in 1936 to Louisiana sharecroppers, moved to Chicago at twenty-one and into the orbit of Muddy Waters and into the front rank of electric blues guitarists where he has remained for the better part of seventy years — sits with his band. Among them, a younger blues musician: Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, who at the time of this writing is in his mid-twenties and already being spoken of with the kind of reverence usually reserved for the dead.

Part Five

For similar reasons, I didn’t listen to much music while out and about in the world. When I was a teenager neither I nor most of my friends drove, so I didn’t spend much in time in cars. I didn’t have a walkman or portable player of any sort, and I didn’t feel any need.

As an adult I will put on music while doing other things, but I start with the perspective that music listening should be intentional — picking something that I want to engage with and focus on.

This ties into my previous post on musical intimacy.

For a long time I felt suspicious of pop music, and I go through cycles of having more or less patience for highly constructed music. There’s a lot of music which is made with the intention of being in the world without having to address a specific listener — being on the radio or excerpted in ads or TV shows. This also goes back to my discussion with ; there is great music which is written and produced to be extremely broad and approachable. For many people that’s part of their early experience of music, for me it feels unfamiliar. As I mentioned in that post it was easy to use the word “authenticity” or “authentic” as a way to distinguish between different styles of music, and music listening, but I don’t think that’s the best way to think about it.

I’m not sure that “intimacy” is a perfect word choice, either, but it does get to the idea that something is being shared between performer and listener, and that it’s good to have ways to talk about different styles in which that sharing takes place. In different moods we may want different things, the word “intimacy” suggests something small and private, but it’s helpful to think about a continuum across different scales.

Since writing the last piece I was thinking about three different liner notes that speak to the musical experience at different scales.

Bob Coltman

It’s Southern music that’s been my teacher, with its bite, its taste of woodsmoke and sorrow, its long distances inside your mind. But I’m no Southerner, and though I live in the North, no Northerner either. I come from a place that hangs between, like an Aeolian harp, where the winds of both blow through. The songs I write are the ones that ask to be written because nobody has. And the traditional songs I sing? Let me tell you about just one place, one man. Everything comes down to that: one person in one time and place.

About twenty-five miles south of Lynchburg in south central Virginia is Altavista, and about two miles past that stood the house of R. Abner Keesee. Years before the day I met him, Ben Moomaw, a correspondent of the Virginia Folklore Society and one of the finest singers I ever knew, had struck upon Mr. Keesee. He wanted me to know him too, if he was still alive.

Abner Keesee is still alive and 79 years old on this day in September 1954, the road dust rising in the baking heat. A squat, wheezing man, he emerges onto his concrete porch and slumps into the creaky swing to entertain his company. His son, youngest of his ten children, and son’s young wife and child all think it’s pretty funny that somebody would want to come see old Dad.

Nearly all deaf, is Mr. Keesee, can hardly hear at all. He says everything like it was the Ten Commandments. That old saying about hearing yourself talk ... when your ears go back on you, and you used to be the champion singer at the White Top Festival, it takes on a little more meaning.

‘Some people,’ he roars, ‘think they know a lot of songs. But it ain’t everybody that knows nine.’

Nine.

He sang two of them to my Dad and me, in a voice that boomed and swooped and dove with the tyranny of deafness. How I wish you could hear that voice. It seemed to come from another world. Hard listening: gritty, full of adventure. But never lost, just finding new paths in the darkness of sleeping ears. The song about the Fisherman’s Daughter, ‘whose friends was dead and gone,’ the words collapsing at the ends of lines, strange, unforgettable—and then the eerie vision of broken dying love that is Far Fanil Town:

He rode till he come to the middle of the town / Likewise to the middle of the street / Who did he meet but his own wedded wife / All wropt up in a winding sheet / He had a penknife drew in his hand / He ripped the seams all around / Her cheeks they looked of a pale crimson red / And her lips they looked smiling at him

We never did find out what the other seven songs were, for Mr. Keesee was gasping after two, and we were afraid for his very life. Once, he said, he’d won the White Top singing prize two years running, and would have made it three in a row if an English judge hadn’t decided three in a row was one too many, and given him 2nd instead. But he won 1st prize in dancing that year, and that was better by five dollars: $15 instead of $10.

He’d breath enough to tell about the manganese mine he knew about on property owned by coal interests. Wouldn’t let on where. Nor give particulars of the gold mine that was plowed up on his nephew’s property, though he could if he cared to. The songs? He’d learned them as a child. His children didn’t care anything about them. ‘People have come here several times to get me to sing, and not give me nothing for it.’ There are a couple of plain glass bottles lying empty in the yard’s scant grass. Dad, who’s wiser in these things than I, spots the hint and gives him enough for a full one. It’s accepted, matter-of-factly. Folded inside the bib of his overalls in hopes the boy’s wife won’t find and confiscate it.

It took me a long time, me who knew hundreds of songs by heart and many more by reputation, to decipher the other message: that songs are living things. Too vital to drag around in the mud, to play in the background while doing something else, to stack on shelves or count up in columns, to breeze through and forget. Keesee knew less than one song for each child he had fathered. Two songs almost too much for one hot September afternoon. Nine the measure of a whole life. Each syllable to be handled with care, like dynamite, or fine crystal.

Mr. R. Abner Keesee never made it into a recording studio in his life. He had more important kinds of music to make: fierce, lonely, stubborn, infected in the blood. He is on this record, with all the other people who taught me to die and be born in every song I sing.

Richard Scholtz (from a CD with Frank Jackson)

We have played together long enough that neither of us remembers quite how long it’s been. Thirteen years? Probably fifteen. Maybe longer.

We have been playing some the tunes on this recording almost that long. The ones that stick with us are those we can explore again and again and they still have a new side to show. They are a lot older than we are and will outlive us. What you have in your hand is a snapshot of one moment in the life of the tune.

We recorded complete, live versions because our playing is an interaction, not set arrangements. Three times round the tune or four? When we play the planning fades and the music takes over.

What is the real shape and personality of this tune? Passionate? Playful? Both? What is too fast or too slow? Preserver the silences? Who leads and who follows? ... Each playing is different; and, if you listen carefully, you can hear us answering those questions as we play.

Joe Jackson

AND FINALLY ... SHOWTIME! Time, once again, to disarm and charm that great beast called The Audience. Time to focus all our energy into making a connection, into making something happen. We can feel it, when we’re winning them over, and it feels good. Everyone, band and audience, merging into one entity. And on a really good night -- and this rarely happens, but we get glimpses of it -- we’re flying. It’s as though music has the power to neutralize the force of gravity. We’re like those lunatics you see on TV who jump out of planes and link arms in free-fall. They never look as though they’re actually falling, but floating, as though time is standing still. And maybe those glimpses are what keep us going, like a drug fix taking us out of the clutter and grind of normal life.

Those are three different images of how music lives; in the soul, in the playing, or in performance. As illustration, consider these three performance by Rhiannon Giddens that I’ve been enjoying lately. They don’t perfectly match up to the passages quoted above, but they’re all excellent and worth sharing, and they illustrate a range.

Rhiannon Giddens

First, is a performance of “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” which she begins by talking about the blues musician Alberta Hunter. Giddens finishes the story by saying, “That’s cool. That’s a life well lived; you know what I mean.“ That influences the mood of the song. It is usually sung with a feeling of regret; someone realizing that they had squandered the good times, and feeling abandoned by their so-called friends. Here Giddens sings it with the appreciation for someone who enjoyed the good times and has the spirit to be capable of bouncing back from the bad times.

It’s a great performance in that entire package of story and song make sense together, and that moods fits with the sense of paying tribute to the older musicians. It’s a good example of a song as part of a long cultural tradition, which changes shape and can fit in various settings.

Second, Giddens and Justin Robinson playing “John Henry” for their 2025 album What Did The Blackbird Say To The Crow. This is a great example of a highly professional version of the song being alive in the playing between two people. You can immediately tell that they’ve played together many times and have that experience that playing answers questions about what the song means in that moment.

The notes for the album mention

Giddens and Robinson recorded outdoors at Thompson’s and Baker’s North Carolina homes, as well as the former plantation Mill Prong House. They were accompanied by the sounds of nature, including two different broods of cicadas, which had not emerged simultaneously since 1803, creating a true once-in-a-lifetime soundscape.

…

“With the assaults on reality going on in the world today, we wanted to offer another kind of record, like walking back onto a gravel or dirt road while a stampede goes the other way,” Giddens says. “With the cicada choir, this record could’ve only happened at a certain time in the last 120 years. We doubled down on place, time, realness, and old-fashioned front porch music. It’s a reminder that another way exists, with music made for your community’s enjoyment and for dancing–not solely for commercial purposes. . . . What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow was recorded in outdoor settings with just Giddens and Robinson, a couple of folding chairs, and some microphones–one of which was placed to pick up the sounds of nature around them, “using technology in the way that we choose,” as Giddens says.

To finish the set a performance that has an element of the sense that, “music has the power to neutralize the force of gravity.” In the notes on the video Giddens says

I got the incredible opportunity to work with a wonderfully diverse group of musicians some weeks ago in at the Aarhus Festival in Denmark - Joe Henry (USA) on guitar, Tony Garnier (USA) on bass, Diego Schissi (Argentina) on piano and Gustaf Llunggren (Sweden) on pedal steel - for this version of ‘She’s Got You’. I love this version for the dynamics and the way we are all listening to each other with every fibre of our being.

It isn’t a performance that would be likely to be included on an album, because it’s just a little hesitant at the start but it really comes alive. It’s worth watching the video to see how her posture and physicality shift as there’s a sense of, “okay, we’re going for it.”

It is not, I would say, a performance which emphasizes the emotional meaning of the song. It’s there; if you’re familiar with the song or paying attention they respect the story, and there are some very satisfying moment. Taken as a whole, however, I would argue that the performance overshadows the nuance of the song and yet, it’s glorious. One of the best things I’ve heard for a while, so I say that just to acknowledge that there are more things in life than just trying to get to the meaning of the piece.

The intimacy is limited in all three of those pieces. There is the sense, in all of them, that she’s such an experienced performer that she’s always conscious, on some level, of providing the audience what it needs. There’s never any uncertainty about making choices that would pull her away from the audience or create confusion. There’s a very specific skill set reflected in all of them, but you can see the way they represent different styles of exchange between a performer and audience.

Trust (again)

I’d be tempted to leave it at that, but I want to make one more note about trust, which I brought up last time. I think part of the magic of music is the way the listener extends themselves into the world of the song. I don’t think people should withhold themselves, but I also have moments when I don’t think a song earns the trust.

In this case I’ll take the opportunity to complain about one of my pet peeves. I don’t like the Johnny Cash cover of “Hurt.” I don’t think it’s bad, but it’s a song that prompts an emotional connection for many people, and it makes me suspicious.

The first thing I would say is that it doesn’t feel like a single performance. I don’t know how it was recorded but, listening to it, I have the sense that it was assembled from various takes and that there’s editing and production choices being applied on a line-by-line basis. The opening couple of lines are great but the farther I get into the song the less I feel like it reflects Johnny Cash extending an emotion to to me as the listener and the more it feels like something assembled in the editing room.

Beyond that, the lyrics don’t feel like they fit Cash. I fully believe that Cash has things to say, as a performer about aging and mortality. But when I hear a line like, “ You could have it all / My empire of dirt / I will let you down / I will make you hurt” I don’t believe that’s a natural idiom for Cash and that those words are a good vehicle for him.

By contrast, for example, I recently discovered his recording of “Ain’t No Grave” and I feel much more emotionally invested in that song. It helps that I’ve heard the song before and I’m sure that Cash also knows the song from way back. It does feel like the idiom for him to express himself. It’s a performance but I connect with his using the song to share a mood and feeling.

I don’t have a simple way to explain that, or a rule that would distinguish when I’m willing or not willing to extend my trust. But, for me, that is one of the important decisions to make as a listener, and one that poses a bit of challenge as a writer. When I recommend music I am saying that I think it deserves emotional investment and that process of extending trust won’t be the same for different people.