Tony's Music Picks 2015

I haven’t done one of these for a few years, but this year I thought it was time.  Here are my album picks [of new music] for 2015:

Dwight Yoakam – Second Hand Heart – 3 Pears was a welcome return to form for Dwight Yoakam in 2012.  Second Hand Heart is equally awesome, and even louder.  Country radio lost interest in Dwight Yoakam a long time ago.  You’re more likely to hear Second Hand Heart on NPR.  That’s country radio’s loss.    He’s not looking for a hit anymore, so he just plays what he wants.  Here he goes back to the cowpunk days of the 1980s when he shared the stage with such roots acts like The Blasters and Los Lobos as well as the punks in X.  DY stays the old-school course he set a long time ago, and the world is a better place for it.  Standout songs:  In Another World, She, Liar, Second Hand Heart.  Play it loud!

Keith Richards – Crosseyed Heart – It’s been 23 years since Keith Richards graced us with a solo album [1992’s superb Main Offender].  When the Rolling Stones record new stuff, you can spot the “Keith songs” immediately.  They’re the ones that don’t try to sound “contemporary” [that’s Mick’s department].  So when Keef decides he wants to put out new stuff, you grab it while it’s available because that’s the old-school stuff that hold its age better.  The Human Riff shows he still knows how to come up with no-frills rock ‘n’ roll.  Keef even goes back past when the Stones were teenagers with a faithful acoustic cover of Leadbelly’s Goodnight Irene.  Keef loves reggae, and here he’s included Love Overdue from Gregory Isaacs, and it isn’t bad for a white guy.  Robbed Blind is a country-ish acoustic ballad complete with steel guitar [courtesy of Larry Campbell].  Standout songs:  Heartstopper, Trouble, Amnesia, Blues in the Morning, Substantial Damage.

David Gilmour – Rattle That Lock – Pink Floyd released The Endless River last year and having Rattle That Lock follow so quickly thereafter is a minor miracle.  DG used the usual suspects to make Rattle That Lock that he did to make 2006’s On An Island.  Given that, Rattle That Lock is a bit more upbeat than its predecessor.  The music for the title track was inspired by a jingle DG heard while waiting for a train in France.  But the lyrics are a bit more seriously.  His wife and lyricist Polly Samson drew her inspiration from the second book of Milton’s Paradise Lost.  There’s a waltz with Faces of Stone, a lament from DG about his mother who succumbed to dementia.  When you listen it sounds like something you would hear while dining at a French sidewalk café.  A Boat Lies Waiting is a piano ballad that is an ode to the late Richard Wright.  It’s an old demo DG made that evokes Wright’s Us And Them.  If you listen closely, Wright himself can be heard saying “it’s like going to sea – it’s lovely” [he was an avid sailor].  David Crosby and Graham Nash once again loan their harmonies – their voices and Gilmour’s work brilliantly.  If you want guitar heroics, they can be found on In Any Tongue.

Buddy Guy – Born to Play Guitar – With the passing of BB King, the “King of the Blues” throne is vacant, but the blues does have a new elder statesman in Buddy Guy.  Buddy is the last giant standing.  He’s 79 years old now, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to Born To Play Guitar.  Picking up where they left off with Buddy Guy’s last album the award winning Rhythm and Blues the team of Guy and Tom Hambridge have crafted another marvel of modern blues Usually BG plays with guests who have no business being near the blues, but not so this album.  Hear he hosts the likes of Billy Gibbons, Doyle Bramhall II, Kim Wilson, and Van Morrison.  And as usual, Buddy Guy is an assassin on a Stratocaster.  Jimi Hendrix wanted to be Buddy Guy, and if he was still alive he might be making records like this one.  Buddy Guy once explained that Muddy Waters’ final request to him was “keep the damn blues alive”. He’s still doing just that.

Warren Haynes – Ashes & Dust – Warren Haynes is a great bunch of musical guys.  One Warren Haynes is the leader of Gov’t Mule, a fearless, muscular, take-no-prisoners blues rock outfit.  Another Warren spent 21 years with the Allman Brothers Band, weaving his magic first with the legendary Dickey Betts and then with Derek Trucks, all the while staring down the ghost of Duane Allman.  A third Warren put out a terrific soul/R&B album in 2011 called Man In Motion.  Now we have Warren in another guise, that of a rootsy, acoustic-leaning folky who sings about salt-of-the-Earth blue collar Americans trying to survive.  Warren teams up with newgrass/Americana band Railroad Earth to create Ashes & Dust, which I could best describe as “Appalachian.”  While there are plenty of acoustic instruments on Ashes & Dust [fiddle, mandolin, upright bass, banjo, acoustic guitar], Warren still plays plenty of electric guitar.  There are still enough guitar solos to satisfy the jam band crowd, but here they are more restrained and relaxed, not like the face-melting solos he does with Gov’t Mule. 

Jason Isbell – Something More Than Free – Jason Isbell used to be in the Drive-By Truckers.  He wrote two of my favorite songs from that group – Danko/Manuel and Goddamn Lonely Love.  But he barely remembers his tenure in the band [2001-07].  An alcoholic who had quite the fondness for Jack Daniel’s, his first marriage to Shonna Tucker unraveled.  After his departure from DBT, he made some records that were ok but didn’t set the world on fire.  After his marriage to Amanda Shires, he went to rehab and sobered up [he remains so today], and made the best album of his career, Southeastern.  It was a masterpiece full of tales of loss, forgiveness, newfound sobriety and second chances.  I read somewhere that Southeastern was described as what happens after you’ve hit bottom and you’ve gotten back up off the deck.  With Something More Than Free Isbell turns his focus outward.  He didn’t want to write about himself with this song cycle.  Here he wrote and sings about working class people from his native northern Alabama.  Like his former bandmate Patterson Hood, Isbell is focusing on what adulthood is really like - marriage, jobs, bills, parents, children, belief, doubt, illness, learning and loss.  He’s come a long way from the young twenty-something he was in the Drive-By Truckers – he’s grown up and he’s now got two masterworks under his belt.

Sonny Landreth – Bound By the Blues – I haven’t heard much about Sonny Landreth.  The little bits that I have heard from his musical peers have one theme – Sonny Landreth is probably the best slide guitarist in the business.  Considering that Ry Cooder is still walking this Earth that’s a bold statement.  So after having seen the man himself on the bill of every Eric Clapton Crossroads festival, I finally broke down and bought me some Sonny.  I got Bound By the Blues and loved what I heard, so now I have six albums from Sonny [plus one he recorded with John Hiatt].  I don’t know if he’s the best slide guitarist there is, but he’s a damn fine one.

Steve Earle – Terraplane – Steve Earle has the blues.  He’s had some bluesy songs on past albums, but this time he goes all-in with an entire album of blues.  These aren’t the sad blues the Mississippi Delta, but more of the bar-stomping Texas variety.  Here he pays homage to the likes of Lightning Hopkins, Robert Johnson [whom Earle name-checks on The Tennessee Kid], SRV, Freddie King and ZZ Top.  In some places he plays solo; in others he goes the full-band route.  The Dukes sound like they were born to play the blues.  Standout songs:  Baby's Just as Mean as Me, the aforementioned The Tennessee Kid, Go-Go Boots Are Back, Better Off Alone.

Los Lobos – Gates of Gold – Los Lobos have been around since 1973.  They have yet to make a bad album.  On previous albums there have been an overarching theme, but on Gates of Gold I can’t find one.  But you expect a few things with each Los Lobos release – smoking guitar playing from David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas, lo-fi production, a couple of songs with Spanish vocals, a traditional Mexican song or two.  And so it is with Gates of Gold.  This is more of the same from Los Lobos, and that’s all I want.  Standout songs:  Made to Break Your Heart, Mis-Treater Boogie Blues, Too Small Heart.

Billy Gibbons – Perfectamundo – Billy Gibbons goes to Cuba – without ZZ Top!  The Rev. Willie G was inspired to make this record when he got an invitation to play a festival in Cuba.  He didn’t have any material or a band to play there, so he made this album instead.  It sounds like ZZ Top meets Santana.  It has that sort of Afro-Cuban flavor to it, with timbales, congas, bongos, acoustic piano and Hammond B-3.  One can hear auto tuned vocals in places [BG doesn’t need it, he just messes with it], and there are some rap sections that are best left unheard.  Overall, this album is as good as it is unexpected.  Other than the hip-hop rap shit, my only other complaint about Perfectamundo is that at 39 minutes, it’s too damn short.  Standout songs:  Got Love If You Want It, Pickin’ Up Chicks on Dowling Street, Piedras Negras, Hombre Sin Nombre.

Why I Like Dwight Yoakam

Today’s country music just doesn’t do it for me.  I like the older guys [and some dead guys] – Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, George Strait, and Dwight Yoakam.  Dwight Yoakam is today’s topic.  He was born in Kentucky, raised in Ohio, and grew up in California.  He attended Ohio State for his freshman year, dropped out and went to Nashville to make a living as a country singer.  There he met Pete Anderson, a guitar player from Detroit who had a similar attitude toward music.  The trouble was Nashville didn’t want to hear what DY was playing.  DY favored a more stripped-down approach to country music, while Nashville was in its glossy, pop-oriented “urban cowboy” phase.  Since Nashville wasn’t interested, DY and Pete Anderson headed west to California.  Out west they played their stripped-down country music in the honky tonks of the San Fernando Valley.  They’d play with roots rock bands like The Blasters, Los Lobos, and X.  These bands drew their inspiration from some of the same sources as Dwight – 1950s rock and roll and old country.

The influences.  Dwight Yoakam is a disciple of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, the two biggest proponents of the “Bakersfield” sound.  The Bakersfield sound itself was a reaction to the Nashville sound.  The “Nashville sound” featured syrupy string arrangements rather than fiddles and steel guitars that aimed at a more “adult contemporary” audience [think of singers like Eddy Arnold, Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves].  The “Bakersfield sound” derives from Western swing, honky-tonk, rockabilly, and rock ‘n’ roll.  Electric instruments abound – Telecaster guitars with their distinctive twangy sound Merle Haggard once said that while Nashville country came from the churches, Bakersfield country came from the bars.  Indeed – you won’t hear orchestras in a bar unless they’re coming out of a jukebox.  Dwight Yoakam also claims Gram Parsons as a big influence on his career – he said as much on a DVD I have about the life of Gram Parsons.

The Voice.  Guitar players like Mark Knopfler and Carlos Santana are such that you can recognize their playing almost instantly.  The same goes for Dwight Yoakam’s voice.  He’s got that Kentucky twang, and sometimes he throws in a Buddy Holly hiccup for good measure.

One Foot in Country Tradition…How does one describe Dwight Yoakam’s music?  His early music is a cross-between of rockabilly and honky-tonk with lots of romantic trauma, Bakersfield-style. If you look up “honky tonk sound” on Wikipedia, it reads the music “tended to focus on working-class life, with frequently tragic themes of lost love, adultery, loneliness, alcoholism, and self-pity.”  Throw in the words bitterness, despair, heartbreak, and pain, then pick almost any Dwight Yoakam song and it will have one or more of those themes.  Dwight covers heartbreak in about a thousand different ways, enough to make one think “hey, there’s someone more miserable than me.” 

In 1999, George Strait got together with Alan Jackson and did a song called Murder on Music Row.  The song laments the “death” of country music - For the steel guitars no longer cry/And the fiddles barely play/But drums and rock 'n' roll guitars/Are mixed up in your face.  One can’t blame that state of affairs on Dwight Yoakam.  When Dwight Yoakam hit the big time, he was hailed as a “neo-traditionalist.”  Dwight Yoakam’s first three albums – Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. [1986], Hillbilly Deluxe [1987], and Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room [1988] – have the Bakersfield influence written all over them.  The instrumentation is stripped down and straight out of the Buck Owens playbook – acoustic and electric guitars, drums, bass [even though you can’t hear it on these records], steel guitars, and a fiddle here and there.  DY recorded a duet with Buck Owens – Streets of Bakersfield.  After Buck Owens died in 2006, DY recorded an entire album as a tribute to Buck simply titled Dwight Sings Buck [2007].  He also recorded a stark version of Merle Haggard’s Holding Things Together for the Tulare Dust tribute album [1994].

He’s done bluegrass, and he’s got the seal of approval from none other than the bluegrass deity Dr. Ralph Stanley.  He recorded three songs bluegrass-style with Dr. Ralph - Down Where the River Bends [it’s on Dwight’s Used Records – 2004], Miner’s Prayer, and Traveler’s Lantern [the last two of which are Dwight Yoakam originals].  If that is good enough for Dr. Ralph, it’s good enough for me.  His versions of Earl Scruggs’ Borrowed Love and Bill Monroe’s Rocky Road Blues can be heard on In Others’ Words [2003].  He recorded a bluegrass version of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ Wheels and the traditional Some Dark Holler for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken Volume III.  He’s got a knack for this – he should do a full album of bluegrass music.

Elvis.  The song that got me interested in Dwight Yoakam in the first place was not one of his songs, but a cover of an Elvis Presley song.  That song was Suspicious Minds, a #1 for Elvis in 1969.  Dwight recorded it in 1992 for the Honeymoon in Vegas movie.  I heard his version and I was hooked.  He’s done Little Sister [included on Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.], and his version of Mystery Train can be heard on In Others’ Words [2003].  Maybe there’s a Dwight Sings Elvis in his future.  Then again, probably not.

One Foot in Rock ‘N Roll… Dwight Yoakam strides the line between country and rock ‘n roll, but sometimes he crosses the line and rocks out.  In addition to those times where DY channels Elvis, DY will record songs done by roots rockers, laid back California musicians, and even music from England.  He recorded a cover of The Blasters’ Long White Cadillac that rocks as hard [if not harder] than most rock bands could do.  The same goes for his cover of the Grateful Dead’s Truckin’.  His latest release [3 Pears – 2012] shows us DY in full cowpunk mode with Take Hold Of My Hand and A Heart Like Mine.  These two DY originals would make the heads of George Strait and Alan Jackson explode – they’re LOUD!

Genre-bending sound.  I can’t pick any single favorite Dwight Yoakam album because there are so many that I like.  When I’m in the mood to hear his music, there are four albums which get the call – This Time [1993], A Long Way Home [1998], Population Me [2003], and his newest – 3 Pears [2012].  Others may like the earlier records [Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc, Etc. (1986) or Hillbilly Deluxe (1987)], but these sound more like demos to me rather than full-fledged studio productions.  I can’t hear the bottom end.  But starting with If There Was a Way [1990], not only can you hear and feel the bass, you can also hear another instrument creep into the mix – a Hammond B3 organ, courtesy of Skip Edwards.  Mandolins creep into the mix as well.  The title song has precious little to do with country – it’s a straight blues.  The album This Time [1993] features a wide variety of sounds – a Floyd Cramer-like piano, electric piano, acoustic and electric guitars, dobros, steel guitars, fiddles, a Hammond B-3, and even some strings on a song or two.  Sorry You Asked [Gone – 1995] features Mexican trumpets similar to Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire.  The title song from Population Me features a mixture of Dixieland jazz muted trumpets with a banjo and a dobro.

The Weepers.  Hard, loud and fast is not Dwight Yoakam’s only stock in trade.  He can write and sing a tender ballad with the best of them.  Hell, I think he IS one of the best of them.  Home For Sale [1993] is written as an ad in the classifieds for a home that “two people outgrew.”  There’s no electric guitars here – just an acoustic guitar, drums, bass, a dobro and a Hammond B-3 organ.  I’ll Just Take These [1998] refers to the memories of a relationship that he thinks his mind can handle.  Aside from the electric piano, the instrumentation here is classic county – a fiddle, a steel guitar, acoustic guitar, some quiet drums and even some strings that don’t get in the way.  The Back of Your Hand [2003] strips it down even further – just an acoustic guitar and some strings.   Dwight Yoakam does what one might think is unthinkable – he makes heartbreak sound pretty.

Tony’s Favorite Dwight Yoakam song:  A Thousand Miles From Nowhere.  I won’t explain it – I’ll let Dwight’s music do the talking here.

His Songs Sound Good Unplugged.  In 2000, Dwight Yoakam released Dwightyoakamacoustic.Net., a collection of 25 of his songs unplugged.   It’s just his voice and an acoustic guitar [except for Little Sister].  It doesn’t come any more stripped-down that that.  The emotive power of Dwight’s voice gives such songs as Johnson’s Love and Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room even more impact than their electric counterparts. This collection is simply spellbinding and well worth having.

Pete Anderson.  Not only was Pete Anderson Dwight Yoakam’s guitar player, he was also Dwight Yoakam’s producer from the debut Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc [1986] to Population Me [2003].  Dwight had the songs, but Pete had a very hard-edged guitar sound that attracted me, someone who wouldn’t ordinarily listen to country music.  Pete Anderson’s guitar was the hook, but Dwight’s songs reeled me in.  As a producer, Pete Anderson was most sympathetic to what Dwight Yoakam wanted to capture on tape.  Here’s how Pete explained it to Guitar World:

“Dwight got better at arranging as it went along. I would interpret his ideas and had my ideas as far as how to arrange the material. He’d write the songs and come in with an acoustic guitar and sometimes he had a little motif. I would come up with a guitar riff or some sort of motif for the riffs or licks for the songs.

Dwight and I sort of blazed our own trail and did what we wanted because he had an extraordinary amount of talent. He had great songs, and songs rule the roost no matter what. Dwight could have been the biggest country star possibly of all time if he’d had the marketing skills of Garth Brooks to go with his talent. In that, we lived in California, people didn’t like us too much, but more of it was out of sight, out of mind.”

After completion of Population Me in 2003, Pete Anderson and Dwight Yoakam parted ways. Dwight produces his own records now, and with three albums now under his belt [Blame the Vain (2005), Dwight Sings Buck (2007), and 3 Pears (2012)], it appears Dwight learned a lot from Pete Anderson.

So with that, you have my favorite living country artist, Dwight Yoakam.  He is a unique performer who has never let him get trapped in anybody’s box.  He does what he wants his way, and does it when he wants.  Pete Anderson is right – he could have been as big as Garth Brooks.  But he went for himself instead of the big bucks, and I think herein lies a lot of his charm.

Tony's Picks 2012 - The Albums

I didn't buy very much "new" music in 2012.  Like last year, there wasn't very much that screamed at me and said "buy me."  When I did buy music in 2012, it was mostly to complete collections I had already started [Grateful Dead, old Rush, etc].  I find that the new music I buy is from old folks who I've been listening to for many years.  Some of the usual suspects have already been reviewed in these spaces

 

Soundgarden - King Animal  This is Soundgarden's first album of completely new material since 1996's Down on the Upside.  The good news:  King Animal is better than Down on the Upside.  The bad news:  it isn't as good as Superunknown, but then not many albums are.  The best songs are on the first half of the album.  Favorite songs:  A Thousand Days Before, By Crooked Steps, Non-State Actor.

Dwight Yoakam - 3 Pears  After being apart for 11 years, Dwight Yoakam comes home to Warner Brothers and releases his first album since his 2007 tribute to Buck Owens [Dwight Sings Buck].  3 Pears has lots of LOUD guitars, standard weepers, and a song with goofy-assed lyrics about jellyfish, peanut butter kisses and giraffes.  Favorite songs:  Take Hold of My Hand, It's Never Alright, A Heart Like Mine, Long Way to Go.

Mumford & Sons - Babel  The wait between 2009's Sigh No More and Babel has been worth it. Who knew that I would like a group of English folk revivalists?  These guys are loud, fiery, ballsy, and full of energy.  One thing they are NOT is "boring" [Fleet Foxes, call your office...].

Spectrum Road - Spectrum Road  This is probably as close to jazz that I will get. One hesitates to use the term "supergroup," but this one is close.  Jack Bruce [Cream], Vernon Reid [Living Color], John Medeski [Medeski, Martin & Wood], and Cindy Blackman-Santana come together to pay tribute to end expand on the music of Tony Williams' Lifetime.  The bulk of the material presented here is from Lifetime's catalog, with a couple of originals and one Scottish traditional song thrown in for good measure.  These guys are no mere tribute band.

Ian Anderson - Thick as a Brick 2 Ian Anderson [Jethro Tull's guiding light] answers the musical question that nobody but a hardcore Tull fan would ask - whatever happened to Gerald Bostock?  For those who don't know, "Gerald Bostock" was a 8-year old boy who wrote an epic poem about the trials of growing up that became the lyrics to Jethro Tull's 1972 concept album Thick as a Brick.  Well, not really...Gerald Bostock was really Ian Anderson, and TAAB was a parody of concept albums then en vogue in the early 1970s.  Unlike the 1972 work, TAAB 2 wasn't recorded as a single, 40-minute song.  The arrangements are leaner, less cluttered, but still well-executed.  TAAB 2 shows five different things that could have happened to Gerald Bostock - he could have been a greedy banker, a soldier fighting in Afghanistan, a shopkeeper, a homeless man, or a preacher.

Mark Knopfler - Privateering  After over thirty years in the business, Mark Knopfler released his first double album of studio material.  If you like what you've heard from MK since he gave up Dire Straits, you get more of the same here.  Oddly enough, this album was not released in the US.  I had to get it as an import.

ZZ Top - La Futura It's been a long time since ZZ Top released anything new.  La Futura has been heralded as ZZ Top's return to their roots.  That's a true statement - the synthesizers of the Eliminator years are gone, as are the beat-box, dub experiments that ruined XXX.  La Futura isn't Tres Hombres, but it's the best thing they've done since Rhythmeen.

Bob Dylan – Tempest It wasn't "the best Dylan release since Blood on the Tracks," but Tempest does continue the musical winning streak Dylan started in 1997 with Time Out of Mind.  Favorite songs:  Pay In Blood, Early Roman Kings, Narrow Way.

http://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/2012/10/bob-dylan-tempest.html

Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Psychedelic Pill He toured three times with Crosby, Stills & Nash [2000, 2002, 2006].  He made a sequel to an album he never released [Chrome Dreams II].  He made an album-long ode to cars [Fork in the Road].  He devoted an entire album to ranting against the Iraq War [Living With War].  Finally, he got around to making a great album [that I didn't think he had in him] with Crazy Horse, and it's about damn time.  Favorite songs:  Walk Like a Giant, Psychedelic Pill, Twisted Road, She's Always Dancing.

http://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/2012/11/neil-young-crazy-horse-psychedelic.html

Rush – Clockwork Angels A first in the history of Rush - a concept album.  IMHO, it is far and away the best thing they've done since 1981's Moving Pictures.  Some things do get better with age, like Rush.  Favorite songs:  Clockwork Angels, Seven Cities of Gold, The Wreckers, Headlong Flight.

http://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/2012/06/rush-clockwork-angels.html

Ry Cooder – Election Special  This is Ry Cooder's contribution in kind to Barack Obama's re-election campaign.  While I don't agree with the message, I do appreciate the art.

http://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/2012/08/ry-cooder-election-special.html

Things to look forward to in 2013 [assuming the Mayans are wrong]:

Black Sabbath - After 33 years, Black Sabbath are finally recording an album of new music with Ozzy Osbourne.   The original four members [Ozzy, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward] announced on 11/11/11 that they would reform, make an album and tour the world.  Things haven't quite turned out that way.  Tony Iommi was diagnosed with lymphoma at this time last year, so plans had to be put on hold for him to recover.  Bill Ward told the world he's having contractual problems with band management and hasn't gotten a contract he could sign.  In 2012, the rest of the band played three shows with Ozzy's drummer, and from what I've heard of the shows Bill Ward hasn't been missed.  Tony Iommi is recovering well and recording continues on the new Sabbath album.  As yet untitled, it'll probably be out in April 2013.

Alice In Chains - These guys took everybody by surprise and released Black Gives Way to Blue in 2009 to rave reviews [including mine].  I wondered why it's been taking awhile for a follow-up, and last week I found my answer.  Guitarist Jerry Cantrell had shoulder surgery and needed to recover.  They started recording in 2011 and just finished not too long ago.  I think it will be out before Spring 2013.

Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell - They have a new album, "Old Yellow Moon," due out on Feb 26th.