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.

Taj Mahal: Maestro

Taj Mahal has always been a different kind of bluesman. For over forty years he has incorporated acoustic blues, rock, folk, jazz, gospel, reggae, various African styles of music, even traditional Caribbean styles into his music. His latest album, Maestro (2008), is an excellent example of Taj Mahal's eclecticism. He shows no sign of not doing whatever his muse tells him.

If you like the albums Taj Mahal did with the Phantom Blues Band [1993's Dancing the Blues, 1996's Phantom Blues, 1997's Señor Blues, and 2000's Shoutin' in Key], then you'll love Maestro. After a nine year hiatus, The Phantom Blues Band returns on four blues tunes - James Moore's Scratch My Back, Willie Dixon's Diddy Wah Diddy, Further on Down the Road (a duet with Jack Johnson), which he wrote with the late Jessie Ed Davis that first appeared on 1969's Giant Step, and Slow Drag, a funky slow blues that is another Taj Mahal original. A band called the New Orleans Social Club (the core of which - George Porter, Ivan Neville, and Raymond Weber - is Warren Haynes' new band away from Gov't Mule) appears on Taj's houserocker I Can Make You Happy and Fats Domino's Hello Josephine. He's off to R&B territory with Los Lobos on Never Let You Go, and rejoins with Los Lobos on the Delta blues TV Mama. Ziggy Marley and his band make an appearance on the reggae tune Black Man, Brown Man, and Ben Harper and company drop in for some blues rock on Dust Me Down. For more variety, Taj Mahal revisits Africa on Zanzibar, renewing the collaboration he started with Mali Kora master Toumani Diabate on 1999's Kulanjan. Maestro is Taj Mahal's first release in 5 years, and is a showcase for both his talents and eclectic musical interests.

As a bonus, in 2009, Taj Mahal lent his talents to a collaboration with David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and a San Francisco Bay-area band called Los Cenzontles ["The Mockingbirds"]. On the album American Horizon, Taj Mahal contributes three original tunes - La Luna [which he sings completely in Spanish], No Hay Trabajo, the bluesy One Hot Mama, Sueños and La Fuerza. A multi-instrumentalist, Taj Mahal contributes organ, piano, electric bass, electric guitar, ukelele, acoustic guitar, banjo, and harmonica. He definitely likes to stay busy. He doesn't sing on all the songs, but he either co-wrote and/or played on them. Good stuff.

If you want to hear some good music from Taj Mahal, these two CDs are good places to start. Enjoy!

Los Lobos - The Town and the City/Tin Can Trust

I was going to write this as my take on the new Los Lobos release Tin Can Trust. But as I listened to it I realized it is a lot like their previous CD of original material, 2006’s The Town and the City. The lyrical themes in several of the songs are similar. Both discs contain songs about people facing different kinds of adversity. The production on both discs sounds the same. If I didn’t know any better I would think all of these songs were recorded during the same sessions and in the same studio instead of four years apart in different studios. This is a testament to Los Lobos’ quality and consistency.

There are songs of escape. TCT’s opening track Burn it Down chugs along with just acoustic guitar, upright bass, and drums, with a hint of mandolin. Susan Tedeschi provides background harmony on the chorus. The electric guitar makes its first appearance at the 2:36 mark with a fairly laid back solo, and then it becomes a full-blown wah-wah-drenched psychedelic freakout at 4:14 that lasts until the song ends. I don’t know what the singer is trying to get away from, but he wants to get away from it in the worst way and not go back by “burning it down.” TCT’s All My Bridges Burning expresses that same sentiment of running away from something. The Road to Gila Bend from TTATC is the tale of a breakneck run across the border from Mexico.

There are songs about “home.” Between the two discs there is a yin-and-yang thing about “home.” On Main Street from TCT depicts a guy going on a stroll through his neighborhood, hanging out with his friends male and female alike, watching the women and their kids, and not worrying about a thing. He’s taking pleasure in the simple things in life. These are the things that make the singer’s blues go away. The Town [East Los Angeles, the home of Los Lobos], one of two title tracks from TTATC, depicts low-riders, graffiti on walls, shots ringing out in the night, and mothers telling their kids not to stray too far from home in “the town where I come from.” It’s a place where the singer’s “heart will be found,” where he’ll rest and go there whenever he dreams. Two Dogs and a Bone, another of TTATC’s reminders of “home,” is a mom’s advice to two brothers not to fight. But it’s all “home,” with all of the good and the not-so-good that go with it. The City [Los Angeles] is the place with the neon lights, where lovers kiss in doorways, people yell at you from their second floor windows. It’s a place where the people dance real slow, where you can go bar hopping from Paramount and Cudahy, you can go get high and shoot out those neon lights. It’s a place to go to get away from The Town, if only for a little while.

There are songs about love. TCT’s The Lady Of The Rose and Jupiter Or The Moon and TTATC’s Little Things and If You Were Only Here Tonight have that topic covered. While listening to Little Things, close your eyes and you’ll hear Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale. You hear the singer being wistful about being so driven to be a success in life that he doesn’t see the “little things” in life, like the love of a woman, like his own heartbreak. Jupiter Or The Moon sounds almost like a long-lost Traffic classic. This one is the classic tale of a man saying he would do anything for his lady [if he could], but she’s not anywhere to be seen and he misses her terribly. There’s optimism and hope in TTATC’s The Valley. It's got the backwards guitars like what you'd hear from The Beatles I'm Only Sleeping, that hypnotic sound that sounds like the singer is waking from a dream. TTATC’s Hold On is a hardworking guy, holding on to every breath while he’s “killing himself to survive,” and if he makes it to sunrise, he’ll do it all over again. On TCT’s title track, the singer tells his lady that he’s broke, but there is one thing he can bring her that doesn’t cost anything – love. Most of these songs from both of these albums fit into the same narrative about life in East L.A.

Of the songs that don’t fit the narrative, here’s a great cover of the Grateful Dead’s West L.A. Fadeaway on TCT. Where the Dead’s original is kind of lazy and laid back, Los Lobos add muscle with David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas swapping guitar solos. I like the separation here – you can hear Rosas’ Les Paul in your right ear and Hidalgo’s Stratocaster in your left ear. The tones of the two guitars are very distinctive. The TCT instrumental Do the Murray is a chance for both David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas to show off a little. TCT’s final track 27 Spanishes is Los Lobos’ take on the Spanish Conquista. It reminds me of Neil Young’s Cortez the Killer, only more subdued.

If there’s a formula to Los Lobos’ music, it’s this – you can count on two songs in Spanish from Cesar Rosas. On Tin Can Trust there’s the cumbia Yo Canto and the norteño Mujer Ingrata. On The Town and the City there’s Chuco’s Cumbia and No Puedo Más. David Hidalgo throws in Luna for good measure on The Town and the City.

I have every Los Lobos album since By the Light of the Moon, which came out in 1987 [I think]. These guys continue to amaze me with every release, even when they put out Los Lobos Goes Disney last year. These guys are incapable of making a bad album. Listening to The Town and the City and Tin Can Trust back-to-back is like watching a movie about the complicated experience of simply living. It is a somewhat dark and murky tale, but you get to hear of the values that the guys in Los Lobos cherish, and that’s not a bad thing. Do yourself a favor and pick up these two discs. You will not be disappointed.


Little Things [from The Town and the City]