by David Burn | Jun 3, 2006 | Music
Thanks to artists like Jim Lauderdale, Mary Gauthier, Steve Earle, Darrell Scott and Gillian Welch, it’s safe to say I’m now fully into country music. Not NashPop. Real, old-time country.
I’ve always been a sucker for genius singer-songwriters, but I’ve tended to focus in years past on rockers like Warren Haynes, John Bell and Jerry Joseph. At any rate, I’m now highly receptive to country-influenced music, or straight up country. Which makes Van Morrison’s new release Pay The Devil so rich.
A master of reinvention, Van’s appreciation of America’s oldest music, from jazz and blues to folk and gospel, has inspired countless recordings, so it’s not surprising he would come out with a country album at the age of 60.
“Pay the Devil” features by songs popularized by Webb Pierce (“There Stands the Glass”), Hank Williams (“Your Cheatin’ Heart”), Conway Twitty (“What Am I Living For”), Emmylou Harris (“‘Til I Gain Control”), Big Joe Turner (“Don’t You Make Me High”) and George Jones (“Things Have Gone to Pieces”), among others. There are three originals, as well.
by David Burn | May 30, 2006 | Lowcountry, Place
A couple of weeks ago I flew out of Hilton Head airport for the first time. A few minutes after take off, I noted Fripps Island and Hunting Island on our right, then a big body of water, then a beach community that I couldn’t quite place. After consulting the map, I learned it was St. Helena Sound and Edisto Island that I saw from the US Air twin-engine prop.
Yesterday, we drove to Edisto Beach. What took five minutes in the plane, took more than an hour and a half by car. Such is the nature of watery land. More times than not one goes around, not over.
While our nearest beach is but 20 minutes away, we like to see what the different beach communities offer. Since moving to the Lowcountry 16 months ago, we’ve visited beaches on Sullivan’s Island, Edisto Island, Hunting Island, Hilton Head Island, Tybee Island, St. Simon’s Island, Sea Island, Jekyll Island, Cumberland Island and Amelia Island. Edisto was most reminiscent of Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island in the northeast corner of Florida. Both have a laid back, old school beach town feel with relatively modest, but still high-priced homes on the beach.
It was a sunny day with a strong breeze. We saw dolphins just offshore, swam in the inviting ocean waters and read our books under the umbrella.
by David Burn | May 28, 2006 | Advertising, Media
Sy Safransky is the founder and editor of The SUN magazine, an award-winning independent, nonprofit journal that has maintained itself and its readership for more than 28 years. It publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and interviews that live up to its motto, a statement by Viktor Frankl: “What it is to give light must endure burning.”
Darby loves The SUN . She’s always saying, “I can’t believe you don’t read The SUN .” For the record, I do pick it up from time to time. She loves the purity of the pub. Presumably so do the other 70,000 subscribers that help keep the Chapel Hill, NC operation afloat.
In a fund raising letter from Safransky, which I have before me, he discusses his battle to keep The SUN’s pages ad free.
As the planet staggers from catastrophe to catastrophe, do we really need yet another magazine filled with the kind of ads that romanticize the destruction of the natural world, deny moral complexity, and perpetuate the status quo?
He mentions in the letter that his methods may be quaint. That’s honest.
As a person who works in advertising, my reaction is why draw such deep lines in the sand? Selling ad space is not selling out and it’s not going to move the editorial direction of The SUN one iota.
I’m not saying The SUN should run ads, after all it is nice that such a magazine exists. I’m saying I would, faced with like circumstances. When brands sponsor great content, artists get paid. And everyone, especially artists, needs to get paid.
by David Burn | May 27, 2006 | Music
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is held at the same time as Merlefest. Decisions, decisions. This year we went to Jazz Fest. Maybe next year we go to Merlefest. They’re good choices to have.
Anson Burtch covered the 19th annual Merlefest in Wilkesboro, NC for Jambase. His report makes me want to know more about emerging artists like The Steep Canyon Rangers, Catham County Line, The Biscuit Burners and The Avett Brothers.
According to his report, Burtch and others in attendance found two performances by The Waybacks with Bob Weir, a.k.a. The Weirbacks, particulary gratifying.
Bob Weir :: Merlefest 2006 by Willa Stein
San Francisco’s favorite jamgrass band has been making a name for itself with a unique brand of boogie. With acoustic instruments, The Waybacks meld folk-rock, newgrass, pop, and even a psychedelic jam or two. Friday night on the main stage, the group, along with Bob Weir, performed an inspired set, playing “Jack Straw” and a couple of crowd-pleasing covers, “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “19th Nervous Breakdown.” Later in the set, people were looking at each other in disbelief. Was that “St. Stephen” > “The Eleven” > “Last Time” they just heard? At Merlefest? Indeed it was. With all the attention on Bob Weir, it would be a shame to overlook the talented Waybacks. Multi-instrumentalist Warren Hood was excellent, blazing fiddle lines around the rest of the band. The set had everyone on their feet and dancing, a rarity on the main stage.
But the highlight of the weekend was the Waybacks’ extended Hillside Stage set Saturday evening. The 45 minutes that were scheduled turned into almost two hours of jamming. They hooked the crowd with a couple of tracks from their new album, From the Pasture to the Future. Then Weir joined the band for “El Paso” followed by Sam Bush for “Kazmir” and “Brown-Eyed Women.” The crowd cheered Gillian Welch and David Rawling’s appearance for “The Weight” and “Brokedown Palace.” The crowd refused to let the band leave, pushing the set long past its official time, and everyone returned for a raucous “Like a Rolling Stone.” For his magical playing at the festival and many guest spots throughout the weekend, Bob Weir earns the title of Merlefest MVP.
Wow, that’s some pro-Bobby press. After his PR disaster last fall regarding file sharing and the band’s need to crack down on it, the guy no doubt could use some glowing coverage. Jambase provides, Bobby. We on the other hand want to know more about The Avett Brothers, et al.
[thanks to Mark Ruckstuhl for the tip]
by David Burn | May 27, 2006 | Music
It doesn’t seem right, but the right likes to rock.
The New York Times reports on National Review’s top 50 conservative rock songs.
It is a primal moment in rock. In the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” Roger Daltrey sings about gladly fighting in the street for a “new revolution,” and with a virtual mushroom cloud of guitar behind him, lets out a fearless cry. But what is the political message?
Classic conservatism, says National Review, the venerable conservative magazine, which in its latest issue offers a list of the “top 50 conservative rock songs of all time.” Its No. 1 choice is “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” which ends with the cynical acceptance that nothing really changes in revolution: “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.”
“It is in my view a counterrevolutionary song,” John J. Miller, the author of the article, said in a phone interview yesterday. “It’s the notion that revolutions are often failures, like the French Revolution leading to Napoleon. The song is skeptical about revolutionary idealism in the end, and that’s a very conservative idea.”
Asked to comment on the list, Dave Marsh, the longtime rock critic and avowed lefty, saw it as a desperate effort by the right to co-opt popular culture. “What happened was, my side won the culture war, in the sense that rock and related music is the dominant musical form, not only in the U.S. but around the world,” he said. “Once you lose that battle, you lose the war, and then a different kind of battle begins: the battle over meaning.”
Sean Wilentz, the Princeton history professor, who has also written liner notes for Bob Dylan, said it was no surprise that such ideas can be traced through rock. “Of course there’s ‘conservatism’ in rock ‘n’ roll,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “There’s everything in rock ‘n’ roll, just as there’s everything in America.”
by David Burn | May 24, 2006 | Music
A few weeks ago on my way home from work, Ike Carter at WHCJ 90.3 FM, Savannah State’s radio station, played a track from Dr. John’s new disc, Mercernary–a tribute to Johnny Mercer, Savannah’s most famous songwriter.
Today, I visited a record store and purchased the disc, after much looking about. It was placed in Cajun between Country and Bluegrass, leaving New Orleans Jazz and Blues fans wondering where the good doctor was hiding out.
The Guardian’s music critic said of Dr. John’s efforts, “He lends insouciant vim to Moon River and a humid swagger to Come Rain Or Come Shine.” Deconstruct the proper British, and it means Dr. John infuses the very soul of New Orleans into the music.
Dr. John does contribute one original, “I Ain’t No Johnny Mercer.” It’s one of the best tracks on the disc.
First things firster
For better or worser
I ain’t no Johnny Mercer
According to a site dedicated to Mercer, he was greatly admired in the music industry both personally and for his intelligent, optimistic lyrics. Born in 1909, Mercer wrote or co-wrote over 1,100 songs, won four Academy Awards and co-founded Capitol Records.
by David Burn | May 22, 2006 | Literature
John Updike caused a stir at BookExpo America in Washington, DC last Saturday. According to the Washington Post, “without warning, he opened fire on the technorati.”
“I read last Sunday, and maybe some of you did too, a quite long article by a man called Kevin Kelly,” he began. He proposed to read a few paragraphs so that listeners who hadn’t seen the article might “have a sense of your future.”
The reference was to a piece called “Scan This Book!” in the previous week’s New York Times Magazine. (The title echoes activist Abbie Hoffman’s 1970 provocation, “Steal This Book.”) In it, Kelly described — in the messianic/hyperbolic style favored by Wired, the magazine with which he has long been associated — the inexorable march toward an “Eden” in which the totality of human knowledge will be downloadable onto a single iPod-size device.
Reading further, Updike noted Kelly’s assertion that “copy-protection schemes” are helpless to hold back the technological tide. “Schemes,” he repeated sarcastically, drawing a laugh. As his audience well knew, the Association of American Publishers filed suit last year on behalf of five major publishers alleging that Google’s library scanning project is a massive and flagrant violation of copyright law.
Updike went on at some length, heaping scorn on Kelly’s notion that authors who no longer got paid for copies of their work could profit from it by selling “performances” or “access to the creator.”
Unlike the commingled, unedited, frequently inaccurate mass of “information” on the Web, he said, “books traditionally have edges.” But “the book revolution, which from the Renaissance on taught men and women to cherish and cultivate their individuality, threatens to end in a sparkling pod of snippets.
“So, booksellers,” he concluded, “defend your lonely forts. Keep your edges dry. Your edges are our edges. For some of us, books are intrinsic to our human identity.”
by David Burn | May 20, 2006 | Food & Beverage
I’m a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir fanatic. The wines from this region are world class, but more importantly to me, I feel connected to them. I believe it is the French conept of terroir at work.
With this in mind, I’m pleased to report there is another wine producing valley of note in the great state of Oregon. The Umpqua Valley, south of Eugene. In the small town of Elkton, Brandborg Vineyard & Winery is producing incredible pinot noir (if the two bottles we’ve recently enjoyed are any testament).
Here are their tasting notes:
2003 BENCH LANDS Umpqua Valley pinot noir
Aromas abound with cherries, sweet strawberries with a hint of forest floor, mushrooms and well integrated vanilla and caramel oak. The flavors echo the aromas with the addition of raspberries, spice, good acidity and finely grained tannins for such a young wine that carry through in a long and pleasing finish. Not a big wine, but very pretty and it would make a fantastic partner with duck confit, pate or fresh grilled wild salmon.
Bottled September 20, 2004 13.8% alcohol 745 cases
Per Bottle $18.00 ~ Per case $194.40
Drier and warmer than the Willamette Valley wine region to the north, and cooler than the Rogue and Applegate wine regions to the south, the Umpqua Valley features seven family-owned Oregon wineries that showcase this region’s viticultural versatility.
by David Burn | May 20, 2006 | Film, The Environment
Do animals merely mate? Or do they also love? This question (and the answer) is at the center of Academy Award wining documentary, March of the Penguins, a moving portrayal that makes the story seem much larger than “a nature film.”
Prior to watching this film, I had never given much thought to the habits of Emperor Penguins in Antarctica. Now that I know something of their lives, I’m astounded by what they go through. For instance, after the females lay their egg, the males then guard it non-stop from the frigid cold, while the exhausted females walk for days over the ice to the open ocean to feed. By the time, the mother returns to care for the newborn penguin, the father hasn’t eaten in close to four months.
Emperor Penguins are noble creatures, often human-like in their upright stance, walking and behavior. It was good to learn about them.
by David Burn | May 19, 2006 | Music
Ramrod is gone. Taken by lung cancer at the age of 61.
The San Francisco Chronicle obituary offers some great stories from the man’s life.
Born Lawrence Shurtliff, he was raised a country boy in eastern Oregon and once won a county fair blue ribbon in cattle judging. He got the name Ramrod from Kesey while he was traveling through Mexico with the author and LSD evangelist.
“I am Ramon Rodriguez Rodriguez, the famous Mexican guide,” he boasted, and he was known ever after as Ramrod.
“I remember when he first showed up at 710 Ashbury,” said Dead drummer Mickey Hart. “He pulled up on a Harley. He was wearing a chain with a lock around his waist. He said ‘Name’s Ramrod — Kesey sent me — I hear you need a good man.’ I remember it like it was yesterday.”
Hart said that it was Ramrod’s practice to say “all right” at the conclusion of every performance as the band filed off the stage. “I looked forward to those ‘all rights,’ ” said Hart. “It was the way he said it. It was the tone that said it all — ‘it was all right … not great.’ You couldn’t fool old Ramrod. I was playing for him.”
Hart also remembered one New Year’s Eve when he thought he might be too high to play. Ramrod solved the problem by strapping Hart to his drum stool with gaffer’s tape.
For more, read Robert Hunter’s Elegy for Ramrod.
