A week ago, give or take, the columnists and reviewers of No Depression received a note from Stacy Chandler, our chief for all things web related and self-described “killer of spam, keeper of the style guide, friend of good music and the good people who make it and listen to it,” letting us know that if we wanted to send her a top ten list of our favorite roots music titles for 2018, she’d be pleased to do something with them. What exactly she planned to do with them I didn’t know, and since I normally don’t participate in such things because I covet my status as the world’s largest collector of half-empty glasses, I deleted the email. Then I changed my mind.
Many of you know that in addition to writing for this website I also aggregate articles primarily about roots music and its weak-kneed country cousin Americana, posting several times each day on multiple platforms. Over the past few weeks I’ve stumbled upon and read endless lists for best rock, folk, indie, Americana, roots, blues, jazz, country, K-pop, hip-hop, live, and reissued albums of the year. While in the past I’ve just skipped or skimmed over them, this year was different.
While new album releases have dipped from a previous high of 130,000 titles per year to a more manageable 75,000 in 2018, when you’re not actually purchasing music because you’re accessing it through the stream at $9.99 per month, the act of finding and listening to new stuff is like having a giant crack addiction. After you the fill up the tank you still want more. And you can have it. Which leads me to why I’ve been searching through all these lists for things I’ve missed or never knew existed, and then adding them into my library with facial recognition and the flick of a thumb.
I’m not just looking for new music, but also books, films, Scandinavian television series on Netflix, the latest discounts on electronic gadgets that I have zero interest in ever buying, celebrity hairstyle transformations and facts about Dove Cameron, whose first kiss at age 17 was with Luke Benward. Not a clue as to who either of them are, but they must be important. I’ve also come across the ten best record stores in America, the best all-in-one turntables, the 13 best blues guitarists in the world, best concerts of the year, ten best music festivals of the year, seven English classic songs to sing out loud with children, and the best song from every Journey album (which is a bit presumptuous if you ask me).
Publishing your own personal list for other people to see and judge, unlike casting a vote in a poll by secret ballot, seems akin to standing naked in front of your tenth-grade public speaking class, and that just sucks. As you can tell by the photo above, I chose to utilize a rather simple system that I discovered on a Pinterest list of ‘easy home projects for the indecisive person’. And that’s me. Because in the day to day and by and by, my favorite music is usually whatever I’m listening to in the moment. So with that said, and in absolutely no particular order, here are a few of my favorite albums for 2018.
Sarah Shook and The Disarmers – Years
John Prine – Tree of Forgiveness
Pharis and Jason Romero – Sweet Old Religion
Joshua Hedley – Mr. Jukebox
Marissa Nadler – For My Crimes
I See Hawks In L.A. – Live and Never Learn
Milk Carton Kids – All The Things That I Did and All The Things I Didn’t Do
Lindi Ortega – Liberty
The Jayhawks – Back Roads and Abandoned Motels
Brandi Carlile- By The Way, I Forgive You
This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.
An occasional series of Americana and roots music videos. Sharing new discoveries, and revisiting old friends.
This started out as a story about my travels throughout the world in a quest to find hidden and long forgotten places of pleasure, often called record stores. Getting down on my hands and knees, pushing through cobwebs and kicking away a dead rodent or two in order to find those elusive hidden musical artifacts that I take home, place on my turntable while pouring myself two fingers of a fine whiskey, and then let the sweet sounds baptize my body and soothe my searing soul.
So that didn’t happen. I’m on the wagon, haven’t stepped on a winged vessel for over six years, and my turntable awaits my oldest son’s ability to rent a van, enlist a helper, and transport it to Brooklyn, where such things are cherished. I surf in the stream and scour YouTube.
Here’s a few things that caught my eyes and ears this season.
There Is Nothing Like Jason Isbell and an Acoustic Guitar
This should hardly be a surprise, as Isbell has been consistently putting out incredible music from back in his days with the Drive-By Truckers, followed by his first solo album in 2007 and those that followed with his band The 400 Unit, named for the psychiatric ward of Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital in Florence, Alabama. His wife, Amanda Shires, manager Traci Thomas, and Ryan Adams assisted in getting Isbell into treatment for alcohol and cocaine addiction in early 2012 and he now speaks openly about it. He’s intelligent, street smart, has a sharp wit, runs one of the best Twitter accounts you’ll ever follow, he was married to Shires by musician Todd Snider, is a fanatic fan of the beleaguered Atlanta Braves — and I’ll stand on Steve Earle’s coffee table and tell you he is currently the best songwriter we’ve seen since Dylan’s most prolific period, whenever that was. While I prefer him alone with his acoustic, this year I’ve gone back into his catalog from the past ten years, and if you’re a Jason-come-lately, you’d be well served to do the same.
This Is the Dawning of the Age of Geriatrics
The other night I went to see Bob Weir and The Wolf Brothers here in NYC, and as I stepped off the subway and headed up Broadway toward the theater, it was if somebody freeze-dried 1967. People of a certain age were decked out in tie dye or wearing faded concert tees across large stomachs, and as I made my way to the loge I saw one poor soul suffering from an overdose of stool softeners. But the music? First rate and as rockin’ and rollin’ as you might not have expected, but Bobby stretched out on his guitar and sang like I’ve never heard him before. It was truly a wonder to behold.
Along with John Prine, who will likely top every person’s end of the year poll, there has been an avalanche of older musicians who’ve either gone out on tour for the first time in years or written and recorded some great music. Examples would include Willie and Dylan, who never seem to stop touring, the Sweetheart of The Rodeo show which allowed Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman to show that they still have the chops, and Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, and Dwight Yoakam criss-crossed the country. Paul McCartney has his first number one album in 36 years, and Diana Ross is killing it in Vegas. Paul Simon went around the world one last time, and I think by now you get the idea: It’s better to burn out than to fade away.
The Year That Americana Music Died
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Not that anybody, but a few, cares about such things, but when was the last time you looked at Billboard magazine’s Americana/Folk chart? A few years ago everyone made a big fuss that not only did “our music” warrant a Grammy award (never televised, of course, and who can forget Linda Chorney?), but we also got our own official chart. As I wrote this Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hitsis number nine, followed by Ed Sheeran, John Mayer, Jack Johnson, John Denver, James Taylor, and Jim Croce. Sure, Chris Stapleton occupies both the number one and three spots, but if this is the best we have to show for it — schlock pop and geriatric redux — I’m outta here.
These are the musicians who came out with some kick-ass music this year, in no particular order, and, for at least this week, aren’t on the Americana chart: Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Malcolm Holcombe, Lindi Ortega, St. Paul and The Broken Bones, Lula Wiles, I See Hawks In L.A., Laura Veirs, Milk Carton Kids, The Rails, Eliza Gilkyson, Mary Gauthier, The Jayhawks, Modern Mal, Clay Parker and Jodi James, Brandi Carlile, Shemekia Copeland, The Earls of Leicester, Pharis and Jason Romero, Tim Easton, Ry Cooder, Sarah Shook and The Disarmers, The Mammals, John Hiatt, Ed Romanoff, Jules Shear, Hayes Carll, Whitey Morgan, Rosanne Cash, and Colter Wall, to name but a few.
And now the real craziness: Of the top ten albums on this week’s chart from the Americana Music Association, not even one made it on Billboard‘s chart. Thank god for Dale Watson’s Ameripolitan music association or whatever he calls it … they’re gettin’ it right.
Why Ska and Rocksteady Have Gotten My Attention
I haven’t inhaled for over 23 years, have no hair left even if I wanted to grow it out, and never went to Jamaica. But for reasons unknown even to me, this was the year I began to get absorbed into the roots of reggae. Blame it on a small radio station in NYC with the call letters WVIP that spends much of the day hawking vitamin supplements and selling help for your damaged credit reports. But every so often they break out the music, and it’s worth the wait. I’m a white boy who can’t even begin to explain it, but here are a few albums that shouldn’t be too hard to find if you want to dip your toes into the water. Start with Lee “Scratch” Perry and Friends – The Black Ark Years, Everything Crash: The Best of The Ethiopians and then The Story of Rocksteady: 1966-1968.
Video Killed the Radio Star
When was the last time you pulled out your old Low Anthem albums? It’s amazing how great this band is, and after opening on the Lucinda Williams’ tour last year, they recorded and released The Salt Doll Went To Measure the Depth of the Sea. Best album title of the year and just a wonderful group of writers and players.
Anybody who has been paying attention these past ten years knows that I keep going back to Marissa Nadler, the Boston-based singer-songwriter-guitarist-artist who can sing about ex-Byrd Gene Clark, cover a Townes Van Zandt song, and just as easily open for a death metal band in a small club in Germany at three in the morning. When her new album For My Crimes was recently released, it coincided with this nice mention from Richard Thompson in The Quietist:
“My youngest son, Jack, introduced me to Marissa Nadler. Her music is really strange, lovely stuff. I think it’s a little bit linked to shoegazing, or that sound, although I don’t know a lot about that. I find it very mesmerising and very dreamy, especially the way she harmonises with herself. I’m also never quite sure what she’s talking about – there’s lots of ambiguity in her lyrics, which I like. Songs and stories don’t always have to be straight.”
King of The Road: Tribute to Roger Miller is a two-disc album showcasing the songwriting of Miller through artists that span all corners, from Ringo Starr to Asleep At The Wheel, Lyle Lovett to Loretta Lynn. It’s a bit uneven and sadly they really missed the mark on “Husbands and Wives,” one of my favorites. Instead of using the great Jules Shear version above (video from Sherry Wallace), they teamed a mismatched Jamey Johnson with Emmylou Harris and murdered it. Despite that, you can cull a number of great performances here if you pick and choose.
And That’s All There Is Folks … It’s Cartoon Time
This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.
Seven years ago, just before Marissa Nadler’s 30th birthday, I watched a simple homemade video that was uploaded to Couch By Couch West, the online fest alternative to SXSW that launched in 2011 and sadly faded away after five years. The fingerstyle guitar and upper-register vocals really struck me as being familiar, yet it took me several days to realize that not only did I know Nadler’s music, but I actually had a whole bunch of her songs already sitting in my digital library. Some were downloaded from her website and Bandcamp page, others came from music nerds and weird old men from faraway places who file-shared late into the night and wrote things about her like this:
“Marissa Nadler could be a damsel who has tumbled from a frayed tapestry in search of her unicorn, a crystal doll who has escaped from her vitrine, or a tubercular maid who has slipped out of her Victorian deathbed photograph to traipse this earthly plane.”
“Part of me wishes she’d use her siren’s call to unite Sisters of the Moon in a woodland super-group of nymphs and urban wood-sprites.”
“She’s like a young Stevie Nicks, all doped up and duped to serve as Devendra Banhart’s geisha. Nah, too strong for that. How ’bout Donovan reincarnated as Linda Ronstadt? Except instead of a ’70s pop star, in this life she’s Fairy Queen of the Muir Woods, a mythical creature spotted only by hippie chicks who dare to eat strange mushrooms and venture into the redwoods past nightfall.”
Baby, I Will Leave In The Morning, May 2011
Throughout Nadler’s music career, which formally began in 2004 with the release of Ballads of Living and Dying, attempting to explain what sort of music she makes by putting a genre Post-it note on her is the equivalent of herding kittens hyped up on catnip. I tried my best to do it with a No Depression feature article that I published in 2011 titled “The Demystification of Marissa Nadler.”
After gently and courteously stalking her through social media and email, we put together an interview that introduced her to y’all bunch of alt-country hillbillies, aging cowpunks, and Americanarama-ites. And if you could get past the image of a Goth princess in heavy makeup with long flowing dresses who played freak-folk acoustic guitar with effect pedals and sang through layers of reverb as she opened late-night shows for metal bands, you might get as platonically smitten as I was and respect her work as an artist and musician.
Firecrackers, June 2014
This was my take on Nadler back then:
“She is not living in the land of unicorns and dragon slayers, her music is not all incense and peppermints, and it sits neatly on the shelf with artists ranging from Joni Mitchell to Emmylou Harris to Vashti Bunyan. There is a lot of talent, strength,and intelligence in this woman, and although I’ll admit that I fell for the image at first, it offers great satisfaction for me to help assist in the demystification of Marissa for you and bring it all back to Mother Earth.”
All The Colors of The Dark, February 2016
Today, at age 37, Nadler is married, still lives in the Boston area where she was raised, is an accomplished illustrator and artist, has toured all over the world while developing an adoring fan base, and has just released her eighth studio album, For My Crimes. It’s a more stripped-down album compared to some of her past work that nevertheless feels lush with a brilliantly executed production and mix. The songs are mostly guitar-centric with harmonies from Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen, and Kristin Kontrol. Here’s Nadler’s description of her songs, which she shared with Jeff Terich at San Diego City Beat:
“They’re written from personal experience, but I think it’s a good thing if people think they feel they’re more like character sketches. I really believe in the power of people to connect with music like that. I was very much writing a personal album—pretty confessional songwriting for me, I guess. I don’t put people’s names in songs, though. It gets pretty tricky when art and life collide. It’s a very hard record for me to talk about because the songs are so personal, and I want to make sure not to cause any fires that I can’t put out.”
Blue Vapor, August 2018
Several days after the Sept. 28, 2018 release of For My Crimes, I sent Nadler a link to an article from The Quietus, an English music and pop culture site “for people aged 10 to 73.” They have an ongoing feature called “Bakers Dozen” in which they ask people to list their favorite albums, and Richard Thompson just published his. Along with Moby Grape, Crowded House, Offa Rex, Squeeze, The Watersons, The Left Banke, and others was Marissa Nadler’s Songs III: Bird On The Water from 2007, which was nominated as Best Americana Record of the Year at the 2007 PLUG Awards. Here’s what Thompson wrote:
“My youngest son, Jack, introduced me to Marissa Nadler. Her music is really strange, lovely stuff. I think it’s a little bit linked to shoegazing, or that sound, although I don’t know a lot about that. I find it very mesmerising and very dreamy, especially the way she harmonises with herself. I’m also never quite sure what she’s talking about – there’s lots of ambiguity in her lyrics, which I like. Songs and stories don’t always have to be straight.”
Within minutes of getting my message she replied “Insane!!! I’ll have to send him my new one! He’d probably like it if he liked that one.” I complimented her on all the press she has been getting on the new record. There’ve been articles and interviews from Rolling Stone, SPIN, Paste, Revolver Magazine, Consequence of Sound, Red Bull, and now, No Depression. She used to read ND back in high school and has covered songs by Gram Parsons, Townes Van Zandt, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and Bruce Springsteen. On her new album there’s a song about listening – or rather not listening – to Gene Clark from the Byrds. She’spends a lot of time on tour in the US and abroad, so check out her site for dates.
This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.
Last week the Americana Music Association released its year-end list of songs that got the most airplay on Americana radio, and in the next few weeks No Depression and other like-minded music websites and mags will publish their own music polls. If I were a betting man, I’d lay down a few hundred dollar bills that there’ll be little variation or surprises between them. Ever since the term roots music has morphed into a more definable mainstream “Americana” tagline, diversity has seemed to have left the building. While you won’t get much disagreement from me on the quality of music on AMA’s list since virtually all of the artists are located somewhere in my digital jukebox, it seems that lately I find myself taking the road less traveled.
Every year I designate much of my listening time on studying music from the past, and this year I dipped deeply into the catalogs of Norman Blake, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Delmore Brothers, Doc Watson, and a lot of jazz: Lucky Millinder, Chick Webb, and several anthologies from the 1920s and ‘30s culled from lost and found 78s. For a few weeks this summer I blasted through the box set This is Reggae Music: Golden Era, which covers only 15 years beginning with 1960, and breaks it down into mento, rocksteady, ska, R&B, early reggae and the birth of roots. Good stuff.
As for albums released in 2016, I’ve come up with a short list of my own favorites that somehow have failed to make the “official” Americana chart, and consequently may be missed in this endless parade of polls and lists that’ll stalk the internet with killer click bait titles. I’m choosing to call it Un-Americana … and that’s a name and a genre descriptor that just might stick.
The Handsome Family – Unseen
“Unseen finds Brett and Rennie Sparks two years after an unexpected spike in popularity due to True Detective fame, while simultaneously finding the duo displaying an outward reverence for the genre and subsequent fan base that has bolstered them to alt-folk antiheroes … one would be hard-pressed to find more true-blue progenitors of the darker side of American music who are still working hard to get you to question a bump in the night.” Jake Tully/Elmore Magazine
Jack and Amanda Palmer – You Got Me Singing
“Amanda Palmer has long been divisive – dedicating poems to bombing suspects, dressing up like a conjoined twin, doing things that make outraged thinkpiece writers jiggle with glee. Her latest album, however, a collection of folk, blues, country, and contemporary covers with her once-estranged 72-year-old dad, Jack, strikes the right chord.” Kate Hutchinson/The Guardian
Marissa Nadler – Strangers
“Marissa Nadler, the galaxy-gazer of American somni-folk, is not of this world. She is an extraterrestrial unloved, a wanderer nonplussed, an inhabitant of a realm that aligns dissonance with wonderment. She is ethereal, moody, and dark like early morning, and with Strangers, Nadler’s seventh full-length album, our indelicate eyes are able to adjust to her clear, clairvoyant lens.” Cassidy McCranney/Slug Magazine
Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms – Innocent Road
“On their new album Innocent Road, Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms stake a claim as two of the finest traditional musicians in America. Their sound is a throwback to the heyday of rural American dance-hall music.” Jerad Walker, NPR Music
Tom Brosseau – North Dakota Impressions
“Tom Brosseau’s unique tenor is instantly recognizable, and it imbues his songs with a palpable feeling of loss, regret and nostalgia. His phrasing, the emotional quiver in his voice and the bare-bones production evoke the feeling of a late-night, working-class living room with friends sharing their most intimate secrets.” j. poet/Magnet
Kaia Kater – Nine Pin
“The banjo’s recent return to favor has seen the likes of Otis Taylor and Rhiannon Giddens reclaim the instrument as part of African America’s musical roots. Twenty-three-year-old Kaia Kater from Québec studied mountain music in West Virginia and writes songs from the here and now. Her second album manages to triangulate bluegrass, Nina Simone, and Toni Morrison.” Neil Spencer/The Guardian
Dori Freeman – Self-titled
“For the love of God just let the songs speak out and choose their own path, and that’s what happens in this self-titled release. The sentiments are so naked and pure, and as potent to stirring the spirit as the smell of a baby’s head that it awakens more than just an appreciation for music, it awakens an appreciation for life.” Trigger Coroneos/Saving Country Music
Freakwater – Scheherazade
“The darkly austere alt-country group Freakwater has kept their simple, gothic sound consistent through the years, but on their eighth album they overhaul it almost completely. It’s their most cinematic album yet, with the music functioning almost as a soundtrack to their short, violent songs.” Stephen M. Deusner/Pitchfork
Easy Ed’s Broadside weekly column has been a fixture at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music for over ten years. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.
New Music Rising
By using the term ‘roots music’ as a description of what I listen to and wax about, you might come to think that I spend all my days listening to stuff like the Fruit Jar Guzzlers, Jelly Jaw Short, Wade Maniner…with a little Bull Moose Jackson and H-Bomb Ferguson thrown in for good measure. And while those musicians were indeed on this morning’s playlist, my taste runs deep, wide and inclusive…a tent so far and wide that I can barely see end to end.
Five years ago this week I published an interview…it was actually the first one I had ever done…on No Depression‘s post-print online website, my home away from home where I contribute a column called Easy Ed’s Broadside. I’d first seen and heard Massachusetts-based musician and artist Marissa Nadler on a few videos that she had uploaded to the Couch By Couch West online anti-festival that ran concurrent to that thing in Austin. Her music captivated and mesmerized me. It was right before her thirtieth birthday, and she’d already released five albums along with several side projects, amassing a highly-engaged international fan base that kept her on the road.
In my article and our conversation, which I do hope you can find the time to read or at the very least watch some of her videos that I’ve included, The Demystification of Marissa Nadlerstarts out with the words of others who’ve tried too hard to come up with a genre-box to explain who she is and what she does.
“The indie-folk pinup girl and mistress of the murder ballad.”
“She’s hacked away the art school whimsy, tossed out the crystals and burned the floaty headscarfs.”
“Simple, melancholic fingerpicked folk ballads that take advantage of her sonorous, spine-tingling vocals, narrating tales of damsels in distress or lovers absent or dead.”
“Compelling medieval twang.”
My take? I think Marissa makes incredible folk music. Maybe not your parents folk music, but it comes from a place where an eighteen-year-old Marissa would sometimes leaf through those early No Depression magazines and as she describes… ‘spend my awkward adolescence copying master paintings in my basement and listening to music on the boombox. A lot of this music was prog rock and classic rock. A lot of it was folk and Americana. I loved Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams and they really spoke to me. Also, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels. Elizabeth Cotton.’
On May 20th Marissa will release her seventh full-length album titled Strangers, and she’ll be doing April dates on the USA West Coast, followed in May and June with dates in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland and Denmark. Here’s the link to her site.
This week she released the new video which she shot, directed and animated herself. I’ll let her own words set it up for you.
“With ‘All the Colors of the Dark’ I wanted to marry my love for the moving image with the song in a compelling visual that pulsated with the same rhythm. I’ve been inspired by the beautiful phantasmagoric worlds created by Svankmejer and Francesca Woodman, The Brothers Quay, among others. In the video, everyday objects move on their own, representing a lingering presence in my life.
Every Picture Tells a Story
The image at the top of this page was shot by my long-time-we’ve-only-met-online friend Sandy Dyas, who is a visual artist based in Iowa City that I’ve written about often. You can visit herwebsite here and check out her work, books (buy them…really) and blog. And more of her images can be found on this site….including this one I originally published back in January 2014 at No Depression dot com.
From The Pages of Kithfolk: The Howard Rains Pictorial
There’s a marketing and publicity company that works out of the Shoreline Washington home of the Leger family called Hearth Music. They are musicians, wordsmiths and designers, with a passion for traditional music and art that goes beyond simply running a business.
KITHFOLK is their digital roots music magazine of long-form interviews, engaging articles, video and audio streaming premieres, album reviews, and columns from guest writers. Most of the time they don’t write about the artists that they are currently working with, but the people and places and sounds that catch their attention.
Wandering around the site the other night, I happened to come across a gallery of paintings from a gentleman by the name of Howard Rains that really jumped out at me. Here’s a small sampling of Howard’s work along with his thoughts…the full story will take you to the gallery.
I have painted since I was a kid, but for many years I have been painting old time fiddlers, drawing only from life and documenting living traditional musicians as they played. These portraits go through the filter of my style and I have often been told they look nothing like the individual I am painting; other times I have been told they look exactly like them. I have done this because I love to do it. Because I am obsessed with traditional music and the incredible people I meet through the music. Click here for the full story.
From The New Yorker: The Awkward, Enduring Influence of Hank William’s Jr.
There seems to be an avalanche of press focus on the music and life of Hank Williams Sr. with the release of the biopic I Saw The Light, but David Cantrell has written an expansive and absolutely fascinating piece on his son.
Hank Williams, Jr., was raised to be an echo, not an influence. His mother, Audrey Williams, pushed him to perform as Hank Williams, Jr., (his given name is Randall) and to play songs pulled almost exclusively from the catalogue of his father, who died when Hank, Jr., was three. He made his stage début, warbling his father’s first hit, “Lovesick Blues,” when he was only eight years old; he débuted on the Grand Ole Opry at eleven. He released his first album, “Hank Williams Jr. Sings the Songs of Hank Williams,” for his father’s old record label, M.G.M., just after turning fourteen, in 1964.
His father remains the genre’s key repository of myth and tradition (though he’s lately moved it on over a bit to make room for Johnny Cash). But listen closely to country radio’s defining sounds and points of view at almost any moment over the last four decades and Hank Williams, Jr., is right there—often, he was there first. When it comes to anticipating the direction of country music, Jr. has mattered more than Sr. for a long, long time.
In that picture above, which is from an old copy of Billboard Magazine, Junior is standing next to my cousin, the late Arnold Maxin. He was a true music man…playing horn in the big bands when he was fifteen, selling records for a Philadelphia distributor after the war, working A&R at Okeh Records, producing a number of hits including Screaming Jay Hawkins’ ‘I Put A Spell On You’ and pretty much every Connie Francis album, and ending up as head of MGM Records in the sixties.
Lucinda Williams Takes Me Far Beyond The Blue
On a Tuesday morning, Lucinda Williams’ husband Tom sent me a message asking how far I was from Tarrytown. I punched out “ten minutes” although it’s probably closer to twenty, and hit the send button. She was playing at the old theater there on Saturday night, and up until the day before, I held out hope that I could arise and attend, but it wouldn’t happen. I sent my apologies on Friday afternoon and said “Another time, for sure.”
My column this past week at No Depression is mostly about me and some trouble I’ve had, but also about how Lucinda and her music moved my needle last June on a stormy night. Click here to check it out.
On the day you fly away, far beyond the blue
When you’re done, and your run is finally through
I’m forced to let go, there’ll be no greater sorrow
On that day you fly away, far beyond the blue
OH NO…A FACEBOOK FRIEND SUPPORTS DONALD TRUMP…WHAT WOULD PETE SEEGER DO?
I’ll make this quick. I used to be a serial-social-media -politicalized-poster. You know…that guy. The friend on Facebook who links every left (or right) leaning story on the internet because they think YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS!!! It’s ok….I’m in recovery. Here’s my story about what I now ask myself before I hit the button. What Would Pete Seeger Do?
Videos You Wouldn’t Know Existed, Unless You Found Them By Mistake.
Four years ago on this site, I posted an interview I had with a woman from Boston by the name of Marissa Nadler. She had been described somewhere on the web by various somebodies as both “the indie-folk pinup girl and mistress of the murder ballad” and “a damsel who has tumbled from a frayed tapestry in search of her unicorn, a crystal doll who has escaped from her vitrine, or a tubercular maid who has slipped out of her Victorian deathbed photograph to traipse this earthly plane.”
While most of Nadler’s music and striking visual image screamed goth-girl-fairy-princess, it turned out she was a No Depression reader in high school, loved Americana music, and recorded several albums of covers that she sold on Etsy, including the songs of Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt. She has a track on the Karen Dalton tribute album, Remembering Mountains, that’s been getting a lot of press lately, and has been recording a new album that’s due out later this year.
From Nadler’s music, I began to connect the dots with the sort of electric ethereal psych-folk music that she was doing, along with fellow travelers like the Philadelphia band Espers, the solo recordings of their vocalist Meg Baird, and Maine-based Buck and Shanti Curran who perform and record as Arborea. Buck is a fine guitar maker and excellent musician, and Shanti sings and plays something called a Banjimer (a type of banjo-dulcimer made by Tennessee luthier Gwen Forrester), harmonium, ukulele, sawing fiddle, and hammered dulcimer.
Over the years I’ve kept in “Facebook-touch” with all of the above, and last November I got a message from a person with a suspiciously long name who told me Buck Curran had thought I might be someone that he should reach out to in regards to the music he was making with his trio.
It was a good call. One particularly haunting song has pushed me back down into the Americana rabbit hole, where we bust genre stereotypes by melding various styles with new traditions. After dozens of listens, it’s become my adult version of “It’s a Small World,” and is now looped inside my brain.
Brian Ebin Parker Wolfe is a guitarist and mandolin player. His wife, Rose, does the vocals, and Bobo Lavorgna plays upright bass.
Based in Southeastern Connecticut, the trio made their debut in 2013, although they have each been performing in various configurations, in and beyond New England, for quite some time. Last May, they put out a five-track EP called Bare Wires, followed three months later by a live version of those same five songs, aptly titled Live Wires. Their newest EP, Wind Pictures, was released May 9. All are available on their Bandcamp page, and the 1998 album credited to just Ebin-Rose (sans Lavorgna), Through the Wires, can be found on Spotify and the iTunes store.
For the past six months or so, Brian and I have been exchanging emails, and in a new-age-y, dot-com-era way, it feels like we’ve developed a friendship over common musical tastes and interests. Like many artists I’ve come to know, he has aspirations to expand the band’s reach but also seems much more comfortable talking about the music rather than marketing and self-promotion. Some of you musician types might know of him through his day job at AcousticMusic.org, the shop halfway between Boston and New York that specializes in handmade guitars, mandolins, and banjos. Others might remember reading about him and Rose in Dirty Linen, a great roots music magazine that sprouted from the Fairport Fanatics and had a 27-year run before folding in 2010.
Rose and Brian met when she came into the store to buy a Martin guitar, and she joined the band he was in at the time, which was called Pottery. “[She] grew up in a family filled with music,” he says. “Her father played guitar and harmonica and sang, her mother sang, and other family members played mandolin and banjo. We would call it Americana; they called it music.”
Rose also credits her family and some close friends for inspiring her to sing, and says her style of singing evolved from the music that she and Brian have created together over the past 20-plus years.
(You might have noticed that the trio looked extra large in that video. Matthew Bruns was the other guitarist in Pottery, 30 years ago, and he is also the composer and second guitarist in the video.)
Lavorgna is a journeyman bassist, associated for many years with the late New Haven blues musician Robert Crotty. He’s also played for a number of other groups. In addition to his work with the trio, he proudly proclaims himself to be the 48th member of the great ‘60s band Jake and the Family Jewels, going on his 38th year with them. His work with Brian and Rose, he says, has “given me the opportunity, the freedom, to create a foundation, a color, and a depth to some of the most beautiful and moving music I have ever heard and been privileged enough to play. It is a gift I do not take lightly, and [I] treasure every time we come together to perform and record.”
When Brian and I got around to talking about influences, it wasn’t surprising that we had similar tastes and touchstones: Beatles, Kinks, Stones, Lovin’ Spoonful, Moby Grape, Fairport Convention, Byrds, Blues Project, Pentangle, Fahey, Dead, Joni, CSNY … all the usual suspects of FM radio back in the day. They were all “guitar-driven,” he says, “with a player who had their own style and we were like sponges. Then came Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, Pierre Bensusan … and by the late ’70s, I started to feel my music was at a point where I was becoming more focused on what was in my own head and what I wanted to say through it.”
Like everybody else who plays or writes inside the “big tent” of Americana, Brian now is struggling with what label might be best used to describe the trio’s music. When I recently heard a song on the radio that featured Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, and Ella Fitzgerald and realized it reminded me of ERT, I thought, “jazz – there it is.” Brian has a different perspective:
“Strangely enough I think that Celtic Americana is close, even though I thought it odd at first. I guess if Richard Thompson can be acknowledged by the AMA as Americana Artist of the Year, it is a fairly wide-open field. Anglican folk rock comes to mind as a label, but I doubt there is ever going to be a drop-down box for that. Appalachian music is certainly at its heart Celtic, and how could there be Americana without Appalachian music? When people ask what our band sounds like, I sometimes say we are like Pentangle, only not from the UK, knowing most of them will not have a clue as to how Pentangle sounds.”
Whatever you call it, Wind Pictures is a four-track EP that pays homage to Brian’s old band Pottery by including a song of the same name. Recently the track was included in a compilation from Good Sponge Records, and I like their motto: “Your brain is a sponge. Be good to it. Absorb what’s of quality, and wring out the rest.”
Ebin-Rose Trio … glad they landed in my stream of connectivity.
This was originally published by No Depression, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.
This article and interview was originally published at the No Depression website on April 2, 2011. Marissa is a wonderful sound and visual artist who remains a favorite of mine, and I thought that this deserves a reprint here on my site. She is currently recording a new album for a 2015 release, and has a track on the recent tribute album to Karen Dalton.
Valerie, the twenty-something graphic artist whom I used to work with a few years ago was also a guitarist who fronted a metal band, and she was a good soul with Indian ink hair, Keane-like eyes and translucent skin. One day as I was driving some folks over to the Astro Diner for lunch, she sat in the back of my truck and shuffled through some discs that I had shoved out of the way and under the floor mat. I could see her smile in the rearview mirror and in her flat, po-mo deadpan voice she sneered, “Ed digs chicks with mandolins”.
Although I’m pretty sure I don’t suffer from idiopathic craniofacial erythema, I nevertheless developed a high cutaneous blood flow which caused a radiation of intense heat. Which means that I blushed as a result to an emotional response. It’s associated with shame or modesty, embarrassment or love. Charles Darwin described blushing as “the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.”
It’s no secret nor shame that I do indeed “dig chicks with mandolins” as well as women who play guitars, dulcimers, banjos, fiddles, cellos, bells, pianos, flutes, percussive instruments and autoharps. And if they can write songs and sing, especially in the upper registers while accompanied by open tunings, fingers that pick strings gracefully and have layered vocals with Eno-isms and Fripp-eries…than I may indeed fall hard.
Which brings me to the incredible Marissa Nadler. For when I listen to her sing and play her guitar, as I watch her videos and listen to her lyrics…I feel the heat and flush begin to spread from head to toe and damn it if she isn’t the circus that every little boy wants to run away with. So it would be fair to say that Marissa’s music touches this old man in a most unique way and I just dig her.
In the press section of her website, I counted over forty stories and reviews, from small blogs and fanzines, to mainstream press like Mojo, Pitchfork, Uncut, NPR, Interview and the LA Weekly. I’ve read most all of them because I found it fascinating that a) writers (mostly male) seem to fall in love or lust, and gush over her in the most poetic manner and b) her music has been described in more strange ways than one could possibly imagine.
While I’m left in awe of Marissa’s talent, words to describe her music don’t come easy to me and I admit to feeling hopelessly inadequate. Especially when I read the beautiful, lyrical and flowing words that others have come up with. So here’s a few uncredited “cut and pastes” from the press page of her website. I could never, ever come up with these phrases on my own, but it might give you some sense of what others think of her…and please consider this as a form of graffiti and neither thievery nor laziness:
“The indie-folk pinup girl and mistress of the murder ballad.”
“She’s hacked away the art school whimsy, tossed out the crystals and burned the floaty headscarfs.”
“Simple, melancholic fingerpicked folk ballads that take advantage of her sonorous, spine-tingling vocals, narrating tales of damsels in distress or lovers absent or dead.”
“Compelling medieval twang.”
“A markedly haunting pathos, musing on death, sadness and mourning with an elegiac beauty.”
“Part of me wishes she’d use her siren’s call to unite Sisters of the Moon in a woodland super-group of nymphs and urban wood-sprites.”
“Marissa Nadler could be a damsel who has tumbled from a frayed tapestry in search of her unicorn, a crystal doll who has escaped from her vitrine, or a tubercular maid who has slipped out of her Victorian deathbed photograph to traipse this earthly plane.”
“She’s like a young Stevie Nicks, all doped up and duped to serve as Devendra Banhart’s geisha. Nah, too strong for that. How ’bout Donovan reincarnated as Linda Ronstadt? Except instead of a ’70s pop star, in this life she’s Fairy Queen of the Muir Woods, a mythical creature spotted only by hippie chicks who dare to eat strange mushrooms and venture into the redwoods past nightfall.”
That’s enough of that….you get the idea. Beautifully written words that conjure some sort of witchy maiden swirling in the fog’s mist, wearing long dresses of lace and satin while her black hair blows in the wind and she holds out an alabaster cup filled with a steamy potion that is sure to lure any man to her lair.
And that right there is what I’d call her curse and her blessing, because she carries this image on her shoulders that might work with many fans but also will chase others away. But she is not living in the land of unicorns and dragon slayers, and her music is not all incense and peppermints and it sits neatly on the shelf with artists ranging from Joni Mitchell to Emmylou Harris to Vashti Bunyan. There is a lot of talent, strength and intelligence in this woman, and although I”ll admit that I fell for the image at first (and have since become platonically smitten as I’ve gotten to know her) it offers great satisfaction for me to help assist in the demystification if Marissa for you and bring it all back to Mother Earth.
Marissa Nadler turns thirty this month. She grew up in a Boston suburb and then attended the Rhode Island School of Design where she studied fine art. She taught herself how to play guitar, uses a lot of open tunings and fingerpicks with her thumb and index finger. She has four “official” albums out, as well as quite a few other projects that she sells at shows, on her Etsy page, website or Bandcamp page. She has toured extensively in the US and Europe. She’s tried living in New York, which she found claustrophobic, and Los Angeles which was just too sunny. She now resides again in Boston when not traveling the highway.
I’ve read she prefers old things to new things, and she cites these folks as some of the artist’s she likes to listen to: Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, Neil Young, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Roy Orbison, Elliot Smith, Bob Dylan, Mazzy Star, Opal, Throwing Muses, Leonard Cohen and the Band. On her Covers album (available only on Etsy), she sings Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt and simply nails Lennon’s “Jealous Guy”.
She was the breakout artist performing this year at the first ever Couch By Couch West web-fest alternative to Austin’s SXSW, putting up some simple homemade videos that drew me in and reminded me that I had all of her albums uploaded, but had barely spent enough time with them. The urge came upon me to curl up with them immediately and so began several days of non-stop Nadler-maniacal obsessive compulsion which made me seek her out like some lecherous stalker.
Thankfully, writing for this site has cachet and she’s graciously allowed me into her world, although I imagine it shall be fleeting as she is a busy person. Over several days we traded messages, tweets and emails and I share our conversations:
Easy Ed: When you and I first connected, you mentioned that No Depression was a magazine you read back in high school. What were your interests back then? Did you identify at all with the alt.country and Americana scene at the time?
Marissa Nadler: Well, I remember really having an affinity for the rootsy Americana scene at the time, probably because it was so different from my own upbringing in New England. I worshipped the west and the freedom it embodied. Part of alt. country and Americana was linked to that wanderlust. My interests back then were my painting career mostly, and music was still a hobby until about age 18. I would just spent my awkward adolescence copying master paintings in my basement and listening to music on the boombox. A lot of this music was prog rock and classic rock. A lot of it was folk and americana. I loved Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams and they really spoke to me. Also, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels. Elizabeth Cotton. I could go on and on.
EE: I felt you were the breakout artist this year at Couch By Couch West and you certainly captured my heart with your homemade videos. You’ve mentioned that it was a more comfortable setting for you, making and uploading videos, than your previous live SXSW experience. Can you share a little about that?
MN: Ha! Thanks Ed. CXCW was a good alternative to SXSW, at least for me. To answer your question, my career has never been an overnight thing. I am not the kind of artist that some A&R guy would see at SXSW and give a big record deal too. This is mostly because I am and always have been a bit shy, and stage fright really debilitates me at those high pressure events. For the past four or five records and those related SXSW shows, the people around me, whether various managers or various record label lackeys that I was working with at the time, would really put a lot of pressure on me to “kill it.” It was as if not doing these showcases was somehow career suicide. One particular year, I ran off the stage after three songs. I am really particular about my sound, but people always see a chick with a guitar and think they don’t need a soundcheck and also assume you suck. (That and you don’t get sound-checks at festivals). So, I’m fingerpicking on a twelve-string and all you can hear is feedback. I start crying, run off stage. End. Three songs. I must add, however, that this hasn’t happened since and I am doing well at my live performances these days.
EE: You use lots of open tunings when you play guitar, and on your albums it’s augmented by all sorts of other instruments, electronics and sounds. Does that come from your collaborators or is it something you hear in your head early on in the songwriting process and direct during the recording process?
MN: I’m pretty open to what my collaborators, like Carter Tanton, will throw in the mix. Carter, who’s arrangements feature prominently on my new record, has a very delicate ear and a sensibility for melody that I trust. So, I basically just have to work with people who I love and trust that can handle playing delicately and knowing when not to play. Usually, during the actual songwriting, my main focus is the words and the vocal melody, and when I can get a real groove on with the guitar, it’s usually by using an open tuning. I can keep the bass notes droning for a constant atmosphere.
EE: I read an interview where you spoke about going into Guitar Center and being treated like the little girl who plays a pink guitar. It seems to me that anyone able to put out five albums, who has toured throughout the world, created an image of both femininity and strength in equal measure and runs a business indicates quite a bit of ambition and tenacity. How do you view your accomplishments so far and what have been some of the highlights for you?
MN: Well, that is very sweet of you, as well as observant. It is a hard thing to strike a balance between femininity and strength. If you are too strong, a lot of men in the music industry view it as “diva” behavior. If you are too meek, or wear too many dresses, people think you can’t play your guitar. I get both assumptions a lot, no matter how many albums I put out, and notoriously have had difficulty with sound-men throughout my life. I have always had a very definitive idea for what I wanted. Whether is was 7 seconds of long hall reverb on my voice or more treble, I knew what I wanted but the sound-men always seemed to think differently. The obvious choice would have been to hire my own sound technician but I have never been able to afford one. I always felt and still do feel that there is a huge double standard in the music industry. There is an argument to be made that women musicians have to play guitar twice as good and write twice as well to get the same amount of respect that the men do. Also, I find an incredible amount of pressure to “look good.” Video killed the radio star, I guess.
In terms of accomplishments, pretty much I just live day by day. I have to be honest with you that I am one of those workaholics that is never happy with the work I have done and I am constantly striving to be better, even at the risk of complete emotional ruin. But, yeah, I guess if I had to name one single accomplishment, I am pretty proud of overcoming my debilitating shyness and it’s crippling shackles to be able to share my music with the world.
EE: Can you share a little about your new album and what we can expect to hear? You mentioned something to me about a pedal steel guitar.
MN: Well, I would say that Brian McTear, who produced this record, did a great job! There are many intimate moments on the record with just guitar and vocals and there are some big, luscious arrangements. There are three songs with absolutely no reverb, which was a huge thing for me. I always and still do love the way reverb make the voice sound, but on this record I wanted it to really cut deep. I noticed the dryer the vocal, the more emotional the sounds sounded. I used to not be able to listen to my voice without reverb. Now, I can listen to it completely dry. Its so much more intimate. Carter Tanton added an incredible amount of beauty to the record with some of his choices as well.
In other parts of the record, we used Tammy Wynette recordings as a way to place the vocals in the mix. So, in some ways, it’s mixed like a classic Americana record. Nevertheless, it has many atmospheric and dreamy moments. Yes, there are two songs with some real rootsy pedal steel “jamming.” And I have to tell you, I never thought I would hear a groovy jam on one of my own records. I actually can’t even believe I just wrote the words groovy jam.
EE: What was your thought process in deciding to fund it through Kickstarter and handle the sales on your own, going outside of the traditional music business model?
MN: Well, things are changing. Everyone’s got to try something new, whether it’s artists or the labels. Its a lot of work but I’m really enjoying my freedom. I am self-distributing through a mail order system. I put pre-order buttons up on my websites far in advance, knowing I would need to be as organized as possible. I also put up a way for stores to order bulk/wholesale from me. So far, so good! (Click here for her website.) If I get overwhelmed, I may use a distributor down the line but definitely an independent one.
EE: I saw you have posted some west coast tour dates for June…where else are you planning to perform? And is your audience of equal gender and age, or is it tilted one way or another?
MN: I am planning on touring the entire US as well as the rest of the world. My audience is changing. My first and most loyal fans have always been older men who are finger picking and songwriting fanatics and music buffs. I also now have a size-able legion of black metal fans at my shows due to my collaboration with Xasthur’s Malefic. I wish more ladies would come to my shows.
EE: In reading some of your press, people sure throw many different labels or genres on your music, many I’ve never even heard of before. So how do you describe what you do?
MN: First and foremost, I take my songwriting very seriously. That is my main craft. I work very hard on the lyrics, the structures, and the melodies. I also consider myself a guitar player. Labels beyond that to help describe the music to new listeners would be dreamy, atmospheric, sultry, nostalgic, and romantic.
I told Marissa that it was my hope with this profile that I could help expand her audience a little. You know, old guys coming out to the shows are nice and all that, but I’d think a younger, broader audience would be there if they just knew her a little better. With an extensive touring schedule being put together, it shouldn’t be too hard to find her.
Here’s a list of what I call Marissa’s “official” releases, although she is an extremely prolific woman in the recording studio and there’s much more to be found in the way of compilations, live EP’s, the great lo-fi Covers album available only on Etsy, and other gems and one-offs:
Ballads of Living and Dying (2004)
The Saga of Mayflower May (July 2005)
Songs III: Bird On The Water (March 2007)
Little Hells (March 2009)
Marissa Nadler (Coming June 2011)
These links where you can learn more, hear music, watch videos and buy things:
http://www.marissanadler.com
http://marissanadler.bandcamp.com
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Marissamoon6
http://twitter.com/#!/marissanadler
The photograph at the top of this post is credited to Courtney Brooke Hall, 2011. Copyright. http://www.lightwitch.com/
Last week the Americana
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