One Album Wonders: He's A Gypsy Boy, He's A Miracle Man, He Is Bob Carpenter

The story of Bob Carpenter is one of unsteadiness, reject, and uncertainty, of wandering through life looking for purpose. Carpenter was half-Ojibway, born into the First Nations tribe on the Northern Ontario Tamagami  reservation, from which an unhappy childhood full of orphanages and foster homes followed. This broken childhood most certainy instilled not only a sense of restlessness but also a strong resistance against being told what to do, something that would ultimately derail his music career before it even began. He went to the Navy, but was discharged for mischievous conduct on drunken shore leave. After some years of rambling and wandering around he ended up in the Yorkville folk club scene of Toronto, where basicall every Canadian folkie paid his dues. 

The story of Bob Carpenter is also that of a man banging his head against the recording industry and its conventions. Trouble started early when finally trying to harness the power of Carpenter's songs into records. Recording sessions with Neil Young's producer David Briggs in 1970-1971 fell apart when they clashed about the direction of his music. Enter producer, fellow Canadian and future Mr. Emmylou Harris Brian Ahern. Recording Carpenter seemingly was like pulling teeth, and the promising partnership soon took a turn for the worse. Ahern believed in Carpenter's songs, but not necessarily in the stark manner Carpenter presented them in. Where Carpenter wanted to,play his songs as simply as possible, Ahern thought bringing in studio cracks and overdubbing embellishments was the way to go. A minor disagreement with Ahern concerning the use of instrumentation and the general 'sweetening' of the record grew into a bigger conflict that finally unraveled Carpenter's burgeoning career. 

Carpenter had also signed with Ahern for the publishing rights of his songs, but that deal was about to expire at around the same time that the release of Silent Passage was scheduled. Ahern insisted that Carpenter resign with him, but Carpenter decided that he didn't want to and tried to hold out for other publishing deals. Though the exact rundown of things is unclear and no one - especially not Ahern - detailledevents, things went something like this: Ahern essentially took Silent Passage hostage, withholding it from release and essentially blackballing Carpenter from the music industry while the conflicts with him weren't resolved. And we're not talking about 'accidentally mislaying the master tape' either, 30.000 copies of the album were sitting in a warehouse ready to ship when Ahern, backed by Warner Brothers, decided to withhold the album. Warner Brothers first postponed, then cancelled the release, with all of those records being melted down a while later. 

When Canadian specialist label Stony Plain finally released Silent Passage in 1984, almost a full decade after its scheduled release, the era of the folky singer-songwriter had long gone the way of the dodo, and so had Carpenter's ambitions of a music career. In 1984 Silent Passage was on first release essentially an archival release. Whatever moment the kind of country-folk and singer-songwriter music had in the early 70s was gone, and so was Carpenter's shot at a career. What's left is Silent Passage, and the music itself.   

So, that orchestration and those backing singers that caused so much strife? Yeah, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Ahern's 'more is more' approach works wonders on opening track "Miracle Man", which faithful One Buck Heads might remember from the very first volume of All Pearls, No Swine. With slide guitar by the late great Lowell George, backing vocals by Emmylou Harris and a fabulously catchy tune, "Miracle Man" does go big and works great. But the slower, more introverted numbers probably didn't need more than a voice and an acoustic guitar. Blame the whole orchestration debate turned fiasco on the times. As a folkie/singer-songwriter on Warner/Reprise in the early 1970s you basically were assured that some string accompaniment was going to end up on your record, with Lenny Waronker's work with Gordon Lightfoot being the prime example.  

Compromised in their form - at least in Carpenter's mind - or not, the songs of Silent Passage are sturdy to withstand whatever embellishments Ahern put on them. The title song is an absolute marvel, with some of my favourite opening lines to any song ever: "Before the war I had no need for traveling / indeed I do not know what made it so important to leave." And the great lines just keep on coming: "Upon this ship of life, we are the mast, the sails and the wind", yet by the end of the song "we are scattered on the oceans once again". Masterpiece, pure and simple. It's sailing and war imagery will be picked up by "First Light" a little bit later on, to almost eually stunning effect.

After the one-two punch of  "Miracle Man" and "Silent Passage" settles into a number of songs, in which the protagonist - an eternal wanderer in search of reason, purpose and companionship - always seems to be at least partly Carpenter himself. "I'm searching always for better wheather", he sings in "The Believer", "I'll chase my shadow 'till I remember". And consider the title character in the backwoods gothic tale of "Gypsy Boy", the song Tony Joe White covered: "I think it's time to leave now, but I don't know where we're going...for I am a gypsy boy, and my home is where you find me."

These observations make it seems like it's some sort of solipsistic record to rival the L.A. mellow mafia guys, but that could not the further from the truth. Carpenter's tone is mystical, all these characters seem to live in a netherworld that is not quite here and not quite elsewhere, vaguely familiar but also strange, both hostile and inviting at the same time. There is something deeply unnowable in Carpenter's words and his songs, a sense of mystery and myth that never completely get uncovered before the listener. Ed Ochs' great essay on Carpenter ponders this and the other enigmas of Carpenter's life and music and is well worth reading in whole. 

But really, it all comes back to that music. Silent Passage is one of the great, way too unknown treasures of North American music from the 70s. So with the miracle man, the gypsy boy, set sail on his ship of life, and see where this Silent Passage takes you... 

P.S.: Even though he is technically a one album wonder, if you like Bob Carpenter and Silent Passage, rejoice: there will be more Carpenter and Carpenter-related material here at One Buck Records.