Next Stop: Dead Man's Town

Various Artist tribute albums are admittedly often a hit-and-miss affair. It's not for nothing that One Buck Records features a whole selection of reworked tribute albums - often thinned doqn editions to curb the spread and throw off the duffers. Various artist ributes to an artist's specific album aren't any different. I recently listened - obviously linked to Bruce and Born In The USA month on these pages - to Badlands, the tribute to Nebraska by a bunch of Americana artists, that got really good reviews back in the days, so I picked it up, but it never became a favorite. Something about it doesn't work. Today's album is obviously not about Nebraska, but Born In The USa, so e're off to Dead Man's Town, a 2014 tribute album by folk/country/Americana label Lightning Rod, that also doesn't quite work. Don't get me wrong, it works well enough, otherwise it wouldn't show up here - theme month or not - but yeah, something about this album makes it less than the sum of its parts. 

And the parts themselves should be really good. Aericana covers of Bruce featuring such house favorites as Jason Isbell and highly rated artists like Justin Townes 'Son Of Steve' Earle, Blitzen Trapper, Trampled By Turtles or Low. This thing should have been a freakin' slam dunk, and I thought it would be, rejoicing when I found it for little money during the famous soldes sales weeks. And it starts impressive enough, ith a slow, moody violin-led version of the title song by Jason Isbell and then-wife Amanda Shires, followed by...a slow, moody cover of "Cover Me" by The Apache Relay. Do you see where this is going? Yes, to get rid of the mainstream sheen and, let's say, populist stink of the original, almost all of the artists here have the same idea: play the song slow and moody. Which is fine, if you do it, and do it ell, but loses in efficacity, when half a dozen or more of your colleagues have the same idea. 

This, then, is Dead Man's Town's problem in a nutshell. In a vacuum, by themselves, these are all very fine versions of Bruce's songs, but the cumulative effect of having so many slow, moody covers makes the album come off a bit sleepy, as if it's permanently stuck in first gear. Thank god that the Quaker City Nighthaks find another gear for "Darlington County" - which admittedly would have sounded weird in slo-mo - and the North Mississippi All-Stars turn the elegiac "My Hometown" in a raucous uptempo coutry & western (or maybe rather cowpunk-adjacent) tune. 

So, Dead Man's Town is full of fine music which is just assembled less than perfectly. This is maybe an album where the shuffle function could come in handy, for a slightly more surprising listen. Sure, it won't suddenly pick up more pace in the abundance of slow numbers, but it's worth a try, maybe. Here Dead Man's Town is presented as is. And as is, sameyness and all, this is still a very nice collection of Springsteen cover tunes, especially if you're into the whole Americana thing. 

So, get ready, next exit: Dead Man's Town! 

PS: If the idea of Americana-flavored Bruce covers talks to you, check out For You, an Italian-artist compilation of exactly that, which features a couple of songs rarely covered elsewhere. 

...The Time That Two Future Cars Took A Turn Down Folk Rock Avenue...

Welcome back to Cars appreciation week! Oh, you didn't know it was Cars appreciation week around here? Neither did I, until just about now. But mentioning the long and winding path to the seeming overnight success of the Cars made me think that Ric Ocasek's and Benjamin Orr's  unexpected detour into folk/soft rock is worth a detour. So we jump in the car, next destination: Milkwood. 

So how exactly did Ocasek and Orr end up singing three-harmony soft folk songs? Blame Jim "Jas" Goodkind, who searched for band members to form a blues rock group (well, it was the early 70s...) and ended up with one Richard Otcasek, armed with an acoustic guitar and a couple of songs. So the two forgot about the whole blues rock deal and played as an acoustic duo, before Otcasek proposed bringing in his old friedn from high school, Benjamin Orzechowski. Milkwood built a bit of a following in Boston and the area, then signed with Paramount Records to record 1973's How's The Weather?, our One Buck Record of the day. 

Hey, what is Waylon Jennings doing there on the right? Oh, hold on, it's Benjamin Ortchowski, soon to lose the beard and then a ton of letters of his name...

And of course there is more to Milkwood than that, because Ocasek and Orr met Greg Hawkes while working on How's The Weather?, adding sax and taking care of the horn arrangements. So while Milkwood doesn't sound anything like The Cars, it's interesting that three fifths of the band were assembled here to work on an album that Milkwood had high hopes in, but sank like a stone. When How's The Weather? flopped, the band was done within weeks of that failure, with Orr and Ocasek moving on to other short-lived bands, until...well, you know. 

But enough about the band, what about the music? Well, it'spretty neat. Nothing earth-shaking, very much in the vein of America, with Ocasek's decidedly odd humour and slightly askew point of view only shining through in very brief moments. Ocasek is at least very well cosplaying the part of the sensitive folkie, with song titles including "Dream Trader", "Winter Song" and - don't laugh - "Timetrain Wonderwheel". This is all very pleasant, if not exactly what you'd expect three future Cars to come up with. But it's definitely more than just youthful ephemera. It will probably not climb up your personal best albums ever list, but it's a really nice early 70s folk-rock (with soft rock touches) album, if you are in for that kind of thing. 

Aah, the letters are still there, but the future Mr. Orr is much more recognizable like that...and check out the snazzy 'stache on Slick Ric...

Today's offering is a whole package, including artwork, photos and a Boston Globe article with enlightenig comments by Jim Goodkind that functions as virtual liner notes for this album. So, enjoy your trip into Milkwood, then we will be back with a last little Cars-related surprise in the next few days...

That Mr. Ely, He Was One Of A Kind...Here's More Proof

When I posted Easy Street in December to honor the then recently deceased Joe Ely, I mentioned that the outtakes from his MCA sessions in the mid-80s were split into two for more reasonably timed and balanced albums. So here is the promised part two, One Of A Kind. Which he was. As with Easy Street, the sound is indeed very mid-80s, though maybe a touch less so than on the first album. One Of A Kind is a record that puts the rock into roots rock, starting straight off with three uptempo rockers, only slowing down for (imaginary) side closer "They Sing Of Her Beauty". a trademark beautiful country ballad. 

And then it's pedal to the medal again with the newly minted title song and "Back To My Molehill", a Zydeco-styled number that reminds us that Ely was an Americana artist in the truest sense, mixing different music styles into his music that isn't bound by the sometimes rigid style codes of the alt country crowd he influenced.  This is also abundantly clear with expansive album closer "Take Me Down", which has some reasonably avant garde keyboard sequences mixed in (New Wave oblige?). 

Like Easy Street, One Of A Kind's eight tracks show a performer who has a unique take on the genre, and these tracks should have been issued a lot earlier (as in, ever). For some fine music that brings to mind folks like The Mavericks or even Los Lobos (on "Molehill"), switch lanes from Easy Street and listen to the one and only Joe Ely, truly One Of A Kind...

Edit: I wanted to set a link to Easy Street and reup that one, but initially forgot. Both is now done, in case you want the double shot of Mr. Ely...

One Night Some Americana Troubadours Walked Into The Troubadour...

 ...and they delivered this set of Americana music. The troubadours in question are Wilco, the time and place are the 16th November at The Troubadour, and the occasion was, obviously, touring behind Being There, the breakthrough album that really put them on the map. The preceding year's  A.M. was a nice 'we're here' sign and proof of tament for a band some people had doubts about - after all, in Uncle Tupelo he was, according to newly acquired arch enemy Jay Farrar "the bass player". A.M. was a straight forward alt country meets the Rolling Stnes bar room,boogie album, but Jeff Tweedy really started to flower as a songwriter and composerv on Being There. 

The concert is presented in its original running order, with one exception: I didn't like the almost nine minute colossus "Kingpin" showing up so early, preferring a straight run to the Being There numbers at the beginning, so "Kingpin" was placed towards the end of the set, where it could have been the final number before a four song encore. I deleted most banter (which I know some of you will miss, but I usually don't), but otherwise you'll get all the music from this gig, later issued with the above art work for a limited vinyl run. My copie was graciously attached by Amazon to the Mp3 version of the hard copy I bought of them, thanks to an overtly altruistic algorhythm. Thanks, evil empire!

I didn't follow Wilco through their carre mutations/evolutions, and kind of tapped out during their krautrock period, but this concert, when they were still essentially a twangy bar band done good, I was fully on the Wilco train, and I think 2001's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is one of the best albums of the 2000s. 

Here you'llget a good glimpse of the band at a formative stage, when they were figuring out in rel time, what they could and should be.So, let's hear these troubadours light up The Troubadour, shall we? 

Welcome To Pink Floyd Country

And I mean that literally. Don't let it be said that I don't recognize the trace of a good idea if I stumble upon one. My use of alternate takes including pedal steel and violin when reconfiguring Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here tempted a reader (hi, Thames!) to declare it a country album, which - while not strictly accurate - does capture the different feel of that version. It also left me with a new idea: What about making a real, dyed-in-the-wool country album of Pink Floyd tunes. And here it is: Welcome To Pink Floyd Country? 

There were two problems with the plan: first of all, there were way less country covers of Pink Floyd songs than I imagined - maybe that match made in heaven wasn't as obvious as I made it out to be? And secondly, of those that existed, there was a rather uneven playing field: I could probably fill a compilation with covers of "Wish You Were Here" and "Time" alone, as these two are by far the most popular cover song choices, including some country & bluegrass artists. But I wanted a variety of songs, so no doubles, not counting the pedal steel version of "Wish You Were Here" of the band itself that was all over the OBG Edit of Wish You Were Here, and is here in all its unaltered, full glory. 

But I did find enough good stuff to complete This Is Pink Floyd Country. One thing that was interesting is that more than half of the tracks on here come from The Wall. I wouldn't have thought that at first, thinking that tracks from Dark Side Of The Moon would outnumber them, but that was definitely wrong - "Time" excluded. Though, to be fair, I took a full four tracks from a single band and album: Luther Wright & The Wrongs covered the entire Wall album in a bluegrass style, though I'm still not quite sure whether the whole thing is an elaborate piss-take on the album or an honest, if definitely idiosyncratic take on it. There is definitely a touch too much of country humour in Mr. Wright's voice, but I took the tracks that sound the most genuine, while definitely bringing the country instrumentation in spades.

I'm already on the record as declaring Cornbread Red's take on "Comfortably Numb" as my favorite take on the song - ever. But there are also great takes on "Mother" by main Dixie Chick Natalie Maines and a really nice run through "Run Like Hell" by multi-instrumentalist David West (he also adds a great take on "See Emily Play"). Wish You Were Here is represented by Cody Jinks' fantastic take on the title song, again led by a majestic pedal steel, showing how that song would have turned out if David Gilmour was a redneck (and I mean that in the best possible way), as well as prog bluegrass band Kitchen Dwellers' take on "Welcome To The Machine". Out of the "Time" covers I chose the one by Cash Dawson, who really brings a nicely atmospheric alt country/Americana vibe to it. And finally, there's Billy Strings with an awesome, extended take on "Fearless". 

So, cool cover, cool cover versions, here's This Is Pink Floyd Country for your delectation...

Exit On Easy Street: Sayin' Goodbye To The Lord Of The Highway

Joe Ely died earlier this week. Now, unlike some other folks that have dies in recent years, I don't have a particularly strong connection to Ely, despite him working in Americana, so music that should be right up my alley. But somehow I never stumbled over any of his albums, so he mainly stayed in my conscience as a guy that many of the Americana and Alt Country artists that I like idolized and namechecked. As a matter of fact, for years the only Joe Ely song in my collection was the cover of "Are You Sure Hand Done It This Way?" with Uncle Tupelo. Ely had been sick for a while it seems, and announced in Spetember that he had dementia and Parkinson's, so you figured he wouldn't be very long for this world. Still, another one of the old heroes gone. It's starting to get mighty thin in the ranks for a certain type of country-folk singer-songwriter. Having recently posted the second album of my Willie & Waylon Outlaws series, I'm thinking that Willie Nelson is immortal, but he will definitely be the last one left.

Anyway, just because I'm not the world's biggest Ely fan, mainly out of ignorance, doesn't mean that I won't mark his passing with a bit of his music. Because the only Ely music I have I put aside a while ago to maybe do something with for this blog. And now that Ely is gone, I did. So these tracks that make up Easy Street and a second album to come up later were recorded by Joe Ely in the mid-80s, in 1985 or early 1986 to be precise, for a follow-up to 1984's Hi-Res. However, his relationship with RCA, the label he was with for eight years and five albums was starting to get rocky, and MCA decided against releasing an album from these sessions, finally dropping Ely from the label. He recorded two albums for Hightone Records before fianlly going back top MCA for the 90s. 

The music that is on Easy Street is proof of Ely's all-encompassing approach to his music. It's rooted in country, but Ely's music is as much rock, while also dipping into honky tonk, mariachi music, and even reggae, as on "Up A Tree", while kick-ass opener "Baby Needs A New Pair Of Shoes" is almost new wave. He's also pretty good with country ballads, as on "A Thousand Miles From Home" and "Heart And Soul". This is all pretty good stuff, and eminently worth of being released. Fair warning, though; This is music from the mid-80s and boy does it sound like it. Drums like gunshots, an overly bright and very likely digital sheen - this isn't a roots record in the traditional sense, or at least it doesn't sound like one. But it does sound pretty good, even if it does sound of its time. 

So here's part one of unreleased Joe Ely, which we more or less discover together. Next stop: Easy Street...

R.I.P. Earle Rewell "Joe" Ely, 1947 - 2025

Every road on One Buck Records leads into Americana...

 

...or so it seems, but you already knew that. From the country rock of the late 60s and early 70s to the alt.country from the early to mid-90s, to the various genre permutations until today, Americana is the one genre that is a contant throughout a ton of music that I like. But, as I said, you might have noticed, whether by listening to the All Pearls, No Swine series, or some of the One-Album Wonders, or hell, even by commercial giants like the Dixie Chicks who maintained a healthy, authentic link to the genre's past. So, it was obvious that at some point I would not only dip into the genre, but full on dive back into the Americana pool. If you have been around for a good long while, you might remember that there was already a full-on Americana sampler around here, back when I made a Blue Rose album sampler. Americana Vol. 1 has no borders or barriers,but also no particular theme, other than being a ton of cool Americana songs that I like a lot. 

There is some aural connect here, in sound and sensibility, maybe because this compilation focuses on modern Americana from the last 30 years or so. The oldest track on here should be Gillian Welch's demo for her classic "Orphan Girl", immediately covered by Emmylou Harris, which is like being knighted in the country rock scene. There's a bunch of groups from the birth of alt.country in the 90s - Whiskeytown, Old 97's and the previously featured Son Volt. Since we already mentioned the queen of Americana, there's other female genre royalty. Patty Griffin's moving "Wild Dog" is as good as anything on 1.000 Kisses - which means it's plenty good. And Alison Krauss with trusty band Union Station in tow as well as Neko Cse are reliable awesome as well.

This collection also collects (some) of the cream of the crop of the last decades in Americana, including one of its most emblematic figures and undoubtedly its best lyricist, Mr. Jason Isbell. "Last Of My Kind", featured here, is a moving, elegiac portrait of a young man from the country, lost in the big city...and the century. "Tried to go to college but I didn't belong, every thing I said was either funny or wrong / laughed at my boots, laughed at my jeans, laughed when they gave me amphetamines" and then juxtaposes this brilliantly with the down home wisdom from back on the farm, that doesn't hold up anymore: "Daddy said the river would always lead me home / but the river can't take me back in time, dand dady's dad and gone / and the family farm's a parking lot, a Walton's Five And Dime", "Mom says God won't give you too muc to bear / might be true in Arkansas but I'm a long long way from there". Isbell's storytelling and the precise way he chronicles the challenges of being a Southern man in a modern, changing society date back to his time in Drive-By-Truckers ("Outfit"), but he has only gotten better since. 

Another cultish figure who has grown more prominent in recent years is Sturgill Simpson and his decidedly retro, old school style  that is sometimes compared to the Outlaw country of the 70s. His signature cosmic cowboy anthem "Turtles All The Way Down" is featured here in a bluegrass version. Other talent rising in the last decade or so that ar featured here: Colter Wall, Lucero, Ben Nichols, Brad Armstrong, Charles Wesley Godwin and John Moreland with a terrific acoustic cover of "Thunder Road". Speaking of cool covers: Darius Rucker, formerly the lead singer of biggest/luckiest bar band in the world, Hootie and the Blowfish, was always a rootsy guy, but embraced full on country/Americana as a solo artist and covers Bob Dylan's never-fnished "Wagon Wheel" from the Bob Dylan & Billy The Kid soundtrack sessions.

So, lots of good stuff here, all coming with the OBG seal of approval. If you want to spend some quality time with some quality Americana music, this is the place to be, folks. Y'all have a good one with this one... 

The French Connection: L'Americana à la française...

Ah, 'tis the season. The rainy season. The getting dark early season. The season prone to slightly melancholic music. Or is it already The End Of The Season? To Redeye, it is. The French singer-songwriter who is behind the Redeye moniker, has studied the art of Americana well, and brings a pretty perfect simulation of the real thing made in France. 'All tracks written and performed by G. " Redeye" Fresneau' reads the booklet, somewhat akwardly. Mr. Fresneau seemingly hides his first name to, uh, hide that he's a dyed in the wool Frenchman, maybe? It's okay, Guillaume, Windows Media's automatic album recognition destroyed the mystery. Redeye's wish for authentic Americana-ness is cute, if not a little overzealous. Until this album, I have never seen a booklet proudly announce where it was printed. But since End Of The Season's was printed in Oregon, the booklet proudly announces this, as if to say 'See how Americana we Frenchmen really are? Even our booklet comes from there!'. 

There is, however, a good reason that Redeye's music sounds so close to the originals it tries to emulate: Fresneau spent four formative years in Austin, Texas, one of the capital's of No Depression/Americana. And like fellow Texans Midlake, there is a good amount of folk and psych elements in Redeye's music. D'ailleurs, the preferred nomenclature for his music, as per Fresneau, is psych-folk, but whatever you want to call it, it's really nice mood music if you are in the mood for some autumnal melancholy. 

This is the kind of sadly beautiful Americana that I would have killed for twenty five years ago and am still A okay with today. The tempo never rises above midtempo and Redeye draws in the same coloring book for most of this album.On the other hand, he has a real knack for this kind of music and this can proudly be put with your other melancholy Americana/singer-songwriter albums. Lucile Vallez' mournful violin wanders through most of these songs and give them a big part of their appeal, though there is also some tasteful accordion and saxophone on the cajun-style "Sunny Roads" and some horns on "Cold As Ice". This isn't just some guy strumming on his acoustic guitar, but beautifully produced music. It also seems no coincidence that the latter two songs with their expansion of Redeye's sound find themselves in the middle of the record, as if Redeye realized that to fight a certain sameyness in his music it would be wise to color a bit outside the lines on these tracks. A trumpet accompanies "Season's Ending" as well, another welcome bit of offsetting the usual instrumentation.   

Since this, his debut album, Fresneau has turned Redeye into a real band, now normally going under (This Is) ReDeYe, still plowing that psych-folk-Americana field he first worked on End Of The Season. But check out the beginnings of Fresneu's faux Americana (Fauxmericana?), because it's better than quite a bit of the 'authentic' stuff...

  

Call him Cool Hand Elvis or Cowboy Costello...how Declan McManus' West was won...

Storytime with ol' OBG, who's going to tell you a litte about how Elvis Costello could have become a country star, years before genre exercise Almost Blue got him in a country kind of mood. The year is 1978 and My Aim Is True has come and gone. It did some business as an import disc in the US, but couldn't get a distribution deal there. Single release "Alison" also failed to chart. But wait - somebody somewhere had to adopt the song, right?! The student community of the University of Texas at Austin embraced "Alison", making it a local hit record. Which got tiny local country label Tumbleweeds Record thinking. So an inquiry of Tumbleweeds Records reaches the offices of Stiff Records. Would Elvis Costello have more country-ish songs in the vein of "Alison", to be released locally on Tumbleweeds Records, with the hopes of a grass roots movement pushing that country rock record further than the Austin area.  

Costello is in London busy working on what will be This Year's Model. But, in turn,  Elvis gets to do some thinking. The guys at Tumbleweed Records want another "Alison"? He's got that. They want more tried and true country stuff? Well, he got that, too.Kind of, sort of. And to give the Tumbleweeds records guys a whole album, he's diving into his back catalogue. Deeply back. 

Costello has two very recent, obvious contributions lying around: The fantastic, George Jones-esque (soon to be recorded as a duet with Jones!) tearjerker "Stranger In The House", that the powers to be at Stiff convinced him not to put on My Aim Is True. And he has "Radio Sweetheart", a number he cut as a demo for Dave Edmunds at the behest of Stiff Records. But two albums do not an album make. So Costello reaches back to his semi-recent past on the pub rock circuit. More explicitly, to his time with Flip City, the pub rock group that dabbled in country rock, or more precisely the kind of vaguely soul-inflected roots rock that a lot of pub rock bands were doing. And it so happens that Flip City recorded a song that sounds like an absolute dead ringer (or rather, a blueprint) of "Alison", "Imagination (Is A Powerful Deceiver)". Plus a bunch of other vaguely country-ish songs, including covers of The Amazing Rhythm Aces' "Third Rate Romance" and Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door". 

So, with the two country numbers he hasn't found room for elsewhere and the best of the Flip City stuff, Costello has the country rock record that Tumbleweeds Records wants. To sound more country, Flip City are being redubbed The Flip City Ramblers, while Mr. Costello gets of course top billing. Yet Radio Sweethearts, the resulting album, doesn't sell much outside of the faithful, and the two singles Tumbleweeds Record launches ("Imagination" and "Radio Sweetheart", are little more than turntable hits on student radio. So, Elvis' career as a country star have to wait, while he strongly rebounds with This Year's Model, paving the way for another country sojourn down the line...

Well, this is where we get back to reality, where no such record exists - until now! One Buck Records is proud to present how the first country record by Elvis Costello could have really sounded like...

Now, that rusty ol' truck there needs some remodeling, hoss...

You ever had the long slow burn of an album that’s a grower? No, I don’t mean in the days after getting it. An album that doesn’t just grow over the first couple of listens, but takes its sweet time, growing and growing and growing...over a couple of years. Rusty Truck’s album Luck’s Changing Lanes is such an album, at least for me. It’s an album that’s been sitting pretty in my record collection since 2013 and until last year it was sitting there waiting to get played once a year, maybe. And then, over the course of a couple of month, something strange happened. Having had its yearly outing, the melodies and words kept creeping back up on me regularly, and I caught myself humming or singing a couple of lines...then had to remember what they were...then realized...Rusty Truck!?

When I picked up this album I had never heard of Rusty Truck before. Nor did I necessarily know who Mark Seliger was. But a sticker promising, among others, special guests Sheryl Crow, Jakob Dylan, Lenny Kravitz, Willie Nelson, and Gillian Welch had me intrigued. Googling Mark Seliger, I realized that I had probably seen the name a bunch of times, seeing how he was essentially the house photographer of Rolling Stone magazine for more than a decade, shooting most of their iconic covers from the 1990s and the photo series for articles. Becoming friends with Jakob Dylan, towards the end of that run, had Seliger pursue his life-long love for country music. Dylan produced a first demo and fellow wallflower Rami Jaffee put together the band that became Rusty Truck. And despite the array of famous guest stars and helpers, Luck's Changing Lanes isn't some sort of all-star revue, a sort of alt-country Supernatural. Most stars' contributions are playing an instrument or the occasional backing vocal. 

If I remodeled the album, that’d already be the second paint job on Rusty Truck's debut album. The record was first published in 2003 as Broken Promises on the tiny Coda Terra label, and despite all the guest stars went almost immediately out of print. It may pay to have friends in places, but not if neither you nor your friends can get heard. The album then got re-issued five year later by Rykodisc as Luck’s Changing Lanes, dropping two songs from the original release and replacing them by two others, which is the version of the album I have. And it’s here where they fucked up terribly with an absolute screw job of epic proportions in terms of sequencing.

I remember my initial, sharp disappointment with much of the disc. Having picked this up in a record store in Edinburgh, there we were driving up the hillsides into the Highlands, and after a promising opening track and an okay second one the album just sort of vanished into a vapor of samey-sounding elegant but sleepy midtempo sound of country crooning that bordered on boredom...”What did you put on there?” my wife inquired for it was she who was driving, “that’s gonna put me to sleep”...and out of the car’s CD player the disc went to then make its very infrequent appearances over the years. I could not even blame my wife, but rather blame whoever put the disc together. Sequencing, maaaaan, you ever heard of it? 

Unfortunately, no one involved with Luck’s Changing Lanes seemed to take the importance of an album's flow much into consideration, as after the first two tracks the album programmed four mid/slow tempo songs which all more or less sound the same back to back to back to back. That’s a lot of back there, hoss. Any momentum the album wanted to build was immediately undermined by a section that invites fingers to approach the skip button. So I did what I do with a disc that has such strange sequencing errors, I essentially skipped the “boring” first side entirely and started with track seven to the imaginary second side which had both stronger tunes and a better flow. I hadn’t started to tinker with re-sequencing albums yet, but boy, if ever an album needed some help to find a better flow, it’s this one.

And it’s worth it. Because those lines and choruses I started to hum almost unconsciously...that happened for a reason. Luck’s Changing Lanes, now re-sequenced for a better listening experience with no prolonged lulls in the middle of things, is full of charming, but ultimately extremely endearing tunes. The instrumentation is rich and varied, some songs like the reggae groover “New York Fallen Angel” with Burning Spear on backup vocals (one of the two new songs) and “Malibu Canyon” are almost pure pop and the only thing that makes this alt country is that Nashville and its radio confections don’t sound like this, unfortunately. The weakest thing on here is probably the duet with Willie Nelson (which gets very close to the ol’ Willie countrypolitan sound), but even that one is endearing. 

For further listening pleasure I attached a couple of live bonus tracks at the end plus two tracks from the follow-up album. It’s interesting to see how they turn “New York Fallen Angel” from a reggae-pop tune into a honky tonk one live. Without further ado (as that was a lot of ado already!), here’s that ol’ twice  remodeled Rusty Truck.

This Just In: Brownsville Boy Beats The Devil...

Outstanding songwriter. Charismatic actor. One-of-a-kind singer of his songs. Activist and defender of those that couldn't defend themselves. 

Where others buckled or crouched, he always stood tall. Really fuckin' tall. They truly don't make 'em like that anymore. 

R.I.P. Kristoffer Kristofferson, 1936-2024

 

The best Neil Young album...made by not-Neil Young. Say howdy to Israel Nash...

I figured I'd post this fabulous album some time here at One Buck Records and the time is now. Actually I was just reminded these last days of how awesome Israel Nash can be when listening to his latest, Ozarker, that I picked up from the library this week. That album with its glammed-up cover shows has Nash going the way of like-minded retro artists like Jonathan Wilson, after the 70s sounds of their repective sophomore albums he has now also arrived at an echo-filled, synth-esque 80s style that sounds like he also listened to Springsteen circa Born In The USA (or, you know, Taylor Swift's 1989). Actually, the evolution of Nash across his records is interesting. Predecessor Barn Doors and Concrete Floors,  still with his last name Gripka attached, has hints of a closeness to the sound of Neal Young in songs like "Baltimore", but "Louisiana" also suggested the country side of Exile On Main Street and most of the album is a muscular, no-frills Americana recording in the 90s 'no depression' mould of Uncle Tupelo or Whiskeytown. But his sound changed relatively significantly for his sophore album, our One Buck Record of the day, Rain Plans. 

Rain Plan, or rather Israel Nash's Rain Plan, is a record that doesn't sound like any Americana album from the 90s, it goes back further, much further. As the title might have tipped you off, think early 1970s Neil Young at his most blissfully stoned. A dude walks up Sugar Mountain, or in Israel Nash's case, down Myers Canyon, in a poncho, and probablly with more than a handful of peyotle in his pocket.  

Gripka also changes his vocal style, going from more of a rock'n'roll growl to a not quite-falsetto that approaches the vocal style we associate with Mr. Young. The instrumentation is still Americana, with cascades of steel guitar washing over these songs, then mingling with slightly psychedelic elctric guitar, often recalling Young's brothers in arms instruments Crazy Horse. There is a real hippie vibe to the thing, right down to the artwork, Lesanka Honighs animal paintings and a mirror foil with the inscription "See the Beauty That Surrounds You". Cosmic American Music lives on! 

If you liked Luke Gibson or you are a fan of the psychedelic Topanga Canyon retro music of the Beachwood Sparks, you should love this record. If you love Uncle Neil, you obviously will. But, really, if your musical sweet spot is, like mine, slightly off-kilter country-influenced rock that sounds straight out of the early 70s, give Isreal Nash's Rain Plans a listen. It's good stuff, maaaaan!

PS:

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. 

One Album Wonders: The stoned'n'beautiful perfect day of Luke Gibson

A pastiche artist like Jonathan Wilson would give half an arm to sound as beautifully, beatifically stoned as Gibson does here, in a way only a 1970s record can. You can study the mannerisms and sound, but the feel of such a record is hard to duplicate. As it turns out, even for Mr. Gibson himself, who never got to record another album. That's a true shame, considering the quality of his single outing here. But hey, this also means that Gibson could not tarnish it with weak follow-ups, instead having his music frozen in time in 1972. "He's called it 'Another Perfect Day' and it is", says an ad from the time, and they're right. it really is. 

Dave "Luke" Gibson was a stalwart of the Toronto music scene, biding his time and learning his trade as a folkie in Toronto's Yorkville district, coming up slightly later than famed Yorkville luminaries Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Gordon Lightfoot. It was of course also the epicentre of Toronto's hippie scene, and it's fair to say that Gibson was definitely a part of that. He co-founded electric blues band Luke & The Apostles in the mid-60s, remarked for their 1967 single "Been Burnt", but infighting had the band implode almost directly afterwards, especially since Gibson had an offer to join local psych rockers Kensington Market. He then reformed Luke & The Apostles in 1970 for another one-off single, then went solo.

Another Perfect Day came out, like Luke & The Apostles' 1970 outing, on True North records, but it was distributed by Columbia Records, so clearly there was some faith in Gibson's outing. But Another Perfect Day came and went, and when it did nothing Gibson left the music business altogether, to become a set painter in the film industry, before reuniting Luke & The Apostles in the 1990s. 

The basis of Luke Gibson's music here is folk, but not the warm, romantic type his countryman Lightfoot popularized. Gibson's folk, with hints of country in it, is fuzzier and earthier. What unites the men is their declaration of love for the nature around them, but where Lightfoot uses romanticized terms to create a Norman Rockwell-style depiction of Canada, Gibson depicts a less romantisized picture on songs such as "Lobo". "Hotel", a tale of a poor drifter trying his fortune in a new town becomes a tale of indifference towards the ill-fated in life. I am also particularly fond of the beautiful, bouncy "Full Moon Rider", a song that gave Gbson's publishing company its name. "All Day Rain", already featured on the very first All Pearls, No Swine, sounds like a stoned hangover, watching the day go by behind rainy windows. 

But really, Another Perfect Day is a fantastic album, top to bottom. Maybe not a perfect day, but a perfect 40 minutes to spend with some very fine music...

Saddle Up...with Beyoncé

A couple of weeks ago I wouldn't have thought I would post an album (or rather, a variation thereof) from 2024 and I would have even less thought it'd be an album by Beyoncé. I probably haven't thought about Beyoncé in fifteen years, because in 2009 "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" was everywhere and had the potential to annoy the heck out of you. The last time I looked forward to hearing Beyonce is probably about twenty years ago (sheesh...) when "Crazy In Love" came out, which was a great single, no matter how you slice it. So color me as surprised as you are by what ended up our One Buck Record of the day. 

Beyoncé released Cowboy Carter at the end of last month as part of an ambitious multiple album project (this is seemingly 'Act II', so all i's in the songtitles are doubled. Artistic or silly, you ask? Both, I'd say!), this time venturing into country territory. And, as you all by now, you can always lure the One Buck Guy with something country-related. When I posted my little Hick Hop compilation a couple of weeks ago, I was probably unconsciously pushed to do so by having heard "Texas Hold 'Em" a couple of days before, which in turn reminded me of Bubba Sparxxx' "Deliverance" which in turn...well, you know. So rather than just letting that spark of inspiration lay where it came from, I decided to dive deeper into Beyoncé's so-called country record. And boy, is there some diving to do. Because Cowboy Carter (I'm sure the title has some gender-critical point to make that I can't care to bother with) suffers from what I called in the comment thread of my Hick Hop platter the rap album problem, namely a tendency to overstuff their albums with too many songs and a number of skits and interludes. Cowboy Carter might not be a rap album, but it suffers from that exact issue, running a rather unreasonable 78+ minutes over a whooping 27 tracks, including skits with country outlaws Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson, plus a bunch of other guests. 

Cutting through all the clatter and filler was the first issue. There is some very good, and some very interesting music on that record, but it gets bogged down by too much of everything a bit everywhere. However, the idea of saving the highlights and have a much more streamlined alternate album took root almost immediately. The idea was to keep mainly the vaguely country-related stuff and build around that. Cowboy Carter isn't strictly speaking a country album, it is rather - like hick hop - a hybrid between beats, country instrumentation and imagery, and Beyoncé's background in modern r'n'b. But the country stuff does give a through line to what is now Saddle Up, a leaner by more than half collection of some of the strongest Cowboy Carter material, including her covers of the Beatles' "Bluebird" and Dolly Parton's "Jolene", complete with new lyrics. 

Highlights written by Beyoncé and her collaborators are the two singles, "Texas Hold 'Em" and "16 Carriages", the sultry "Alligator Tears", the beautiful ode to her daughter, "Protector" and "American Requiem" which is both personal and political ("Can we stand for something? / now is the time to face the wind", while interpolating Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth"). Cowboy Carter runs for more than 78 minutes, Saddle Up runs a vinyl-era appropriate 38 minutes. If it were a vinyl record, tracks 1-7 would be the a-side, and tracks 8-13 the b-side, for all you nerds (like me!) out there. 

                                                    Like a rhinestone cowgirl...

In order to get the music into a shape I like and enjoy listening to, I mercilessly cut things down to the bone, both in terms of tracks used (I think "Ya-Ya" and "II Hands II Heaven" are great songs on their own, but they didn't fit what I wanted to do with Saddle Up) and the tracks itself. "American Requiem" is entirely re-edited to eliminate some parts I didn't like, "Sweet Honey Buckin'" lost more than half of its running time (and the, uh, 'buckin' part, thus the title change), I didn't much care for the opera stylings in the second part of "Daughter", so turned it into a medley with" Flamenco" and so on and so forth. Cowboy Carter is ambitious and overstuffed, and deserves credit for the former while the latter is now being taken care of. The album's overreaching is actually to its favor, as Beyoncé reckons with country music, its history, its meaning - especially on a personal and family history level - and its makers and listeners. 

A part of the project was seemingly to counter the harsh rejection of parts of the country establishment (you can easily guess which ones) to her first country foray, "Daddy Lessons" in 2016. This is what she is referring to in "American Requiem" when she sings "Used to say I spoke 'too country' / and the rejection came and said I wasn't 'country enough' / Said I wouldn't saddle up". But saddle up she did, ain't no doubt about that. 

Cowboy Carter is one of the most talked about albums of the year, if not the last years, or if you believe Stevie Wonder (one of the cast of thousands who played on this thing), "of the 21st Century". Yet I imagine most of you probably haven't heard it, because it's not your jam. I didn't think it was mine, either, but now, as Saddle Up, maybe I can get some of you to check out what Beyoncé's ambitious, messy, complicated take on country is about...

So, folks, let's all saddle up...

Ciao, Bruce - Ti piace la musica Americana?!

It must've happened sometime in the middle of the 1980s. For almost two decades the Netherlands had been Europe's undisputed capital for everything country rock. And while the Dutch still love their line-dancing and their country music, another relatively unexpected country took their place as the place to be if you like country music and - as it came to be known in the 1990s - alt country or Americana. That place is Italy. Do you know what Italians also like? Bruce Springsteen! So, it seemed logical, for a small group of them, to combine their interests. And from that the idea of For You was born - Italian Americana artists covering Bruce Springsteen. Now here's a concept you don't see or hear everyday...

The most recognizable name of the line-up is...not what you'd expect. I - like a lot of people - discovered Alexi Lalas - at the Football (soccer to our American friends) World Cup 1994. He was instantly recognizable with his long red locks and beard. What I didn't know until very recently was that that appearance was enough to get him signed to a small first-league (Serie A) club in Italy and that he also was a budding musician in his spare time. And so, somehow, Lalas ended up on two tracks from the first For You compilation, both very good and present here. Other than that, the artists here are as much a mystery to me as they probably are for you. If they aren't, do tell me more about Francesco Lucarelli, The Blue Bonnets, Rossana Casale, Ricardo Maffone or the Modesta City Ramblers. These are presumably all low-key regional artists, but that doesn't mean that the job they're doing of bringing the Boss' music to life isn't a good one. 

                         Not the F.B.I. (full-blooded Italian) you were expecting, huh?!

There were two volumes of For You - the original compilation from 1995 and a belated follow-up in 2010. I picked more or less pasimonously from both volumes to make a sort of 'best of' For You, specifically picking the artists that covered some of Springsteen's lesser known songs. For one, because songs that aren't done to death are more interesting - and secondly, because the songs covering the old warhorses often sounded like well-meaning karaoke. Admittedly, I played it safe by opening with The Wild Junkers' cover of "Better Days" which...does sound a little bit like well-meaning karaoke. But the good kind! And from there, things do get a little more adventurous. Deep cuts like "Jesus Was An Only Child", "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Iceman" and "The Angel" make their apparition, often in interesting, arrangements that tweak things in an Americana direction, though not so much as to denature the originals entirely. On these twenty selections here, the artists find the sweet spot between paying homage and doing their own thing. 

So, here it is for you: Italian artists conering that most quintessentially American of songwriters. Some of these work better than others, but all of them deserve the benefit of doubt and a fair listen. So, here they are, For You...

Peter Fonda's hired hand and The Hired Hand

If you have never seen Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand, you should probably rectify that omission. It is a fabulous and unique movie, part of the wave of revisionist Westerns that the New Hollywood brought with them, and yet it's own thing entirely apart. It was directed by one of the spearheads of the New Hollywood, coming freshly off Easy Rider, with a blank cheque for his directing debut, yet it has no signs of hipness or appealing easily to the counter culture the way Rider did. Of course it was a disaster to market, bombed and got taken out of cinemas almost immediately. Its failure alienated Peter Fonda from the Hollywood industry for years. It is a Western unlike any other. 

Part of its otherness, even within the genre, is the screenplay by Scot author Alan Sharp. Here, men aren't stoic and stay cool in every situation, the stereotype of the Westerner. When men die here, they wince and are afraid, they cry for their mother, or for a friend. "Hold me, Arch." Women aren't just there to support the men of action around them, they are their own boss. The decide what they do with their lives, with their bodies. When Peter's sister Jane watched the film, she told him that he'd made a feminist film. She isn't entirely wrong. 

Another part of its otherness is the outstanding work by DP Vilmos Zsigmond and editor Frank Mazzola. Especially in the first half of the movie - more impressionistic and less plot/dialogue-heavy - they create a Western unlike any other. Zsigmond's outstanding filmography - often only using natural light - was amplified by Mazzola's editing, with freeze frames and impositions, to create painterly tableaus that you haven't seen like this. Fonda wanted to make a film about the elements, and it shows, even if he had to be convinced at first to keep the stunning sequencees Mazzola created out of Zsigmond's fantastic images.  

And the last part of the otherness is Bruce Langhorne's music score, for which he played dozens of instruments, including unexpected ones like Sitar or flute. A true one man band. A review described his music as "both earthy and ethereal", which is right on the money. The earthy part are the choice of instruments, inspired by what instruments really were played at the time. The ethereal part is the music itself, which is extrememy beautiful, but also ghostly and otherworldly at times, perfectly supporting the slightly off-kilter atmosphere of The Hired Hand, especially in genre terms. 

It's maybe fitting that Bruce Langhorne himself is somewhat of a hired hand - a studio musician who would lend his acoustic fingerpicking skills to many a folk artist from the 1960s, most prominently Bob Dylan. It is by established by the man himself that the title character of "Mr. Tambourine Man" is Langhorne himself. The Bobster himself said "'Mr. Tambourine Man,' I think, was inspired by Bruce Langhorne. Bruce was playing guitar with me on a bunch of the early records. On one session, (producer)Tom Wilson had asked him to play tambourine. And he had this gigantic tambourine. It was like, really big. It was as big as a wagon-wheel. He was playing, and this vision of him playing this tambourine just stuck in my mind. He was one of those characters...he was like that. I don't know if I've ever told him that."  Like the inscrutable title character of Dylan's tale, Langhorne jingle-jangled, and played, and continued playing, never drawing much attention to himself. A true hired hand. He never made a solo record until 2011, an album that never came out on a label. It was called Mr. Tambourine Man and featured Langhorne and his big-ass tambourine the size of a wagon wheel. 

The Hired Hand, the movie is a total mood piece, and so is The Hired Hand, the music score. In keeping with that I worked the score into a single long piece, a sort of mixtape that keeps all the magical parts of Langhorne's score, mostly in chronological order, and eliminates a couple of minutes of more incidental music.The original score wasn't very long to begin with, around 25 minutes, and you'll get a little more than 17 minutes of that here. Just the best for the readers of One Buck Records, same as it ever was. 

                                  Now that is a grown man's tambourine right there...

Let Langhorne whisk you away for a magical quarter of an hour, then go and find out how you can see The Hired Hand. You will regret neither.