From The Record Shelf: Let some Chicks take you Home...

Well, that escalated quickly. Or, you know, it didn't. When I posted the Dixie Chicks' Fly back in *checks notes* May 2024 (?!?), the idea was to in the following weeks and months to their next two albums as the trio of albums the Chicks started with Fly are all great. Yeah, you read that right, weeks and months. Not, you know, years apart. But as usual, I started to post a bunch of other cool stuff and then kind of forgot about the Chicks. But no more! Maybe because Easter is coming up? Nope, that's not it, though. What really brought me back Home is the recent post about Ron Sexsmith's fabulous Cobblestone Runway album. Thinking its slight electronic embellishment sheen made me think of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Beck's Sea Change, and wouldn't you know it, they all came out the same year. You know which great album also came out in 2002? That's right, the Dixie Chicks' Home which has some claim to be the Chicks' best album. 

About twenty years ago I was hanging out on the Warren Zevon Bulletin Board, and regularly getting into fights - internet fights, thus the stupidest fights imaginable - with that one guy. I've forgotten his name, but I distincly remember him commenting when someone posted a music magazines - probably Rolling Stone - Top 250 albums of, uh, the laf-decade maybe? "If they are so obtuse as to not list Home, their list is coompletely worthless" opined that dude, and while his name might be lost to the fog of memory, his very personal and insistent use of the word obtuse. So, WZBB internet rando from around 2005 - you were wrong about pretty much everything else, but you were right about Home being a great album! 

Home saw the Chicks leaning further into the things that worked so well on Fly. That album introduced some Celtic influences, so Home has an entire jig (or reel?) called "Lil' Jack Slade" that is, uh, Irish bluegrass (?!?) and bring out the uillean pipes and tin whistle for "More Love". Bluegrass is actually a pretty constant presence on the album, and listening back to it it's pretty amazing how bluegrass Home  really is - for a projected megaseller. There's two reasons for this: One is that the Dixie Chicks' confidence level was through the roof, the other was the unprecedented success of the old-timey sounds of the O Brother Where Art Though? soundtrack in between Fly and this album. 

The Chicks still don't trust themselves completely as songwriters, though we have three band songs here, up from one of Wide Open Spaces and but they picked top notch songs from top notch writers, including two from Patty Griffin, Stevie Nicks' old Fleetwood Mac warhorse "Landslide"the beautiful "A Home" by Maia & randy Sharp, a great storytelling song from Bruce Robison ("Travelin' Soldier"), the rollicking opening number "Long Time Gone" penned by Darrel Scott, which has a couple of great lines, poking modern country radio: "They sound tired, but they don't sound Haggard, they got money, but they don't have Cash, they got Junior, but they don't have Hank".   

Of course, country radio would soon poke back, and hard. Natalie Maines' critical comments about George W. Bush and the Iraq warmongering of his administration(boy, were we innocent babes in the woods when we thought that guy was the worst president ever and you couldn't stoop lower than that doof...welp...) saw country radio drop the Chicks like a bad habit, making fourth single "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)" their lowest charting single ever and have "Sitting On Top Of The World", one of the two Griffith numbers, miss the charts entirely. The Chicks and country radio would never be close again.  

History would of course be on the Chicks' side, and on Home's which remains a classic. So, let these chicks take you home for some very fine bluegrass-flavored country music...

And just for funzies, here's my top ten albums from 2002:

1. Patty Griffin – 1,000 Kisses

2. Dixie Chicks – Home

3. Ron Sexsmith – Cobblestone Runway

4. Beck – Sea Change

5. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

6. Counting Crows – Hard Candy

7. Dan Brodie – Empty Arms, Broken Hearts

8. Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band – The Rising

9. Coldplay – A Rush Of Blood To The Head

10. Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around

From The Record Shelf: If you need one Roger McGuinn record, it's this one...

First and foremost, Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue was somewhat of a one of a kind spectacle, the likes of which we wouldn't see again. Dylan had already resurrected his career just before with Blood On The Tracks, though the touring spectacle certainly generated an interest in Dylan not seen in years. The Rolling Thunder Revue didn't just help revive Dylan's career, though. It sure as hell revived Roger McGuinn's creative spirits. By the time Rolling Thunder, uh, rolled around McGuinn was pretty busy doing nothing, when not coasting on his name and reputation. His last album, Roger McGuinn & Band, was a critical and commercial flop, though I maintain that it is not nearly as catastrophic as a bunch of folks would tell you. But yeah, repurposing old Byrds and Dylan songs and otherwise mostly outsourcing the songwriting to his backing band didn't help with the impression/accusation that McGuinn was only half-heartedly following his music career. 

To be fair, that career had flatlined in the mid-70s, with McGuinn's first two albums being decent but completely by the numbers versions of what people would expect from a Roger McGuinn record. So, yeah, Rog definitely needed a pick me up in late 1975, and Dylan's phone call to just come out and join the circus troupe was exactly that. His involvement in Rolling Thunder was relatively small - he'd get a short solo set and then often stayed with the band for Dylan's closing set - but it definitely revived and reconnected McGuinn with rock'n'roll and gave his studio work something it didn't have in a long while - purpose.   

There is real bite and real commitment to these performances, something that was sorely lacking from his previous albums. From the opening chords of album opener "Take Me Away", McGuinn's ode to the Rolling Thunder Revue, the music is tight, McGuinn is in fine voice and multiple highlights follow each other. Incidentally, I am personally not a huge fan of pirate yarn "Jolly Roger", but it's a fan favorite for many. "Rock And Roll Time", co-written with Dylan Crony and Rolling Thunder Revue musical director Bobby Neuwirth as well as Kris Kristofferson, has him on his punk-iest snarl of a vocal, something he would put two years later to great use on "Shoot 'Em". "Partners In Crime", a loving send-up of the Chicago Seven does have all the hallmarks of a McGuinn political satire, using the pastiche approach already familiar from Byrds songs like "I Wanna Grow Up To Be A Politician". 

"Round Table" is another McGuinn rocker about - you guessed it - King Arthur's Round Table, while his second stab at the traditional "Pretty Polly" (the first was an aborted attempt for Sweetheart Of The Rodeo that established McGuinn's arrangement of the song and did end up on my alternate version of the album) is - true to some of the harder edged vocals on the album - a much more frantic, even hysterical performance. Johnny Rogan calls it "much more psychotic" which sounds about right.But McGuinn was of course also the master of vocal imitation, used to full effect here: Dylan's "Up To Me" sounds appropriately Dylan-ish, while ""Dreamland" is sung in a higher register to remind you of its author, Joni Mitchell. 

A big part of the heavier rock sound of Cardiff Rose is of course producer Mick Ronson, whom McGuinn met on the Rolling Thunder Revue. Considering the quality on display here, McGuinn must've been hugely disappointed when the album he was rightfully proud of couldn't even beat Roger McGuinn & Band and actually missed the Top 200 altogether. No matter how you slice it, this is a really good album, and it is arguably the high watermark of McGuinn's solo work, at least until the comeback/legacy sequel album Back From Rio in 1991 which to my mind is a little too conscious about being 'a Roger McGuinn album'. Cardiff Rose is not, it simply stands as a great collection of songs.

This is part of a two-tier project. Be back in two days for Band Of Pirates, a mini-album companion piece to Cardiff Rose, which is obviously a One Buck Records exclusive. We're not just lazily grabbing things from the shelf here, people...even if they are great albums... 

From The Record Shelf: The Alpha and Omega of Jay Farrar

The story of Son Volt is of course closely linked to the ignominious end of predecessor band Uncle Tupelo. After relations between Jay Farrar and "the bass player" as he only deigned to call Jeff Tweedy afterwards had reached a point of rien ne va plus, they broke up the band with Tweedy forming Wilco out of the remaining Tupelo members while Farrar hooked up again with original Uncle Tupelo drummer Mike Heidorn and brothers Dave and Jim Boquist, the latter contributing all kinds of instruments, from fiddle and dobro to pedal steel. Son Volt quickly recorded our One Buck Record of the day, Trace. Trace is a great album. It is a very Jay Farrar album. It is also pretty much the only album from Son Volt you'll ever need. 

Let me explain. Even a cursory listen to Trace will reveal how much they sound like Farrar's old band and how much Uncle Tupelo's music and mood were originally influenced by him. Which of course led to the fits of jealousy that broke up the band when Tweedy began to assert himself more. But Trace also reveals another truth about Farrar's songwriting, namely that Farrar wrote and rewrote the same songs over and over. Some of his best songs are on Trace, but that's why I call the album his alpha and omega in the title: you don't really need to listen to any Son Volt after this. Farrar has said everything he had to say here, in a way he rarely equaled and never bettered. 

"Well, are we having fun yet, guys?...huh?!...uh, guys?!?"

Take opener "Windfall" for example, a modern Americana classic if ever there was one. The storytelling in that long all night ride down the lonely midwest is fantastic, and the details are telling. "Switchin' it over to AM, searching for a truer sound..." intones Farrar's protagonsit, ending up with a country music station from somehere in Louisiana, "sounds like 1963, but for now, it sounds like heaven". Farrar's music, searching for a truer sound, always looking backward, also starts to sound like you are stuck on a retro radio station. This, of course, was the ultimate humiliation for Farrar, assuring an amount of grumpiness that makes Oscar the Grouch look cheerful by comparison: Wilco, after the admittedly unsure debut of A.M., began with Being Here not only to gain critical acclaim that soon surpassed Son Volt's, but also began to move into all kinds of interesting, enticing directions: art pop, electronics-tinged pop, krautrock. Whereas Son Volt didn't move, not really, proudly running to stand still, keeping Farrar's twin occupations of Neil Young& Crazy Horse-like guitar rockers and sad country weepers alive, but never moving out of these boundaries.

Farrar contunues plowing the same field. It's - as you will hear on Trace - a great field, but how many times can you rework the same soil before it gets barren? Still, Trace shows Farrar & Co. in exceptional form, alternating said guitar rockers and country weepers, and working both to (almost) perfection. "Windfall" is a sort of modern classic, but "Tear-Stained Eye" isn't much behind. "If learning is living, and the truth is a state of mind / You''ll find it's better at the end of the line". Farrar's protagonists here are on the run again, from something they can barely define to somewhere they can not possible get to. As he sings in "Windfall": " Never seem to get far enough / staying in between the lines / hold on to what you can / waiting for the end / not knowing when". Springsteen's protagonists also were always on the run out of small town America towards an unknown future, but they at least always had a glimmer of hope. Farrar's don't: "We're all living proof that nothing lasts",as he sings on "Route". 

Fittingly black and white, mostly black...

All of these reflections make it sound like Trace is a total downer of an album, but it isn't. It is, however, the best display of Farrar's pitch-black world view and the sharpness of his songwriting. That's why the most tender and hopeful moment on Trace doesn't come from Farrar's pen, but rather incredibly, from that of Ronnie Wood in closer "Mystifies Me". Mystifying indeed. So, here's one of the true classics of 90s Americana...and may the wind take your troubles away...

From The Record Shelf: Useful Music (No, really!)

If someone has browsed through the pages of this young blog for middle-aged readers, it seems obvious: Only old music for older folks here. But one goal of One Buck Records is to also from time to time present albums that have fallen through the cracks or have never gotten the attention they deserve. And yes, that includes albums that are less than forty years old. Case in point: Useful Music by the Josh Joplin Group. These were indeed my college years, so it's fitting that at the time I would listen to what in the olden days was called 'college rock'. It is in many ways is a good snapshot of what smart, well-written and played college rock sounded like in the early Aughts. Most of it was actually recorded and released in 1999, though this is the re-release from 2001 that added "Camera One" which dutifully became the album's lone sort-of hit. But Useful Music has held up remarkably well and even the markers of its time of production - the slight Hip Hop-like rythm of "Superstar", the reference to Sugar Ray in "Phil Ochs" - are now a charming time capsule. This album sounds like its time, while also subtly commenting on it. Take  "Phil Ochs", clearly one of the highlights of the set, a song that's not so much a eulogy for the beloved songwriter himself but rather the values he stood for, all the while skewering the rise of the artificial teen/boy group pop stars of the late 1990s: "And though the poster child tries/ he won't survive the scorn/ he is killed with compromise / in the tube where he was born / Phil, you are not gone / 50 fans can't be wrong / or can they?". 

The melancholy underpinning "Phil Och" also hints at what really makes this record. On one hand its fabulously catchy stuff - great music to listen and hum or sing to while doing something else - drivng, obviously, but also the laundry or what have you.  But then the record sneaks up on you with a well-placed observation or turn of phrase, or a tinge of melancholy during the mostly upbeat-sounding proceedings. Sometimes it's more than a tinge, as in the aforementioned "Camera One" that cuts through the beautiful L.A. lifestyle facade to reveal the story of a Hollywood suicide. And yet, you can easily not notice the often surprisingly weighty lyrics, because there are these fantastically catchy melodies propping up the songs, having you sing along to their choruses in no time. Useful music, indeed.