I saw Steve Earle perform at the venerable Mercantile Library in downtown Cincinnati last night.
It wasn’t a full-on concert, it was a “Words and Music” performance, meaning Steve did about eight songs, and also read from his novel and collection of short stories, then took questions from the audience.
He talked about his heroes – Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan. He mentioned how the Vietnam War changed not only those who went and their families, but the entire country… and inspired his album Copperhead Road. He played his song “Devil’s Right Hand” after telling a funny yet moving story about his then-14-year-old son (Justin Townes Earle – a great singer/songwriter in his own right) stealing one of his guns, and how it changed his views on gun control.
Steve dropped out of school and ran away from home at age 14. He talked about how he regretted his lack of formal education, and often wished he could be a Writer (capital W)… until someone pointed out that as a songwriter he was writing stories that people could sing along to as they’re riding in their cars. Damn straight! One of the songs he did last night is probably my favorite tune of his, called “Someday.” In four minutes, it paints a vivid picture and captures the yearning of small-town kids better than any novel I’ve read. (The lyrics and a live performance are below.)
I saw Steve in a similar intimate, small-room setting back in the early 90s, at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California. That was back when he was hooked on drugs. He wound up homeless, then in jail.
He’s been sober for 20+ years now, and I’m sure glad he’s still around to share his Writing with us.
There ain’t a lot that you can do in this town
You drive down to the lake and then you turn back around
You go to school and you learn to read and write
So you can walk into the county bank and sign away your life
I work at the fillin’ station on the interstate
Pumpin’ gasoline and countin’ out of state plates
They ask me how far into Memphis son, and where’s the nearest beer
And they don’t even know that there’s a town around here
Someday I’m finally gonna let go
‘Cause I know there’s a better way
And I wanna know what’s over that rainbow
I’m gonna get out of here someday
Someday
Now my brother went to college ’cause he played football
I’m still hangin’ round cause I’m a little bit small
I got me a 67 Chevy, she’s low and sleek and black
Someday I’ll put her on that interstate and never look back
Someday I’m finally gonna let go
‘Cause I know there’s a better way
And I wanna know what’s over that rainbow
I’m gonna get out of here someday
I’m gonna get out of here someday
Someday
Someday
This past weekend, my wife, my oldest son Gabriel and I went to L.A. so that he could visit college campuses (or is that campi?).
The fact that my favorite band happened to be playing a concert in L.A. on Saturday night was purely coincidence. (And by “coincidence” I mean “the main reason for the trip.”)
Yes, faithful dubbatrubba readers will know that I’m talking about Buffalo Tom. They play very infrequently these days, and usually only the left and right coasts of the U.S. of A. When I read that the west coast dates would feature two sets, including them playing their 1992 opus Let Me Come Over in its entirety, I figured I had to go see them… I’m not getting any younger and neither are they. As the opening track of the new album Quiet and Peace says “now my time behind is greater than my time ahead.” Besides, my son wanted to visit UCLA and USC… “Father of the Year” + Concert of My Dreams = win-win.
The cover of the Let Me Come Over album.
I won’t bore you with the details… chances are good that 70% of the 10 folks who actually read this blog don’t know who Buffalo Tom is and don’t care. Suffice it to say it was a fantastic evening, a borderline religious experience. They sounded great. I loved and savored every damn moment. They’re not the biggest band in the world by any stretch of the imagination. They’re semi-retired for all practical purposes. But to the 500-some-odd true fans in the Teragram Ballroom, most of whom are in their 50s, the three guys in their 50s up on stage crushed it.
Bill, Tom and Chris… just three average Joes playing some tunes for their friends.
For the three readers who do care, here are some links:
Instead they live their lives, occasionally regroup, record and head out to perform for a fervent fan base. Some fans are simply enjoying reheating the embers of the heady club days of their alt-rock youth and others are following along with each album.
Super fan Mike O’Malley is in the latter category. Quite frankly, the actor-writer-producer — likely familiar to some for his comically poignant performance as Kurt’s dad on “Glee” or the early 2000s CBS sitcom “Yes, Dear” — is much more perturbed than the members of the band that Buffalo Tom has not achieved a higher level of mainstream recognition.
“I feel a little bit like Arthur Miller, ‘attention must be paid,'” O’Malley says with a laugh on the phone from New York, where he is putting the finishing touches on the book for the new Jimmy Buffett Broadway musical “Escape to Margaritaville.” “But, attention must be paid! I don’t understand why they’re not Wilco or The National.They deserve to be as well-known by a new generation of people who love music.” (emphasis mine.)
Most songwriters peak. Few fans think Bob Dylan improved after “Blood on the Tracks.” Nobody champions Bruce Springsteen’s “Wrecking Ball” over “Born to Run.” But subtract the nostalgia you feel for Buffalo Tom’s “Let Me Come Over” and you’ll likely find the new album “Quiet and Peace” as great as anything the band has done — don’t doubt my claim until you have listened to the quintessential Buffalo Tom track “Lonely Fast and Deep.”
The Boston trio of singer-guitarist Bill Janovitz, singer-bassist Chris Colbourn and drummer Tom Maginnis have nothing to prove. The guys will never make the band a full-time gig again — their ninth album comes after a seven-year break. Maybe it’s this freedom that allows them to write clear-eyed, adult rock ’n’ roll. (Note: This is not meant as a pejorative.)
They fill “Quiet and Peace” with tight rock about complex relationships. “Roman Cars” captures something between mature and playful, an aesthetic between the Kinks and R.E.M. “In the Ice” features a melody and melancholy that echoes Janovitz’s deeply underrated solo album “Walt Whitman Mall.” Flirting with folk, punk and rock drones, the band sounds endlessly comfortable with its art.
3 musicians + 4 days in the studio = one timely new album. It’s Widdershins from Grant-Lee Phillips, just released on Friday.
The things he’s writing about aren’t hard to figure out. Grant-Lee, who has a Native American heritage, sings “I’d rather go down fighting for the water than start another war for oil” in “Walk in Circles” – a clear reference to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.
In “King of Catastrophes” we get the line “from what I hear of fascism, I wouldn’t put it past him”… sounds like he’s referring to our current prez.
Of course, even when he’s throwing shade, he finds a bit of sunshine. In “History Has Their Number” he tells us: “you can’t live in anger, nobody can… it means more to create than to destroy.”
And it’s not all folksinger protest ballads. He still can rock like he did in the early 90s with his band Grant Lee Buffalo. (Their album Fuzzy is one of my all-time favorites.)
Grant-Lee Phillips is probably better known for his role as the town troubadour on “Gilmore Girls” than for his albums.
That’s too bad, because he’s got a great voice, plays a mean guitar and has a lot to say that’s well worth listening to.
Don’t worry, I’m still a tree-hugging vegetarian. The “meaty links” that we’re serving up at the dubbatrubba café are longer reads/listens that are worth chewing on.
I recently posted about South African singer/songwriter/amazing human being Johnny Clegg. Here’s a great 50-minute interview and performance from a recent World Café:
Bill Janovitz is the lead singer of Buffalo Tom. He’s also a father. The latter is more important. He wrote a blog post back in December of 2012, about the Newtown school shooting. Sadly, it remains just as relevant today, in the wake of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (and dozens of other mass killings that have come since Newtown). Please read the entire post here… but if you don’t have time, please ponder these excerpts:
We may not be expected to stop every insane bomb-making McVeigh-like terrorist, nor will we stop every future mass shooting. But no one can deny that we need to start to take logical steps to regulating guns to make it more difficult for the most damaged among us to gain access to machines that slaughter the most innocent among us…
Each day that goes by without substantive corrective measures should bring each and all of us collective shame. As long as we are unwilling to take advantage our self-evident truths of individual liberty, enshrined in our nation’s most sacred documents, to speak out loudly and demand action, days like Friday should make us all feel ashamed to be Americans — ashamed to have done so little with the responsibility that comes with such advantages…
We have already failed these 20 first-grade children, as we have dozens, if not hundreds of others. What are we going to do to stop the next obscenity?
So while politicians often lean on mass shootings to call for gun control, the problem goes far beyond those incidents. Though it’s hard to fault them for trying; mass shootings, after all, force Americans to confront the toll of our gun laws and gun culture.
Social networks, though, have since colonized the web for television’s values. From Facebook to Instagram, the medium refocuses our attention on videos and images, rewarding emotional appeals—‘like’ buttons—over rational ones. Instead of a quest for knowledge, it engages us in an endless zest for instant approval from an audience, for which we are constantly but unconsciously performing. (It’s telling that, while Google began life as a PhD thesis, Facebook started as a tool to judge classmates’ appearances.) It reduces our curiosity by showing us exactly what we already want and think, based on our profiles and preferences. Enlightenment’s motto of ‘Dare to know’ has become ‘Dare not to care to know.’
Anyone who disapproves of who you’re being or what you’re doing isn’t even in the same room with you 99.7% of the time. It’s a classic mammoth mistake to fabricate a vision of future social consequences that is way worse than what actually ends up happening—which is usually nothing at all.
Let’s end on a brighter, sunnier note, shall we? Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes, one of the greatest comic strips ever) gave a fantastic commencement speech at Kenyon College back in 1990. It’s well worth reading nearly 30 years later.
I tell you all this because it’s worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It’s a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you’ll probably take a few…
…having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.
Certain songs from my youth are forever etched in my brain. One of them is a one-hit wonder from 1980 from a Canadian band called The Kings. Actually, it’s a one-and-a-half-hit wonder, as the song was a bit of a medley/segue called “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide.”
I remember hearing it on WLS-AM, the rock and roll powerhouse (back then… now it’s news/talk) out of Chicago. (Yes, children, gather round and Grandpa Dubbatrubba will tell you of a day when folks actually listened to something called “the radio” and there was this thing called “AM” and you could pick up stations from all over the country if their signal was strong enough… now get off my lawn!)
The song peaked at #43 on the U.S. charts, but it’s a Top 10 memory for me. Every time I hear it (which is once in a blue moon), I’m immediately transported back to Hagarville, Arkansas (population: 100 if you count cows), and am listening to that song in a camper parked next to our house (why my never-been-camping father purchased a camper is a story for another day), with an extension cord running from the house to the camper to power my radio, and the TV so I could watch “Saturday Night Live” and the turntable so I could listen to Rush’s Permanent Waves and REO Speedwagon’s A Decade of Rock and Roll.
Extension cord sold separately. Also, our driveway was rocks.
Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear…
The Kings are still around… gotta love a band with a lead singer named David Diamond and a lead guitarist named Mister Zero! They even have a documentary about the making of their hit song, if you have 43 minutes to spare:
They were just a blip on the pop radar, but in my head, my heart and my ears, this beat goes on…
I love crate digging at the thrift store, you always find some classic albums. And by “classic” I mean “weird.” Check out these “mounds of sounds and stacks of wax, all designed with you in mind…”
Clyde doesn’t look the part of a blues man, but you have to admire his fashion sense. Plaid jacket, polka dot bowtie, boater hat at a jaunty angle… play that trumpet, Clyde, let’s get this party started!
(Quick Google search reveals Clyde was more of a Jazz guy, and co-founded Downbeat magazine. I’m learning while I’m dancing.)
Next up on Bandstand is a man who really needs no introduction. He also needs no more beads and rhinestones on his outfit.
Looking good, Wayne. But let’s pick up the tempo a bit… grab your batons everyone:
And now for the grand finale. Gents, break out your tube socks and tight shorts. Ladies, it’s leotard time. All together now…
Exercising to the top hits is the best. Although song choices like “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” may scar kids for life. Aw, what the heck, it had a good beat and you can dance to it, I gave it an 86.
Kevin Sullivan on Warren piece: “Praise Warren. He also said, “You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long…” Jan 15, 08:48
Damian on Eternally Grateful… still: “Thanks for reading, and thanks for sharing that song, Chuck! You’re absolutely right that the Deadhead community is amazing.” Jan 15, 08:17
Chuck Wiggins on Eternally Grateful… still: “I’m ambivalent at best about the Grateful Dead’s music, but there’s no discounting the incredible community built around it. And…” Jan 14, 09:05
Kevin Sullivan on Spoken and Unspoken: “You lived the brotherhood Damian, and that is a full plate. Peace to you and peace to John.” Nov 18, 16:54
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