Monday April 28th 2008, 10:11 pm
Filed under: Podcasts
Posted by: Julia
Hayden is the stage name of Paul Hayden Desser, an elusive yet enduring artist from Canada who has experienced life as a recording artist on every level over the past 15 years, from independently released four-tracks to major label sucess to movie soundtracks. In 1996, Hayden contributed the song “Trees Lounge” to Steve Buscemi’s directorial debut film of the same name.
Today, Hayden has released his seventh studio album in the US on Fat Possum Records. Find out more about Hayden, and where in the world he’s been in this edition of the Songlines podcast.
After wrapping up his current sold-out tour with Feist, Hayden hits the road with a full band for his own headlining tour of the US. Find out when he’s coming to your town here.
Chris and Oliver Wood are sons to Bill Wood, a former Boston folk revivalist who recorded several duets with Joan Baez in the 1950’s. Although he had turned to a career in microbiology before starting a family, Bill raised his sons on a healthy diet of campfire folk, 1960’s pop and Appalachian bluegrass. These sounds are echoed in The Wood Brothers’ second effort Loaded, which also incorporates the jazz and blues influences from the brothers’ solo careers. The album is a true family affair, dedicated to the memory of their late mother. Learn more in this edition of the Songlines podcast.
Brooklyn’s American Babies just released its first album, but the band is already being heralded as a supergroup by bloggers and Paste magazine due to the combined experience of the group’s core members. While brothers Tom and Jim Hamilton spent years with the Philadelphia jam band Brothers Past, the rhythm section is led by Joe Russo of the Benevento Russo Duo. Hear more in this edition of the Songlines podcast.
It took Tom Hamilton two years to write the song “American Babies,” which was one of the first he began for the project. He wrote it with the vision of getting as many friends as possible into the studio to record together. Good thing he has so many talented friends!
Thursday April 17th 2008, 5:20 pm
Filed under: Livewire
Posted by: Julia
“White Guy at the Apollo” jokes were rampant Tuesday night with Joe Jackson headlining the famed Harlem venue, but it was Jackson himself who took the cake, covering a song by 1970s spandex-flashing, Eurovision Song Contest sovereigns ABBA.
“I guarantee you this is the whitest thing ever played at the Apollo,” Jackson declared triumphantly, before launching into “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” a hit single in 1977 when he was still in the band Edwards Bear and was yet to establish his eclectic New Wave/jazz blend that over the years has incorporated rock, pop, and R&B (and on this surprising cover, even calypso). With a high-energy performance, Jackson spanned thirty years of fame and loneliness, from New York to New Orleans, in a set marked simply by extraordinary musicianship.
It only took seven songs to bring the fervent audience to its feet, which the band did during “On Your Radio,” a song Jackson called Jurassic-era, either due to its approaching 30th anniversary, or possibly as a swipe at the state of radio today. “At least he didn’t sing ‘Sunday Papers,’” I thought, “that would be positively Triassic.” But when you’ve been around and prolific for as long as Jackson has, the different phases of your career must begin to seem like eons. And with the showmanship on display that night, you’d think the last three decades had been one long wait to make his Apollo debut.
Things kicked off with “Steppin’ Out,” setting the New York theme with a song released as he was making the city his new home in 1982. In the years that followed that top ten hit, Jackson’s success has often been contrasted by a desire for personal anonymity, and the next two songs confronted this longing pointedly. After “Invisible Man,” the lead single from the new album Rain in which he yearns for an invincibility to the pressures of fame, Jackson segued into “Too Tough,” a more personal proclamation of solitude:
“I know you think that I protest too much / I’m like a Diva with the tragic touch / But if I wanna hide from the pouring sun / It has to be alright”
At the end of the song, Jackson melodramatically shielded his eyes as he looked out at the crowd, before having the house turn the glaring spotlight away from the stage and onto his audience. Now at ease, he confided, “I never thought I could play here.”
Jackson’s delight at finally playing the venue is understandable given that he lived here for 20 years, mostly during the theater’s 1980s renaissance. He departed in a huff in 2003, not for the usual (and forgivable) 9/11 reasons, but in protest of the city’s smoking ban, a movement that Jackson has actively campaigned in essay and song. He now lives in Berlin, where there is no smoking ban. Appropriately, after the doomsday satire “Cancer” from Night and Day, he provided the antidote by detailing the exploits of a hedonistic immortal in “King Pleasure Time.”
Suffice to say, the songs on Rain do not elude Jackson’s trademark sharp wit, but there is plenty of romance and loneliness to go round; he closed the set with “A Place in the Rain,” which he called “angry, sad, funny, romantic,” and is startlingly akin structurally to the W.H. Auden poem “Funeral Blues.” During “Solo (So Low),” a song about being alone, he fittingly ordered his band mates off stage to perform unaccompanied.
His band on the road and on Rain consists of bassist Graham Maby and drummer Dave Houghton, original members of the Joe Jackson Band with whom Jackson reunited in 2004 for Volume 4. Paying tribute to cocktails and New Orleans on “Dirty Martini,” the trio appeared to have the most fun, with Maby dancing round to press his cheek against Houghton’s as they shared a mic for the echo refrain, while the drummer awkwardly tried to keep rhythm.
At the end of the day though, the city that got the most love was the one we were in, with “The Uptown Train” and “Chinatown” played back to back. Even sans ashtrays and nicotine-stained ceilings, Joe Jackson still hearts New York.
Thursday April 17th 2008, 9:20 am
Filed under: Podcasts
Posted by: Melanie
For twenty-five years, Billy Bragg has been offering spirited messages about the power of common people to do extraordinary things, and poetic observations on their relationships. On his latest, Mr. Love & Justice, his voice sounds better than ever, and you’ll love the way his great band, the Blokes, fleshes out the tracks.
Billy is so eloquent when speaking about his music, and his role as a songwriter:
Oh! I should mention that his Wikipedia page is chock-full of cool tidbits. Learn how he got his demos heard by an A&R exec by impersonating a TV repairman, and how he got them played by taking John Peel a mushroom biryani, and all sorts of bizarre and interesting facts.
Early this year, Apple featured Yael Naim’s single “New Soul” in the debut commercial for its new MacBook laptop, and the way that the song resonated instantly with listeners launched her to instant fame. But Yael is much more than a one-hit wonder. Her beautiful self-titled record features intricate, surprising songs sung in her bold voice in French, Hebrew, and English. Hear some of them in this edition of the Songlines podcast.
The overnight success of “New Soul” at iTunes led Idolator.com’s Chris Molanphy to write an article on iTunes’ impact on the Billboard charts amusingly titled “Hey, Let’s Write a Song Called ‘Steve Jobs Is Dreamy.’” Good idea. Anyone have any thoughts on lyrics?
After working together for eight years, slogging around the country in their van, unloading their tuba and accordion and upright bass for scheduled gigs at rock clubs to choruses of: “Are you guys in the right place?”, DeVotchKa’s four classically trained musicians caught a break. Two first-time filmmakers heard one of the underground band’s songs on an LA radio show, and felt like they were hearing the sound of their movie, Little Miss Sunshine. They hired DeVotchKa to score the soundtrack, which was later nominated for a Grammy. How fitting that the little film that won America’s heart was the story of messed-up family full of loveable characters packed into a van.
Here’s the Songlines podcast on their phenomenal new record, A Mad and Faithful Telling.
There is something calmingly reassuring about the start of a new baseball season: hope abounds as fans imagine that their team can navigate an exhausting 162-game schedule and postseason to emerge as champs. (I know this because I did it as a boy growing up in Cleveland where the Indians rarely finished above .500. What was I thinking? What am I thinking now?) Whether you’re a diehard or just an occasional fan, take a moment to predict who the real winners will be. You’ve got until April 30. Tigers fans: don’t lose hope. It’s only April!
