The breakup of one of New Jersey’s most popular bands has produced another promising lineup all too ready to fill the void. Todd Scheaffer, lead singer of From Good Homes now fronts Railroad Earth, a Stillwater-based sextet that defies genre and defines eclectic with a rootsy blend of bluegrass, rock, jazz, Celtic and Americana. Originating as an informal acoustic jam session amongst professional musicians, Railroad Earth has amassed a huge following through incessant touring, and recently released their fourth studio album Amen Corner. Learn more about the making of the record in this edition of the Songlines podcast.

 

 Railroad Earth podcast [4:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (18)

The band’s popularity on the jam circuit has allowed them the opportunity to play with some of rock’s finest, including Phil Lesh who employed them as his “friends” on Phil Lesh & Friends, and even learned some of their repertoire. Check out this video of Railroad Earth returning the favor with a rendition of the Grateful Dead’s “Casey Jones.”

Amy MacDonald is a 20-year-old self-taught musician from Scotland who picked up her first guitar almost half a lifetime ago. This week, she learned her debut album This is the Life has already sold one million copies, two months before its August 19th US release. Many of the songs on the record, such as “Mr. Rock & Roll,” express her bewilderment at the celebrity-infatuated culture she lives in. Ironically, the album has elevated MacDonald to an object of adoration herself on account of her strikingly rich voice, genuine and clever lyricism, and exuberant guitar playing. Check out the audience reaction to MacDonald in this clip of her performing “Mr. Rock & Roll” at the Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands on 5/31/2008, which drew 180,000 people over three days.

Pinkpop is the oldest annual festival in the world, drawing 1.5 million music fans and performances from the likes of R.E.M, Fairport Convention and Metallica over 40 years. Its name is originally derived from the Dutch word for Pentecost “pinksteren” because the festival was traditionally held on Pentecost weekend. However, the word “pop” in Dutch means “doll” and today the festival is represented by its logo of a pink doll.

Last February, New York Times writer Charles McGrath pointed to the success of public radio in contrast to the ever-shrinking government support for public television in a piece titled Is PBS Still Necessary? in which he reported public radio now boasts some 30 million listeners, up from two million in 1980. Or, 28 million listeners in 28 years.

Even despite the current recession, many of the stations I talk to each week reported record or near-record fund drives this Spring. Non-comm Triple A KTBG is one such station, where listenership, member dollars and community interest continue to improve in defiance of economic forecasts and cultural trends.

I flew into Kansas City International airport last month for a weekend trip, and after presenting myself at the rental car desk, promptly fainted when the lady informed me gas was running at about $4.28/gallon. I have rarely driven since moving to Manhattan, and still remember gas being less than a dollar a gallon when I arrived in Missouri only seven years ago. After peeling myself off the floor, I set off on the 45-minute trip east in my less than glamorous Kia Rondo to my alma mater, the University of Central Missouri, which owns KTBG.

It was about 11am when I arrived at the station. The sounds of Wilco were drifting through the speakers, and the place was deserted. Kind of like when I was a student working here seven years ago, I thought. Wrong: I’d soon learn this was just an unnatural lull. In addition to the paid staff, there are a record 19 students working at the station this summer. That’s about twice as many as worked there during the school year when I was a student.

I first landed in Warrensburg, Missouri on January 1, 2001, which I later learned was the very same day Jon Hart returned to his hometown to program the station after 23 years in Kansas City proper. At that point, it was actually a jazz station, KCMW, and had previously operated as a classical station, never having raised more than about $12,000 in either capacity during a single fund drive. Jon actually worked there originally as a high schooler (and was fired five times) and had now arrived back with the ambitious goal of transforming the station into a viable and valuable cultural commodity with little in the way of resources. I, meanwhile, was looking for a reason to stick around for the summer and thought: “Hey, being a DJ could be fun!”

By my count, there were nine of us students working there that first summer, and virtually all of the others have long gone on to non-broadcasting careers from law to teaching math. Some of us were in it for a “cool” (i.e. non-Pizza Hut) job, while others just had severe cases of audio visual nerdiness. Not one of us was there for the love of jazz. There was no real station image to embrace, no events or community initiatives. But over the summer, our enthusiasm for the job expanded exponentially as we were all let in on one big secret: at summer’s end, our underachieving little jazz station would flip formats to something called Triple A.

We held weekly meetings about what exactly that meant, while Jon built a music library from scratch using his own and our personal CD collections, including us in aspect, from picking core artists to station branding. Within a few short months we had new call letters, a logo, a music library, and most importantly real enthusiasm for our air shifts.

On August 1, 2001, 90.9 The Bridge signed on with “Some Bridges” by Jackson Browne, and the change was instant and palpable. Listener feedback was overwhelmingly encouraging (in fact, one such listener named Leslie ended up marrying Jon and working at the station, so she must have really liked the change). That very morning, five or six promising new students showed up to volunteer their time, almost all of whom have gone on to broadcasting or music-related careers. Very quickly, we became a noticeable force in the Kansas City market, with steady presence at area concerts, while little by little, each fund drive proved we were on the right track. It was tremendously exciting to be a part of a success story being built on nothing but passion and hard work, and I’m happy to say that since I left the station in 2004, things have continued to improve dramatically.

I recently spoke to my former colleague David Houghton, now sound engineer and web and promotions manager, who described a plethora of new initiatives that most recently includes their first summer concert series in Kansas City. The Bridge has also been streaming for the entire life of the station, offers a podcast series as well as an archive of all in-studios, and has recently launched a YouTube page to gain more exposure for artist visits.

Most significantly, KTBG membership has increased by a minimum of ten percent every year since the format change. In March, the Bridge had its best-ever fundraiser, reaching the pretty unrealistic goal of $59,000 set by the CPB: a 60 percent increase on the previous record, qualifying the station for a significant grant.

“This radio station represents a community, and it felt to us only fair to let the community know what we were facing, and let them tell us how strongly they wanted us to move forward. It was like a vote: do you want us to take a little step forward or a huge step backward? This is the beginning of the story. Now, we have to work hard to justify all of the donations that people made,” said Hart.

Monday’s New York Times featured a piece about those worst affected by raising gas prices. They are, of course, those people in rural America with a lower income and higher dependence on gas. But despite this trend, and the current economic recession, Bridge listeners are among those 30 million public radio listeners who still find enough value in their station to dig a little deeper in their pockets and continue to contribute.

–Julia Clarke

Amy MacDonald wrote the song “The Road Home” six years ago, more than a quarter of a lifetime for the twenty-year-old Scottish musician. Aged 14, three years before signing her record deal, she had no idea that in 2007, the song would play a role in a moment of great national pride for her country, when it was used as the soundtrack to the city of Glasgow’s successful bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games. MacDonald’s lack of foresight in this matter is understandable given that, as she revealed last week onstage at the Living Room in New York City, the song was actually written about her dead dog.

The diminutive Scot is playing her final night of a three-night introduction to America, following in the footsteps of so many before her who have tried to break into the US market. Declaring that this is every UK musician’s dream is perhaps no secret, but it is certainly endearing. She jokingly dubs her band (four equally youthful and spirited players) as “the aliens with unusual abilities” referring to their US visa designations, but the relief and excitement at having finally made their first trip across the Atlantic literally rises the temperature in the room. Her acoustic guitar is held high like a shield, and she strums it confidently. MacDonald and her band emit an aura that is at once assured and genuine.

Amy MacDonald and Julia Clarke

Whereas many overseas musicians like U2 and the Beatles have reigned in their accents in song to achieve success Stateside, or even acquired a vaguely ambiguous spoken English accent a la KT Tunstall, MacDonald seems clear she’s not going to temper her Scottishness to become more accessible. She makes no attempt to mask her thick Bishopbriggs brogue between songs, and the stories she tells on her debut album This Is the Life are equally local in theme. She sings that “nothing beats the feeling of the high Barrowland ceiling” in “Barrowland Ballroom” — about the famed Glasgow music venue where the country’s most famous serial killer scoped out his victims, and where past acts have included Dylan, Costello, Bowie (and now McDonald) — and includes a cover of Dougie McLean’s “Caledonia,” one of Scotland’s unofficial national anthems, as the hidden track.

Yet she’s not making a patriotic assertion of national identity. She’s simply singing about what she knows and who she is, which is exactly what a twenty-year-old should be singing about. The contrast between the young singer’s soft speaking voice and her nuclear-powered singing voice that blasts the room like a rough-edged Dolores O’Riordan transform her remarkable tales of ordinariness into an astonishing live performance. With enough confidence and skill to be impressive and convincing, there’s no sheen here, just real roots rock with the best of folk.

–Julia Clarke

“Speak slowly/My eyes are so bleary/I guess I’m young but I feel so weary”

A night after canceling their first New York City show due to illness, Zooey Deschanel cheekily apologized by way of self-deprecation, poking fun at her ailment with “Black Hole,” a dreary tale of loneliness belied by a chipper melody, twangy slide guitar and jaunty pace that is one of ten original songs on Volume One, her new collaboration with M. Ward.

Certainly she looked the picture of health; exuberant, and unapologetically effervescent, wearing an uncontained smile as she tapped a tambourine cheerily against her thigh. But at the end of the song, she turned her back to the audience to reach for something behind her, then returned holding up a large sign with a handwritten message: “Hello New York.”

She’d lost her voice the day before and in order to give it all during the performance, she had to silently woo the crowd between songs. The effect was in fact as charming and as quirky as Deschanel herself, who produced various signs (“Hi,” “Thank You,” and “You Look Great, You Really Do!”), held her heart in a mock swoon at the applause, and jumped up and down like an excited school girl before launching into “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”

But perhaps more importantly, her muteness presented her with the challenge of winning over a first-time audience without the safety net so many new musicians fall into – witty stage banter to fill up the 90 minutes. Instead, Deschanel was left with charm, which she oozes, and of course the sweetly crafted compositions she recorded last year with M. Ward.

The songs on Volume One are almost without exception playful: “I’m just sitting on the shelf” she sings on “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” teasing a lover to come sweep her up; and deliciously retro - “I Was Taking a Walk” is pure 1950s swing. But to say Deschanel is simply imitating art would be not only wrong, but a huge underestimation of her talent; she is genuine in her inspiration from the music of her forbearers. Her voice is buttery smooth, at times haunting when she evokes the distant past on Smoky Robinson’s 1962 hit “You Really Got a Hold On Me,” and she effortlessly harnesses country, blues and jazz.

Though she’s better known as an indie actress with roles in films like Almost Famous, Deschanel grew up singing in church choirs, and has been singing with the jazz cabaret act If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies since 2001. She and M. Ward first recorded a duet together in 2006, and their chemistry lead to the full-blown collaboration, which they recorded retro-style using as few machines as possible. A year has passed since they laid down the tracks, and when they play live, the songs take on the perfection of practice, and the comfort of easy improvisation.

For his part, M. Ward remains mostly mum, and at first, I wonder why he didn’t simply take over emceeing responsibilities, but as the show went on it became clear that despite his omnipresence on Volume One, the grammatical order of their moniker is intentional. Though he has several shining moments on electric bass, his aim seems to be to shine that spotlight on Deschanel.

–Julia Clarke

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.

 

 Hayden podcast [5:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (36)

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.

 

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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.

 

 American Babies podcast [4:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (39)

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!

“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.

–Julia Clarke

Wearing a simple blue cotton dress, Yael Naim flits waiflike onto the stage at the Bowery Ballroom around 9:45pm, grabbing her acoustic guitar and nimbly hopping onto a stool where she sits bathed in a warm yellow spotlight that might as well be the adoration of her audience. To call them “fans” might be a tad premature at this stage, it being one of her first ever US shows, and her self-titled collaboration with David Donatien having been released only on Tuesday.

Indeed, waiting outside the Bowery before the show, I overhear more than one conversation that indicates many of these concertgoers came tonight because they heard that one song. One twenty-something student-type says he checked out a few of her songs on MySpace, while his companion appears to be here based on buzz alone. They agree that the song “from the Apple commercial” is “really great.”

Inside, the sold-out crowd is similarly young, mixed-race, and slightly female-heavy. I note a solid showing of Eastern Europeans, which might be the Regina Spektor factor. Yet to call these people merely curious scenesters would also be an understatement. They have been locked in place for a while, standing firm to make sure they don’t lose their precious sliver of unobstructed view. There is an unmitigated air of excitement when Yael does make her ethereal entrance. “Oh, she’s so cute!” a few people squawk; having never set eyes on her before, there is something gratifying about seeing the enchanting voice physically manifest.

At the opening chords of “Paris,” the first track on her album, there are some delighted gasps of recognition at the song, which is sung in two of Naim’s native tongues, French and Hebrew (the latter, endearingly, with a French accent). Then, half way through, as she is nearing the French part of the refrain, she leans away from the mic — boldly, I think, for someone who has never played this city before — and invites the audience to finish the verse. They do.

“Thank you so much for coming!” she gasps afterwards, explaining in her heavy French accent how especially glad she is to be here after spending so many months holed up in the living room of her tiny Paris apartment with Donatien working on these songs “for an album we didn’t even know if it was going to be released.” With that, she launches into “Far Far,” an autobiographical account of a girl with music inside her that’s bursting to get out:

“How can you stay inside? / There’s a beautiful mess inside.”

This beautiful mess is what she and Donatien made in that Paris apartment. After a personally disappointing stab at recording with 2001’s In a Man’s Womb, Naim retreated from music, disheartened. Meeting Donatien has been the inspiration she needed. Listed as “Artistic Director” on the album, the multi-instrumentalist took her exquisitely simple compositions and added strings, horns, choirs, effects, even encouraging her to sing in Hebrew for the first time. When they were finished, they put it all back together, and what they have is a complicated, beautiful mess that sounds effortless.

Donatien, for his part, remains an invisible force in the music even in a live setting. He stays far behind her on stage, easy to miss physically, but he is there with every swell, twist and turn of the music.

Naim is no fool; she knows what brought the crowd here in the first place, and she takes great pleasure in teasing us, seated at her piano now and playfully tapping out the first three (now almost universally recognizable) notes of “New Soul,” then stopping as cheers erupt. “What is that song?” she asks gleefully. “I used to think I was an old soul,” Naim explains, adding “which means you’re really smart. But then, real life begins…”

Real life for Naim has changed irrevocably these past months. With “New Soul” being featured in Apple’s MacBook Air ad campaign before her name had ever been whispered in the US, it became her first top 40 US hit long before the album was released. The song tiptoes into your head before breaking into a whimsical waltz that subsides but never leaves.

In observing Naim in the flesh, you get all the proof you need that she is more than just one song. For one thing, her album doesn’t illustrate quite how powerful her voice is. At times boasting a soaring aria and others a bluesy roar, I’m reminded of Alanis Morrissette in her role as God in the movie Ðogma, with her earth-shattering voice (minus the exploding human heads). Also in her favor for staying power, Naim is delectably funny — whether she’s doing her “Dance du Canard” (duck dance, literally) or rhyming “mon coeur” and “fleur” with “for sure” — and charismatic, as she manages to keep wholly engaged a crowd that until this instant undoubtedly have had no real connection with her beyond a commercial and the internet.

She ends the set in this way, connected, having her now adoring fans take the place of her missing cellist by becoming her choir. After teaching the females in the room the aria, she instructs the males to take a lower pitch and we gladly oblige as her string section while she stands in the center of the stage again, leading us like a tiny fairy-conductor. Afterwards, those more-than-just-curious-scenesters and not-quite-fans-yet float out, probably deeply in love.

–Julia Clarke