FLYIN SHOES REVIEWS
2000

MIGALA
Asi Duele un verano
(Acuarela)
DAVE CARTER & TRACY GRAMMER
Tanglewood Tree 
(Signature Sounds)

TOWNES VAN ZANDT
A Far Cry From Dead
(Arista Austin)



They come out of Madrid but have more in common with the likes of Belle & Sebastian / Smog / Palace Brothers and Drunk alongside whom they deservedly rank . They share with the above a tendency to line-up changes, stylistic leaps and a use of sampling/spoken word that assures them their own place on the margins of post-rock/art-country. The peculiar atmosphere of found sound collage / sampling intermingled with the Spanish lilt to the English ( spoken and sung) is highly effective. The nearest obvious comparison is with Drunk’s expeditions into classical/folk hybrids with a country tinge, a fact highlighted by the fact that they share a label in Spain ( Acuarela). ‘Low of Defenses’ is typical – drifting sound-scapes, lyrics that seem more Pablo Neruda than your conventional indie-rock fare and a sonic bedrock of Oldham-esque archaic folk-rock ( thay have fulfilled pick-up band duties with the man with a hundred names in their native Spain). They have won accolades in Spain and France and I wonder how long before us ‘artistic-islanders’ wake up to their beauty? Belle and Sebastian have already sung their praises but in a climate where The Beta Band are touted as avant-garde I think it may take some time although the disc is now distributed here through Cargo. To me this wonderful recording has more genuine innovation and eclecticism than a bag-full of so called BritArt-Rock. For the more adventurous consumer, one not put off by titles like the name they gave one acoustic radio session, ‘Voyages to the Polar Dreams’. Pushing the borders

 

 


The force that through the green fuse...

First months of the new millennium and already my end-of-year best-of list is starting to fill up. I came to this recording via a track on the LUKE magazine compilation cd called ‘Grand Praire TX Homesick Blues’ from their first, home-recorded, disc ‘When I go’. Good as that track was with its echoes of Townes and Clark it didn’t prepare me for the joy of this new disc on Signature Sounds – home to Richard Shindell & Brooks Williams amongst others. Recorded at the Signature Sounds studio apart from one ‘kitchen – sink’ recording it is a masterpiece. Reading Carter’s enthusiam for the ‘mystical’ in interviews had made me dubious that influences as diverse as Lorca, Burns, Thomas, Casteneda, Kerouac, Keen and Van Zandt could be successfully sewn together in a patchwork quilt of a recording. What this duo have produced can rightly claim to be a modern milestone in the singer/writer and duo recordings tradition. On its own Carter’s Ely-esque voice and Texan influences would claim attention but married (almost literally it seems) to Grammar’s exquisite folk voice it all makes perfect listening. Not only do the duo performances work but each solo is strengthened by their partner’s musicianship. The standard of playing is extremely high both from them and the accompanying musicians and the production exceptionally clear. The lyrics are Carter’s – the son of a mathematician father and devoutly Christian mother who has absorbed the very best of the Texas Troubadour tradition like a sponge and fused it with the celtic bardic and surrealist traditions without at any time drowning in ‘misty mountaintop’ cliches.

The ghost of Bo Diddley and Slim Harpo dance with Steve Earle circa Copperhead Road on ‘Crocodile Man’. Elsewhere (reflected in the cover art) are hints of a hotter sun as in the Lorca-esque imagism of ‘Farewell to Saint Dolores’ where the fragmented dream-like imagery is carried along by the tune. Elsewhere debts to both Dylans ( Bob and ..Thomas) show like bones in a wind-blown sand graveyard. ‘Happytown (all right with me)’ scampers along like an acoustic ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ sung by John Stewart and Buffy Ford. Speaking of which it’s that duo’s classic ‘Shadows through the glass’ that this set comes close to emulating –and that is one hell of a record. The cover of ‘Tanglewood Tree’ sees the duo adopting a kind of Welch/Rawlings neo-postmodernist revivalist stance and if thats shifts units fine but really they are shoulders above the present competition in this area the latter, Williams/Olsen and Snakefarm included. ‘Hey Conductor’ bounces along like Johnny Cash’s baby or early Darden Smith before the over-production set in and Grammar belts out a beautiful fiddle tune. At times there’s a suggestion of the unjustly maligned Timbuk III before that ‘hit single’ did for them. If you care about songwriting and if you’re reading this you obviously do then this an essential disc and I won’t quote Carter’s lines out of context but there’s Lightfoot, Hardin, Dylan, Cohen and Mitchell in there plus a good few I ain’t unravelled yet –classic stuff. In the cold early mornin’ rain of this March morning that’s good enough for me. ‘Cat-Eye Willie...’ swaggers its Burns sings Dylan way along like an over-laden pick-up truck full of fruit before final track ‘Farewell to BiterrootValley’ lays Grammar’s voice bare against a very ‘British’ finger-picking from Carter. Bare it may be but comparisons to Denny/Tabor would not go amiss. Enough said. That list –top three immediately – maybe top of the tree.

...drives the flower.



There’s a banquet up on the second floor of an old hotel somewhere on the back-streets of Any-town USA. There’s a bunch of singers and writers and poets blowing up a storm. But at the head of the table there’s one place set but the chair’s empty. The occupant checked out three years ago and now there’s just a candle burning above a bunch of worn out books, a sheaf of lyrics, a cut deck of cards. The party goes on and the ghost of Townes is out in the street smiling up at the commotion as he sets off up the hill in the rain.

I’ve been putting off this review. It hangs heavy on my shoulders. After all this is the guy who inspired this webzine. All the twists and turns that it has taken since its start just one year ago in April 1999 have somehow or other lead me back to Townes. Everybody who has appeared in the magazine has either met him, played with him, seen him, listened to him into the small hours, worshipped him or revered his talent at some time and at the very least been unable to ignore him. How do I review then this posthumous disc with the devastatingly apt title ‘A Far Cry From Dead’. I was gonna let it slip for the umpteenth time ‘cos I felt the presence of his wife Jeanene and all the other friends and devotees who brought about its release on a major label. Their dedication and commitment to getting the reputation he deserves is remarkable and to see a great grainy black and white photo of Townes peering out from the major store’s racks is wonderful. Then I read an assessment of his friend by Steve Earle courtesy of a (‘unofficial’?) report on a songwriting class Mr. Earle gave in The Old Town School. Suddenly I felt that ghost tap me on the shoulder......now that review....? Yes sir Mr. Zandt..I’ll try..

It’s pretty simple. Mr. Earle summed it up. Townes was a poet and "the best songwriter in the world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that". That quote has passed into folklore itself but hell its true. What really got me excited though was one of those moments of revelation where different worlds collide and suddenly everything makes sense. Steve Earle revealed –

"According to Townes, his biggest influences were Robert Frost and Lightnin' Hopkins."

(Steve Earle quoted by Jon Calderas.)

Robert Frost, Georgian poetry – Edward Thomas –a whole English poetry tradition related to a beat troubadour on some dusty Austin street. Frost’s ‘Birches’ or Thomas’s ‘Nettles’ and Lightnin’ Hopkins. The mind whirls. This is not some academic construct but the flashes of genius connecting across cultures and time. I’d always felt that The Austin ‘school’ of songwriters –Zandt, Clark, Walker, Keen and Williams et al deserved the attention of those literate forebears and here was a direct connection! As this webzine has grown I’ve started to explore all the ramifications of this fusing of literature and song. Now here’s the icing on my cake. To have heard Townes talking about Frost would have been a treat but the couple of times I saw him play he was distant somehow whether it be in a beery Islington club or diminutive at the London Bloomsbury Theatre. He seemed to carry a loneliness around within him that was held back by the hilarity and explosive carousel of his now well documented troubadour’s life. If all the stories he span were true and the long slog of clubs and bars as demanding as it seems it’s a wonder he ever had time to pen the fabulous masterpieces he did. We’re in Verlaine and Rimbaud territory for better or worse and who knows if the lifestyle shortened his life or it was a magic bullet of blood that the Lord simply used to call him forth. Whatever, he has left behind some of the great ‘literate’ masterpieces of the songwriter’s art. Any songwriter who does not own one or all from Our Mother the Mountain The late great..., Flyin Shoes, High Low and Inbetween, Nashville Sessions, Delta Momma Blues, Townes Van Zandt, or if you want all the genius in one easy package the unsurpassed Live at The Old Quarter, well they ain’t songwriters. But like any great writer/poet/genius ( use your own word ) he’s also attracted a whole lot of extra releases –fueled since his death, and speculation –just like the D.HLawrence’s and Virginia Wolf’s of this world. Some of this has served his memory badly with a swathe of live recordings that are interesting snapshots of a voice and a talent in decline –worn out by that treadmill of club and bar. None of these are particularly bad but I’d rather listen to a thought out album like the subtle ‘At My Window’ a late flowering treasure-trove than anything titled ‘Pain’ or suchlike. ‘Far Cry From Dead’ is a cut above these live recordings which are fast approaching double figures but hardly scale the foothills of the masterpiece recorded at The Old Quarter. However the backing (added to old solo tapes of Townes) still has the slight wooden-ness that such projects cannot avoid. Buddy Holly and Hank Williams received similar treatment with similar results. It isn’t bad but Townes’s earlier takes on the songs tower above these versions and you can hear the years in his voice. For completists the two previously unrecorded tracks mean this is a worthwhile purchase and for newcomers to Townes the track selection is representative of his best including a healthy selection of ‘greatest’ songs. However as my previous reluctance to review suggests and this assessment confirms I can’t give it the five star review I’d have loved too. Hope you understand Townes wherever you are. See you’ve been around ever since my uncle’s record collection offered up an old British copy of My Mother the Mountain and I was intrigued by this dude peering out under a cowboy hat and a back cover with a guitar decorated with ribbons. That was thirty years ago and I’m looking at that cover as I listen to ‘To Live is to Fly’ ...’

It’s goodbye to all my friends, it’s time to go again
Think of all the poetry and pickin’ down the line

In the days before his death at Arras in World War 1 Edward Thomas had been writing to Robert Frost and on his body this scrap of verse written in pencil on a slip of paper was found ... .

Where any turn may lead to Heaven
Or any corner may hide Hell
Roads shining like river up hill after rain

Maybe Townes more than anyone would have understood that.

Farewell Townes and thankyou.

shaun