The Rulers Of The Root

Posted on by


Debut albums are generally the domain of youth, pimpled adolescents unleashing pent up formative years of angst, doubt, unrequited love perhaps. So it’s strangely comforting to find that Glasgow band, The Rulers Of the Root, are, if not grizzled, at least able to recall when pubs were shut on Sundays and buying music meant a trip into town on a weekend. Their album, Porky Dreams, is released officially next Saturday with a launch gig at The Glad Cafe on the south side. It’s a tremendous album that showcases singer Patrick Gillies‘ excellent wordplay, a slightly absurdist take on life that comes across at times as stream of consciousness, at other times emulating the likes of Ian Dury with a fine feel for the shape and sound of language. Delivered with gusto in a manner reminiscent of Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits or Nick Cave the words are well matched by the band’s well-drilled and finely honed music. While they visit several styles on the album there’s a precision to the playing that has come from extensive rehearsals and a long history of listening to tight units such as The Blockheads and The Magic Band. Guitarist John Palmer and bassist Mick Murphy have a lifetime of playing in bands behind them while drummer Chris Quinn has a similar if less lengthy pedigree. With three of the band working in sound engineering there’s ears aplenty to fine tune the music and the end result is Porky Dreams, years in the making perhaps but with a spring in its step as well as its tail.

With the album pressed and plans well afoot for the launch Blabber’n’Smoke met up with three of the band and we started off by asking how they got together and past glories.

John: Three of us work together while Mick is an old friend of mine through my wife. He knew her brother, Malcolm Duffin, a drummer. Mick played in Glasgow bands in the eighties and for the past few years he’s been playing in Clash tribute bands. I played in several bands in the eighties.

Chris: I played in a few bands in the eighties but I’ve always been on the other side of the fence as a sound engineer. It’s a refreshing change to be on this side for a change.

Patrick: I’ve got no musical history. At the risk of boring you, about ten years ago, Nancy, my wife, bought me a guitar because I’d been wanting to play one for years. Like any teenager I could play Sunshine Of Your Love on one string but I started buying songbooks by the likes of Ray Davies and such and tried to play them in my ham-fisted way. Anyway, I eventually started writing songs and played them to John who thought they were quite promising. They were really like dead bodies these songs but John did his Dr. Frankenstein on them, revived them, put some glitter on them. After that, it was like a leaking tap. I just kept on writing songs to the point where we’ve got about 30. We put 15 songs on the album because I’m so old I was terrified I’d die before I’d get a record out. So it’s 15 songs but only 55 minutes so they’re not huge songs. The central core I suppose is country, a weird juxtaposition, a beginning and an end, some Blockheads type stuff.

Is it mainly songs from your live set?

Patrick: Yeah but we revived an old song called Elephant In The Room, which was one of the first songs I wrote, John did a really good job with it, it’s basically a country song but we’ve turned it into a Kevin Ayers type extravaganza.

John: Yeah, it’s quite dark, I was inspired by Ayer’s Song From The Bottom Of A Well which was one of my favourites when I was about 14. I love the guitar playing on it, that crazy, cranking guitar, just hitting it really. It’s an experiment I suppose but it came out quite well.

You say that a basic influence is country but while Charlie certainly fits that bill there’s some funk, Latin American grooves and noirish jazz on the album.

John: Yeah, every song’s been through about half a dozen different stages until we find a style that fits the song. We all listen to so much, we’ve been buying and listening to music from everywhere for a long time. It was quite funny when Chris was mastering the album and was trying to figure out which tags to put the songs under, we wanted to tick all of them.

Patrick: Yes, Loudon Wainwright maintains that his career was set back when someone said he was country and western so all his album were filed under that beside the likes of Sydney Divine.

The lyrics are quite striking, where do they come from?

Patrick: It never really follows a format I’m afraid. For example with Porky Dreams I came up with the name of the song (after some intense dreams one night) and just Googled American idioms and threaded them all together to make some sort of sense and to fit the sound of the G to G minor groove. Murdoch Browns also came with the sound of the original riff. It changed a bit over time and was written at the time News International was in the news a lot, I think it started from that phrase ‘Chipping Norton Set’. Elephant in the Room had a completely different tune originally but was written first and then the music came later. With Rose of Jericho I just wanted to write a story, a bit like Richard Thomson’s love story 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. Millport Cowboy was written after a visit to Millport …and it was full of Cowboys!! Neilston was written after a rail journey to Neilston in the rain and I wanted to convey a bit of that repetitive rail sound. Music and words came together. I’m sorry I can’t come up with a consistent formula! Charlie was about a friend of mine who fell out of a fourth floor tenement window and about my dad who was in Normandy. I wanted to write a traditional country song in A. I suppose words and music came together.
I’ve got good musicians and good sound engineers here. I write the songs and then take them to John and he does the rest and then the song will have three or four incarnations with the band before it finally pops up. Some of them are really close to the original, for others it’s been a really long process.

John: Some of the songs on the album were recorded years ago, really just as quick demos so we’ve had to go back to them and repair things, modify them and such. Patrick’s singing has changed since we started recording

Patrick: What he means is its improved a lot. We even had a soviet era, songs about the KGB; I was reading a lot of Solzhenitsyn at the time.

John: Yeah, we had a Ukrainian friend come into do a voice over on that. It comes across like a Zappa thing but what she’s reciting is a recipe for chicken soup! She was really good at it and we said you’ve done this before, turns out she records the voice messages for Ukrainian passenger ships, the evacuation instructions and such.

Unfortunately, there’s no Ukrainian chicken soup on the album, perhaps the next one. In the meantime Porky Dreams is a sublime trip into Patrick Gillies’ fevered imagination, an imagination that comes to life on stage where he adopts an almost atavistic persona and again one is led back to mesmerising performers such as Dury and Beefheart as Gillies grimaces and gestures utilising props at times and inhabiting the songs as one possessed. Meanwhile Palmer, a superb guitarist, in fact one of Glasgow’s most guarded secrets, lets rip with style, panache and a deep love and knowledge of rock riffdom.

Blabber’n’Smoke will have a review of the album in the next few days and the launch is at The Glad Cafe on Saturday 22nd November where they will be supported by Edinburgh’s Kings Of Cheeze, details here.

Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue. Last To Leave.

Posted on by

Isn’t the internet wonderful? A few months ago I happened on a video that stood out for two reasons. First was the one take approach to it as the camera panned and dollied around the band playing, nice. Second however was the band itself. A Patsy Cline like singer with an intriguing look sang wonderfully over a magnificent blowsy Spanish inflected twang laden backing. The band was Gal Holiday And The Honky Tonk Revue and the song was To Make Amends. It stuck with me so Blabber’n’Smoke eventually acquired a copy of their latest album, Last To Leave, and lo and behold, To Make Amends is but one of the gems contained therein.

New Orleans residents, Gal Holiday And the Honky Tonk Revue are fronted by Vanessa Niemann, a wonderful singer, fired by the likes of Cline, Wanda Jackson and Loretta Lynn. She’s a formidable looking lady, the album cover has her imperiously sitting, defiant, outside an old trailer van, bags packed. Her lizard green dress and cowboy boots, tattoos and flame red hair all flagging up danger, this woman is not to be messed with. The image is carried on to the music, she sings with a sultry confidence, a country torch singer with attitude. Meanwhile the band curl and swing hitting plain old honky tonk, sweet bluegrass stylings and killer outlaw country.

From the start Niemann asserts her authority as a hefty grunt from her opens the first song, The Long Black Ribbon, a wide screen cowboy clatter with sterling pedal steel and telecaster twang. She’s A Killer is a film noire piece set to Western swing with double bass plucking bravely and the guitars just hoovering it up as they duel and quarrel. It’s similar to the rockabilly stylings of Imelda Mae but to the nth degree. Last To Leave is a fairly straightforward country styled lament but again the performance is well above par and they continue at this level throughout the album. Broke Down And Broke is gritty trucking fare while Rainy Nights, Sunny Days is suffused with early sixties Nashville smoothness, slightly jazzy with an excellent guitar solo that shares joy and tears, you need to hear this but it really is magnificent. Teach Me How To Two Step ups the sassiness quotient as Niemann swaggers over some more excellent guitars (it has to be said here that Chris Adkins and Tony Martinez on guitar and pedal steel shine throughout the album) and on the one cover here, Pat Benatar’s Love Is A Battlefield, they rein in the temptation to offer an amped up country rock version and instead treat the song to a brisk Bakersfield jaunt which again has some superb picking.

Last To Leave is an audaciously great listen from start to finish and while New Orleans folk can catch the band on a regular basis it would be great if someone could entice the band to cross the water. In the meantime we have the disc and that video.

website

Cam Penner and Jon Woods. Blackfriars Bar, Glasgow. Saturday 8th November

Posted on by

P1020983

On a rain soaked and cold Saturday night in Glasgow the troglodyte trappings of the cellar in Blackfriars offered a warm and dry repose. The cave like comparison seems apt as it was a bear of a man, big, bearded, cradling a tiny four stringed acoustic guitar, who emerged from the shadows to mesmerise the audience for the next hour or so. Cam Penner looks ferocious, a look belied by his easy going and gentle introductions, but when he sang he drew the audience into a different world, one that’s sparse, cold, steeped in nature and history. Be it the reminiscences of Once A Soldier, the spectral Ghost Car or the gutbucket blues of Memphis Penner preached,crooned and hollered, stalking the stage, gently picking his guitar or banging a drum kit.

Cradled in the corner throughout this was Penner’s foil, fellow Canadian Jon Wood who conjured sounds from a variety of instruments and effects. On guitar, Wood ploughed the blues as sweet, sad and occasionally savage notes flew from his fingers while his lap steel added colour and atmosphere. Integral as his guitar efforts were to the show it was Wood’s use of a sampler which created a twilight zone where ghosts dwelled and shadows beckoned while sampled keyboards added to the tapestry of the sound.

Together the pair delivered a show that cut to the bone with occasional shivers to the spine as Penner spun his tales and wove a web that tantalisingly drew us in to a world far removed from a rainy Glasgow night. A trip to a heart of darkness drawn from Penner’s life and country that the Glasgow punters for the most part live vicariously but for the duration of the show we were in the wilderness with this big-hearted man as our guide.

There’s still time to catch Penner and Wood this week, dates here:

Nov 13 Kirkcaldy, Nov 14 Woodend Barn Banchory, Nov 15 Blue Lamp Aberdeen, Nov 16 Harbour Arts Centre Irvine

The Dreaming Spires. Darkest Before The Dawn EP. Clubhouse Records.

Posted on by

Oxford’s The Dreaming Spires are based around brothers, Robin and Joe Bennett who together have a quite a history toiling at the Americana coalface. Their previous band Goldrush had a good pop at making it big and for a period they were in an early incarnation of Danny & The Champions Of The World while in their spare time they were prime movers in setting up Truck Festival. Darkest Before The Dawn is a three song curtain raiser for their second album due early next year. As with their debut album, Brothers in Brooklyn which related some of their adventures in the States, there’s an autobiographical element to the EP with the three songs relating to a friend of the band’s, a guy called Danny who co-wrote several songs previously with Robin Bennett. According to Bennett Danny fell on hard times and the EP is an elliptic account of their relationship and the travails of touring in America.

The EP opens with the seven minute jangled jewel that is Hype Bands (Parts I & II), a song that starts off like Big Star backed by The Memphis Horns as Bennett packs in personal experiences and name checks or alludes to classic American music icons, songs and singers. The addition of the horns and the groove that the band lock into are reminiscent of Danny & The Champs’ recent forays while the road trip element recalls some of The Wynntown Marshals’ album, The Long Haul. It’s a brave, slightly convoluted, adventure with wide-eyed wonder at being in the land of musical heroes dulled by the actual enervating experience of being part of the biz. Musically however it’s a great rollercoaster of a song which definitely benefits from repeated listens as it caroms from jangled country rock to The Band like funky horn grooviness.

The mysterious Danny (actually, with some deft Googling you can easily check out his identity and rest assured he has heard the songs and approves) was the brothers’ road manager on their first trip. House on Elsinore finds them back in LA with Danny in a dark place and the band adopt the identity of one of the classic bands who epitomise the duality of LA. There’s a mighty Byrds thunk from the off with thick 12 string jangle recalling their baroque fondness of Bach. It’s a glorious song that has some of Crosby’s medieval trappings woven throughout.

Darkest Before The Dawn ends the EP on a minor key as The Spires return to Big Star territory with a song that recalls Alex Chilton at his best. Wounded and vulnerable but eventually optimistic as the song is wafted upwards by a heavenly chorus and soaring guitars, a song to make Nick Kent cry.

We mentioned above toiling at the coalface of Americana and in the press release for the EP Robin Bennett expresses a fear that UK bands playing American influenced music has at time seemed laughable before going on to explain that The Kinks, The Beatles and The Stones were all doing this before UK Americana happened. On the evidence here it’s apparent that this is no joke. The EP is a powerful chunk of music, influenced of course by some classic American bands but in the end whether they come from Oxford, England or Oxford Mississippi is irrelevant when the result is as delicious as this. It whets the appetite for the new album and you can read more about that in an interview with Robin Bennett here. The fact that Tony Poole of the criminally underrated 70’s UK Americana rockers, Starry Eyed & Laughing is involved is proof indeed that Americana is a state of mind, not place.

Darkest Before The Dawn is released on November 24 on Clubhouse Records

Dick LeMasters. One Bird, Two Stones

Posted on by

If you’ve been overdosing on Texas country music recently then Dick LeMasters is the guy to remind you that there’s a lot more going on in the Lone Star State. Texas has a very fine blues history stretching all the way back to Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lightnin’ Hopkins up to The Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughan while the late Doug Sahm and blues boogie champs, ZZ Top were the main flag bearers for the musical soul of Texas.

LeMasters is no spring chicken. He grew up in Texas with his teen years in the seventies, the glory days of the World Armadillo Headquarters when Austin was supplanting San Francisco as “head city” and every long hair was into country rock. He scuffed around with music taking second place to earning a living and it wasn’t ’till he was in his 40’s that he got serious with his band Longneck Road who earned a fine reputation locally. However it’s been a long road to his solo debut, One Bird, Two Stones, which hits stores this week and has been eagerly anticipated by the European Americana contingent with some rave reviews coming in.

One Bird, Two Stones is a solid album that would snuggle nicely beside the likes of Ray Wyllie Hubbard with a raw boned electric edge to many of the songs while there is a definite ZZ boogie apparent especially on the opening song, Big Ol’ Buick, with its Gibbon’s guitar licks and Power In The Snake which has a wicked fuzz lead. While LeMasters’ might not win any awards for originality there’s no doubt that the songs sizzle and burn for the most part while there are moments when he kicks over the embers and lets the fire burn down. River Blues is a slow burning blues with slashing guitar licks while Need Your Lovin’ Baby actually recalls the minor chord style of David Crosby and the blissed out atmosphere of If I Could Only Remember Your Name, a great little number.

Website

Sam Baker

Posted on by

A reminder that legendary Texan Singer Songwriter Sam Baker is appearing in Glasgow next week as part of a UK tour that kicks off at London Dingwalls on Monday 10th November. Sam Baker’s introduction to songwriting and live performance began as a method of coming to terms with a tragic, life-changing moment. Aged 32, taking a train ride through Peru, a bomb exploded in the carriage causing catastrophic damage and killing seven people, including a German boy and his parents who were sitting close by. Having survived, but left with both physical and psychological scars, Baker set out determined to relearn the guitar and rebuild his memory and speech. He attributes his minimalist storytelling techniques and lyrical elegance to this life changing event; his reflection on life and appreciation of each day a clear theme throughout his work.
“Life is a gift. I went through a lot of bitterness- a lot of anger. But those things are toxic. Gratitude for what remains is more helpful than resentment for what was lost”

Catching the attention of BBC Radio 2’s Bob Harris with his first album ‘Mercy’ back in 2004, Baker followed up with ‘Pretty World’ in 2007 and completed the set with ‘Cotton’ in 2009; now referring to this as ‘The Mercy Trilogy.’ The trilogy maps his path of recovery combined with the overwhelming theme that ‘everyone is at the mercy of another one’s dream’. With the support of pledges from fans across the world, Baker returned in 2013 with a new album ‘Say Grace’,supported by an incredibly successful UK tour.

The Glasgow show is Wednesday 12th November 2014 at Webster’s Theatre, promoted by The Fallen Angels Club. Blabber’n’Smoke’s review of Say Grace is https://paulkerr.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/sam-baker-say-grace/. Tour dates are here

Jeni & Billy ‘s Big Picnic Band. Picnic in The Sky.

Posted on by

Funny how things come back to haunt you. Well, not haunt exactly but Jeni & Billy got in touch with Blabber’n’Smoke a few months ago asking if we wanted a copy of their new album, Picnic In The Sky. Back in 2010, we listened to their album, Longing For Heaven describing it as the sparse folk sound of the mountains and backwoods folk, god fearing, hardworking, scraping a living but finding joy in family and friends and giving it a big thumbs up. And so it was that Picnic In The Sky winged its way here. It’s fair to say that all we said about Longing For Heaven could be said about Picnic In The Sky with one caveat. The duo’s sparse sound is supplanted by some accompanying musicians, a situation that was not planned per se but came about as a result of some serendipitous goings on including a waitress taking a food order and then disappearing for some time.

The result is an album of Jeni & Billy with Craig Eastman, David Jackson, Denny Weston Jnr. and Dillon O’Brian filling in on fiddle, slide guitar, lap steel, mandolin, bass, accordion, drums, keyboards, claps, feet, shovel, rake and baking pan (!). It’s still raw country music, still what you might expect to hear on a porch, just this time you might need a bigger porch. The expanded instrumentation does allow for a degree of sophistication with The Days Of The Blue Tattoo, a song about a white woman captured by Yavapai Native Americans, brimming with lush guitars, bar room piano, accordion and fiddle and sounding for all the world like an Emmylou Harris song from the late seventies. However it’s testament to their homespun qualities that the band songs retain an earthiness that harks back to the early recordings of The Carter Family with the two best examples being Are You Meant For Me and The Mill Hurries On, the latter being the song that features the shovel and rake percussion on a wonderfully woozy and sepia stained waltz. There are numerous delights here with the opening song, The Robin & The Banjo an excellent example of raw Appalachian music complete with flatfoot dance steps while Picnic In The Sky flies along borne on lilting slide guitar as it paints a picture of bygone days. And for anyone hankering for the simplicity of their earlier recordings there’s The Old Hotel, a plaintive and raw monochrome capture of a desperate lover, armed with a gun and a fifty dollar bill, returning to that hotel looking for the will and the way to end it all. Great stuff indeed.

Jeni Hankins assures me that she and Billy Kemp will be in Scotland next year. In the meantime this is as fine a slice of delicate, bruised and uplifting roots music you’ll hear in a while.

Website

The Stray Birds. Best Medicine. Yep Roc Records.

Posted on by

Blabber’n’Smoke has been privileged to have seen The stray Birds twice this year. First time at Celtic Connections when they were promoting their excellent EP, The Echo Sessions. Next up was a Fallen Angels Club promotion at the CCA in September. In the intervening months, the engaging trio from Pennsylvania were picked up by US label, Yep Roc Records who have released Best Medicine, the band’s second album. This is great news, for the band of course but also for those who faithfully follow the stream of very fine roots musicians, incessantly touring, playing to small (but dedicated) crowds and who buy the CDS, vinyl, T-Shirts and god knows what else at the merch table after the gig. If a label like Yep Roc (home to Dave Alvin, Chuck Prophet, Paul Weller and Robyn Hitchcock) are interested then the future may be just a little bit brighter.

Anyway, down to business. The Stray Birds (Maya de Vitry -guitar, banjo, fiddle, Oliver Craven – guitar, fiddle and Charles Muench – double bass, banjo) have much in common with numerous other string bands doing the circuit, they can all sing with lead vocals shared out while their harmonies are spot on. They swap instruments with abandon, can swing or weep depending on the song and, grouped around a single mic, they can transport the listener to the Appalachians even if you’re sitting at home or hunched up in a folding seat in a dark and hot auditorium. There are two things that perhaps set them apart from the throng. de Vitry’s singing is the number one weapon here as she has a superb voice, fairly unique, no Lucinda Williams’ sultriness or sassy cowgirl grins. She seems steeped in the loam of the land, resonant and rich, a full throated voice that resounds through the ages, she should have been singing with The Band back in the days. In addition to this Craven is no slouch himself in the vocal department while Muench adds a fine earthiness with his contributions. Weapon number two is the songwriting. A song like Adelaide is very much in the tradition but the performance is well above par while Feathers And Bone (with Craven’s slightly hoarse voice leading) is a standard waiting to be picked up by others as it transports the listener to another land. The title song is far removed from traditional fare as the band sing the praises of a record store they visited. A hymn to music (and vinyl in particular) it swells with rippling guitar and an almost Gospel approach to the grooved deity.

There’s not a dud song here as the band recall the Wounded Creek Native American massacre on Black Hills, a song that towers when played live, Simple Man, a Guthrie styled tribute to land workers and Might Rain, the closing song and one which stylistically resembles the opening title song as de Vitry sings again of loss and the band sound as old as the hills with stuttering banjo and plaintive fiddle. Live, the band can whip up a storm but on the album the jollity, if we can call it that , is provided by a rousing Western Swing take on the old standard, Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor and a fine knockabout hillbilly swagger on Who’s Gonna Shoe. Make Yep Roc (and the band) happy and grab a copy, you won’t be disappointed.

website

Pieces of Robert Wyatt

Posted on by

Excellent piece on Robert Wyatt by Richard Williams

Richard Williams's avatarthebluemoment.com

The Amazing BandWhen I read, in the new issue of Uncut magazine, that Robert Wyatt has decided to stop making music, I felt an immediate pang of dismay. So I rang him up to see if he really meant it. His reply was to tell me a little story about the novelist Jean Rhys, who, after a long period of inactivity, responded to her publisher’s gentle suggestion that she might like to write another book by asking him if he’d enjoyed her last one. “Yes, of course,” he answered. “Well, read it again,” Rhys said.

We could all do a lot worse than work our way through Robert’s albums, starting with 1970’s End of an Ear, which includes his fabulous deconstruction of Gil Evans’s “Las Vegas Tango”, and concluding with 2010’s magnificent ‘…for the ghosts within’, on which he shares the credit with the saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and the violinist/arranger Ros Stephen. And…

View original post 399 more words

Billy Childs. Map To The Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro. Sony Masterworks

Posted on by

Time for a little sophistication here at Blabber’n’Smoke. Late night sophistication in fact in the form of this exquisite tribute to the late Laura Nyro from jazz musician, Billy Childs. Childs has rearranged a slew of Nyro songs and invited guest vocalists to breathe new life into them. The guests include Renée Fleming, Rickie Lee Jones, Alison Krauss and Dianne Reeves while Jerry Douglas turns up on Dobro and Wayne Shorter adds sax, the whole produced by Larry Klein, no stranger to enigmatic female singer songwriters.

The orchestration is superb with the strings in perfect harmony with the jazz instrumentation and while several of the songs are not immediately recognisable from the originals the spirit of Nyro can be felt throughout. Rickie Lee Jones’ interpretation of Been On A Train is the current favourite here but all of the songs bear repeated listening. Definitely recommended for lovers of Laura Nyro while fans of modern jazz will find it interesting.

Website