A while back, a local organisation called “When You Awake” (named perhaps after the tune by The Band?) which is dedicated to the celebratory perpetuation of neo-retro faux-rural style and culture (though they don’t phrase it that way) took part in a George Harrison Tribute Concert at Spaceland, to raise money for a charity intending to get music lessons to needy kids.
I had the good fortune to be in one of the bands recruited to perform: the Amanda Jo Williams band. We played three songs, with special guests including a tap-dancer and a moog-ist. The house band was SICK good!! Andy Creighton and company. Solid work - we didn’t have a single rehearsal.
I had been hoping for videos of our set to turn up, and they have not, but When You Awake has posted a recording… for the full story and the complete show, dig their site.
Meanwhile, here’s our three tunes for your consideration:
Not so often I get to play with a really good band to a packed room of muy enthusiastic dancing fools. This was a highlight of my musical life, so I’m passing on to you THE ENTIRE SET, in no particular order. If the footage from Boyd’s camera, whenever it turns up, has better sound, I will post that as well (or instead or something). Z took these. Enjoy!
I picked up a record by Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter … I’ve always thought it was a beautiful band name, but a little outside my genre of interest (don’t really dig “country-rock” … excepting certain exceptions … see below) … though I bought Jesse and co’s split single with Steve Turner on BURN BURN BURN a few years ago and really fell in love with their song, “Moon Over Troubled Town” (but it always sounds different every time I play the record, which I guess is a good thing. I blame it on the labels being pasted on the wrong sides of the vinyl) …
The one I just bought is a full-length, called “Like, Love, Lust, and the Open Halls Of The Soul” … and I’m not sure what, if anything, I was expecting.
But I play in a few bands which include elements of country and also elements of rock, blues, funk, whatever … and that means those bands can be called, at least in part, “country-rock” … and that means it behooves me to find a place to stand in that alleged genre.
So I bought this Jesse Sykes album, thinking maybe a record by a country-and/or-Americana-inflected artist who I liked pretty well, maybe that could give me some ideas of how to position myself.
OK, well, it did that.
I’m a guitar player, but the guitar player on Jesse’s album isn’t the first thing I noticed (although he is wonderful). The first thing was her voice, which is astonishing. She sings like an old, old woman in a young woman’s body. She sings as if she lives in a burrow dug into soft earth in the roots of an old, old tree. It is wonderful.
And next I realized how badly the sounds were causing me to miss the Pacific Northwest. Bad enough to cry. It won’t leave my mind.
In this music there is rain, and pine-tree-lined horizons, distant mountains, and an awareness of mist. There is a cool humidity, a northern languidity, a massive heft of tone and a psychic impact delivered laconically but nonetheless with force.
The guitarist is Phil Wandscher. He’s great. I plan to study him closely in the future. And while I like what he’s doing quite a lot, I also know now how what I do is going to be different. Thank you, Phil, for the inspiration.
The production and mixing are very complimentary to this group. The musicians sound like epic stomping monster gods singing sweetly in the deepest darkest forests of the mythic overworlds. But the music itself is so intensely chill that I can only listen to one side at a time (there are four) lest I fall into a trance from which I will not emerge.
(And it’s solid background music, too … for Tai Chi, Yoga, feeding the cat, but a little too subtle to wash dishes to … that’s good, we need music like that)
…Exceptions being (”country-rock” that I like): “Exile On Main Street” and related Stones. Certain Bob Dylan records. Certain Neil Young records. Lots of stuff by Leon Russell. (I like just about everything these people ever did, but their output varies, as you probably know, in terms of genre).
And I like certain things (but not everything) by The Band, Ry Cooder, JJ Cale, Danny Barnes … the “country-blues” ie Robert Johnson, Skip James, maybe Elmore James (tho, yes, I know, that’s edging into a Chicago blues bag, but Elmore is early and influential enough that I think I can call his “blues,” “country”) … Things from the Harry Smith Anthology Of American Folk Music. Hank Williams 1.
Not sure what else I’d really put in this category to any major degree, tho of course there are elements in many and diverse places (Black Crowes, Earth, blah blah blah) …
