New CDs I’ve been enjoying

When I get off the road for a few weeks, I dig into the suitcase full of music I picked up at festivals and other stops along the way. And I also dig into the immense heap of CDs that arrive in the mail while I’m gone. Here, in no particular order, are some noteworthy items, some of which will get on the air – but I only produce three hours of radio every week, two of which tend to overlap considerably, so I can’t do it all.

Will Kimbrough, Americanitis. Kimbrough plays in Rodney Crowell‘s band and also has a band called Daddy. He performed under his own name at the Suwannee Springfest, accompanied by a fine player from Tallahassee named Scott Campbell. Kimbrough’s singing and songwriting styles fall somewhere between Crowell and T Bone Burnett, a damn fine place to be! (There’s a really fine acoustic duo performance of Rodney’s “Dancin’ Circles ‘Round the Sun (Epictetus Speaks)” on WNCW‘s Crowd Around the Mic Vol. 9, a fund-raising CD from a fine radio station (and a longtime GD Hour affiliate).) I really enjoyed Kimbrough’s songs, and I weaseled a copy of Americanitis out of him at the festival. Favorite songs include “I Lie, “Pride” (which will be heard on GD Hour #970), “Less Polite,” and “Act Like Nothing’s Wrong.” I expect this disc to stay in rotation for quite a while around here.

Sometimes Why. Three fine singers – Kristin Andreassen of Uncle Earl, Ruth Ungar of The Mammals, and Aoife O’Donovan of Crooked Still – collaborating with minimal instrumentation and maximum charm. I’ve been knocked out by The Mammals every time I’ve seen them; Ungar’s partner (and now husband) Mike Merenda wrote one of the songs on the Sometimes Why CD, “I’m Tryin’ to Remember What City I Know You From,” which also appears on the Mammals’ CD Departure. O’Donovan warned me not to play “Too Repressed” on the radio. Here’s an interview from Pure Music that explains why:

PM: …. I was listening very quietly this morning, because people were sleeping. And the first X-rated line went by, and I thought, “Wait a minute, did she say what I thought she said?”

AO: [laughs]

PM: And I had to turn my player up, and heard, “I want to f**k you.” I said, “Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m hearing!” [laughs] And yet, it was sung so sweetly, so musically–and I was telling a young hippie friend of mine later about it. I said, “I’m not talking about a passing reference, Dave–this is a six-minute song!”

[laughter]

AO: I know.

PM: It’s so out there. I thought, “Damn, these old-time ambient chicks are off the hook.” It’s just beautiful.

AO: Oh, thank you. It’s funny. Actually that song started as a jam between myself and Ruth’s husband, Mike. We were all at Merlefest, just kind of jamming on guitar. And Mike sort of came up with that riff, that da, da, da, deeyoo, deeyoo, deeyoo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. And then I made up all the words and sort of the rest of the song. But–

PM: Did you start singing those words on the spot when you and he were jamming?

AO: Oh, yeah. That was on the spot. We were at this cabin in the woods in North Carolina, and we’d just come back from Merlefest, and we were partying.

PM: [laughs] Right. Did he start laughing when you started singing those words?

AO: Oh, God, the guys were cracking up…. We were going for it. But the thing is that in so much music right now, in so much pop music and so much hip-hop, there’s so much sex going on…. And there’s a lot of sex going on in old-time music, too, but it’s really subtle, and it’s really under the surface, and it’s usually a song from a guy’s point of view…. Like “Going on up on a mountain, give my horn a blow, every girl in this old town says yonder comes my beau.” And those references are definitely made.

PM: Yeah, all the way back.

AO: So it’s never from a woman’s perspective, ever. [laughs] I just felt like we had to come up there and say, “We’re humans, we’re women, and this is how we feel at this moment.”

Dan Frechette, Lucky Day. Dan showed up at SpringFest to play with his Winnipeg homeys The Duhks, but (except for fiddler Tanya Elizabeth) the band got stuck in Canada because of some US immigration bullshit and never made it to the fest. Tanya, Dan, members of Crooked Still, Joe Craven, et al. filled the time slot admirably, and Dan impressed the crowd with his songs. He told me offstage that he has written fourteen hundred songs, by way of complaining that only one tenth of one percent of his output is represented by his CD, Lucky Day. It’s a pretty respectable showing, I must say! The Duhks have covered a couple of his songs, most notably (to my mind) “Who Will Take My Place?” on Migrations. I look forward to hearing more from this left-handed songwriting machine.

Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams, Flapjacks from the Sky. I missed their SpringFest sets due to scheduling conflicts, but they got a great buzz from musicians and fans alike. I ran into them in the convenience store next to our hotel late Sunday night, after the festival’s end (Joziah Longo is hard to miss!), and we had a nice conversation about the vicissitudes of this business we’re in. They’re coming west in May for the Strawberry festival, and I gave their booking agent some suggestions about places to play in the Bay Area while they’re in the time zone. I listened to their CD on the way home. Good stuff!

Brave Combo. I shared a Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour stage with this Texas outfit on March 19. You can watch it online, or listen in a variety of formats. I had heard of Brave Combo for years, but never seen ’em live. I left Lexington a fan! We traded CDs, and I listened to the three I got from them all the way down to SpringFest. My favorite is Holidays!, a colelction of mostly original songs about all the red-letter days on the American calendar. Hard to pick a favorite, but “Father’s Day” made me smile, and “Groundhog, Groundhog” made me laugh. In “Hail to the Chief/Minstrel Boy,” Danny O’Brien plays a muted tumpet solo that sounds like a politician giving a speech. Also noteworthy: “Postcard from New Orleans,” a sort of meta-“Iko Iko.” The lyrics are posted on the CD’s page. They’ve been around for 25 years, and they’ve never moved out of their home town of Denton, Texas. It seems to be working for them – they’ve won Grammys and everything. Check ’em out.

Dang, I’ve got to getback to paying work. I’ll try to post some more notes in the near future. But before I sign off, I want to note that today’s mail brought some very welcome treats: Three reissued Monty Python CDs from Legacy Recordings: Monty Python’s Matching Tie and Handkerchief first appeared on vinyl as a three-sided disc! You’d put the needle down on one side and not know which of the two sets of tracks you’d get. On the CD, all tracks are directly accessible, and there are four bonus tracks, too. Also the Monty Python and the Holy Grail soundtrack, and Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation Album. More comments after I’ve had time to enjoy ’em some.