It's mini-review time again. This week the column looks at four new roots music releases, three that have not gotten as much attention as they deserve and one by a legend that comes out next month. There’s also an update on four stellar vinyl blues re-issues that serve the dual purpose of making great-sounding records available to roots music lovers and continuing to make roots music readily accessible to audiophiles.
Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert - Volume 4 (Out now)
Kane and Gellert have a quiet intensity about them, one that seems to hover in the air, unflinching, enduring, like the Milky Way in the night sky, full of mystery and wonder. And like that night sky their playing, most often guitar and driving fiddle, encompass the possibilities of not just musical traditions but also of life, love, and loss. This album is no different, and has become my favorite of the year (so far).
This time out, they also tackle the biggie: death, and what we take with us. In “I Can’t Wait” they approach the letting go: “Someday we’ll roll away the stone that we’ve carried for so long…. It seems we have gone too far, now we don’t know where we are.” Not unlike the Wordsworth line, “The world is too much with us,” augmented by the gentlest of finger picking. “The Mansion Above” binds the great divide with what we do in the here and now: “If I don’t start making my peace with my neighbor, I’ll loose my connection to the mansion above.”
Nellie McKay - Gee Whiz: The Get Away From Me Demos (Out now)
To say that I was knocked out when I first saw McKay in 2004 is an understatement. As her producer Geoff Emerick (of Beatles fame) said when recording her debut critically acclaimed album of that same year, Get Away From Me, you run across an artist of this caliber once every 10 or 15 years. Now, over 20 years in, I have not altered my initial assessment that McKay marries Randy Newman's sardonic wit with Blossom Dearie's cabaret intimacy.
Usually when albums of demos are released they demonstrate the creative process, highlighting the seeds that grew into songs that flourish. But this collection shows that McKay’s talent, and songs, were pretty much fully formed at the beginning – not sketches to be worked on in a studio with seasoned pros to produce a polished result. As this 18-track collection also includes three never before released songs, it's a real treat. But wait, there's more: McKay’s 2023 album, one of my fav albums of that year, Hey Guys, Watch This has also just been released on vinyl for the first time. I’m in Nellie heaven.
Steve Gillette – Best of Steve Gillette (June 22)
It may be 60 years since his “Darcy Farrow” was first recorded by Ian & Sylvia. It became a folk club staple for decades, and was recorded more than 300 times. Gillette has, if somewhat quietly, continued a career steeped in the folk music tradition, as well as having 14 albums under his belt, and touring, his other songs have been covered by Nanci Griffith, Waylon Jennings, and Tammy Wynette, and his film credits include movies by Disney and MGM.
Now comes this homey collection of 12 tunes that also features folk royalty: Buffy Sainte Marie, Graham Nash, the late David Lindley, and Jennifer Warnes. Gillette’s baritone, while always warm, now has a lived-in feel to it where he does not so much sing his songs, rather caresses them. Oddly enough "Darcy Farrow" is not included here, but the hummable "Back on the Street Again" is. It was a hit for The Sunshine Company in 1967 and perhaps serves as a metaphor as it's good to have Gillette back again. Even if he never really went away.
Ron Sowell - Dance Till the Music Stops (Out now)
Sowell would be forgiven if he did an easy album, one where he rested on his laurels, which include leading several influential bands in his adopted state of West Virginia, recording numerous albums, and by virtue of being the musical director and acoustic guitarist of the Mountain Stage band being heard by an untold number listeners every week on the radio. No, instead he takes all that he has learned from five decades of musical adventures, every track displaying a different aspect of his talents from jazzy folk to creole.
If I had to pick one song, it'd be the soft samba of the title track, a mediation on life, its immediacy and its swiftness: "Feel the beat, move your feet, twirl and twist and shout. Let it go, enjoy the show, don't sit this one out." Certainly don't sit out on this whale of an album.
Vinyl Update: The Blues and More
Craft Recordings’ Bluesville imprint continues its strong list of significant reissues with Buddy Guy’s 1968 album This Is Buddy Guy! and Scrapper Blackwell’s 1962 comeback Mr. Scrapper’s Blues (both were released on May 16). While the Guy album was only his third solo release, he already had his bona fides with several albums with Junior Wells, including the seminal Hoodoo Man Blues (1965). So, it was not a stretch to record a live album so early in his career, one that captures the energy, and a club ambiance, of a blues icon not in the making, but already there in the moment. Interestingly, while Guy is definitely in charge, the genius of the record is its emphasis on the entire band. You feel as though you were down front at a show, seeing the sweat glistening on their brows.
I first heard Blackwell on his 1930s recordings with arguably the most popular blues artist of his time, pianist Leroy Carr. (His “How Long, How Long Blues” is one of the most recorded blues songs ever.) However, Blackwell also recorded some solo work, most notably “Kokomo Blues,” which was later reworked by Robert Johnson into “Sweet Home Chicago.” When Carr passed away in 1935 he pretty much hung up his guitar.
But fate was kind, in the late 1950s, Blackwell returned to performing and in 1962 released this masterwork, Mr. Scrapper’s Blues. The album was also somewhat prophetic because just as his performance sounds as though his soul was at stake he died shortly after it was recorded. It’s an album that haunts you long after its last song, “Penal Farm Blues,” is over. Because it’s never really over. As with the Guy album, and the other Bluesville pressings, the sound quality is impeccable.
Speaking of blues pianists, Candid Records is also digging into its rich history of roots recordings with its reissue of Memphis Slim’s 1961 magnum opus, Memphis Slim, U.S.A. As its title suggests, its a travelogue vividly portraying the hardships and triumphs of a traveling bluesman.
He presents the blues in a more straightforward manner, in a way Carr pioneered, the blues as popular entertainment. Moreover, his conversational delivery may be somewhat disarming to some “purists” as Slim (born John Chatman) takes us on a journey, both musical and historical. In so doing we become a participant, not merely a listener.
No discussion of the blues, at least in my book, is complete without mentioning the most heartbreaking of Americana blues songs, “Dublin Blues.” Compass Records has just released a 30th anniversary edition of the Guy Clark album of the same name. It’s not only been remastered but remixed as well, both by Miles Wilkinson, the album’s original co-producer and engineer. It also includes a never-before-released track, "Once More With Caution," with Emmylou Harris (who also in 1995 released her own masterpiece, Wrecking Ball), Verlon Thompson and Darrell Scott. The rest of the album also features performances from a long list of Americana royalty: Sam Bush, Rodney Crowell, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Nanci Griffith. It’s an album for the ages.
It should also be noted that this summer Fat Possum Records will reissue Mickey Newbury's three masterpieces, Looks Like Rain (1969), Frisco Mabel Joy (1971), and Heaven Help the Child (1973). (More on Newbury can be found here. I have not heard these records, but based on their fine Townes Van Zandt releases (and others), there is no reason to think these will be any less terrific.
The above reissues are also available on CD, and digital download.
Click on any photo to view the gallery as a full-size slideshow.
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