Lohio is from Pittsburgh, or as frontman Greg Dutton described it to me, “a land where three rivers become one” — which sounds fittingly more magical.
I was drawn to pluck their fantastic little Family Tree EP out of the tilting stack of promos by my stereo solely based of the title of the first song: “Leave The City, Leave Your Room” — excellent advice in the continuing quest towards adventure. It’s the spirit that permeates the whole album, one that makes me want to crane my neck upwards as I walk down the street, looking for some magic.
I love the low/high combination of shimmering bells and bleeps here on this song, combined with the sexy bass undercurrent. Their tunes are reminiscent of the chimey harmonics and thumping drumlines of Fanfarlo, the singalong freshness of Welcome Wagon or Sufjan Stevens, and at times the nuanced breathy confessionals of Doveman – this little EP snuggles right into niches of music that I enjoy and makes me happy with their own fresh creations.
Mumford & Sons played two new songs last night to a fervently enthusiastic crowd at their sold-out Denver show. One song, tentatively titled “Broken Crown,” was just written yesterday at soundcheck here in Colorado. You know, I was probably doing something like eating an apple at my desk at the same time they were out composing potent new songs like these — just, you know, at soundcheck.
The other new one, “Below My Feet,” is a slow-building piano-based shot of redemption, and was written in Melbourne this summer during their Australian tour. Both are compelling.
Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) writes songs that could be stripped of all their music and go dressed as poems on Halloween. As compelling and gorgeous the melodies he weaves can be, I am often laid out by a turn of phrase or simple description in his lyrics. This new song has been floating around in various live videos on the internet (both of the early performances he flubscharmingly) but since this is from a radio broadcast last week, the sound quality is near-perfect. I think this is the best mp3 of it yet.
Half Moon (new song) – Iron & Wine
Halfway home in the hilltop trees
and all our footprints in the snow
and the evening glow
leaving
Low night noise in the wintertime
I wake beside you on the floor
counting your
breathing
’cause I can’t see nothing in this half moon
lay me down if i should lose you
Halfway-working on a wornout house
and all our friends the ragged crows
and aching bones
whining
Where are we when the twilight comes?
the dark of valley and the breeze
and the frozen leaves
chiming
’cause I can’t see nothing in this half moon
lay me down if i should lose you…
Really, perfect for this season, right? I’ve listened to it on loop since this morning, and have been singing along to that nahh nahhh verse at the end.
Also, this was how he started that show last week in Milwaukee, and it made my heart hop when he gets to that chorus “have I found yooooooou?” in his solo, piercing falsetto. Wow.
It may be Rocktober here in Denver, what with all sorts of marvelous shows rolling through here this month. But in a few weeks, forget Rocktober because Fuel/Friends is presenting three absolutely fantastic shows coming through Colorado in the first week of November, with bands from the fertile loamy shores of the Pacific Northwest.
We’ll call it Rockvember, which really doesn’t have nearly the same snappy effect as Rocktober, but it will have to do.
Seattle’s The Head and The Heart and Portland’s Drew Grow and The Pastors’ Wives — both bands are becoming addictions of the most socially acceptable kind, meaning that I pretty much just rotate between their two albums in recent weeks but maintain my hygiene and there’s no lying or drug-seeking behavior.
First off, Drew Grow and The Pastors’ Wives are playing the Larimer Lounge on Wednesday, November 3rd (with Kelli Schaefer, the girl joining in for a show-stopping duet on the last lines of the song in the video below). The next night, Thursday the 4th, they are playing a Fuel/Friends house show down in Colorado Springs and I think you should come. It’s $5 and you can BYOB and rock out in my ‘hood.
Every last thing that you need to know about why you should come see Drew Grow & The Pastors’ Wives for one of those two shows can be gleaned from this post here, and from this video here. Wait until three minutes in, when the best kind of musical cataclysm starts to occur:
Their album is one of my favorites of the year, easy. Recently at the Doe Bay Festival in Washington, the Seattle Weekly reviewer wrote, “Two weekends ago, I had one of those rare, game-changing live music experiences, the kind when you’re watching a band and your chest swells up big and red and raw like a great frigatebird during mating season and there’s a lump in your throat and an ACME anvil could fall on the person next to you and you probably wouldn’t even notice the blood spatter because HOLY FUCKING SHIT this band is amazing.”
Then on Friday, November 5th –if we survive the two nights with Drew Grow, maybe rehydrate our electrolytes– Seattle supernovas The Head And The Heart are playing their first show in Colorado at Moe’s (next door to the Gothic), co-headlining with local favorite Ian Cooke, with support by The Lumineers.
Guys, I can’t even tell you how blindingly quick things are exploding for this likeable, insanely catchy band right now, and deservedly so. They just toured through my home state of California, and I had friends at each stop along the way either texting me effusive praise from stageside, or stuck outside in the rain (like in LA, where apparently many folks couldn’t get in, despite the band adding a late show the same night). I have never seen them perform live yet, just pretty much watched the bejesus out of youtube videos.
This is a new song, “Gone,” they have been performing, with a bridge that I just can’t get out of my head. I’m trying here…
BIG OLE’ TICKET GIVEAWAY!
I have five pairs of tickets to give away to both of these Fuel/Friends presented shows (11/3 with Drew Grow and 11/5 with The Head And The Heart) to folks who email me. You can go to both, I’d absolutely love to share these bands with you.
When I am mayor of Wise and Awesome Song-Composition Choices, I think I will mandate a period where all percussion has to be naturally derived, i.e. something you can clap out with just the hands you and your friends have, the feet that can clatter and rattle the floorboards, and that ‘fwap’ sound you can make by hitting your thigh. Also, since it is one of my most-enjoyed driving pastimes, I may also allow drumming onto a steering wheel while simultaneously trying to keep the car from drifting into the next lane.
You might recall this affinity expressed in my Stomp/Clap mix (probably my most beloved mix I’ve made for myself yet). Therefore, I was stoked to meet Matthew and The Atlas.
Matthew Hegarty and his four bandmates are from around London, and their band has grown up in the regular Communion music-collective nights at the Notting Hill Arts Club (along with acts like Laura Marling, Noah and The Whale, and Mumford & Sons). They’re signed to the record label that has sprung up out of these nights, headed by Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett: the newly-formed Communion Records.
As you can see, their suspenders above emphatically state, “Why yes. We do play the banjo. And we make Americana music more stirringly than many of your true-blooded natives.”
This song sings about recognizing your roots as they change, and falling far, far from the tree. I feel an immense swell of wide-open horizons pounded in the soul of this song here.
The National ended their set just like this last night in Denver, and I was in the front row five feet away. I don’t think I can explain it more than to say that I stood there with tears running down my face. That show was one of the most amazing and deeply cathartic I’ve seen.
Leave your home, change your name
Live alone, eat your cake
Vanderlyle, crybaby, cry
oh the waters are risin’, still no surprisin’ you
Vanderlyle, crybaby, cry
Man its all been forgiven, swans are a swimmin’
I’ll explain everything to the geeks
All the very best of us
string ourselves up for love
All the very best of us
string ourselves up for love
Hangin’ from chandeliers
Same small world at your heels
All the very best of us
string ourselves up for love…
I have so many of these favoriteNationalsongs that it’s hard to recount all the ones that have laid me out over the years. I mean that literally; I often lay flat on the floor when I am listening to them, and just let them wash over me. I woke up with a tightly-wound knot in my belly this morning about seeing The National in concert tonight, for my first time in a non-daytime festival setting.
This is one song that I hardly think they’ll play tonight, since it is off their self-titled 2001 debut album, but it still grabs at my insides something fierce.
He’s missed her love because he never realized how much he had it. It’s an advance summary of so many songs in The National catalog, a wasteland of missed opportunities, cracked hope, nights when the stars never aligned. She looks at him with her silver eyes, as someone she doesn’t recognize.
I’ve sometimes wondered why they named their website after this song title. It could have just been that they liked the sound of the words, but that part of me that always wants to make sense of everything thinks that there might be some summation in this song of what the National is about.
I’ve also spent more time than I should have wondering about the line “don’t be a nightingale for anyone’s space to fill.” It might just be words strung together, but I want to believe there is something more behind that imagery. The nightingale has been linked to the idea of an artistic muse, and Shelley wrote: “A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.”
For what that’s worth.
AMERICAN MARY give my jewels to the army, my silverware and jeans
give my love to your family; tell them anything.
give yourself to anyone; give yourself away
don’t be a nightingale for anyone’s space to fill.
if i could, i’d be your star again
fall across your falling sky…
it takes a lot of little rain to make you feel like nothing.
anything, anything you can do, do to me for everything i did for you
nothing.
i didn’t try to take your love away
i just never knew i had it…
there is nothing you can say to ever make me want you
american
there is nothing you can say to ever make me leave you
american.
I’ve been unabashedly reveling in every morning where we evade the chill for one more day, where I can ride my bike to work in a skirt and short sleeve shirt, where I can sit on the porch after dinner and not feel that mercury drop and the gooseflesh form. But hey — all that stopped early this week, with a final burst of indian summer and the subsequent autumn arrival. Time for scarves and cider and music that makes me feel thoughtful, wistful, warm.
Once the inspiration hit, this mix was almost harder than the summer mix I made. Summer mixes are all about toe-tapping fun and driving around with the windows down, singing along at full volume. In examining my iTunes library, I realized that perhaps I am drawn intrinsically, year-round to this sort of autumnal music, those songs with heft and subtle strength and acoustic coziness, maybe of the hippie beards-and-sweaters variety.
As much as I love the hot days of summer, I do look forward to the quiet introspection of fall.
AUTUMN LEAVES, AUTUMN STAYS: THE FUEL/FRIENDS FALL 2010 MIX
One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) – Bob Dylan
Because, for me, there’s no other artist that evokes autumn for me as thoroughly and immediately as Dylan. The organ crescendo in this song feels like an October carnival, exploding with caramel apples and the smell of leaves burning.
Slow Dance – Coco et Co.
This duo from Montreal has woven together a rich and gorgeous album, the sparse iciness of melody here anchored by the warm Springsteenesque timbre of Andrew Sisk and the interwoven frost of Miranda Durka. It’s autumn and winter in one song. You can get their album here for $5.
Down In The Valley – The Head And The Heart
I cannot say enough good things about these guys. This song from their self-titled debut (easily one of my favorites of the year) is steeped in referential nods to all sorts of old, good country songs and emanates a road-weary ennui. The violin also breaks my heart. I’m presenting their Nov 5th show in Denver: stay tuned for a ticket giveaway next week!
The Gospel Song – Magnet
Magnet (Even Johansen) warms his native Norway nights with this substantial stomping, clapping, banjo-laced gem.
All Through Montana – John Craigie
Remember that warm seeping feeling in your chest when you first listened to the magnificent slow burn of “Orange Sky“? This song (from San Francisco songwriter John Craigie) infuses a distinctly Western-landscape haze into that sensation. I love this song.
Bare Bones and Branches – Lewis & Clarke
One original review of this album in ’03 called it “the perfect autumnal album.” I agree.
Sold – Dan Mangan
This gorgeous, smart album and Dan’s oaky, warm voice have been a major part of my last few months and I don’t plan to stop.
The Void – Jay Farrar & Ben Gibbard
This atmospheric song from the Kerouac-inspired ode from Gibbard and Farrar makes me taste fog and smell pine trees on the California coast.
Sin-Eaters (b-side) – The National
A tremendous b-side from the expanded version of High Violet (coming next month), all tension and velvet. This feels to me like a preface to the sadness of “Runaway.”
Five Years Coming – Cataldo
A small, bright spot of sunshine through the grey clouds: “the simple songs of hope I wrote have always been my best.”
Si, Paloma – Sun Kil Moon
A reader suggested this intricate instrumental as the perfect fall song and I concur.
Burning Stars – Mimicking Birds
This Portland trio crafts lo-fi, compelling music that I love. Fittingly recorded in a bedroom, as a home demo.
Transformation (live at eTown) – David Gray
David Gray has always felt like an October artist to me (or maybe January, but that’s another mix altogether). This melancholy piano song is fitting for this time of year when everything is being transformed by the chill.
What We Gained In The Fire – The Mynabirds
This Saddle Creek band recorded their stellar debut album with lots of whiskey and dancing in an Oregon hillside cabin. That sounds like an excellent fall weekend.
Passing Afternoon – Iron & Wine
“Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made / And she’s chosen to believe in the hymns her mother sings / Sunday pulls its children from their piles of fallen leaves.” Autumn isn’t autumn without Iron & Wine, yes?
Come Talk To Me (Peter Gabriel) – Bon Iver
Or Bon Iver as well? This cover is from the Record Store Day split 7″ I bought and have surely worn a groove in by now, a slow and haunting cover, with plucking banjo that sounds for all the world like rain on a tin roof.
Paint a Face – Neil Halstead
An acoustic folk album full of slow-reveal hues from this former Slowdive frontman, this was one of my favorites of 2008 and I always pull it out when the leaves start to change.
Helpless (live) – Neil Young
“There is a town in north Ontario”…. sweet jesus, talk about the high and lonesome sound — I think that tinkling piano with the piercing lone harmonica together at around 3:00 on this live version just about does me in for good. “Blue, blue windows behind the stars, yellow moon on the rise / Big birds flying across the sky, throwing shadows on our eyes….”
Rambling Man – Laura Marling
Like a wise Joni Mitchell in fresh 20-year-old skin, Laura Marling wows the socks off me.
Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight (Beatles) – Mumford & Sons
I can go for the Mumford & Sons sound any time of year, but they are coming to Denver at the end of this month and I am looking forward to it as a contender for show of this season (their Telluride one surely was for summer).
Storm Window (John Prine) – Josh Ritter
Folk perfection, the musical marriage of these two. “I can hear the wheels of the automobiles so far away, just moving along through the drifting snow / It’s times like these when the temperatures freeze, I sit alone just looking at the world through a storm window.” [bonus]
Post-War – M. Ward
One of the most perfect “slow-dance in stocking feet, finish your whiskey while you rest your head on my chest” songs that M. Ward has ever written.
It All Comes Right (Doe Bay Session) – Drew Grow & The Pastors’ Wives
This is one of my new favorite bands, and this singalong version of the closing track on their scuzzy, gospelly, phenomenally-good debut album is everything I want in music. Stay tuned this week for details of a house show I am throwing with them on November 4th!
I’m intrigued by music that crosses borders, geographically and within perceived divisions of genres. As I’ve grown into a happily well-traveled, curious adult, I’ve (obviously) enjoyed expanding my ears beyond the pop hits, the oldies, and the cheesy synth hip-hop of my youth. One of the first global, non-American artists that started pushing some of those borders of my musical geography was the Italian artist Lorenzo Cherubini, known throughout Europe as Jovanotti.
I wrote about him late this past summer when I was preparing to go see his show on the Santa Monica Pier. I flew out to LA and back, spending less than 24 hours basking in this marvelously foreign glow, in order to take advantage of his handful of small-venue United States dates — a rarity for an artist who regularly sells out stadiums in Italy.
Pressed tight and sweaty with hundreds of dancing, singing Italians, lurching forward and back as one organism of enthusiasm, I remembered in their vibrancy what it is about Jovanotti that makes him so infectious. “Every Italian knows at least five Jovanotti songs by heart,” asserted one Italian-American reporter, and the crowd of stylish ex-pats that night certainly proved that point and beyond. I was thrilled by the enthusiasm, and –don’t forget– the dancing.
But you, dear reader, may wonder if it was only the faithful and the foreign who loved his show. No — there were plenty of uninitiated folks in the crowd on that Southern California pier that didn’t know anything more about Lorenzo, other than that respected indie-rock station KCRW was presenting the show, or maybe that, heck, it was an absolutely gorgeous summer evening by the waves. But by the end it seems safe to say that everyone was converted. I saw shining joy on people’s faces as they folded their blankets and put their shoes back on in the deepening summer twilight.
In San Francisco’s Stern Grove a few days later (a show attended by 10,000), the PBS reviewer wrote, “No one has more fun at a Jovanotti concert than Jovanotti himself.”
Jovanotti played a crucial part in my musical horizons opening, and evokes all those intangible boundary-pushing, dazzling moments of a semester spent abroad in a foreign country. He was one of the first artists I loved whose perspectives on the entire world was coming from a completely different place than all of mine.
Therefore, meeting and interviewing him before the Santa Monica show was, to me, akin to meeting Bono (a man Jovanotti calls friend, due to their joint efforts on the Cancel the Debt initiatives in developing countries). Beside the ferris wheel and crashing waves of the Santa Monica pier, he greeted me warmly, we sat down, and we chatted a bit about music, creativity, social justice, and the importance of rhythm.
It was a terrific night.
JOVANOTTI INTERVIEW
Fuel/Friends: The press has been writing about this tour and last summer’s tour as your attempt to “cross over” into American music. What do you think of that term, “crossing over”? Is it different when you play here versus Italy? What are your goals here?
Jovanotti: I don’t have any future goals. My only goal here is to have a good show, to make the people fun, to make the people feel good – this is the goal. I am not planning a career here, or trying to win the Grammy award, it’s not that. I’m having fun, I do so many big shows in Italy, you know? The chance for me to do some little shows here was stimulating. My job is to do music. It’s very exciting for me to do music in different places. The best thing is not always to do a stadium, but sometimes just one show in front of one hundred people.
F/F: How are you creatively inspired by the different places you perform?
J: I don’t know… I am more inspired by the different places that I travel. When I perform, it’s always an experience of giving, not of receiving. And so, I divide my life always into two phases – the phases of this out(ward) direction and in. When I do shows and I do tours, it’s the phase of ex-direction, so at the end of the tour I feel more vuoto, more empty than filled.
Then I have to stop and maybe, usually, I can go somewhere, wherever, alone. I go in South America, or Asia, it’s always something that attracts me a lot, to travel and lose myself in a town where no one knows me, and I don’t know nobody. It creates a condition in my mind that permits me to start approaching a new music form.
F/F: So, do you write better at home in Cortona or on the road when you are traveling?
J: Travel is like a way of training your observation. When you are in a place that you know well, you don’t see anything more. Ehm… when you go around the world, it is a way of practicing. My musical colleagues may all do this practicing in different ways, but we all must train our ability to observe, and our ability of creative synthesis. The synthesis is the final goal, to take a concept and synthesize it in one image. It is something that photographers do, it is something that you as a journalist do, with a phrase or an image or a word. Musicians may do it with a melody or a musical atmosphere, or with words.
For me, always the most difficult but stimulating part for me is the lyrical part of my songs. I always start from the lyrics. A song for me doesn’t exist until I have a word that gives me the key to enter the door. Then when I’m inside, I start, and sometimes it comes out in three minutes, sometimes it takes three years, sometimes it takes ten years. But at the end I am looking for the synthesis, when you can distill it down to the essence. I use different techniques. My favorite technique is that of the list. For me it is creatively very inspiring, I have books full of lists of everything. And then from that, it is a way to get an order. You know, creativity is a job. I don’t believe in pure inspiration. I believe in hard work.
F/F: Hmm, I can see your listmaking in your music — a lot of your songs will detail many seemingly simple things that add up to a complete and powerful image or effect.
J: Yes, that’s the way I like to write. I don’t have the talent to create a plot. I admire a lot my colleagues that write a song that is an intricate story. My talent is more impressionistic, less linear. I would like a lot to develop the narrative part to tell a story about somebody, in America, you know you have someone like Paul Simon or other folk songwriters. I love complex stories. It is something I am still not comfortable with what I am doing.
F/F: When you had that conversation with Bono for GQ magazine, you asked him about the moment of opportunity that lay ahead to bring the issue of Cancel the Debt to the forefront again, with the World Cup in Africa, and with Giovanna Melandri. Were your goals achieved with that?
J: No. No. But with Italian politics can be totally distant from our global vision of the world. We have a lot of problems with the politics. Italian politicians don’t have big horizons. The fact is that the African problem and poverty are not sexy from a media point. It is very hard to get the interest of the people. The politicians are only interested in the things that interest the people. The only great thing in Italy is that we have the church, so with the church you can attract the attention in these kinds of topics. So you have to pass through the church to get the attention of the politicians. So working in that way, we’ve made good gains towards Cancel the Debt, but after 9/11, everything started to be much harder in getting that message heard. With the soccer games, our political class didn’t catch the opportunity.
F/F: Are you still working towards African debt cancellation?
J: I am still working with it. But it is very difficult. When you are talking about poorness, people don’t want to know anything about that. It’s very hard when you are talking to push the button of compassion and charity inside people. Because with compassion and charity, we didn’t get many results.
But the next step –the “upgrade”— would be to go at it from a justice standpoint, it is a political justice issue. Poverty is not about a failure, or a lacking. It is a political issue, and Bono is also doing a good job at drawing attention to that. In Italy it is harder, because the church monopolizes the conversation, but uses it in a way that won’t talk about AIDS or other things that are totally central.
F/F: Last question, and then I’ll let you go because it sounds like they are getting ready for you out there. If the 20 year-old Jovanotti DJ could see what the 40 year-old you was doing right now, what do you think he would think?
J: (smiles) I think he would be happy. Maybe criticizing. When I was a DJ, I didn’t like musicians, I liked machines. I was doing hip hop, so for me the drum machine and the computer were all I needed. In the future I would be drawn back in to more machines. Rhythm for me is still the most attractive thing in music, especially when I was growing up. Rhythm has only expanded for me as I have learned more about different kinds of music. It has gotten to be the biggest thing — there’s nothing that I don’t like. But Rhythm and words have always been central. When I did my first commercial enterprise, I called it Soleluna, ritmo e parole – rhythm and words. That is what I will keep looking for, ehi?
****
Indeed. This video is exactly what my jaunt to Los Angeles was like, in seven pro-shot minutes:
Jovanotti is working on a new album (that’s what he is talking about in that video up there) which will continue to fuse Latin, African, European sounds and beyond. I do hope that he returns to the US, because he is a terrifically versatile, infectiously enthusiastic performer, and if you ever get a chance to see him, you must.
[top photo credit Mary Leipziger, who happened to be walking by. All my photos are on the Fuel/Friends Facebook page]
Liz Durrett is from Athens, Georgia, and has the sort of warmly knowing voice that makes me miss Cat Power just a little bit less. Her first two albums were produced by her uncle Vic Chesnutt, while her latest album Outside Our Gates (2008, Warm Records) was produced by Eric Bachmann of Archers of Loaf / Crooked Fingers fame.
This Cat Stevens song has always been one of my best-loved songs to sing out loud, in all its unadorned perfection and plaintive hopelessness. Liz’s version is haunting and spare, making little chills dance down my spine.
Liz contributes to a track on the forthcoming Crooked Fingers EP Reservoir Songs II, and can also be heard doing some vocals for Phosphorescenton their album Pride. With some free mp3s and a back catalog worth exploring on her website, also make sure to listen to the beautiful duet she does with her late Uncle Vic for free download.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
BIG OLE’ TICKET GIVEAWAY!
Just off tour with Mumford & Sons (who 
Name: Heather Browne
