So, what’s a girl to do when an immensely talented band of friends is coming to visit and all of your audio recording guys are out of town? Drew Grow & The Pastors’ Wives looped through Colorado last weekend on their western states tour before heading into their current leg with Wild Flag, and we decided to get creative with a guerilla video session on a Sunday morning.
Kevin Ihle has done stunning video work with artists in and around Colorado Springs, filming folks like Damien Jurado, Sera Cahoone, and Bryan John Appleby (during his chapel session), but this is the first time we’ve tried recording a whole chapel session only through a visual lens. And actually — I can’t think of better guinea pigs than DGPW.
Each of the four people in this band is fascinating to watch perform. There is a deep authenticity and soul in their music that works its way out through all of their faces and every fiber of their beings. Heads are thrown back, eyes squinted shut, bodies bent at the waist. You know, for sure, that in the music they mean it.
Their songs also lend themselves extremely well to the sort of collective uprising of the spirit that we typically associate with churches, chapels, and other spaces for the sacred. Buoyed by the incredible acoustics we discovered in a small side-chapel once we wandered from the stage (think: reverberation from every angle, almost overwhelming), this represents a cherry-picking of songs from their catalog perfect for the setting.
Starting with the grand-piano-laced “Bon Voyage Hymn,” Drew & Co sang of a mighty chorus that sets slaves free, then moved to a brand new (heartbreaking) song “Pony” and an vocally-focused older song called “Us,” circling back thematically for a deeply-redemptive closing rendition of “Do You Feel It”: so break into a chorus, maybe a saving melody….
Sometimes you see someone singing and they are just so, so very clearly in their element that they nearly vibrate an easy tidal wave of vocal power, inhabiting and swimming free inside the song. Galen Disston used to sing in an ambient folk band called Pickwick. One day, as the story goes, he was listening to a Sam Cooke record and decided that therein lay a new urgent direction. The next band practice, they tried something different.
I think we can all agree that holy hell did they make the right decision.
Although this song was on my summer mix –something about soul and summer heat goes together in my mind– I noticed after I listened to it carefully a few times that it is a super dark song (possibly about the suicide of Ian Curtis?). Galen acknowledges the darkness of the lyrics, but adds, “all the songs are stories that have blown my mind, and I wanted the opportunity to live them in a small way when we sing the songs.” You can certainly see that indwelling here.
Pickwick left everyone speechless (and a broken stage in their wake) at the Doe Bay Fest, and they have a new maxi-EP out this month called Myths (a collection of their previous single releases, with some bonus tracks).
Pickwick is recording their full-length debut in December with tour plans to follow (including SXSW!). It will not be long before these guys (deservedly) explode brilliant and farther outside the Pacific Northwest music scene.
October means we’re happily knee-deep in baseball, surrounded by seasonal pumpkin ales, and, regrettably, wrist-deep in the slimy insides of jack-o-lanterns. Music has been my quiet oasis. I figure it’s high time I stop futzing over my autumn mix and share it already.
The fall mix is one of my favorites to make. In addition to being generally hyperaware of everything around me in life, especially subtexts and undercurrents, I notice an acute sharpening of my senses every time the seasons change. It’s why I make you guys these seasonal mixes: as everything in the natural world around me transforms, I have this nerdy compulsion to soundtrack it, to sharpen that moment. Autumn for me often hits like a jetstream of melancholy, and I’ve found after listening to this mix a few times through that (coincidentally) many of these songs have themes of: bones, rivers, empty beds, and gospel backing vocals. Make of that what you will.
Suddenly the hedonistic humidity and verdant ease of summer is replaced, seemingly overnight, by a chill in the air that makes you take in a sharp and marvelous breath. Sweaters come out of the back of the closet and it becomes much harder to get out from underneath the down comforter in the morning. These are the songs for that.
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost, Yale Review, Oct 1923
NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY ::
THE FUEL/FRIENDS AUTUMN MIX 2011
The Wind – Cat Stevens
This is probably and very possibly the most perfect song ever written, coming in at under two minutes and sounding just exactly like twirling orange leaves drifting to the ground.
Do You Remember – Ane Brun
I picked this big song here because it boldly sounds to me the way that autumn looks - all vibrant and audacious, thumping right into your lush summer and startling it with crackly fiery colors. It sings of us finding the first position (ballet reference, i think) and every muscle resting, but also knowing it was the last time. You also must watch the video.
[thanks Dianna] Sorrow – Tyler Lyle
After posting the title track last month, “The Golden Age and The Silver Girl,” I cannot stop listening to this whole album. Seriously, you guys — it’s one of my favorite discoveries of the year. Tyler’s timbre and vulnerability in his voice when he climbs an octave at 2:45, over that longing banjo and strings, keeps killing me every time. If I could run away, I’d run away, drag you back to my bed / It’s the sweetest memories that hurt the worst in the end…
Always Gold – Radical Face
This is my favorite new song on this mix, and it speaks directly to the title of the mix/poem also. From the latest Radical Face album ‘The Family Tree: The Roots’, I love the way that Ben Cooper can weave stunning melody and woolly atmosphere together so effortlessly, with the warm shuffly handclaps and choirs of humming.
California – Iron & Wine
Sam Beam is the epitome of autumnal music, isn’t he? Along with Elliott Smith and Bob Dylan, he’s a seasonal prerequisite for me. This early demo somehow references both California and the Springsteen riff from “Glory Days,” in warm, slow tones. Never thought I’d see that pairing in a Sam Beam song, but I love it.
Kitchen – Vinyl Skyway
This song feels warmly burnished to me, and when those harmonies burst in all “oooooh”ing, it reminds me of Colorado Octobers, shot through with seriously gorgeous sunlight. Very Teenage-Fanclubby and golden nostalgic.
River Song One – Wooden Sky
I keep cueing this one up on repeat and just letting it play. No seriously, like fifteen times in a row. It’s a bittersweet slowburner of a song, from The Wooden Sky, out of Toronto. Thanks, Adam (who also has an ace fall mix).
Dark Turn Of Mind – Gillian Welch
The new album from Gillian is on constant repeat for me this season; it is amazing, as is she. I like the way this song wrestles with the shadows that unkind love can leave on our psyche (“I see the bones in the river”), but also the gentle embracing of those dark currents and how the nighttime is so lovely, and how the nightbirds sing so sweet. Haunting song.
When You Are Still (live on WNRN) – David Wax Museum
With this song that celebrates that welcome stillness that I rest in this time of year, the flawless harmonies of David Wax & Suz Slezak get their third consecutive seasonal appearance on my mixes this year, from spring to summer to now. This means I am listening to their album a heck of a lot, and also that there’s a variety on there that strikes me in just the right ways (reference: The Head and The Heart, the only other band I can remember featuring three seasons in a row). I chose this live version of the song since the album version doesn’t have Suz’s superb harmonies (that I like to sing along with).
The Ground We Stand On – Hawksley Workman
This is the third song that coincidentally ended up on this mix that speaks of climbing back in bed / too much space in my bed / too much now that’s vacant. Hmmm. First off: stop it, Autumn. Lay off. Secondly: perhaps it’s the awareness that happens as the temperatures start to drop — you want to spend more time huddled under the covers, but maybe you also realize with a sharp stab that you don’t necessarily want to do it alone. Hawksley’s Canadian. He gets it.
Years/Cleo’s Song – JBM
JBM is another artist that is just completely quintessentially an artist for the autumn time. Close your eyes and listen to this and tell me that all you can see is yellow aspen groves.
Open Air – Lemolo
These two ladies are from the Pacific Northwest and have known each other since they were kids, naming their band after a street in their childhood neighborhood. They completely blew everyone away in their sweaty yoga studio set at Doe Bay Fest this year (I’ve watched this video too many times). [Sidenote: in addition to being incredibly musically intuitive, drummer Kendra also made the raddest slip-and-slide accomplice that I've ever met. We rocked it at that fest, and had the brutal bruises to prove it.]
Ohio (Damien Jurado) – Strand of Oaks
Somehow Tim Showalter (Strand of Oaks) takes what is already a devastating song and makes it almost moreso, from that resigned opening sigh. I just found out that my paternal great-grandfather worked in the steel industry in Zanesville, Ohio (I’m totes claiming this song now), but we can all relate the the feeling of searching for a home, and wanting to come home. Been a long time.
[via]
Hope You Know – Megafaun
I still think this band would have the perfect name if they were very, very metal, but as you can hear here, they are not. But rad nonetheless, this track is from their new album on HomeTapes Records. The heavy, clear evocative resonance of piano also plays strongly throughout my fall mix this year.
At The Bird’s Foot – City and Colour
From the cowboy-sounding-but-actually-Canadian Dallas Green (City and Colour), this mysterious and gospelly song is about the burning fires of oil spills. I saw Dallas perform under gorgeous skies at Sasquatch this year, and I think his music sounds better with woodsmoke and October in the air.
Golden Days (acoustic) – The Damnwells
Me never featuring this on an autumn mix before is a grotesque, abhorrent oversight. God, I love this song, and this version somehow even improves on the original. It makes me long for things that haven’t even happened yet.
Into The River – Portage
More river imagery, more gospel voices rising strong. I think I need to go spend some time in a cabin (or a tent) by a powerful river again, before stuff starts freezing. Proclivities in my listening habits are trying to tell me something.
Northbound 35 – Jeffrey Foucault
Another song that should have been on every fall mix ever made since long ago. I am not sure if I’ve ever raved adequately about how much I love this song. Some days I will leave it on repeat and just sing along and feel that deep lingering sadness. This song seeps and burns. There are two lines that will always, always get me, no matter how many times I listen: “And we fought all night and we danced in your kitchen, you were as much in my hands as water or darkness or nothing could ever be held,” and “what’s beautiful is broken / and grace is just the measure of a fall.”
Things I Never Needed (acoustic) – Grace Potter & The Nocturnals
This is a song about brutal realization of our shortcomings and a shedding of the things that we’d be better without. As such, it is a perfect soundtrack to this season and also works well for masochistic late nights. [video]
Hear The Noise That Moves So Soft and Low – James Vincent McMorrow
McMorrow gives me chills like Jeff Buckley and Bon Iver and Patrick Watson and other men who sing falsetto but are yet are fine specimens of men. His whole album is gorgeous and haunting.
I’m Losing Myself (featuring Ed Droste) – Robin Pecknold
The voices of Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear team up for a woodland autumnal spectacular. Lonely, darkly introspective, and self-damaging, this song is. “All alone at the end of the day I am just like the gathering fog.”
A Minor Place (Bonnie “Prince” Billy) – Fanfarlo
Fanfarlo takes a kicker of a song from Bonnie “Prince” Billy (oh wait, they’re all kickers from him) and make it their own during their iTunes Session. They’ve got a new album coming out too, and I am excited since I loved their debut thoroughly.
Lightning Rod – Drew Grow
I once heard Drew call “Friendly Fire” the saddest song he’s ever written, but I think this could be a runner-up. It’s a brave song. From last winter’s Comfort Feel EP.
The Loneliest Place I’ve Ever Been (Is In Your Arms) – Damien Jurado
The most wonderful thing about Damien is that I think he just pens songs this marvelous by the dozen and posts them on soundcloud, like a terrific overstock sale of heartbreak. I’ve been thinking of this song a lot lately, the bald-faced way he nudges “don’t you know / it’s time that we let go.” Yes. It is.
Graveyard – Feist
This is the track I’m stuck on the most on the terrific new Feist album, unable to get enough of the choir that swells all around in the later half of the song, “Whoa-ohh, bring it all back to life.” As it pertains to our seasonal wanderlusts, it’s just a reminder that after everything green dies, there’s gonna be the quiet icy silence, but someday all will be brought back to life.
To stream this year’s mix on 8tracks (for android users and other streamers), click here.
[cover image is of the tree outside my house, a gorgeous combination of red and gold / many many thanks again to Ryan Hollingsworth for the great graphic cover design!]
On Saturday nights, what we really all often need (and should always want) is one of those visceral gutpunches of musical redemption. For my money, the best option you’ve got this weekend is to come see the show Fuel/Friends is presenting withDrew Grow & The Pastors’ Wives at the Hi-Dive:
Drew released one of my favorite albums of 2010, and has soundtracked some of my favorite moments of the last year. I wrote: From those fuzzy, sexy, pleadingly plaintive blues jams like “Company” to the aggressive push-and-tug of the rowdy “Bootstraps” and the dulcet golden ’50s croon of songs like “Hook,” this album has pleased me completely. Every song is a favorite. The opening “Bon Voyage Hymn” sets the tone for this album (if it has one) of a sort of rough-hewn, honest, rock gospel as Drew howls, “Sing a shelter over me / With a mighty chorus, slaves set free.” And by that I mean the oldest spirit of gospel, in community and a shared love of singing, with our heads thrown back and our feet stomping — but while the guitar squalls and the dirty drums crash.
At the house show they played for me last November, it was like the best kind of church, a jaw-dropping explosion of goodness.
After breaking his FEMUR in a van accident earlier this year, and now in the midst of a successful string of shows with the kickass women of Wild Flag, Drew had a gorgeous acoustic EP (“I wanted to see which songs could survive being this naked,” he said) and hung out with me for a few days in San Diego while they were on tour. Their music is just as vibrant as ever.
They are eminently deserving of your listening ear and your presence on Saturday night. See you there?
TICKET GIVEAWAY
I have three pairs of tickets to Saturday night’s show, please email me if you would like a pair. Take my word, and tell a friend!
DREW GROW & THE PASTORS’ WIVES TOUR DATES:
% = headline
* = w/ Wild Flag
October 20th @ Flying M Garage (Nampa, ID) %
October 21st @ Kilby Court (Salt Lake City, UT) %
October 22nd @ Hi Dive (Denver, CO) %
October 24th @ Replay Lounge (Lawrence, KS) %
October 25th @ The Opolis (Norman, OK) %
October 26th @ Lola’s (Ft Worth, TX) %
October 27th @ Fitzgerald’s Downstairs (Houston, TX) *
October 28th @ The Loft (Dallas, TX) *
October 29th @ La Zona Rosa (Austin, TX) *
October 31st @ Rhythm Room (Tempe, AZ) *
November 1st @ The Casbah (San Diego, CA) *
November 2nd @ Troubadour (Los Angeles, CA) *
November 3rd @ Troubadour (Los Angeles, CA) *
November 4th @ Great American Music Hall (San Francisco) *
November 5th @ Great American Music Hall (San Francisco) *
November 7th @ Humboldt State (Arcata, CA) *
November 9th @ Doug Fir Lounge (Portland, OR) *
November 10th @ Doug Fir Lounge (Portland, OR) *
November 11th @ Neumos (Seattle, WA) *
November 12th @ Biltmore Cabaret (Vancouver, BC) *
I had a baseball-saturated weekend, seeing both Moneyball with my dad (he cried, and I love him for that) and watching the Cards head to the World Series with some friends from St. Louis. I also was watching a PBS mini-documentary this morning about the Seattle music scene, and I realized that for as happy as this Macklemore video makes me every single time I watch it, I have never shared it.
So that needs to change. This is Seattle’s Macklemore (Ben Haggerty) and Ryan Lewis, they blew me awayat Sasquatch with one of the most electric and literate performances I’ve seen in a long time, and this is just a terrific video, especially if you love the romanticism of baseball like I do.
And then — I just heard this today and whoaaaaaa. Macklemore X Ryan Lewis – Can’t Hold Us (feat. Ray Dalton)
(lookin for a better way to get up out of bed instead of gettin on the internet and checkin a new hippie kid….indeed)
Macklemore starts his gigantic fall tour tomorrow in London with (Doe Bay Fest alums) Champagne Champagne and I, for one, cannot wait to see him again. He’s in Denver on Friday night, 12/16, and also maybe heading to a place near you. GO.
MACKLEMORE FALL TOUR
Oct. 18 – London, UK – Xoyo
Oct. 19 – Brighton, UK – The Hope
Oct. 20 – Bristol, UK – The Croft
Oct. 21 – Dublin, IE – (Loft) Twisted Pepper
Nov. 4 – Olympia, WA – Capitol Theatre
Nov. 16 – Bellingham, WA – Mt. Baker Theater
Nov. 17 – Spokane, WA – Whitworth University
Nov. 18 – Ellensburg, WA – Central Washington University
Nov. 19 – Eugene, OR – Wow Hall
Nov. 20 – San Francisco, CA – Slim’s
Nov. 22 – San Diego, CA – Epicentre
Nov. 23 – Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour
Nov. 25 – Tuscon, AZ – Club Congress
Nov. 26 – Tempe, AZ – Club Red
Nov. 27 – Albuquerque, NM – Launchpad
Nov. 29 – Austin, TX – Emo’s
Nov. 30 – Dallas, TX – Trees
Dec. 2 – New Orleans, LA – Siberia Bar
Dec. 3 – Atlanta, GA – Drunken Unicorn
Dec. 4 – Chapel Hill, NC – Local 506
Dec. 5 – Baltimore, MD – Sound Stage
Dec. 6 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
Dec. 8 – Boston, MA – Paradise
Dec. 9 – Burlington, VT – Higher Ground
Dec. 10 – Toronto, ON – MCO Club
Dec. 11 – Ann Arbor, MI – Blind Pig
Dec. 13 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
Dec. 14 – Minneapolis, MN – Varsity Theatre
Dec. 15 – Omaha, NE – Waiting Room
Dec. 16 – Denver, CO – Bluebird
Dec. 17 – Salt Lake City, UT – In The Venue
(Oh, hey, and final baseball note – just noticed today is also the anniversary of the Loma Prieta quake that interrupted the 1989 Giants-A’s World Series when I was a Bay Area fifth-grader…)
So all I could do was lay on my living room floor and listen to this version over and over. Hearing the way Damien Rice softly and darkly teases this song into something shatteringly his own, there’s not really other appropriate responses or actions while listening.
From the forthcoming Q magazine compilation covering my favorite U2 album, I found it especially amazing how Damien totally changes this song just through switching a few pronouns from “you” to “me,” and the hesitancy in his voice, the inhalation of breath. With a few twists of vocabulary, he shifts all the blame and redemption woven through this song squarely onto his shoulders. I heard it in a way I haven’t heard this song in a long time.
i asked you to enter, and then i made you crawl
and you can’t be holding on
to what i’ve got
Portland’s John Heart Jackie (along with Justin Harris from Menomena) take on Prince’s 1980 lovesick ballad, weaving a swanky little few minutes of atmosphere, in the middle of a tour no less. Impressive.
I’ve been told by a few friends to keep my ears open for Caroline Smith & The Goodnight Sleeps, but I hadn’t really listened until I came across this blues cover today (originally made popular by our good soul-soother/breaker, Ray Charles). It gives me all sorts of chills. Listen to her wail — I love it when musicians surprise me.
Drown In My Own Tears live at Rock Shop, Brooklyn (Oct 11, 2011)
Caroline’s from Minneapolis, and her sophomore album Little Wind is out now on United Interests. Two songs from that:
I am getting on a plane to California this afternoon, and need to dive into work, but instead I really can’t stop watching this first:
Hey Rosetta! contributed a glorious favorite track on the Springtime mix I put together earlier this year, a cavalcade of voices and the stirrings of new life shooting up. This song and this video captures that same spirit. I want to sing on a cliff or in a darkened church with a few dozen people to this song.
Hey Rosetta is from St. John’s, Newfoundland, the most easternly point in North America, and I guess that’s what folks do out there to support their hometown musicians. Bring the whole town right on out to sing. Their latest album from earlier this year is called Seeds, and they have a massive tour (Australia, Canada & most of the USA) this autumn.
I have been eyes-closed for an hour, blissfully listening to this recording of Ryan Adams at Denver’s Civic Theatre two weeks ago. It’s been the only sound in my house other than my bare foot tapping on the wood floor and the occasional profanity I’ve been yelling over how so very very very good this recording is.
When Ryan Adams played that rainy Thursday night, I couldn’t go to the show because I was hosting a marvelous candlelit little house concert of my own, but when I saw the setlist I near-doubled over at how flawless it had been. If I could have hand-picked a setlist, and then hand-picked the ways I wanted him to sing the songs (you know how sometimes you know an artist’s live catalog so well that you want the melody to go up at that one point in the song, like he did in Sweden that one time but not on the record? yeah, he did that), this recording would be the result. Ryan’s voice is perfect. The versions are inspired and heartbreakingly gorgeous.
I feel like using my blockbuster movie announcer voice to say, “If you download ONE Ryan Adams show this year, MAKE IT THIS ONE.” Holy shit, so good.
RYAN ADAMS AT DENVER CIVIC THEATRE
SEPTEMBER 15, 2011
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.
Pickwick left everyone speechless (and a broken stage in their wake) 
TICKET GIVEAWAY
Caroline’s from Minneapolis, and her sophomore album 
Name: Heather Browne
