there’s much more stardust when you’re near

Jim James delivered one of my favorite live late-night performances earlier this week on Fallon (who hosts Night Beds tonight). There is such blissful joy in this performance, especially at the end when it all explodes in a dazzling burst of orchestral happiness with The Roots and all their instrument-wielding band-geek friends, apparently. Jim also seems to be radiating peace — and not just because of his passing resemblance to a certain messiah.

A New Life (live on Fallon with The Roots) – Jim James

I am somewhat obsessed with this completely magnificent song; isn’t it just a perfect way to start the year? Used hearts, fresh starts, and all.

Jim James’ debut solo record Regions of Light and Sound of God came out earlier this week, and has set me off on a Jim James / Yim Yames / My Morning Jacket listening binge. I’m especially re-crushing terribly on The Tennessee Fire — every song on there just….geez. Jim’s on tour, let’s get him in the chapel, stat.

JIM JAMES TOUR DATES
2/18: Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s SOLD OUT
2/19: Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg SOLD OUT
2/20: New York, NY @ McKittrick Hotel SOLD OUT
4/17: Louisville, KY @ Brown Theatre
4/19: Milwaukee, WI @ The Pabst Theater
4/20: Chicago, IL @ Vic Theatre
4/21: Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
4/23: Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
4/24: Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre
4/26: Boston, MA @ Royale
4/27: Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
4/29: New York, NY @ Webster Hall
4/30: Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
5/2: Nashville, TN @ Cannery Ballroom
5/3: Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
5/4-5/5: Atlanta, GA @ Shaky Knees Music Festival
5/6: Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheatre
5/7: Dallas, TX @ House of Blues
5/9: Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
5/11: Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre
5/12: San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
5/14: Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
5/15: Seattle, WA @ Neptune

Also, as a Friday bonus, if you like “A New Life,” relisten to this 2007 Magnet song from Norwegian shores; my brain pleasantly linked the percussive feel in them.

The Gospel Song – Magnet

House show announcement: Nathaniel Rateliff on February 21

I’m so pleased to announce that the next Fuel/Friends House Concert will be on Thursday, February 21 with the beguiling voice of one of Denver’s favorite sons: Nathaniel Rateliff.

I saw his music years ago when his old band Born in the Flood opened for Kings of Leon in Denver. In the years since, Nathaniel has been a consistent fixture of amazingness first with The Wheel, and now under his own name. He got to know the Mumford & Sons fellas early on, and you may have seen him on the Gentlemen of the Road caravan, or heard him play on the Mumfords’ Daytrotter, as well as three Daytrotter sessions of his own.

This show will be a fundraiser for Nathaniel. Some jerkface jerk in a stolen car rammed his touring van. Those repairs are not cheap, and we want to step up to help him, and enrich our ears in the process. We are suggesting a donation of $10-15 for this show. It starts at 7pm, February 21; location details here.

Desirae Garcia (of The Haunted Windchimes) will open the evening with her honeyed songs.

I’ll leave you with Nathaniel playing one of his songs with a dude you might recognize. So fun.

[header image by my old friend Todd Roeth]

Fuel/Friends Chapel Session #22: Night Beds

Winston Yellen walked into the side door of the chapel on one of the last days of 2012, with a denim shirt and an easy smile, his younger brother Abe along to play drums and piano. Gregarious and unassuming in appearance, he looks like any other 23 year-old from Colorado Springs, but when he sat down at the microphone and opened his mouth to sing the a capella “Faithful Heights,” we all fell completely silent. Dumbstruck. That voice just flies out of him, with no warning.

The music of Night Beds walloped me with a colossal punch the first time I listened to it, and so far this has not lessened, not even a little bit. As someone who both deeply loved Jeff Buckley and also remembers the earliest days of Bon Iver, I feel like this guy has something in his music that could be listened alongside of both, and I would permanently give access for this music to get at all of the rawest parts of my psyche. It’s magnificent torment, this record – direct and unadorned.

We recorded these songs a couple of days before the year 2012 ended, while Winston was home from Nashville for the holidays. The handful of us in the church were speechless at the power in Winston’s voice, and the smart, literate force of his lyrics. There’s so much melancholy weighted in the single electric guitar that Winston plays here — those bluesy notes hung in the air and felt like water in my lungs, slowly accumulating. Winston floats and swims strongly through the spaces in his song, letting his exceptionally powerful voice pierce through the resonance.

His debut record Country Sleep is out today in the UK, tomorrow in the U.S. Like I said at the end of my last post of 2012, I think Winston’s efforts could be one of the most notable and promising of the year that lies ahead of us. Stay tuned for the in-depth, fascinating interview I got to conduct with Winston; his first in the United States. I hope to post that later this week.

FUEL/FRIENDS CHAPEL SESSION: NIGHT BEDS
DECEMBER 29, 2012

Faithful Heights / Ramona
First off, stop what you’re doing before you click play here, because you’re not going to be able to continue doing whatever you were doing once Winston starts singing. Secondly, I like these versions even more than the album because they manage to come off even more potent and honest. We talked a lot about these two songs, which bravely open up Country Sleep. I wondered who they were about, who Winston was inviting to crawl into his arms for comfort, who Ramona was, and why she needed to fuck everything she’d been taught. I was surprised and intrigued to learn that both of these could be about him, or for him. Changes the whole perspective, in a poignantly sharp and self-compassionate way, when we sing to a side of ourselves.

22
At the end of our session I commented to Winston that this was a fitting song for him to play, for our 22nd chapel session recording. This song sings about hearing the trains in the August night, and that’s shaped how I picture it: on a Tennessee hillside somewhere in the dense summer heat. His voice keens like a lonesome whistle in the darkness while the percussion clacks over the rail ties. This is a darkly lush song, on a lush album.

Lost Springs
“And I never have known / why I feel so alone…” The more I listen to the new Night Beds record, the more I feel like this line repeated in this song might be the theme of it, in a way that the movie Melancholia fought with its fists pounding against the giant meteor of depression hurtling towards earth and threatening everything we love and enjoy. The sweet piano topnotes that Abe adds on the grand piano feel almost like stardust falling.

Everything Trying (Damien Jurado)
So, GUYS — I am not sure my heart can handle it if people keep covering Damien Jurado songs. I mean, I love it obviously. And: ouch.

This is Winston’s amazing take on Jurado’s crusher from Caught In The Trees (2008). Oh, I’ll be sailing on your deep blue eyes.

Download this whole session in a click. And go get his record.
ZIP: NIGHT BEDS CHAPEL SESSION

MORE VIDEOS:

“Lost Springs”

“22″

[video and photo by Kevin Ihle, audio by the Blank Tape Records studs]

you want good love / you know it’s gonna burn you alive

You know that scene in That Thing You Do, when The Wonders (Oneders) hear their song on the radio for the first time and everyone stops and turns up their radio and starts to dance and whoop? When I first heard the uber-catchy opening track “Burn You Up” off Mike Clark & The Sugar Sounds‘ new album Round and Round on KRCC radio, I did the same thing. Except I was at work, so minus the whooping. For your Friday joy:

Burn You Up – Mike Clark & The Sugar Sounds

I grew up listening to oldies all the time (KFRC: San Franciscooo); I have an encyclopedic ability to sing, hum, and snap along with a huge variety of songs from the classic foundations of rock and roll. This record hits every single one of those sweet spots for me, in a current way. I hear Otis Redding, I hear Roy Orbison — yet as Josh at the Denver Post so perfectly wrote, “There is no revival, no costume play, no irony. These are brand-new, honest songs that resonate as classics.”

Mike is my same age, and I get the feeling he loves all those old songs as much as I do. This record is an unabashed celebration of music from the 1950s and ’60s, but done with clean urgency. Mike also plays in one of the best-known Americana bands from Colorado, The Haunted Windchimes (who you may have heard on A Prairie Home Companion), but this is a total departure; these songs kept coming into his songwriting brain but not fitting with what the Windchimes were recording. These are songs that evoke a whole other landscape of glowing yellow radio dials, and a time when rock and roll was the rebellious domain of young people, and not the safe “oldies” you now hear in the dentist’s chair. Mike does it with so much joy.

Spurred by the tremendous chapel session we recorded with Mike last week, I have been listening to this album pretty much non-stop for the last two weeks on my big kitchen stereo. Sometimes, at home, I dance. The record is another fine Blank Tape Records release, the same folks who donate their magic skills to producing each and every one of the Chapel Sessions. Hear one more song off the record, the irresistible “Summer Girls.” There is a 100% chance this will make the Fuel/Friends Summer 2013 mix, the way “Smooth Sailin’,” also on this record, made (and titled) my Summer 2012 mix.

TOUR: Mike is playing his Denver album release show tonight at the intimate, awesome Deer Pile (above City O’ City), with R.L. Cole and Joe Sampson. Then he sets off on a West Coast tour for the next month; if you go, I bet you’ll like it.

You might even dance.

MIKE CLARK & THE SUGAR SOUNDS TOUR
Feb 4 – Cavalcade – Fruita, CO
Feb 5 – Soul Poles – Park City, UT
Feb 7 – Jones Radiator – Spokane, WA
Feb 8 – Caffe Mela – Wenatchee, WA
Feb 10 – Huck Notari Springville House – Portland, OR
Feb 13 – The Horned Hand – Bend, OR
Feb 14 – Axe and Fiddle – Cottage Grove, OR
Feb 23 – Crepe Place – Santa Cruz, CA
Feb 24 – Mercury Lounge – Santa Barbara, CA

[picture credit: Kevin Ihle. Of course]