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August 14, 2008

Como Now

It is a relief once again to fall in love with an album -- an entire album -- to become enraptured by the music of artists who are unknown to me. To discover something of such great and glorious sounds that it is worth moving from the truck to the house stereo and back, to find music so rewarding to listen to that I have not opened the mail for a week, because this is enough. This is plenty.

The album is called Como Now: The Voices Of Panola Co., Mississippi, and it is formally released on Tuesday, August 19 by the Daptone label.

Panola County, Mississippi, was the site of several Alan Lomax field recordings in the 1940s and '50s. It is, apparently, a citadel of gospel singing. Como Now was recorded during on July 22, 2006, and offers 16 a cappella tracks from a variety of strong, singular voices, from the aged and revered Brother and Sister Walker (whose harmonies remind me of Blind Willie Johnson) to the extraordinary Como Mamas, who sing counterpoint to the equally extraordinary Mary Walker.

It is a funny thing, coming to gospel as an unbeliever. As a nonbeliever. As someone who does not seek, does not need that kind of truth. I would argue generally that mine is a simple faith: That things work, that doing right is worth doing for its own worth. That if there is a god, he or she or they is unknowable, and none of our human efforts to describe the such a being have done any justice to the job. Nor led to much justice, for all that.

But I love the music, when it soars. (Hell, I love all music when it soars. When the magic is in full force.) It is possible that I am now drawn to gospel because it is sufficiently close to the other sounds I have spent the last 13 years listening to that it is familiar to me, and sufficiently removed from those sounds to be new. All that said, I have to trust the evidence of my once-trained ears, and this is a striking album. Whether one believes, or not.

Como Now is not a field recording, though it was recorded in a small brick church, and the best of the region's singers are said to have shown up for the occasion. It is neither professional, nor unpolished. There are times when one yearns for slightly better microphone placement, but they pass quickly.

I would particularly like to draw your attention to Irene Stevenson's "If It Had Not Been For Jesus," which she wrote. Of course she wrote it. It is too personal, too private a testimonial to learn from a book.

And to draw your attention to "Trouble In My Way," with the trio of Como Mamas backing Mary Moore, the most extraordinary and exhilarating song on the album. Had I any formal musical training, I could perhaps explain how the harmonies work, but I don't, and they work fine without my knowing how. It's not quite call and response, more like question and answer...the chorus isn't simply a counterpoint to Moore's leads, but a full-throated response. The song spins around a simple riff (the answer is mostly "Jesus, he will fix it"), and then, after a litany of woe, resolves simply and beautifully not with "Jesus, he will fix it" but with a tempered line of acceptance: "After a while."

Ah. And the John Edwards Singers' "New Burying Ground," which I so much wish to start a radio show simply so I can segue into "Wreck On The Highway," and maybe the version Jon Langford sings.

I may no longer be a good judge of such things, but this is -- by far -- the best album I've heard this year.

Posted by Grant at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 8, 2008

Full

"Don't pick the beans until they're full," Dan said before leaving for the week to tend to his mother. He is not, ordinarily, a man given to lots of words, but by his daughter's count he told us this at least six times. She is not a woman given to exaggeration.

Dan and Marge have a nice log house on a fair bit of land, and own two businesses, but his greasy beans are the legacy which most concerns him, at least this season. The thing he is most proud to hand down, the treasure of his family. The greasy bean appears to be one of the treasures of the Appalachians, and the name seems to cover a handful of somewhat different heirloom beans. You cannot buy them in the store, that much is certain.

They are delicious, to my taste.

We have come to find out that beans, like churches and child-rearing practices, are a very personal taste. Sometimes an acquired taste. It is not true that my wife's family hoards greasy beans, but it is true that they share them only with their closest friends, with people who appreciate them. They are the only beans we eat; last year we canned 100 quarts. This year, it appears, we will put up a bit more than that.

And we will serve them to friends who come to dinner. Fresh, they are cooked in the pressure cooker, with new potatoes on top, and salt, a little oil.

Dan's mother is 95. She has been eating greasy beans all her life. His mother-in-law is, well, well into her 80s, and eats them as well, though I'm not sure she was raised with them. I do not mean to suggest they are some kind of fountain of youth, but clearly the eating of such things has served these two formidable women well. (Now if we could convince little Maggie to eat them...but at five it's more important to her to say no than to try new things.)

Full greasy beans are tight to the touch, and you can feel the peas well formed within the pods. Having picked only ten or fifteen gallons of them in the last 48 hours, I am far from expert in these matters, but have been advised by the canning contingent of our little commune -- the women, that being their chosen but not designated side of this work (except my wife, who both gardens and cans, twining her family's traditions) -- that the beans are good, I am well pleased.

They finish at the base of the vines first, and the vines rise a good four feet. Which makes the first two pickings, at least, stoop labor. Because we hurried -- fighting a wet spring, and still dodging a wet summer (not likely to be a good year for peppers) -- the rows, they are a bit tighter together than we might now wish. There are six rows in the garden, plus another row we planted later so as to have beans further into the season. Two of the rows run the full 100 feet of the garden, the other four are cut short by the asparagus and rhubarb patch, where we harvested garlic and failed to grow much lettuce. Not that short.

We pick, mostly, sitting on plastic pickle buckets, and it is possible to fill one of these five-gallon buckets on a long row just now.

When I was a boy I picked blackberries, almost obsessively. My mother -- a child of the depression -- did not waste them, but I am sure she did not feel the need of as much blackberry jam as I provided the means to make. As I got older and more clever I took to borrowing the garden shears and cutting the vines back so as to get to promising troves of blackberries. Now my brother lives in the apartment buildings they cleared that patch to plop down in the middle of suburbia, and so it goes. (We have had some difficulty growing tame blackberries down by the orchard.)

Picking the beans reminds me of that. It is a meditative time. Susan has come out with her iPod, and we have a second one which I could load and figure out how to play, but I like the silence. Rather, I like the noise of the place. Because it is bloody hot here still, and humid, we tend to pick at the end of the day. (I haven't entirely given up rock 'n roll hours, and early mornings are tough, still.) As the sun sets we can hear the chickens scurrying up in the barn, where Survivor #1 -- the rooster we will keep because he was the lone living chicken out of the first 25 we bought -- is teaching the young hens the arts of chicken love, which sounds to be a one-sided pleasure but is just beginning to produce eggs. And the frogs down at the pond below, they chime in. And then, as the sun sets more, the rest of the forest begins to make its night sounds, and sometimes they are fearful sounds.

It is a meditative time, and that word "full" has been ringing in my head as I bend over to lift up leaves and hunt for ripe greasy beans. This is a full life, just now. Without the visible stature I once had as the co-editor of a small music magazine -- not so much status, of course, but it's funny to watch it drift away, nevertheless -- it is still a full life. Not simpler; often more complex.

Close readers will have observed my obsession with artists who continue to produce past the flush of youth. Sometimes I think I have come, by a quite random road, to this small town to learn about the second half of life, and how it ends. Perhaps.

But my days are full, and my hands are sore, and my back is tight in new places, and as I watch from the sidelines while my two partners work to make this website a viable and interesting business, I am grateful.

Full is also the title of Jon Dee Graham's last studio album, and I am mindful, as I sit on my bucket and pick beans, that he lies in a hospital bed in Austin recovering from an automobile accident. We are not friends, have only really met once, but we are almost the same age and I am somewhat acquainted with some of his demons, somewhat acquainted with the nature of his journey. He is, I think, one of the most spiritual men I have spent time around, and that includes a friend who is now a priest. Deeply conflicted, I would guess, and unresolved. I cannot guess how badly hurt he really is from the spare reports I've picked up from Austin, and I do not wish to pry. Being in a hospital is bad enough.

I am not a praying man, but I am on my knees here in the field, and he is often on my mind. Maybe that's praying.

That story I wrote about Jon Dee, it was the hardest thing I've written in years, and I still think I only got it half-said. "All of this is confusing enough" he sings in my ears, and I know his voice is not for everyone. But, as I wrote to a friend in Texas, his voice sounds like I imagine mine would, if only I could sing. And I can't.

So I will listen to Jon Dee in the silence of this morning, and pick beans. And hope for the best.

Posted by Grant at 6:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)