Forgive the brief political digression -- although this one isn't so much "candidate" politics as just a matter of fundamental matters of national interest. I'm wondering if folks have seen the ads that 80-year-old Texas oilman T. Bone Pickens has been airing recently, in which he makes plain the dangers of our dependency on foreign oil and suggests a plan for significantly reducing that dependence by converting part of our energy blueprint to wind power and natural gas.

I'm impressed with the idea, and most importantly the initiative, the apparent desire to start doing something ASAP, and in a big way. Pickens doesn't really seem to care which candidate supports his plan, he just wants whoever ends up in office to take this bull by the horns. I think he's on the right track, and his willingness to spend a boatload of money to push this issue forward in the national agenda. Pickens' plan isn't the only way forward, but it could realistically be a significant part of the way we wean ourselves off of foreign oil.

Just wondering if others feel the same....

adios,
peter

It's getting near the end of the road for the momentous Robert Plant & Alison Krauss tour, which plays tonight in Cleveland, Ohio; Friday in Lexington, Kentucky; and Saturday in Nashville, Tennessee. A handful of Texas and west coast dates in late September and early October were just announced yesterday (see the list below).

My co-editor Grant Alden reviewed the first night of the tour in Louisville, Kentucky, back in April; I caught the show this past Friday (July 11) in Raleigh, North Carolina. A few observations, then, from the tail-end of the journey:

* This was quite a well-designed and presented show, which I suppose is no surprise, but still I was impressed with the way they used fairly simple but elegant backdrops and lighting to make a basketball/hockey-arena feel much warmer than it actually is. When Krauss and Plant made their entrance just after the band started the opening song, "Rich Woman" -- he from stage left, she from stage right -- and took up residence at their respective microphones, there was both a professional flair and a simple, unpretentious quality to their presence at the fore of the first-rate backing-band. The sound-quality was also far better than is typical for such venues; the difference between this night at Raleigh's RBC Center and the Bruce Springsteen show I caught a couple months ago at the Greensboro Coliseum was like the difference between sunshine and mud.

* While the remarkable makeover to "Black Dog" (with Stuart Duncan's banjo taking the lead riff into spooky deep-south Deliverance territory) and the more straightforward rendition of "The Battle Of Evermore" (the harmonies perhaps informed by a previous duo version by Heart sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson?) were the show-stopping Led Zeppelin-borrowed classics, I was most impressed by the less-obvious but mesmerising rendition of Plant's old solo hit "In The Mood", which they weaved into the traditional "Matty Groves" (with Krauss and Duncan dueling on fiddles) and then back out again into Plant's tune at the end. The musical arrangement beneath Plant & Krauss' harmonies was reminiscent of the spell they cast on the Raising Sand standout track Killin' The Blues (which unfortunately was not in the set list on this night).

* While the exquisite performance of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? traditional number "Down To The River To Pray" -- with Krauss' sterling soprano supported by a remarkably warm backing-vocal trio of Plant, Duncan, and Buddy Miller -- was one of the show's highlights, I couldn't help but think of how that vocal arrangement might have served another O Brother track: "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby", which was famously sung for the movie by the trio of Krauss, Emmylou Harris and Gillian Welch. It has, over the years, occasionally been performed in different configurations onstage at festivals such as Merlefest when a couple of the original participants happened to be at the same place, which just made me wonder how it might be adapted to these three unlikely male voices. Perhaps that would've been too gimmicky...but still, I'd have loved to hear them give it a shot.

* T Bone Burnett (who co-wrote "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby" with Welch) was the consummate bandleader -- mostly invisible, but always in control. It helps to have the likes of Miller (who occasionally played pedal steel, mandoguitar and autoharp, in addition to his electric and acoustic duties throughout), Duncan (who played seemingly every stringed instrument under the sun during the course of the evening), upright bassist Dennis Crouch, and versatile drummer Jay Bellerose as your subjects, of course. Most of the time, Burnett stayed in the shadows and let the singers and his bandmates shine (though he did take lead on "Bon Temps Rouler" midway through the set, to spell Plant and Krauss briefly). But occasionally his place behind the wheel was clear, as on the Townes Van Zandt tune "Nothin'", toward the end of which Burnett directed the band into dramatic, dynamic blasts that underscored the lyrical darkness to which Plant referred in introducing the tune: "This is a spectacular song for all the wrong reasons."

* Finally, the overriding sense I came away from the show with was that, by digging deeply into the roots of the music from which his pioneering rock band sprouted several decades ago, Robert Plant has found a way to age gracefully. Led Zep reunion possibilities aside, what his explorations into Delta blues and now Appalachian country-folk (and beyond) have given him is no less than a new lease on life, a new way to breathe freely as a musician well past the stoking of the starkmaking machinery. While it's the union of Krauss & Plant's voices that's ultimately the grand creative spark here, and while Krauss herself and all of the backing musicians shine brightly in their respective roles onstage, somehow it's Plant that you end up feeling most like you want to "root" for, or just to be happy for him being able to live this experience. Less than a month before his 60th birthday, he seems radiantly young at heart, dwelling amidst these oldest of American musics.

adios,
peter

P.S. -- Ah yes, those new tourdates:

Sept. 23 -- Starlight Theatre (Kansas City, MO)
Sept. 24 -- Fabulous Fox Theatre (St. Louis, MO)
Sept. 26 -- Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion (The Woodlands, TX)
Sept. 27 -- Austin City Limits Music Festival (Austin, TX)
Sept. 30 -- Rose Garden Arena (Portland, OR)
Oct. 1 -- Qwest Field Event Center (Seattle, WA)
Oct. 3 -- Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (San Francisco, CA)
Oct. 4 -- Konocti Harbor Resort & Spa (Kelseyville, CA)
Oct. 5 -- Mountain Winery (Saratoga, CA)

Half-year top-albums roundups have always struck me as not quite worth the bother, as it often seems a stretch to try to spotlight ten (or twenty, or whatever number) releases worthy of the kind of year-end-list status that a half-year list is supposed to emulate.

On the other hand, one thing I routinely do throughout the course of the year is to drag specific songs that have really connected with me into a "potential best-of-the-year" iTunes playlist, to help in making a year-end compilation when that time comes. And when opening the field up to specific tracks rather than whole albums, it's somewhat easier to get a quantitative sample that's maybe worth addressing at the mid-year point.

So, with that in mind, here's a look at what songs populate my work-in-progress "2008 Best" playlist so far, just past the halfway point of the year. They're not "ranked" in any order; when I get around to making a year-end disc, it's always sequenced according to artistic and sonic segues, not a "#1 thru #20" sort of stacking. It's too early to figure out what the order might be, so consider this just what the present playlist might sound like in shuffle-mode:

"Always A Friend", Alejandro Escovedo. Hard not to include a song that Bruce Springteen & the E Street Band already took the trouble to learn, a couple months before it even came out. I'd hesitate to call Escovedo's new Real Animal his finest album, but I don't hesitate for a moment in declaring this to be the best "single" he's ever recorded.

"Antarctica", Weepies. In terms of acoustic-based pop, nobody (with the possible exception of Hem) is making more radiant and engaging music at present. Deb Talan possesses one of those just flat beautiful voices; the harmonies and production touches from her husband Steve Tannen help make "Antarctica" as airy and sweeping as its namesake landscape.

"I'll Be Your Mirror", Mike And Ruthy. Another husband-wife duo covers the Velvet Underground on a modest side-project album released during a hiatus from their band the Mammals. Their rendition is simple and folksy, highlighted by the endearing sweetness of Ruth Ungar's voice and Mike Merenda's varied guitar accents.

"Oil Man's War", Kathleen Edwards. The title suggests this song as being more political than it actually is; really it's just the latest in Edwards' series of finely-detailed character-portrait song-stories, along the lines of "Six O'Clock" news or "In State" from her first couple of albums. Yes, there's a certain amount of anti-war sentiment -- though the narrative sounds more like someone fleeing the Vietnam draft days, rather than the Bush-era misadventures -- but ultimately this is simply a story about two people escaping, together, expressed with Edwards' typical emotional urgency.

"Supernatural Superserious", R.E.M. I'd read something in advance of the release of Accelerate which suggested that R.E.M.'s new record really benefited from a re-emphasizing of bassist Mike Mills' backing vocals, and I'd concur that's a big part of what makes this song stand out. Whereas Michael Stipe's voice has somewhat oddly become less appealing over the years (his softer tones frequently seem to have been traded for more hard edges), Mills' voice makes a real difference in turning up the more melodic qualities of R.E.M.'s music, even when he's singing harmony.

"In The Night", Basia Bulat. I'll be surprised if this Canadian artist is not significantly wider-known a couple years from now than she is today; she's already up-and-coming, but she seems fully capable of luring in, say, the million or so folks who were attracted to 10,000 Maniacs. You can hear it in songs such as this, an instantly catchy number that spotlights Bulat's terrific voice and her skill for propulsive arrangements. It helps that she's capable of being quite creative without taking herself too seriously, as this video for the song demonstrates.

"Chip Of A Star", Chatham County Line. There's just something so sprightly about Chandler Holt's simple little banjo riff that kicks off the song, and the joy in singer Dave Wilson's voice as he reaches for the high notes in this heartfelt love song, and the way pedal steel player Greg Readling propels the melody off into the sunset as the song fades out -- it all adds up to one of the most memorable, stuck-in-your-head songs of the year.

"Overture", Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet. Choosing this track -- which leads off the group's self-titled album -- is kind of a copout, as it essentially summarizes all the songs that follow, with abbreviated passages and snippets and references to the rest of the album's content. Yet it's a fascinating way to get a sense of not only what the full record is like, but also just how versatile these enormously talented musicians are.

"Wrong Guy", Mando Saenz. This is one of two big surprises for me on the playlist, in that I'd heard Saenz's previous work and always felt it to be decent but rarely moving. This track, on the other hand, is nothing but moving -- it's emotional, melodic, graceful, bracing, somehow both calming and on-edge at the same time. Saenz proves himself to be a first-rate singer here, and the interwoven instrumental support is a perfectly steady and rolling accompaniment for the spell he casts with his voice.

"Lonesome Joe", Whipsaws. This is the other big surprise -- a band I'd never even heard of till Tim Easton mentioned a few months back that he was bringing these guys down from Alaska to be his backing band at SXSW. Turns out they're pretty good in their own right, too -- but this song is more than that; it's a damn near perfect ballad. Singer Evan Phillips tells the story of a man the band met in a bar one night who shared his tales of down-and-out life and loss; the mournful pedal steel accents make all the difference.

"Color Of A Lonely Heart Is Blue", Old 97's. It's probably not fair to primary songwriter Rhett Miller that I keep gravitating toward secondary songwriter Murry Hammond's comparatively fewer contributions to the band's albums -- especially since Miller wrote some really great songs on the latest 97's disc, Blame It On Gravity -- but there's just a trance-like magic to this one that can't be denied. For six minutes, Ken Bethea's guitars wend and weave around the beguiling melody; there's a subtle but significant piano running beneath everything that brings it all home.

"Monument Valley", Drive-By Truckers. Quite a few songs from the Truckers' latest, Brighter Than Creation's Dark, probably coulda been contenders, but it's the closing track that keeps making me hit "repeat." The way Patterson Hood and Shonna Tucker's voices meld is a thing of beauty, and Hood's lyrics are typically world-weary and wise: "When the dust all settles and the story is told/History is made by the side of the road."

"I'll Come Knockin'", Walter Hyatt. This one has enormous sentimental value to me. Lyle Lovett covered this song on Step Inside This House in 1998, two years after Hyatt died in the Valujet plane crash in Florida. Hyatt's old Uncle Walt's Band mate Champ Hood (who died of cancer in 2001) unearthed it after Hyatt's death, as Hood explained to me in an e-mail in 1998: "That song goes way back to '71 or '72. Uncle Walt's Band demoed in Nashville around that time. I rediscovered it on about the only reel-to-reel tape that I own. We used to perform it, but it eventually 'slid' out of the repertoire as new stuff came in." Lovett's version is among the best things he's ever recorded; for Hyatt's own version to finally surface on the posthumous collection Some Unfinished Business, Volume One was something special.

"Those Days Are Gone, And My Heart Is Breaking", Barton Carroll. Another mild surprise; Carroll made a name for himself as a sideman with the likes of Crooked Fingers and Azure Ray, but proves himself to be a solo singer-songwriter well worth watching on his disc The Lost One. This tune's a sort of rambling tale set to steady acoustic picking, but Carroll's keen writing makes it easy to crawl inside the song's central character.

"Lloyd's Mom", Tres Chicas. This one's on a benefit compilation album called Musicians For Minneapolis, and is the first recorded evidence of a song the group has been performing live for around a year now. It's one of the best things they've written, largely because of how well it utilizes the voices of all three singers -- Caitlin Cary, Lynn Blakey and Tonya Lamm -- as well as the inclusion of a sparkling piano solo by backing member Sara Bell.

"State Fair", Drunk Stuntmen. Oftentimes I'll close a year-end disc with an instrumental, and this one would have to be a prime contender for the 2008 version. It's the title track of the Stuntmen's latest release, and while it seems sorta out-of-place for them -- Steve Sanderson's vocals are such a central part of the band's identity -- it's just a beautifully played piece that conveys its emotions and dynamics artfully, without a need for words. It's deep, and dark, yet hope shines out between the cracks of that darkness.

adios,
peter

Due in part to a show I attended over the weekend, I spent some time this morning re-reading a feature story I wrote for No Depression many moons ago -- March-April 2003, to be exact. The article, about a band called the Drunk Stuntmen, was initially intended to be a one-page profile in our Town & Country section, where we generally presented up-and-coming acts that most of our readers probably hadn't heard about yet.

I recall writing the piece in early 2003 and, as I got deeper into it, finding that I just couldn't stop at the initially-intended 1,000 words. Pretty quickly it had gone twice that, and by the time I'd wrapped things up, it was triple the assigned length. Grant took pity -- maybe appreciated that I seemed to care so much about this relatively unknown band -- and suggested we move it into a feature-slot; he even took some photos of the Stuntmen when they coincidentally had a Nashville gig in the days leading up to our deadline.

Sometimes we were proven right with these instances when we went out on a limb. There was a certain pride we took, over the years, in being the first national publication to write about dozens, possibly hundreds, of artists who went on to bigger and better things.

Bigger and better is partly in the eye of the beholder, though if by "bigger" you were to mean moving up from the small clubs to the large clubs, or moving from self-released CDs to an established record label, it generally hasn't happened for the Stuntmen. This past Friday night, they played to a crowd of about 75 at the Berkeley Cafe in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina; it was largely the same devoted crowd of regulars who have remained loyal to the band since their first appearance at the long-running N.C. State campus-area hangout Sadlack's in January 2002. The Stuntmen are touring behind State Fair, the latest in a string of self-releases; there's been no rise to the ranks of a Bloodshot or Yep Roc, although that may simply reflect the increasingly DIY-nature of the record business as much as anything.

Still, quite a bit has happened with the Drunk Stuntmen in the five years since our ND feature story. Most notably, they hooked up with a collective from their hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts, called the Young At Heart Chorus. In recent months, you may have heard quite a bit about this group of senior-citizen singers covering the likes of Springsteen and Hendrix, as they became the subject of a widely-acclaimed documentary and were featured on 60 Minutes, The Tonight Show and other national TV programs. (A couple of the Stuntmen accompanied the Chorus on some of the TV appearances.) There's also a live DVD (separate from the documentary) of collaborative performances between the Stuntmen and the Chorus -- with the Chorus singing many of the band's own original songs, lending a whole new perspective to them. But by and large, the Drunk Stuntmen seem to have mostly been left off the coattails of the movie's success.

Which is a rather long way of saying that it feels like somehow these guys just can't seem to catch a break. And yet their performance in Raleigh on Friday reaffirmed everything that made me want to write far longer than I was supposed to write about them in the first place, back in 2003.

There has been attrition in the years since. Drummer J.J. O'Connell was replaced by Dave Durst; and most visibly, State Fair marks the departure of co-founding guitarist and occasional songwriter Terry Flood, who'd been a substitute teacher to frontman Steve Sanderson back in the latter's high-school days. It's logical that Flood, being a little bit older than Sanderson and his longtime bandmates (guitarist/singer F. Alex Johnson, bassist J. Scott Brandon, keyboardist Scott Hall), might be the first of the original lineup to depart; that said, he is clearly missed, even as the band has become perhaps more focused as a five-piece.

Back in February of this year, shortly before State Fair went to the pressing plant, Sanderson dropped me a line and asked if I might be willing to write some quick liner notes for the album. I ended up declining -- between an anniversary trip, SXSW, and finishing our final issue of ND, there just wasn't time to give it the necessary attention -- but I suggested to Steve that perhaps a note he included with the advance-disc he'd sent had said what really needed to be said. They wound up not using any liner notes in the simple cardboard CD packaging, but I still feel like Sanderson's words summed up a lot about who this band is, and what their art means to them:

"State Fair was written and recorded when this 15-year-old band was going through the death of a mother, a father, and two beloved dogs. It was also a time when a founding member decided it was time to move on. The result is the most emotional piece of art this group of friends has ever created."

Though it's Sanderson's songs, and his beacon of a voice, that have largely been the Drunk Stuntmen's bread-and-butter over the years -- check out this YouTube link for a solo take on one of the band's best songs -- the one on the new record that hit me hardest was one that Johnson sings, called "Halcyon Times". It's a sort of family chronicle -- more poignant, perhaps, because Johnson is the one whose mother passed away while the album was being made -- with personal verses that lead into a more generalized chorus: "They were hard times/They were precious times/They could all sing along/Dance from dusk until dawn/Those halcyon times."

The second time it comes around, Johnson keenly shifts to present-tense, allowing the song strike a much more universal and contemporary chord:

These are hard times
These are precious times
We can all sing along
Dance from dusk until dawn
These halcyon times.

These are hard times, indeed. In revisiting that Drunk Stuntmen feature I'd written five years ago, I was struck by a section near the end in which the band members were discussing what the future might hold:

At some point, perhaps, all the hard work will pay off. Though they're also soberingly aware of the other possibility -- that "at some time it will all break down, and we'll all go home and get regular jobs," Hall says.

Johnson has the last word on the matter: "I'll see a No Depression in a bar when I'm 50 and say, 'I was in that fuckin' magazine!'"

Johnson's not 50 yet, but he won't see a new copy of No Depression in a bar when he gets there. Today, June 30, officially marks the end of our era as a bimonthly magazine, the May-June issue having run its full and final course.

And yet, the Drunk Stuntmen are still going, in these halcyon times.

adios,
peter

Well before the heydays of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and other grunge-centric denizens of early-'90s Seattle, the Emerald City was home to a different variety of rock 'n' roll revelation.

An auspicious foursome who called themselves the Young Fresh Fellows helped to put the Northwest on the underground-music map in the early/mid-1980s, a few years before Sub Pop arrived on the scene. They played with an abandon and devotion similar to that of the grungesters who followed; but rather than drawing their emotive power from angst and desperation, they thrived on a spirit of whimsy and humor. They were, in a word, fun. And fabulous. (It was tongue-in-cheek, yet fitting, that the Fellows' first album was titled The Fabulous Sounds Of The Pacific Northwest.)

A quarter-century later, their legacy lives on, having carried the day long past the dissolution of Seattle's grunge scene. The city has supported other sytlistic surges and swells over the years -- roots bands have had occasional upswings, adventurous jazz players have found a small but significant niche, and indie-rock is at a fair peak right now -- but the Fellows' style of old-school garage-based rock 'n' roll has carried on throughout. One could argue, in fact, that this is the true Seattle Sound.

A visit to the area this past weekend reaffirmed that notion. Although Fellows ringleader Scott McCaughey moved a few years ago to Portland (where he continues his Minus 5 exploits and tours with R.E.M.), his various cohorts still carry on in Seattle, spinning amid several main-projects and side-projects. (Perhaps they're all side-projects of each other, or just on the side of whatever everyone may do during the daytime hours.)

Two of the best held court at a couple of relatively new venues over the weekend. Friday night, the High Dive played host to the Tripwires, which features Fellows bassist Jim Sangster, his guitar-slinging brother Johnny Sangster (an accomplished producer), drummer Mark Pickerel (who has his own solo deal with Bloodshot Records), and frontman/songwriter John Ramberg.

Everyone in the band is essentially overqualified for the Tripwires' humble local-bar-band stature, but none of them seem to mind; on the contrary, they all appeared to be having a blast sharing the stage, and the band's repertoire features the best songs Ramberg has written since the early days of his mid-'90s group the Model Rockets. (As it happens, the Model Rockets will be reuniting on July 4 to celebrate a reissue of their 1994 debut disc Hilux.)

Jim Sangster was the common denominator to the show I saw on Saturday, a headlining slot at the new Slim's Last Chance Tavern by a group that seems to call itself either Sergeant Major or Thee Sergeant Major III. (Which is sort of a carry-over from the Fellows' playfulness with band monikers; they once released an album under the name 3 Young French Fellows 3.) Name-games aside, this is a truly engaging bunch, largely because they seem to have hit on a naturally compelling and musically conducive lineup: a guitar-bass-drums power-trio fronted by two full-throated singers (one male, one female).

The instrumentation is top-of-the-line garage-pop, with Sangster joined by longtime Fellows and Fastbacks guitarist Kurt Bloch plus drummer Mike Musburger (who's played with the Posies and Love Battery among many others). Bloch is the primary songwriter, and thus the material reflects the sort of twisted pop-punk edge that was the hallmark of the Fastbacks (a long-running Seattle band fronted by female singer Kim Warnick that in its early days included Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan).

But it's the two singers, Bill Coury and Leslie Beattie, who launch those songs into the stratosphere. Sometimes they're trading off the vocals, sometimes they're singing in harmony, or in melodic unison; but the vocals are always out-front, even against the propulsive wall-of-sound being bashed out by Bloch and his mates. This is in-your-face stuff, but in a glorious and inspirational way; with Bloch and Sangster kicking and grinning their way through the set -- on this night, wearing jumpsuits featuring logo-patches that read "Waste Management" and "Coroner" -- they make it nigh impossible not to get swept up in the grand spirit of their rock 'n' roll.

The audience is, perhaps, not what it once was for bands such as these; both nights, the crowd capped out at around 100, whereas in decades past a draw of 200-300 might have been more typical. Still, this has never really been a thousand-capacity-venue type of thing, and probably never will be. Yet it seems quite clear to me, after basking in this weekend's double-shot of Fabulous Sounds, that it's also never going to go away. Long live the rock 'n' roll pest control.

adios,
peter

A crowd of around 60 or so would've seemed pretty good a few blocks east at the cozy Local 506, but at the comparatively cavernous Cradle, it felt like, well, one of those slow summer schoolnights in "a college town with a musical sound" (to borrow a phrase from Taylor's song "Two Of These Too", which she played solo at the end of the night for a couple in the crowd who'd requested it). Thing is, though, some of my best memories have come from nights like this. A Tuesday night at the Continental Club in the mid-'80s with Camper Van Beethoven and a few dozen fellow Austinites. A Sunday night in '93 at Lulu's in Athens, Georgia, with Alejandro Escovedo and his violinist and cellist. A Thursday night in '91 at Club Congress in Tucson, Arizona, with the incomparably versatile band Tiny Lights.

The common denominator there is major talents playing intimate shows to small crowds, and Maria Taylor's thirteen-song set (the headlining slot after openers Jonathan Rice and Nik Freitas) had precisely that same feel to it. While the Birmingham, Alabama, native, a former member of the duo Azure Ray, has so far received relatively modest renown on her own, her two solo albums on Saddle Creek Records -- 2005's 11:11 and last year's Lynn Teeter Flower -- are confident, enchanting confirmations of an artist reaching full bloom.

A digital-only EP (physical copies were for sale at the show) called Savannah Drive, recorded with Andy LeMaster, is the latest addition to her catalogue, collecting acoustic versions of a few songs from her first two records plus a couple of new ones. The EP's new tracks, along with a couple other new songs she played Monday night, suggest her third record (tentatively slated for a fall release, probably to be called Ladyluck) may well be Taylor's best yet -- and she didn't even play the catchiest of her recently written tunes, a Buddy Holly-esque number that she played in a set opening for Josh Ritter at this same venue last November.

Taylor seems to fall quite easily and evenly into the indie-rock and acoustic-folk camps, which ultimately is evidence that her writing stands beyond genre limits. Like most really good songs, Taylor's are sturdy enough to find new life through reinterpretation, as per the stripped-down presentations of "A Good Start" and "Song Beneath The Song" which highlighted the early part of her set. (Both are also on the new acoustic EP.)

Reference points? Best I can come up with is Lori Carson, who produced some of the best atmospheric/emotional music of the 1990s, spiking her hushed and deeply personal songs with just a touch of electronic rhythms and echoes to create something that went well beyond coffeehouse-confessional folk. Taylor's doing a similar thing here, though it's not the least bit imitative; chances are she's never heard Carson's music.

It helps that she has a really good band behind her. The guitar-bass-drums trio of Taylor Hollingsworth, Van Hollingsworth and Michael Shackleford (respectively) provide spot-on support of Taylor's songs and singing; they're subtle when they need to be, which is often, but they're also plenty able to kick things up a notch when Taylor turns toward a more aggressive or incandescent mood.

A telling cover near the end of the set was Skeeter Davis' 1963 country/pop crossover smash "The End Of The World", a tune well-suited for Taylor's often-wistful vocal expression; she left the instrumentation to her bandmates, softly tapping a tambourine against her back as she sang. She followed that with the most fully-fleshed-out number of the night, "Xanax"; as the band began to crank up the volume, Taylor motioned toward the merch table at stage left and asked her sister Kate (who'd been selling CDs and T-shirts) to join her.

That spontaneous rush of sibling harmonies provided a perfect encapsulation of the beauty which arose from the Cradle on this unassuming Monday night. Near the end of the song, the two sisters leaned on each other at center stage, smiling as they shared a secret murmur beneath the din of glorious noise.

It's nights like these that keep us coming back -- both the players, and those of us out there listening.

adios,
peter

Sunday night I made the hourlong drive over to Raleigh to catch the fine Salt Lake City group Band Of Annuals, who I'd been fortunate enough to stumble upon a few months ago during a visit to Seattle. Sadly I discovered upon arriving at the Pour House that the band's van had apparently broken down en route to the gig, and they were stuck in the middle of nowhere on a Sunday with no prospects for getting it fixed until at least the following day. (Longtime local stalwarts Regina Hexaphone, with guest Jeffrey Dean Foster, had been scheduled to open and stuck around to play a quite enjoyable set, which kept the trip from being all-for-naught.)

Still, in this age of gas prices at $4 a gallon and rising (to paraphrase/adapt the old De La Soul title), the investment involved with just going to see a show strikes home a lot more forcefully these days. Even in a car like ours that gets decent gas-mileage (25-30mpg), going to Raleigh from where we live is a minimum $15 round-trip.

And if that's the dilemma for fans wishing to attend shows (particularly those who, like me, have moved further out to find an affordable house), it's difficult to fathom the toll gas prices have taken on the bands themselves. Never mind the risk of breaking down and missing gigs while waiting for the van to get fixed; the expense of just getting from one show to the next, driving hundreds of miles in a gas-guzzling Econoline with gas prices more than double what they were just five years ago, seems like it might be enough to kill a lot of young bands. (Especially given the shrinking value of CD sales in the digital age, to which the answer was supposed to be, "But you can still make money by going on tour.")

I'd be interested in hearing some thoughts from touring musicians about this. Just how much is the price of gas affecting or curtailing your plans to hit the road this year? Are we nearing (or have we perhaps already passed) a tipping-point where it just isn't worth it anymore?

Leave comments below if you're so inclined. And thanks for stopping by.

adios,
peter

p.s. -- bonus points if you can name the artist whose quote appears in the subject-line of this post.

UPDATE: Here's a link to a good piece about this very subject:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/popmusic/2008/06/bands_on_the_run_from_high_gas.html

You may have noticed that a new blog has shown up on our homepage alongside the ones Grant and I have been doing for a few years now. If you've been a longtime reader of our print publication, the name David Cantwell will not be new to you, as he'd been a No Depression senior editor since...well, since we started having senior editors. I'm not sure if his writing appeared in every single issue of ND, but if not, it was pretty darn close. He also co-authored, with fellow ND senior editor Bill Friskics-Warren, the fine book Heartaches By The Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles. We're quite pleased to have David aboard.

You may also have noticed that we've re-tagged the personal-blogs section as "ND Columnists" -- the notion being that what we're seeking to provide in our respective web-havens on the ND site is perhaps more akin to the thoughtful and extended writing long done by columnists, as opposed to the more off-the-cuff and link-related text which has come to be common on the blogosphere. Call 'em our "blogs" still, if you wish -- we probably still will at times as well, from force of habit -- but it's our goal to give you writing that consistently delves deeper than just scratching the surface or pointing you in another direction.

Finally, just to keep you updated as to what all we're up to on the web-front: You may have heard us discuss, either here or in our final issue or in various media reports, our plans for a significantly revamped website. Things are still on-course for that expansion; what you're seeing here, for the moment, are merely small steps toward the major overhaul which we will unveil in the fall. Such full-scale rebuilds take time not just to plan but to execute, but rest assured that we're well into working on it. Meantime, we'll continue adding a few new things here and there on the current site, such as more reviews and new columnists and perhaps a couple other trial-balloons as well.

And we'll also be back in-print this autumn via our first "bookazine" with University of Texas Press, as announced in our final print issue (and on this site a few weeks ago). What seems like down-time is in fact very much gearing-up time, and we're very much looking forward to sharing the fruits of it all with y'all in the fall....

adios,
peter

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- You probably won't believe this, but the above lyrical snippet is actually the very first line of a song written in the 1970s by Mark McKinnon. Yes, that Mark McKinnon, the one who last week announced he was stepping down as chief advertising strategist to John McCain because, to use his words, "I just don't want to work against an Obama candidacy."

The song is called "The Fever" and, despite its uncannily prophetic opening line, it's not by any means a political number. It's your basic yearning-for-love tune -- later in that first verse, he laments, "I guess what I really need is to fall in love again" -- but it's a pretty good one, especially as sung in 1977 by Julie Griffin (who would later become Julie Miller) on the one and only record by an Austin band of that time called Partners In Crime (which I wrote about last year in this blog entry).

"The Fever" is, far as I can tell, one of very few surviving relics from McKinnon's modest musical heyday. The only documentation I've found of McKinnon singing and playing his material is on a ten-disc Kerrville Folk Festival compilation covering the festival's first ten years, 1972-1981 (released in the late '90s on Silverwolf Records). McKinnon's song is called "Back On The Street" and is the third track on Disc 5, featuring performances from the 1976 festival. (McKinnon's name also appears in a mostly-complete online listing of finalists in Kerrville's New Folk songwriting competition; apparently he competed in 1975, along with the likes of Lucinda Williams and Tom Russell. Nobody seems to know who won that year.)

I believe I have that ten-disc Kerrville collection somewhere in a box in the closet (which I failed to locate in three or four hours of searching last night, but at least I finally got the bulk of the other CDs sorted and shelved in the process). There are, however, 30-second snippets (different ones) of the song on both Amazon and allmusic. The chorus goes, "When you've lost that old desire, and your life's just not complete / It's time to set your soul on fire again, and get back on the street."

McKinnon's modest musical aspirations ultimately met a dead-end as the '70s waned. He explained to Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith, in an interview which aired on Austin PBS station KLRU in 2003, that "the one time in my life where I really exercised some wisdom was to recognize the limits of my musical ability. I figured on the trajectory that I was on, I'd end up at a Round Rock Holiday Inn when I was 45. And I shifted gears into politics and journalism."

The first stop was The Daily Texan, the student newspaper at the University of Texas; McKinnon was its editor in the 1980-81 school year. I missed him by three or four years -- I did some work at the Texan during my college days at UT in the mid-'80s -- but I do remember, as a high school journalism upstart in Austin, hearing about how McKinnon had (if I remember this correctly) spent a night or two in jail for refusing to reveal a source. (I've searched the web in vain for details of that incident; if anyone reading this may recall the particulars, feel free to add a comment toward that end.)

Over the following two decades, McKinnon made a gradual transition from Democratic media-and-politics expert -- including stints as press secretary for Lloyd Doggett's 1984 U.S. senate campaign (lost to Phil Gramm) and for mid-'80s Texas governor Mark White -- to independent consultant with the company Public Strategies and his own firm Maverick Media, and finally to George W. Bush's inner circle, first as media/advertising director for Bush's Texas governor re-election campaign in 1998, then in the same role for Bush's 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns.

Given that he's crossed the Democrat/Republican divide before, his actions last week were perhaps not entirely surprising. While he's made a point to insist that he still plans to vote for McCain and to act as a sort of informal adviser, he apparently decided quite awhile back that if the election came down to McCain vs. Obama -- a rather unlikely scenario many months ago -- he'd step aside. McKinnon said in a June 2007 interview with Cox Newspapers' Washington bureau, "I don't think Barack Obama needs the mirror of politics to reflect who he is. I think he has a deep character and good judgment. I also think he's wrong on some fundamental issues. But I believe he is honest and independent and if he were elected, I think it would send a great message to the country and the world."

This seems, in a way, to echo something McKinnon said in a lengthy 2005 interview with PBS. It strikes me as a sort of mission statement about McKinnon's political beliefs:

"...one of the things that occurred to me, in my development as a political consultant, is how important character is to a candidate. ... Character I saw as really an important characteristic for officeholders, because I had seen Democrats who sort of met an ideological litmus test but failed miserably in the character department. So when the important decisions came, they weren't necessarily making those decisions based on the right reasons. And so I saw over time, working with people like former [Houston] Mayor Bob Lanier, former [Texas] Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, people who ... were the sorts of people you'd look at and you'd say: 'I may not agree with everything you say, but I know what you're saying; I know what you believe; I know where you're going, and I admire and respect you for that. You're predictable. You have a backbone. You believe in something.'"

The irony, of course, is that McKinnon applied that very litmus-test to the up-and-coming Texas governor George W. Bush, and decided that he wanted in. We've all seen how that has turned out. On the one hand, I'd expect that McKinnon would still staunchly defend Bush as someone who believes in what he's doing; on the other hand, it's almost impossible to dispute, at this point -- from either side of the aisle -- the ill effects of what Bush has done during his eight years in office.

That McKinnon subsequently ended up in the camp of McCain -- whom he'd helped attack and defeat in the 2000 battle for the Republican nomination -- is a telling and colorful side-story in its own right, as McKinnon related to Evan Smith in a March 2008 Texas Monthly interview:

"I only got to know him in 2004, when he was traveling with the president. We had our bonding moment at one of the general election debates. Because it was in Arizona, McCain hosted us. We were in the greenroom waiting for the debate to begin. I noticed a television in the corner. There was a news story on about Pat Tillman -- about how Jake Plummer, Tillman's former teammate [at Arizona State and with the Arizona Cardinals], had put a sticker printed with Tillman's number on his helmet and had gotten in a fight with the commissioner of the NFL, who said it was a violation of the uniform policy. And then it cut to video of McCain blasting the commissioner, saying that it was absurd that he hadn't allowed Plummer to honor his friend. So I went over to McCain, and I said, 'Senator, I just saw this story about Tillman, and I'm not surprised, as he was a constituent of yours, that you would be defending him like that.' And I said, 'By the way, I have very profound feelings myself about Pat Tillman. I thought it was an example of sacrifice and humility when he joined [the Army] and a tragedy when he was killed. It had such an impact on me that I wanted to remember him every day, so I got a tattoo of his [jersey] number, which was 40, on my arm.' So McCain said, 'Bullshit, let me see it.' I took off my coat and rolled up my sleeve to show it to him, and he grabbed me by the shoulders and kind of teared up and hugged me and said, 'I knew there was a reason I liked you.'"

And so, McKinnon's battle within himself rages on: Having initially played the aggressor against McCain because he believed in Bush, only to bond later with McCain and take up the Arizona senator's cause, he now removes himself from the fight because he believes Obama to be too much a man of character to attack.

Let's return, for a final word, to the previously-referenced 2003 Texas Monthly/KLRU interview. The original topic of conversation which led to McKinnon's self-critical assessment of his musical shortcomings was that, as a youth growing up in Colorado, McKinnon had been befriended and mentored by a fellow named Kris Kristofferson.

"I was a wild teenager and I loved music and wrote music, and Judy Collins was my baby-sitter growing up," McKinnon related. "And he [Kristofferson] heard our band and liked us, and tried to get us a record deal -- he came up to Colorado, and we spent a week or two in the studio. The record deal never worked out, but I got the bug badly, and I ran away from home, and went to Nashville and lived with Kristofferson, and ended up staying there for three or four years, and wrote music and hung out, and he put up with me. It was a great chapter in my life."

Kristofferson's left-leaning world-views are no secret; thus it's natural to wonder what the songwriter has made of McKinnon's long and complicated journey through the American political landscape. There was some back-and-forth about this two years ago in the letters section of The Austin Chronicle, in response to a feature that the alternative-weekly had run on Kristofferson in February 2006. First, a letter-writer asked why the interviewer (Andy Langer) hadn't asked Kristofferson about McKinnon, to which Chronicle editor Louis Black responded: "I spent several days traveling with Kris Kristofferson last year, and he made it very clear that this was a topic about which he had nothing to say."

And yet perhaps more revealing was another letter that followed two weeks later, shortly after Kristofferson and McKinnon had apparently encountered each other at the Austin Film Festival Awards show. Letter-writer Kelly Jackson observed that "Kristofferson and McKinnon were seen at the Austin Film Festival Awards hamming it up on the red carpet, including a moment when Kristofferson grabbed McKinnon, put his arm around him, and turned to the cameras laughing, 'Red state and blue state!'"

Just as McKinnon wrote, many decades ago, that "black on white was the news today," so did Kristofferson write, many decades ago, a lyric that nails Mark McKinnon to the core:

"He's a walking contradiction."

It's from "The Pilgrim (Chapter 33)", which Kristofferson once introduced as being "a song I started out writing about Dennis Hopper, and ended up writing about Johnny Cash...and Chris Gantry...and Ramblin' Jack Elliott...Bobby Neuwirth...Freddy Neil...David Blue...Eric Andersen...Paul Siebel." Or perhaps various other names, depending on who came to mind at any given time he may have sung it from a stage.

Dunno if he's ever mentioned Mark McKinnon in that recitation. But it sure seems like it fits. Especially this verse:

"And he keeps right on a-changin'
For the better or the worse
Searching for a shrine he's never found
Never knowing if believing is a blessing or a curse
Or if the going up was worth the coming down."

The record's called The Cake Sale and it was recorded by.... well, The Cake Sale, sorta, in that the inside credits on the record include a passage stating "The Cake Sale are:" and then listing all 24 musicians who took part in making the record. In reality, it's essentially various-artists collection, but there are a lot of interweaving ties: Hansard, for instance, contributed the song "All The Way Down" (which he and Marketa Irglova recorded for the Once soundtrack), but it's sung here by Irish singer-songwriter Gemma Hayes. Hansard, in turn, sings lead on the track "Too Many People", which was written by Ollie Cole of the Irish band Turn. Similar twists exist throughout, with songs and/or vocal contributions from the likes of Josh Ritter, Damien Rice, Bell X1 members Paul Noonan and Dave Geraghty, the Thrills' Conor Deasy, and Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol.

A record of such atypical structure -- and with no feasible way to tour behind it -- was almost inevitably going to fall through the cracks; indeed, it seems mostly to have gone unnoticed since its overseas release in December 2006 as a benefit for Oxfam, an international organization fighting poverty and injustice. (The record received a U.S. release in November 2007 via Yep Roc.)

This one deserves a closer look, though, because of how well it hangs together as a whole -- which is maybe why they decided to present it as a "band" album rather than a various-artists collection. Ritter's rendition of Noonan's "Vapour Trail" is one of the catchier numbers he's recorded, while Nina Persson of Swedish band the Cardigans delivers a lovely reading of Canadian singer-songrwiter Emm Gryner's "Black Winged Bird". Pretty much every track here works, and they wisely held it to just nine songs, rather than allowing the oversized collective to create an overblown album that dipped into less-significant or self-indulgent material.

I'm not exactly sure who was the ringleader here -- or if anyone really was; they've certainly gone out of their way to present it as a very egalitarian endeavor -- but whoever all was responsible, they deserve kudos for doing such a fine job. It's a record that deserves better than to fade into oblivion.

adios,
peter

Having made the relatively modest drive up to Richmond, Virginia, on Friday night to see another Swell Season gig after Thursday's Raleigh show, a few comparisons/contrasts and observations:

* Even in a smaller market such as Richmond, it's clear that Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova have well outgrown the nightclub circuit. Richmond venue Toad's Place (apparently a cousin to the storied New Haven, Connecticut, original) would probably be a comfortable venue for acts drawing under 1,000, but the sold-out crowd of 1,500 was a little bit more than the room could reasonably handle. On the one hand, it was kind of nice to see the band in a space where you could walk around and observe the show from different angles and perspectives; but in the end, too many patrons were relegated to watching primarily the TV-screen monitors instead of a stage they couldn't quite glimpse from the back bar or the balcony. Still, it was partly worth the drive just for one last chance to see the Swell Season in a club setting.

* Beyond that, it was also worth the drive for the rousing, show-closing cover of Van Morrison's "Into The Mystic". Probably the best reason for having seen the Raleigh show over the Richmond show was Hansard's mid-show solo rendition of "Astral Weeks"; the converse was the case with "Into The Mystic", which had the added attraction of Irglova's uplifting harmony vocals (not to mention the full-band backing). Better yet to have gone both nights and seen both songs. I don't know if you could fairly call Hansard the heir to the Irish legacy of Morrison's muse, but one thing is clear, he gets Van The Man, and grandly channels the true spirit of Morrison's music.

* A couple other set-list shifts in Richmond allowed for two more Frames numbers ending up in the mix. "Red Chord", an anthemic number from their 1996 album Fitzcarraldo (and the 2002 live disc Breadcrumb Trail), proved a fiery late-set high-point. Earlier, when Irglova departed for a brief stretch (apparently struggling with allergies), they cranked out "God Bless Mom" from 1999's terrific U.K.-only Dance The Devil. Compared to typical full-on Frames shows, it was a modest performance of what is arguably Hansard's best rock song. Inarguable, at least for me, is that Hansard's vocal re-entry after the bridge is the most dramatic passage he's ever fashioned: When he screams out "You see how haaaaaaard it can be, to keep your side of the deal" with the full force of the band behind him, it ranks up there with Springsteen's "The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power-drive" and, yes, even Roger Daltrey's legendary scream on The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" among the most powerful and emotional moments in all of rock 'n' roll.

* And yet, Hansard got by far the most overwhelming audience response of the night when, during a mid-set solo excursion, he casually tossed in "Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy", the minute-long, made-up-on-the spot ditty from a charming little scene in the film Once. Given the vast and vehement audience sing-along that spontaneously erupted, it would appear that the song Hansard spent the least amount of time writing in his entire catalogue has paradoxically become one of his most popular, which he acknowledged with equal-parts amusement and chagrin. Take it where you can get it, one supposes, and hope they find their way eventually to "Seven Day Mile"....

* Finally, Hansard effectively tweaked his introduction to "Falling Slowly" in Richmond. The metaphor was the same -- about how 7/8ths of him was amazed at how far he kicked the ball, and 1/8th of him just wanted his ball back -- but he changed the numbers to "99%" and "1%". Which works much better, in part because we humans don't respond as cleanly to fractions; and also because, well, 1% is about as much of an underdog as you can get...and everyone loves to root for the underdog.

adios,
peter

Picking up where the last entry left off, paging through our final issue of No Depression from the feature stories onward:

* It was important to Grant and me, for obvious reasons, to do some of the more substantive writing in the final issue. It was my good fortune that the Weepies, who I'd been wanting to write about since falling fully for their 2006 disc Say I Am You, were releasing their new disc Hideaway during the window of our last issue. Grant's turn follows with his piece on Hayes Carll; and Grant also had the honors of doing our "Artist of the Decade" cover story (partly because I'd writted written the cover story of ND #74, and also the cover story for our LAST "Artist of the Decade," Alejandro Escovedo, back in 1998).

* Speaking of Grant's cover story on Buddy Miller, I've had an inordinate number of folks comment to me about Thomas Petillo's photos accompanying the piece. My sense was that it was not only great photos but also great art-direction by Grant, in the way he used the shots to string through the piece as a sort of visual connective tissue. And something about that concluding shot, with Buddy setting down the guitar and away, seemed to tell our own story as well.

* A couple notes on headlines in the 4-page features: I saddled Sera Cahoone with the chorus lyric of Bobby Sherman's "Seattle" (from the old TV show Here Come The Brides), hoping perhaps it had some resonance to her home turf, but also as an acknowledgment of ND's roots (when we started the magazine, all of us lived in Seattle).... The Blue Mountain headline (Muscle memory") was a nod to both Laurie Stirratt, who'd used the term in a quote from the story about how natural it was to start playing the old Blue Mountain songs again, and to bassist Cindy Toth of the Reivers, who'd mentioned something similar about her band's reunion just prior to the shows I reviewed in the Miked section.... The Weepies headline is, as many of you probably recognized, the title of one of Iris DeMent's finest songs (covered by Merle Haggard, even).... As for the Hayes Carll headline, which reads, duh, "Hayes Carll," forgive us for falling down on the job there. That piece was at one point slated to be the two-page opener for the Town & Country section, where we use the artists' name as the headline; when it ended up getting expanded to a four-page feature, we forgot to come up with a "real" headline and somehow never caught it in the proofing process. Ah well, I guess "Hayes Carll" can speak for itself (er, himself).

* Roy Kasten's lead to the Billy Bragg piece was maybe my favorite of all the pieces Kasten has written for us over the years. It nicely tied in some of the magazine's prehistory to the piece, while also subtly making note of current political realities (i.e., we're STILL enmeshed in Iraq). All in all a very nice profile of an artist who has been somewhat of a beacon for me ever since i first heard Talking With The Taxman About Poetry back in 1986.

* Jason Crosby's illustration opening the Robert Forster piece was a beautiful work of art, and seemed perfectly fitting to the subject. By stroke of good fortune I struck upon a headline to match by tapping the title of an old song that the Carter Family used to sing (among many others). We were also indebted to publicist Robert Vickers (a former Go-Betweens member) and photographer Stephanie Chernikowski for helping us dig up some nice historical shots of Forster's old band.

* Having John Marks write what I believe to be the definitive piece on the Old 97's was something of great personal reward to me. I'd stumbled upon Marks just a few months earlier, sort of by chance via a blog-entry he'd written about our #73 Shelby Lynne cover story, and ended up becoming a big fan of his recent documentary film Purple State Of Mind. That he gladly found the time to write for our last issue was a nice reminder of why this magazine has been so much fun over the years: As much as anything, it's about working with really talented writers.

* Same would be true for Britt Robson's piece on Pinetop Perkins, in fact. We'd also discovered Britt only recently (thanks to a referral from Ellen Stanley of Red House Records) but really wanted to get him on a longer feature while we still had the chance, and it surely paid off with the Pinetop piece. Didn't hurt that Todd V. Wolfson's photos were a work of art as well.

* The lead items in the two record-review sections -- Whiskeytown in Not Fade Away, Alejandro Escovedo in waxed -- couldn't possibly have been more fitting closers. Full disclosure mandates mentioning that I wrote the liner notes for the reissue of Whiskeytown's Strangers Almanac; but seeing as how they were the lead Town & Country piece of our first issue, and appeared on the cover of ND #10 when Strangers Almanac was released, there wasn't much doubt that it was the obvious lead review for the reissue section. All the more apropos that we got David Menconi, who did that T&C piece in ND #1, to write it. And Bill Friskics-Warren's take on Escovedo's new Real Animal album nicely referred to our long history with Escovedo, helping to bring our "Artist of the Decade" discussions full-circle.

A special "citation of merit," if you will, for Jesse Fox Mayshark's sidebar-review of the Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet disc. Mayshark's always been one of our finest and smartest writers, but I thought he really went above and beyond here, with such a perfect take on the record that I'm confident there will be none better to appear.... And finally, it was a nice coincidence that the very last record review to run in ND was of a Heybale disc titled: The Last Country album.

* Probably not much needs to be said about the last-page Screen Door piece that I didn't already say on the page. Suffice to say that it seemed to almost write itself. The bit at the end about the wire-mesh screen that we used for the logo seems trivial, in a sense....but to me, it felt, in a strange way, like the heart of everything we've been about.

adios,
peter

If you've read this blog with any regularity over the last couple of years, you'll know that I do this little editor's commentary about the current issue shortly after each one is published, usually just mentioning a few stories or photos or headlines that had some sort of particular personal significance, or that I perhaps wished to shed a little additional light on.

With our final issue, which arrived on the racks and in subscribers' mailboxes over the past few days, I'm afraid there are too many of those kinds of details to cover in a single entry. So I'll break this up into two parts, the second to follow later this week.

It probably comes as no surprise that our last issue meant a great deal to both Grant and me and thus carried quite a bit of content that reflected the finality of the occasion. Looking back through its pages when it arrived, however, I was struck by just how much was drawn directly upon the magazine's history, and/or my own musical journey. Some of what follows will speak to that.

First, though, there were the letters. That old Wilco song-title which has served as our letters-page title for all these years didn't quite suffice this time, as the box wasn't full but overflowing. The two pages we printed were just a fraction of what we received, and that's not counting the 200-odd comments on our website. To those who wrote and whose letters we couldn't fit in, our apologies, but also our thanks for letting us know what ND meant to you. The elegance of your expression, and the variety of ways in which y'all expressed it, was a great inspiration as we put #75 together.

This issue's Most Valuable Player profile, David Menconi's interview with Eric Heywood, originally had been scheduled for #74 but there wasn't room. It seemed fitting that it ended up in the final issue instead, given that Heywood was onstage with Son Volt in July 1995 when I traveled to Minneapolis to see their first performances at 7th Street Entry while working on our debut issue's cover story. I've since seen Heywood bring radiant color to the music of several other fine artists (Alejandro Escovedo and Richard Buckner come to mind especially), and have long been impressed by not just his musical ability but his personable nature -- both qualities no doubt highly prized by songwriters who have taken him on the road. Can't think of anyone I'd have rather featured in the MVP slot for our finale.

That the Miked section was framed by Paul Cantin's review of the Cowboy Junkies' Trinity Session concert and my own review of the Reivers' reunion show spoke significantly to the path that led to the launching of No Depression. Though neither were tagged "alt-country" in the 1980s, both acts incorporated elements of country and alternative approaches into their music.

The kicker was that the section's penultimate review was Holly Gleason's account of a Jackson Browne show at the Ryman. You'll just have to trust me on this, but many years ago (the date on the word-file in my computer says May 21, 2000) I made out a list of the Top 25 albums of all-time which had most greatly influenced me -- not necessarily a critical "best albums" assessment, but a more personalized reckoning -- and the top three were Jackson Browne's The Pretender, the Reivers' Translate Slowly, and the Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Session. Somehow they all ended up in our final live-review section together.

One of the most gratifying consequences of the surge in advertising that allowed us to publish 144 pages was that we were able to add a few extra Town & Country pieces rather late in the game; as a result, from start to finish, that section is packed with acts who really deserved a place in our final pages. The Carolina Chocolate Drops had played at our Merlefest booth last year and were clearly rising stars in our midst; we'd written about them briefly in the live-review and record-review sections, but they very much deserved a profile. Grant had been quite taken with the Hope Nunnery disc that had showed up in the mail recently. Kyla had been telling us how taken she was with this new Seattle band called the Fleet Foxes that was preparing to sign with Sub Pop. Dawn Landes was someone I'd encountered in New York during a meeting with the folks from Hem (with whom she toured for awhile), and whose name just kept popping up in the years hence (indeed, I'll see her later this week when she opens for the Swell Season in Raleigh).

Band Of Annuals I'd stumbled upon by chance at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle a couple months back and was certain they were going places; I'm pretty sure they're the first Salt Lake City band to be in our Town & Country section. The Whipsaws were actually the second (if I recall correctly) act from Alaska we'd done a T&C on; I'd seen them at SXSW with Tim Easton and doing their own stuff and was rather taken with their songs and their spirit. The Waybacks clearly have made great strides in recent years, thanks in part to the recruitment of Warren Hood, whose late father Champ was one of the true good guys in Austin during my formative years there. The members of the Rite Flyers were also around during those Austin coming-of-age days, if in different bands; what they've created together in the present strikes me as something special, as was evident when they opened for that Reivers reunion show back in February.

That'll wrap up Part 1, then....check back later this week and we'll move on to the features and record reviews. Meantime, hope y'all are enjoying reading our print-bimonthly finale as much as I enjoyed working on it.

adios,
peter

The subject-line might lead you to think this is gonna be a post-NC-primary political ramble -- but no; we'll leave that to Daily Kos and the like. If you're a Nick Lowe fan, however, you probably also recognize that quote as the chorus-lyric of what may be the finest song Lowe has ever written.

There'd be a boatload of arguments against such an assessment, no doubt -- not so much against "Hope For Us All" (from Lowe's latest labum, At My Age), but in favor of landmark Lowe tunes such as "Cruel To Be Kind" or "I Knew The Bride" or "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding", or somewhat lesser-known gems such as "All Men Are Liars" or "High On A Hilltop" or "The Beast In Me", or any number of other selections in Lowe's catalogue. Trying to single out his best song is a bit like trying to pick out the best peak in the Colorado Rockies; the whole range is pretty spectacular, you know.

I come today, however, to praise "Hope For Us All", and to write at some length as to precisely why. In particular, I'd like to present this song as an example to all aspiring lyricists of just how well a song can be written. Which is not to suggest everyone should go out and write a song like this -- imitation obviously isn't the point in art, and besides, it took Nick a long time to get this good -- but rather to posit "Hope For Us All" as an apex toward which to strive.

Let's start with the simple part. Almost every great song has a simple part. In this case it's the chorus. Lowe builds everything around these straightforward but heartfelt eleven words:

If even I
Can find someone
There's hope for us all.

That says a lot, with true brevity, a rare commodity in songwriting.

From there, things get complicated, from a craft perspective -- but you'd never know it as a listener, because Lowe makes the whole thing sound so natural, so effortless. Looking at things closely, I see three distinct examples of real brilliance which take this song from the simple to the sublime:

1. Metric diction. That's a complicated-sounding term to describe the rhythm Lowe employs in the line which bridges the verse to the chorus. It's a classic poetic turn, really -- akin to that phrase "iambic pentameter" you may occasionally hear in reference to Shakespeare and other masters (though I don't believe the syllabic pattern quite bears out this example as fitting the specific "iambic pentameter" numeric designation).

The intent and effect, though, is very similar. After starting the song with a rather unassuming couplet -- "People are remarking on the change that's come over me/It can be explained very easily" -- he digs into the meter on the next line:

OUT of the BLUE someone's COME into MY lonely WORLD and now I'M walking tall

It all reads like one continuous line -- no breaks or pauses, but rather syllabic stresses which propel the lyric straight into that simple chorus:

And if even I
Can find someone
There's hope for us all.

There is, of course, the obligatory rhyme ("tall" with "all"), but unlike most songs, the rhyme isn't the crux of the structure; rather, it gracefully marries the other elements of language that are driving the song.

He repeats the form in the second verse, but with a different line (which gets repeated later in the song):

I must adMIT there were TIMES when all I ever DID was climb THE wall

The meter, and the careful choice of words to fit that meter -- i.e., "metric diction" -- puts a skip in the song's step, sets it apart, seamlessly segues the listener from one stage to the next. You can hear how well it works immediately; taking a closer look shows just how clever and not-so-easy it is to pull off.

2. The bridge. Plenty of songs falter here; as a mostly amateur songwriter myself, I find it to be the toughest thing to write well, to create sensibly or naturally. Nick uses a simple little trick here to bring it home: He ties his chorus to the end of the bridge.

It's basically a two-verse bridge, kind of a classic "middle-eight." The first stanza is the setup: "Even in my darkest hour/There was still a light somewhere/Letting me know by its glow/That I'd find comfort there." Nothing particularly special to that, though the internal-rhyme of "know" and "glow" within the third line is a nice touch.

It's the second part that does the trick. "I walked a lonely street/Waiting for love to call/And if even I can find someone/There's hope for us all." The catch in writing a bridge is that you have to find your way back into the heart of the song. Lowe does this with exquisite ease, simply setting up the latter half of his middle eight to flow right back into his chorus.

I wish I could do that.

3. The grand finale. I use that term loosely and hesitantly, because it suggests the sort of overblown-instrumental-bombast conclusion that's common to modern pop but is almost entirely absent from Lowe's repertoire. What he does at the end of "Hope For Us All" is far more subtle, but also far more grand, from a lyrical perspective.

He appears to be just returning to the chorus, which is generally what most songs will do as they finish or fade out. But wait, there's something more here:

But if even I
A feckless man
Who's thrown away every single chance he's ever had
Can find someone
To check his fall
There must be hope for us all.

This is transcendent on multiple levels. First, he perfectly fits three new lines into the fundamental framework of his initial three lines -- and not just tacked on to the front or the end, but intertwined. The lines of his primary chorus are lines 1, 4, and 6 here. What he's woven into the narrative with lines 2, 3, and 5 doesn't sound out-of-place; on the contrary, it sounds like the whole six-line stanza could've been the original chorus.

Further, look at the words he's using here. When was the last time you heard someone sing "feckless" in a pop song? And it's precisely the right word: "having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy" (per definition 2 at dictionary.com) -- a spot-on description of the man who's being transformed in the course of the song. Even better, perhaps, is the way he describes finding a true love: "Someone to check his fall." Again, this is not typical language, and it's all the more compelling for its singularity.

Finally, consider the emotional impact of that expanded chorus, which is ultimately all that really counts. Instead of just returning to the same words you've already heard a couple of times, he hits you with something that makes you listen fresh again -- and which portrays the character more dramatically and vividly than anywhere else in the song. This is a guy who's desperate, who's feckless, "who's thrown away every single chance he's ever had." And yet even he has found someone.

Indeed, there must be hope for us all.

adios,
peter

P.S. -- A live performance of the song:

It's tempting to call this Merlefest "The Year of the Piano" in that keyboards seemed to figure fairly prominently in many of the most memorable performances. None were better than Ollabelle, whose keyboardist, Glenn Patscha, repeatedly cast mesmerizing trances and tones with his organ work during the band's stellar Saturday-afternoon set in the drizzle at the Americana stage. Their version of the Grateful Dead's "Ripple" on the Cabin Stage later that night was a show-stopping beauty. Merlefest may generally be all about the banjos and fiddles and guitars and mandolins, but when you hear a good keyboardist in the midst of all that, it ends to stand out like a clarion call.

A more spotlighted piano-centric highlight was Saturday night's mainstage performance by Bruce Hornsby with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder. The two played material they recorded together on last year's duo album, plus the obvious hits reworked for the format (Hornsby taking a lead vocal on the Bill Monroe staple "Uncle Pen", Skaggs' band Kentucky Thunder driving the tempo and feel of Hornsby's "The Way It Is"). Hornsby's an interesting cat, in that the runaway pop success of "The Way It Is" in the '80s allowed him the opportunity to do many things with his stardom -- and he parlayed it into such seemingly unexpected ventures as joining the Grateful Dead and teaming up with Skaggs. His musical talent is unassailable, as he showed most especially on wondrously complex yet poignant minor-key piano runs during "Mandolin Rain".

Piano also played a significant role in Tift Merritt's packed-house performance at the Walker Center on Saturday afternoon -- or at least it sounded that way from the lobby. The house was so packed -- after a sudden torrential thunderstorm sent everyone scurrying to the festival's scant few indoor venues -- that we never did actually get in to see, though it sounded good from outside the theater doors.

Finally, a rather brief but highly affecting piano interlude came during the Avett Brothers' Friday-night headlining set. "Salina", an ambitious track from the band's 2007 breakthrough disc Emotionalism, went from serene to sublime when guitarist Seth Avett switched midsong to piano, emphasizing the tune's quasi-classical references. The Avetts' legions of fans still respond most voraciously to their high-intensity numbers -- on this night, they caused a minor but lovable ruckus when they began passing the reserved-seat chairs overhead behind them to create a mosh-pit up front -- but it's those moments of melodic magic that continue to set the band apart from others in the punk-trad realm.

adios,
peter