Rock ‘n’ Rail Redux

Posted on April 9, 2016 by Denny

The train was canceled on my first attempt to ride the rails to DC for a concert and on the second attempt it was hours late. This time it was just right and I’m in the nation’s capital ready to see Willie Nile and his band perform their new album. I’m just a little late for the cherry blossoms and the weather doesn’t look all that promising but I hope to get to look around the mall a little bit before show time.

The journal for the trip is here. This entry is to let blog subscribers know of the trip and to provide a place for comments.

Music Review
World War Willie
Willie Nile

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Denny

wwwillie_cvr I’ve been a serious Willie Nile fan for barely two years or something like 5% of his career. I feel bad about that. I know I missed a lot and assumed that I’d missed him at his peak. World War Willie makes that assumption laughable.

I’ve told elsewhere how I remembered 1980’s “Vagabond Moon” only after his 2013 road trip anthem, “American Ride”, caught my ear and how I was subsequently blown away seeing him live in February of 2014. I can’t say for certain that Willie, who is just a little over a year younger than me, is as energetic on stage as he once was but it’s possible. Are the shows I’ve seen as good as the ones I’ve missed? How do performances of the most recent two years compare to those that came before? I can’t know that but I do know that they are outstanding and compare most favorably with some great past concerts that I didn’t miss.

While it is impossible to go back to attend those missed shows, it is quite possible to listen to music created in the past and I did that eagerly. There were no disappointments. Earlier Willie Nile albums held up well when compared to American Ride and vice versa.

The first new Willie Nile product to be released following my conversion was 2014’s If I Was a River. It was a delight but different. It was mostly solo and acoustic and maybe the sort of album that fools like me think of an aging rocker doing as he slows down but Willie wasn’t slowing down at all. The piano was his first instrument and he told writer Peter Gerstenzang that he had “…wanted to do an all-piano album for a number of years”. He also told Gerstenzang that, “I’m gonna make a full-on rockin’ album with my band for the next release.” And so he has.

The new album rocks as hard as Places I Have Never Been or Streets of New York or any of the other previous Willie Nile offerings. As guitarist Poppa Chubby says, in one of the first outside things I read about World War Willie, “There’s not a single down moment on this record.” What there is is eleven new songs and one cover. There is serious stuff like “”Let’s All Come Together” and fun stuff like the title track and “Grandpa Rocks”. And of course there is serious stuff disguised as fun stuff like “Citibank Nile”. The lone cover is Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane” which Nile has frequently played live and on which he has put his own stamp.

Great characters populate great songs. Folks in my age bracket might identify with the subject of “Grandpa Rocks” whose “hair what’s left grows down to his socks” and who wears a “‘been there’ grin”. I feel like the line “He ain’t afraid of dyin’ he just likes bein’ alive” fits perfectly. The “Runaway Girl” is “a two-dream girl in a one-horse town”. The album’s most disturbing character appears in what is currently my favorite song in the collection. With “fire in her eyes and a pint between her thighs” the young girl in “Trouble Down in Diamond Town” is clearly set on self destruction. The song’s slightly syncopated three shots mark some of the most efficient and effective use of drumsticks this side of the opening of the Eagles’ “Hotel California”.

Drummer Alex Alexander provides a lot more than three shots. Neither he nor bassist Johnny Pisano are ever intrusive but focusing on either will reveal some truly impressive work that both supports the tunes and drives them forward. One time Eagle Steuart Smith contributes guitar to a couple of tracks including the Levon Helm tribute “When Levon Sings”. However most of the album’s guitar work comes from band regular Matt Hogan and that includes some mighty nice slide playing on the bluesy “Citybank Nile”.

“Grandpa Rocks” ends with the spoken words “Where’s my cane? Who are these people?Get offa my cloud.” It’s natural to think that Grandpa is Willie and that those words come from the real Willie Nile. However just a little thought is all that’s required to see that that simply can’t be true. Everybody’s welcome on Willie’s cloud. Climb aboard and listen up.

A Pre-Refurb Peek at Music Hall

Posted on March 20, 2016 by Denny

At the end of this year’s May Festival, Cincinnati’s Music Hall will close for extensive renovations. The Cincinnati icon, which first opened in 1878, will open again in the fall of 2017. I knew I ought to attend at least one more performance there before the closing and working in part of the May Festival has been in the back of my mind. A number of things lined up Friday that made attending the first night of the MusicNOW Festival possible and attractive. I may still try to make it back for the May Festival but the pressure is off and I had a most enjoyable evening.

MusicNow, the brainchild of Bryce Dessner of The National, was first held in 2005. Although The National was formed after he moved to New York, Bryce is a Cincinnati native and frequently involved with the city’s music. An Australian tour prevented him from attending this year’s festival but one of his compositions opened Friday’s concert and another was premiered on Saturday.

With about an hour to go, the lobby was pretty empty and I grabbed a couple of pictures. There are a number of large chandeliers in the building with one of the most impressive hanging in the center of the lobby..

I used some of the extra time to head upstairs. On the second floor, I snapped pictures of the upper level of the lobby and the balcony of the main concert space, Springer Auditorium. The third photo is of the Springer Auditorium Gallery. The seats in the foreground are about where I sat to watch Big Brother and the Holding Company in October 1968. This was the performance that was paused while Janis and the band watched the Beatles on the Smothers Brothers Show.

I believe that 1968 show was my first at Music Hall. Many, wildly diverse, have followed. If Big Brother is at one end of the range, Andrés Segovia might be at the other. He was solo and acoustic when I saw him in 1982. So was Bruce Springsteen in 1996. But Bruce was 47; Segovia nearly 90. That little old man and that little old guitar on the big old stage remains one of my most memorable concerts and a great demonstration of the wonderful acoustics of that big old space. There were numerous Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra concerts that included a variety of soloists; several performances of the Nutcracker ballet; the Kinks; John (not yet Mellencamp) Cougar; Peter, Paul, and Mary; and others I’ve temporarily forgotten. But my purpose in going to Friday’s show was not to trigger old memories. I wanted to firm up my impressions of the building in anticipation of next year’s changes. It was standing at the back wall of the Gallery and looking at the distant stage that prompted the most ancient memories then not-quite-as-ancient memories just followed.

My seat was a last minute pay-what-you-want bargain. From the left side of the second row the visuals consisted largely of orchestra member’s ankles and partially obscured profiles of featured performers but the audio was fantastic. The Kronos Quartet performed first followed by violinist Jennifer Koh with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. After an intermission, the quartet and orchestra performed together. Mandolinist Chris Thile closed the show. He performed, like Segovia and Springsteen, solo and he even stepped in front of the mic to do a couple of songs completely acoustic. Not suprisingly, it sounded great from a few yards away but I almost bolted from my seat to see if he reached the rear of the audtorium as well as Segovia had. I didn’t. I wish I had.

The Cincinnati Opera has put together a rather nice Music Hall Renovation FAQ in which they specifically mention that “The large chandelier in the auditorium will be restored.” I don’t know if that means the others will not be but it does raise the question. I hope that’s not the case although if only one can be saved, this is certainly the right one.

Road Crew in the Fork

Posted on January 21, 2016 by Denny

pgs Puckett’s Grocery & Restaurant is the target of this trip but there will be some stops along the way. Puckett’s is in Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee, which, for me, is a little beyond Nashville. I have Music City evenings planned for the Bluebird Cafe and the Grand Ol’ Opry at Ryman Theater before my evening with “America’s Route 66 Band”, The Road Crew, at Puckett’s. You know the saying, “When you come to a Road Crew in the Fork, take it.”

The journal for the trip is here. This entry is to let blog subscribers know of the trip and to provide a place for comments.

My Wheels — Chapter 19
1970 Chevrolet Nova

Posted on January 17, 2016 by Denny

nova70 Again I must confess to a purloined photo gracing yet another My Wheels post. My car did not have the highly visible dual exhausts or fancy wheels of the pictured vehicle nor did it have the unseen 350 V8 and 4-speed floor shift. Mine was a 307 V8 with a 3-speed automatic. However, my car was, just like the one at right, a Cortez Silver 2-door with — and this is important — black vinyl top. It is the only vinyl topped car I’ve ever owned and one of very few I can even imagine owning without some level of embarrassment. While I doubt everyone agrees that the vinyl covering looks pretty good on this car it’s apparent that I’m not alone in thinking so. There are many full restorations of third generation Nova coupes that include a restored vinyl top. And that includes some high-end 396 Super Sports.

There was nothing extraordinary in my acquisition of the car. I bought it from a Chevy dealer’s used car lot for a reasonable but not remarkable price. I don’t recall any of the numbers though I do recall some evidence surfacing while I owned the car that the miles showing on the odometer were considerably less than those actually traveled. Selling used cars has always been something of a craft and its practitioners somewhat crafty.

Viewed in isolation, there was nothing extraordinary about the Nova’s departure, either. However, when seen as part of the My Wheels story, it stands out as the first car I ever sold in drive-able condition to a stranger. Only three cars had previously left my possession while drive-able. The 1952 Ford was sold to a friend, my half of the 1959 Chevy went to my sister who already owned the other half, and the 1969 Opel stayed with my wife who already… well, you know.

The car came and went in roughly the same condition but deviated from that condition a couple of times along the way. One was when I slid off of a wet road on the way home from work and parked it solidly against a tree. That required a bit of popping and painting in a body shop.

Then there was the Joni Mitchell incident. A friend and I were headed to her concert in Oxford, Ohio. While stopped in a line of traffic leading to a parking lot we noticed a cloud of smoke from — we thought — the car ahead of us. When that car moved on and I attempted to follow, there was more smoke but no motion. In time we realized that the lack of motion, the racing engine, and the billowing cloud were all connected. We later learned that a hole had opened between the radiator and a transmission cooler mounted below it. The two different liquids attempted to change places and a goodly amount of each quickly escaped. The transmission stopped transmitting.

We somehow got a wrecker to tow the car to a nearby garage. There was nothing to be gained by hanging out at the garage and the friendly tow truck driver agreed to deliver us to the entrance of the concert hall. While we enjoyed the show, we managed to line up a ride home. After a few days and several telephone calls, I hitchhiked back to Oxford to get the car. While dramatic, things were not as bad as I feared. A little water may have entered the transmission but most of the errant flow went the other way. The transmission was undamaged and a flush and fill brought it back to life. A junkyard radiator replaced the one that caused the problem. The blow to my budget was painful but it could have been so much worse. If only that big tow truck had been yellow.

My Previous Wheels: Chapter 18 — 1971 Vega
My Next Wheels: Chapter 20 — 1972 Audi 100 LS

Naissance All Over Again

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Denny

I think I attended the very first Ohio Renaissance Festival in 1990 though it’s possible that my first visit was in ’91 during the festival’s second season. It was great fun regardless of when it happened. I visited Willy Nilly-on-the-Wash, the fictional home of the festival, a few more times during the next decade then I stopped. I have no idea why. I was never a regular. I never went more than once a year and doubt I ever went two years in a row. Every two or three years seemed about right until it somehow dropped completely off my schedule. I’m sure I haven’t been there since at least 1999 which means that yesterday was the first time in the twenty-first century that I visited the sixteenth century. It’s changed.

I heard something on the radio about the festival just before it opened this year and decided I really should check it out. It runs for eight consecutive weekends with each week having a theme. There is a Pirates Weekend, a a Barbarian Invasion Weekend, and other fun sounding themes including OktoBEERfest!. This was the only weekend I had free. It’s Romance Weekend. By buying my ticket online I saved $1.14 (20.81 vs. 21.95). I wondered whether it was worth it but once the car was parked it became clear that I had done the right thing. My print-at-home ticket let me go right through the entrance on the right instead of standing in one of the lines on the left.

People in period dress (more or less) are everywhere and it’s not always easy to tell if they are officially part of the show or just highly motivated patrons. I’m only half sure the lady shopping for new cutlery is an amateur and even less certain about the others. I’ve never been actually confronted about photographing someone but I have had a few hard looks. It the look comes before I’ve fired the shutter, the shutter remains un-fired. At this sort of event, the exact opposite is more likely. When I took the second picture, I was actually targeting that magnificent beard but the lovely lady beside it noticed me and made sure I got her best side.

Thrill rides are powered by gravity or muscle. There are, of course, weight limit and “you must be this tall” signs but those aren’t the only restrictions.

Music is plentiful and good. There is even a genuine honest to goodness hurdy gurdy.

Actually, entertainment of all sorts is plentiful. One of the perennial favorites is the Theater in the Ground (a.k.a. Mudde Show). I caught a a performance of Dante’s Inferno and yes he does. They somehow talked a lovely lass from the audience into playing the role of Beatrice and much to my amazement kept her quite clean. The narrator didn’t fare so well. I lingered behind to get a picture of the bare stage.

Knights on horseback are every bit as popular as men in mud. There are full-tilt jousts several times each day and before each joust the knights demonstrate some of the skill involved by charging past their squires and plucking rings from their fingers. The lances used are considerably smaller and lighter than the ones they will use in the actual joust.

Although I was quite happy to get it, my seat for the joust wasn’t the best. It was easy enough for me to look past the array of lances but that might be a little tougher in the pictures. In the first picture they are just about to meet. In the second and third thay have just met and some fairly dramatic things are happening. I suppose most folks would simply post some video from their smart phones but I’m a bit more old fashioned and have created a couple of triptychs. One begins with that second photo in which the lance of the knight on the white horse has just snapped. The second begins with the third photo where the knight on the black horse is about to lose his lance.

Though bigger and better than when I last saw them, the joust and mud theater have been part of the festival since its beginning. The human chess match was new to me. I didn’t really follow things closely or understand all the rules but it is obvious that captured pieces do not just leave the board/field willingly. Note Elizabeth Regina watching the game in that third photo. The queen’s presense is often felt throughout the festival. I had encountered her shortly after entering and snapped a few pictures of her and her entourage. She spotted me and paused as she passed. There is an “official” photo of the queen that appears on the festival website and in brochures. I borrowed it to pair with mine.

This is, as I said, Romance Weekend so I’ll end with this touching image of two smitten youths, with odd curly things on their heads, sharing a scarf.

Much Miscellany 2
Sloopy at 50

Posted on September 13, 2015 by Denny

Released in the summer of 1965, the McCoys’ version of Hang on Sloopy reached #1 on October 2. A week later, the Ohio State Marching Band performed the song for the first time and, twenty years after that, the Ohio General Assembly adopted it as the state’s official rock song. This last summer, as the song’s 50th birthday approached, the Rolling Stones did a snippet of it during their concert in OSU’s Ohio Stadium. On Saturday, Rick Derringer (nee Zehringer), the McCoy’s guitarist and lead singer performed the hit with his current trio and the full Ohio State Marching Band. Following that, the trio rushed to the singer’s home town for a dinner and concert. I was there for the concert.

The concert was part of the second annual Union City Arts Festival. It filled the nicely restored train depot and a new park, along with the area between them. A number of food vendors augmented the many arts and crafts booths. The nearby downtown area joined in and the local museum, which has a permanent display of a few McCoys related items, hosted a memorabilia collection assembled by Rick’s cousin, Mike Zehringer.

After their dinner, which quite a few fans had paid to attend, the band moved to the stage area and poised for a few pictures with the fantastic 1950 Chevrolet parked there. The car is the creation of original McCoys organist Ronnie Brandon and Rick and Ronnie were soon catching up and also posing for a few shots with the car.

The band opened with a Christianized version of Still Alive and Well then delivered a hard driving two hour show with songs from throughout Derringer’s career. Frankenstein, Free Ride, Real American, and Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo were all played.

The song that started it all, Hang on Sloopy, was a special moment with all three surviving McCoys on stage. Keyboardist Ronnie Brandon and the band had parted ways in 1967. Drummer Randy Zehringer (Rick’s brother) developed encephalitis and had quit playing by the early 1970s. Bassist Randy Jo Hobbs died of drug related causes in 1993. I apologize for the blurred picture of Ronnie, Rick, and Randy but it’s the best I have. I got no picture of Randy singing (he did not attempt to play drums) and only a fuzzy one of Ronnie at the organ.

Here is a much clearer though somewhat older photo of the three McCoys. It is from sometime around 1964. The bass player in the photo is Dennis Kelly who was replaced by Randy Hobbs when college called.

Book Review
An American Songline
Cecelia Otto

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Denny

aas_cvr Cece’s a singer… and a traveler and now a writer. Cece (I know the book cover says Cecelia but few actually call her that.) has been singing since childhood. As an adult, she has spent a goodly amount of time singing professionally as a classically trained mezzo-contralto and there was travel, both in and out of the US, involved. Then, just as the career should have been accelerating, a stumbling economy resulted in it instead being sort of paused. Cece used the time to attend workshops and other activities to help in focusing her future. One workshop involved identifying, in a short amount of time, “…five projects you see yourself doing…” and one item on her hurriedly produced list was “singing travelogue”. No one, including Cece, was quite sure what that meant but it sounded intriguing and, before long, she was on her way to defining a real world project that included a coast-to-coast concert tour, a CD, and this book.

The word “songline” was already part of her vocabulary. Songlines, or dream-tracks, are paths across Australia that indigenous people navigate, and have navigated for centuries, by the singing of songs.The songs are a mix of geography, mythology, and history and that sounds a lot like a “singing travelogue”. Cece chose the Lincoln Highway as the path for her “singing travelogue”. She traveled it during its centennial in 2013 with performances along its entire length. Unlike the Australian songlines, there isn’t really a song or even a set of songs that will guide travelers along the Lincoln Highway but Cece compiled a repertoire of tunes that mention the highway or were performed along it during its 1913-1928 heyday. Some new original Lincoln Highway related songs appeared in her concerts, too.

At one level, the book is a travelogue of that 2013 trip from New York City to San Francisco. Multiple outings are spread over six months. There are descriptions and photos of the same roadside attractions and interesting people and places that folks on vacation might encounter because, when possible, Cece is a tourist enjoying the sights. But sightseeing is definitely secondary. The purpose of the trip is the series of concerts and getting to each of them and being healthy when she gets there is her primary focus. Therefore, the book is also — perhaps mostly — a behind the scenes story of a do-it-yourself solo concert tour. Of course, getting to and performing concerts involves interesting people and places, too.

The book’s organization basically follows the road with states that the Lincoln Highway passes through providing most chapter names. Two notable exceptions are “Loss Along the Lincoln Highway”, which talks about events and thoughts that have absolutely nothing to do with geography, and “Love Along the Lincoln Highway”, in which Cece’s husband, Dan, shares his thoughts on the project that separated the recently wed couple for extended periods. The “singing travelogue” concept is brought to the printed page by beginning each chapter with the description of one of the songs from the tour.

An American Songline has plenty of dates and places and people but it also has emotions. Not only does Cece describe towns and venues, she shares the feeling of singing in those venues when she hasn’t seen her husband in a month and she talks about performing when the recent death of a friend is on her mind and after being surprised by a familiar but unexpected face in the audience. Being behind the scenes sometimes gets personal.

As a sort of “full disclosure”, I’ll mention that I first met Cece at the 2011 Lincoln Highway Association Conference when An American Songline was still a dream. I saw her perform at the concert in Hayseville, Ohio, as well as at other LHA events including the centennial in Kearney, Nebraska. Like Cece, I headed west from Kearney and, although I did not attend the advertised concert, spotted her name in lights along the way. I took some pictures but have never had an opportunity to use them… until now.

aas_sign

An American Songline website.

An American Songline: A Musical Journey Along the Lincoln Highway, Cecelia Otto, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, June 11, 2015, paperback, 8 x 5.2 inches, 318 pages, ISBN 978-1514317822
Available through Amazon.

Music Review
If It’s Got Wheels
Carey Murdock

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Denny

iigw_cvr The title song is the opener and I’ll admit I found myself wondering if that was a good thing. “If It’s Got Wheels”, the song, is a V8-powered rocker that heads straight for the horizon like something Springsteen or the Eagles might drive. But then what? Did Murdock pick this tune to lead off and supply the name for his latest album because that’s all there is? The quickly apparent answer is a very loud NO. If It’s Got Wheels, the album, is filled with powerful songs performed by a collection of talented musicians.

On my first listen, I found myself truly paying attention to those musicians as things kept right on rocking into the second track. I’ve seen Carey a few times. Always solo and always acoustic. I’ve heard other recordings with a band but, in hindsight, it seems I must have thought of the others only as accompanists for Murdock’s distinctive vocals. As “Go On and Leave Me” played, I heard Nigel Lawrence’s keyboard work and Mark Sieister’s saxophone as important and integrated parts of the song and I started to realize just how much Lawrence and guitarist Steven Bryant had contributed to the opening cut. Drums and bass, John Henry and Warren Brown respectively, had also been important and solid and masterful. I don’t know if this is officially the Carey Murdock Band but whatever the group is called, it’s a good one.

Two tracks into the album, I was enjoying Murdock’s writing and singing just as I expected but I was also enjoying and appreciating all the other players on the album, too. Despite the name, the next tune, “Don’t Want to Slow It Down”, slows it down but continues to show off the backing musicians Everyone is present, in a subdued sort of way, from the beginning but it’s Henry who initially carries things with a slow snare only cadence. Before the song is over, the whole group is wailing and Henry’s full kit is in on the action. For the moment, this is my favorite song on the album and the drum work is certainly one of the reasons but so, too, are lyrics, vocals, and the band’s performance

I was loving this full team “wall of sound” approach but I was also concerned that it might have become a necessary part of Murdock’s music. Track four, “Messy Love”, straightened me out. With an acoustic guitar and his harmonica, Carey delivers this one all by himself. It reminded me that a good song can be performed in a variety of ways and will remain a good song. These are good songs and Murdock does what many musicians do not and includes a booklet with lyrics and other details for each of them..

With one exception, the full band appears on the remaining tracks. One of those, however, is missing Murdock. It’s a one minute instrumental called “Interlude” that lets everybody showboat a little and which just might be used as a break song. I can almost hear “Short pause for the cause. Don’t be rash with your cash. We’ll be back in a flash” but, when it ends, there’s Murdock singing the opening line of “Never Like This Before”. Murdock’s voice has been compared to Springsteen’s and that’s not a bad reference point. However, I’ve also heard him do a pretty fair job crooning Frank Sinatra tunes and there’s a gravely end of his range that’s more like the older Tom Waits. For this song, Carey uses his Tom Waits voice.

The full band exception I mentioned is the last song on the album, “In This Together”. The only instrumentation is Murdoc’s acoustic guitar with Steven Bryant supplying both bass and drums. The song was co-written with former Taylor Swift fiddler and backup vocalist Caitlin Evanson and she joins Carey in singing it here. Murdock’s voice touches on the gravely Waits-ish sound in a few places. Evanson’s decidedly does not. It’s a beautiful way to end the album.

CareyMurdock.com

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Cardboard on the Ohio

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Denny

The weather was perfect for yesterday’s Cardboard Boat Regatta in New Richmond, Ohio. I missed the actual start of the first heat but I did see its conclusion and plenty of the racing that followed. Lego Joe was a crowd favorite. It is kind of hard to believe but both the water-skiing Joe and his wave runner style tow vehicle are both made of cardboard.

Unfortunately, Joe’s maneuverability was not a match for his good looks. He never really reached race speed as what I’m guessing was a small leak in his skis led to an early finish. Joe began to plow into the water then eventually tipped over. The increased drag slowed the rig even more and it appeared as if the tow vehicle started to take on water which make it even slower and less stable. When the driver eventually fell off of the increasingly wobbly craft, I think he was ready for a rest.

Of course, Lego Joe was not the only beautiful but not quite race-worthy craft in the field. The submarine did eventually reach the finish line under power from its two man crew. The raft, piloted by a young girl also made it but it took a while and required some assistance from a friend or family member. The shoe had directional difficulties and, after an excursion into the line of spectator boats (that may or may not have included soliciting a cold adult beverage) pulled ashore near the course mid-point.

If this ten member crew wasn’t a record, it had to be close. It’s certainly the most people I’ve ever seen in a cardboard boat. It took quite a while to get everyone into the boat and ready to paddle but disembarking went a lot quicker.

Here are shots of one of the entrants before, during, and after the race. Some boats return to compete year after year. Others make just one glorious appearance. I’m thinking this one might be in the latter category.

I finished the day at the Festival by the Lake in Alexandria, Kentucky. The draw for me was SIMO, who I last saw close to a year ago at the Southgate House Revival. This is a high energy and high volume act and, at least for me, the great outdoors suited this better than the smallish upstairs room at tSGHR. I also think a bass player change helped. Wonderful stuff.

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