Short Cuts: Summary Reviews #5

Divided Man
Brian Rudy
Think Music Tank
1999
15 tracks

My general sense of this recording is that it's like pared down Seventies rock. There's the hard-driving acoustic guitar, the over-reverbed voice, the lush "MacArthur Park" fills, the long songs (the "Divided Man" suite is actually five interconnected tracks totalling 15:49), and odd mix of folkish lyrics and guitar with harder rocking guitar and percussion. The cover art, a panorama painted in a Group of Seven meets Magritte style, really epitomizes the overall feel of this recording.

There are echoes here of Mason Williams, Seventies Lightfoot ("The Canadian Railroad Trilogy" or "Don Quixote" come to mind), The Who ("Magic Bus"), The Allmann Brothers, Alan Parsons, Todd Rundgren, and the later Beatles (or perhaps Wings). There's some of the feel of Seventies British folk, the rocking sort epitomized by Richard Thompson and others, and more than a little Celtic edge (although that leans more toward today's neo-Celtic rock).

Rudy has a distinctive singing voice and style. Some might even say his voice is strange and his style more than a little quirky. Set in the context of his own words and music, Rudy's voice has the ideal sound, the finishing touch for a work of art with a very personal perspective that somehow manages at the same time to touch upon the universal.

For those who would like a brief stroll through the other side of the looking glass, a break from the humdrum world, Divided Man may be just your trip, no mushrooms required.

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Gust of Wind
Ray Bonneville
Stony Plain
1999
11 tracks

Bonneville appears to have a broader understanding of what constitutes the blues than do many of his contemporaries. Many blues artists play what I would, for want of a better term, call black blues: the acoustic blues of the Mississippi delta and the southern United States or the rocking electric blues that grew up in the Forties and Fifties. Often ignored is the white or country blues popularized by Jimmie Rodgers and others. Bonneville's style is more along the lines of this white blues, but heavily spiced with black blues, the New Orleans sound, and popular blues forms. The result is an impressive stylistic fait accompli. Bonneville's blues style is uniquely his own.

Bonneville's lyrics stand out not just as blues lyrics but as stylish stories told simply but with emotional depth. These are not the formulaic blues lyrics one often expects, but the work of a Canadian blues poet.

Gust of Wind was produced by contemporary blues idol Colin Linden, who also performed on many of the tracks. What Linden's influence was on the final sound of this release is anyone's guess. The sound is clearly Bonneville's and the bond between Bonneville and Linden's input is seamless and polished. It says a lot for Bonneville's talent, though, that this Canadian legend has contributed his own talent to Gust of Wind.

Ray Bonneville's Gust of Wind presents a selection of warm, intelligent blues by a Canadian stylist who deserves to be better known than he has been to date. This release will be a welcome and refreshing addition to any blues collection.

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Short Stories
Ran Birkins
Independent
2000
8 tracks

For Ran Birkins as a writer the truly problematic area is not the music or the performance, but the Short Stories themselves -- the lyrics. While the writing here is not bad, it is fraught with flaws which require fine-tuning. This is where Birkins must be especially objective and very clear about what it is he's trying to do.

On the one hand, Birkins appears to lack the courage of his convictions. The content of his lyrics suggests that his inner artist wants to write Christian or at least socially conscious songs. All the songs speak to family values, including love and marriage, the relationship between a step-father and child in a second marriage, and the issues of abortion and adoption. The harder or more political the issue, though, the more Birkins pulls his punches, as though his commitment to the issue is less strong than his fear of censure.

On the other hand, at times Birkins is far too obvious in his declarations, slipping onto a "preaching to the converted" mode. "Somewhere Sarah" is a prime example of this.

"Somewhere Sarah" speaks in the voice a mother who has given her newborn daughter up for adoption some years before. This touching song recounts the mother's reflections on her daughter's imagined life as she is growing up. As both the story of a mother's dilemma and a parable with political and social implications, this song could work quite well.

The last verse, however, turns into an unsubtle political statement best placed elsewhere or retooled to better fit the mood of the rest of the song. Even more damaging is Birkin's shift in point of view at the end of the song. Although the entire song is written from the mother's perspective, Birkin ends the song in the child's voice: "I praise God my mother chose life, not abortion." It jars. While this may be a valid political assertion, as expressed this statement is far too unsubtle to fit the rest of this potentially fine song.

Over all, I would say that Ran Birkins' words and music tend to be cliched and clearly need not just polishing but serious work on their structural and dramatic integrity. Birkins appears to have some talent and, if he can do the work necessary, he may yet come up with some powerful material.

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Live
El McMeen
Piney Ridge Music
2000
12 tracks

Based on what I've observed in El McMeen's Live release, I suspect he's too centred on the wonderfulness of himself to respect either his audience or the material that is a large part of what makes his work so wonderful. You may have guessed by now that I am nowhere near as impressed by El Mc Meen as apparently he is by himself. It's true.

For those who may not know, I never read the promo stuff before I hear the music. Based just on the music, I would have thought McMeen to be some academic with no real idea of the inter-relatedness of the music and its audience. McMeen's playing is indeed very good, one might even be moved to say it is excellent. His playing is sound and technically correct. But it's cold and clinical. There is no warmth, no emotion expressed. There is an arrogance to his playing that comes through in the music.

Worse, what makes this performance deadly boring is not the stilted guitar work but the fact that McMeen seems to fancy himself a raconteur. Even before McMeen speaks, the recording begins with a long (one minute, fifteen seconds) introduction by the owner of the music school, which has all the appearance of a one-minute commercial for El McMeen. The initial impact of this speech is compounded by the seven, mostly boring, introductory speeches McMeen makes between the tracks.

Especially boring is his revelation of home life in the McMeen household vis à vis the song "Camptown Races" by Stephen Foster. This rambling monologue takes up eight and three quarter minutes, most of the gist of which is how boring McMeen's wife finds it. This should have been a clue to McMeen. If even his intimate family finds it boring, should he take it to the public?

Worst of all, based on things he himself says and no matter how much he couches it in failed attempts at humour, McMeen seems so wrapped up in himself he has no respect for others. In the context of his "intro" material, he manages to dis accordion players, Tito Fuentes, José Feliciano [toward whom he is very condescending, then proceeds to play the song Guantanamera nowhere near as well as Feliciano had done when (his own words) thirty years his junior], and [depending on how one reads his doo dah story] his own wife. He fails as well, on the liner notes or anywhere else, to give credit to the Cuban composer, Compay Segundo, and poet, José Marti, who wrote Guantanamera. One begins to wish that, instead of a lawyer, McMeen were an academic after all.

Perhaps the lesson is this. There is a substantial difference between an expert and a virtuoso. There is an equally substantial difference between an academic and a performer. One may develop all the new chording methodology possible and write books 'til the ink runs out, but to reach a living audience requires not wires and ink but flesh and blood.

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Rhythm & Blueprints
The Renovators
Berger Platters
1999
15 tracks

While most contemporary blues bands have a sound that takes us back to the best rock and roll of the mid- to late Fifties [usually not among the big hits], The Renovators bring something different to the music. It's still rock and roll, but the sound is more like what was being recorded in the early Sixties (especially "It's Been Done" and "The Big One"). While not abandoning that central blues sound, this music reflects a variety of newer influences including ska/reggae ("Blue Reggae"), and early Dickie Dale style surf music ("Bandaido" and several other tracks).

Several of the tracks on Rhythm & Blueprints show a distinct jazz influence. "Keep Dreamin'" and "You Snooze, You Lose" are excellent examples of the jazz approach that pervades this release.

This is not a release for those who listen to either the first track or the first few seconds of each song then decide to like it or not. The first track ("Rip Up The House") is a standard medium-tempo rocking blues. Most of the rest of the tracks feature familiar instrumental opening bars. Nothing too exciting there. Rhythm and Blueprints has much more to offer the listener who gives it a chance. This is a release full of surprises.

Among the sound treats served up by The Renovators are instrumental tracks ("Bandaido" and "Renovator's Boogie"), a spoken-word performance ("I Don't Ski"), jazz tracks, neo-Sixties pop-humour, surf-music, reggae [sounding very much like pre-reggae ska], and more.

The sound of this release is solid too. On too many compact disc releases, the drums sound thin. On Rhythm & Blueprints, the drums pound out like Krupa reincarnated, with a full, round sound. Much of the driving force of this release has as much to to with the quality of the production as with the instrumental skills of the players. The best example of this, and the best drum number on the CD, is the surf instrumental "Bandaido" with its unrelenting backbeat.

Complementing the very integrated instrumental mix, the vocals on this release are consistent and polished. The vocal style is what gives this release a lot of its very Sixties feel, with many tracks sounding like they might have been recorded in 1960 instead of forty years later. While these artists are not likely to make it on their singing ability alone, their capable vocals are ideally suited to the music they play and the overall impact is impressive.

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Tim Harrison
Tim Harrison
Second Avenue Records
1999
10 tracks

Tim Harrison writes and performs contemporary folk music at a level to which most singer/songwriters can only aspire. Harrison's new self-titled release is a class act all the way, creating a new benchmark for folk artists everywhere. Even though several tracks are updated versions of older songs previously recorded for other releases, the overall sound is consistent and the quality unflagging.

Harrison plants himself soundly in the folk music tradition with straightforward lyrics that tell simple, but not simplistic, stories of real people in the real world. His are words from the heart that will appeal to each listener in a slightly different and personal way. Simply put, Harrison is one of the finest folk lyricists in Canada today.

That Harrison has a solid grounding in traditional music is evident not only in his well-written lyrics but also in his choice of melodies. He sets his tales against simple folk and country melodies that both reflect the past and stand up as creations in their own right. These are the sort of melodies that fans can pick up and play in their own back-porch jams. Yet, Harrison manages to bring this traditional feel to his music without ever sounding like he's simply picked up an old melody and adapted it. His melodies are fine original creations.

The music is straightforward, the sort of mix one suspects will sound at least as good performed live and will probably sound even better. Here, Harrison doesn't reach deep into the prehistory of folk music. No sweet madrigal or fake Celtic sounds here but something more of the twentieth century. The echoes here are more of early Lightfoot (Steel Rail Blues, Early Morning Rain) and James Taylor (Sweet Baby James). There are even hints of the more straightforward Cohen (Bird on a Wire, Famous Blue Raincoat). This is folk music with a distinct country edge and a hint of rock and jazz thrown in. The instrumentation is kept simple and Harrison sings with a with a bright, clear voice.

In this release, Tim Harrison has made something very special. Nothing I say can demonstrate that. I may comment on the lyrics, tightly written and seductive. I may tell you about the warmth of the traditional sounding melodies. I may even mention the well-crafted arrangements set against Harrison's evocative singing voice and style. In the end, it all means nothing at all. This is a release that must be experienced in person, must be listened to in a room with no distractions.

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2NU2.COM
2NU
NU Music LLC.
1999
12 tracks

Those interested in hearing the best spoken word performance being done today will want to hear this release. From beginning to end, 2NU2.COM epitomizes the quality of which this form is capable. Jock Blaney's voice is rich and powerful, his readings evocative and at times moving. The music, spanning and sometimes mixing several genres, is an interesting blend of real instruments and electronics.

"Stalker Valentine" is a bizarre, frightening yet very humourous song that also rocks along, carried by a solid slow blues background. The performance, both spoken and sung, has that not always subtle but very wry Lyle Lovett edge to it, providing a strange counterpoint to the dark content of the piece. Here's just one example: "I have to move now because I've written your name all over the walls in red paint and it won't come off...." I can imagine this song being played on campus radio stations all across North America. I have my doubts it will get that airplay.

More than forty years ago, Skeeter Davis released a quiet rockabilly hit, "The End of the World." 2NU has created a rich, bluesy rendition of this same song featuring gutsy female vocals and an R&B horn section. Like Puff Daddy, only far better, Jock Blaney inserts additional verses telling the story of lovers no longer together. The result is to turn this old pop song into a six minute emotional powerhouse.

Humour and fantasy are at the centre of Blaney's art. "The Submarine" tells the tale of a man who builds a submarine out of beer cans then sails into a dark fantasy reminiscent of "The Yellow Submarine" or a grownup version Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are." The speaker in "The Island" has a "melodiously configurated rastafarian dream" that falls somewhere between the worlds of "Shimmy, Shimmy, Koko Bop" and a Warner Brothers cartoon. The exotic female singing and wild vocals in the background enhance the sense that this dream takes place in Toon Town.

"A Father's Day" takes a more traditional approach, sounding very much like the work done by Jimmy Dean in the Fifties. This is a sweet, sensitive evocation of a man grown old and reflecting back on his life. Memories are selectively mixed to pack a lifetime into just over four minutes. In the process, the listener discovers an empathy with this old man as he relives the special moments of his life. Blaney's quiet reading and the peaceful keyboard background meld perfectly to bring the character of the old man to life. This is another piece that deserves to receive far more airplay than it probably ever will.

Forget your preconceptions. Forget that you think spoken word is just poetry and that you hate poetry on principle. If you want to hear music that stands up not just as spoken word but as music and art, if you want to experience some of the best spoken word performance out there, then make it a point to hear 2NU's new release. It's worth the risk.

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Skitterin' Up
The Black and Blue Band
Black and Blue Music
1999
15 tracks

The Black and Blue Band is a family affair. Besides singer/songwriter Jake Willis, the band includes his wife Tammy Williams and their three sons aged thirteen, ten, and seven. The band's publicity materials demonstrate the parents' great pride in the abilities of each other and of the three children. In this day and age, it's reassuring to see a family who can work together so well.

For a band which includes a novice vocalist and three children, the music on this release is not bad. In fact, had this information not been provided, I might still report that the music of The Black and Blue Band is not bad. There is clearly a lot of talent in this family. The music is clean and unoffending, a pleasant mix of faux Celtic and straight folk styles in a comfortable variety of tempos.

With the amount of excellent music being released in Canada, especially in the folk/roots area, is not bad good enough? If the aim is to make a dent in the national market, not bad simply won't make it. If the aim is to release a nice family album and to play gigs around one's own town, where the family is known and loved, a release like this is probably good enough. The artists can reap the love of local audiences and sell enough CD's from the stage to pay for the project.

Over all, the music is competently performed. Clearly, even as young as seven years old, there is a great deal of talent in this family. However, while all the parts are in the right places and the songs roll smoothly from beginning to end, there is nothing here to spark the listener's imagination. There is a flatness of emotion to most of these tracks, a sense that too much energy may have gone into playing the music correctly and not enough into just enjoying the process.

This is clearly a band that has room to grow and develop. If these parents can learn to step outside and view the players not so much as their perfect loves and more as working artists, that growth will occur more quickly. Because this is difficult and sometimes impossible to do, they may be well advised to find an outside advisor to provide some direction.

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Nippising
Dennis Gomo
Independent
1999
15 tracks

Of the fifteen songs on Nippising, three are spoken word performance and another three are presented in a style which is as spoken as sung. Among these are the best songs on this release. Even where the words are sung, the instrumentation and arrangement echoes a style often used by several prominent American poets in presenting their work.

Will these songs get much airplay? I have my doubts. If we ignore hip hop music, the last admittedly spoken word recording I remember making the hit parade was Les Crane's Desiderata almost thirty years ago. Should they get airplay? I think so.

"Away (Ode to Akhunaton)" is a delicious paean of love. Although dedicated to an ancient Egyptian god, these words and Gomo's presentation have a sensual reality to them that could as easily be a metaphor of love between a man and a woman. Like Crane's hit, "Away" mixes spoken verses with a sung chorus to great effect. Unlike Crane's hit, this song is quiet and gentle, the words floating over a bed of softly strummed guitar and soothing harmonica.

"The Universe is Watching" appears at surface to take a larger view. Without being big and preachy, this is a millennial poem. Rather than attempt to forecast the future, Gomo's lyrics invite the listener to consider some questions of where we go from here. There are echoes here too. Some of the lines (and that tiny voice laughing in the background) seem to echo themes from Sheb Wooley's "Purple People Eater". One almost expects the voice to say "Tequila" at the song's end. On the literary side, were this lyric not about the Universe, it might as easily be about a man and a woman, just another version of "had we but world and time enough...."

In other songs, Gomo adopts a sort of Tony Joe White patter, not quite spoken but not quite sung, telling the story with power and emotion.

Also outstanding on this release is Gomo's treatment of the blues. Here are quiet, evocative blues played in a very traditional style, with the vocals a marriage of the great black artists and white bluesmen like Jimmie Rodgers. The result is a powerful and universal blues style that lulls the listener into Gomo's world. "Big Stars" stands out as a very fine treatment of the blues genre by this artist.

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Murder Your Darlings
Wampeters
Wampus Records
1999
10 tracks

Murder Your Darlings is a very Eighties sounding release, sometimes even carrying echoes of the Seventies. The music is suggestive of artists as diverse as Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Talking Heads, Procol Harum, and even Lou Reed. This is the sort of rich, mellow rock that permeated more than a decade starting in the late Seventies. The sound is full and orchestrated, filled with organ and other keyboard voices. This is definitely background not dance music.

Mark Doyon's lyrics fight against the mellow sound of his music, leaning toward themes of personal angst and uneasy relationships. There is a precarious balance here between bitter anger and a sort of quiet desperation, a frustrated acceptance of things as they are. Although without the hard edge of a Morissette, this is where these songs approach the disquiet evident in much contemporary pop music. More defensive than aggressive, the anger in these lyrics bespeaks a soul lost and not sure where to turn next.

In combination with his lyrics, Doyon's voice and singing style often moves away from his retro-rock music to give the listener more of a folk experience. The combination is interesting and refreshing. In the same vein, this is the yet another release in which the artist has incorporated that "jingle-jangle" sound so common in Sixties folk rock. This is especially noticeable in "Lee Jackson Highway," but shows up briefly in several other songs. While not a major element in the mix, this ornamentation gives the music a distinctive sound all its own.

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Glow
Joe D'Urso & Stone Caravan
SCR/Schoolhouse Records
1998
14 tracks

Falling somewhere into that Bermuda Triangle between Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and John Mellenkamp, D'Urso's music has a familiar feel that makes it a comfortable listen. But does the music sink under the waves of D'Urso's chosen genre's more famous practitioners. Good as it is, this music is perhaps too derivative.

The music is hard-driving rock and roll. For the most part, the lyrics tell interesting stories. Taken by itself this is a release that deserves a good listen. Taken in context of music calling itself roots rock, Joe D'Urso & Stone Caravan are not at the top of the pile. Although performing original work, these musicians still tend to sound like a Springsteen cover band. If there is work to be done, it is not on the quality but the originality of the writing and performance.

One interesting variation is that this group, while playing with a hard rock style, often incorporates that "jingle-jangle" sound so popular in Sixties folk-rock. It's a welcome relief to hear this sharp, bright sound break through the din. It's like sunshine on a rainy day.

Like much American poetry of the second half of the 20th century, D'Urso's lyrics avoid a poetic feel, leaning more toward a conversational, storytelling style. While D'Urso claims such diverse influences as Harry Chapin and Leonard Cohen, I hear in his lyrics more of Springsteen or Bob Seger. In fact, "Leonard Cohen" sounds as though the words and music might have been written by Seger in another era. Whatever the influences, these lyrics stand up well.

Even with its weaknesses, Glow is a release fans of this type of music, including me, will enjoy owning. On the negative side, none of these songs stands out as exceptional and it feels as though D'Urso has yet to find his unique voice as a songwriter. On the positive side, he and his band Stone Caravan are first rate musicians who put out a solid sound.

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festival to go
various artists
Festival Distribution, Inc.
2000
20 tracks

This is not a review. Not really. It's more a matter of credit where credit is due. Once again, Festival Distribution has come out with a promotional CD compiling some of Canada's finest folk artists. You can't buy festival to go, volume 2, but you'll be hearing it in the background at some of your favourite music stores across the country. It's well worth the listen.

The twenty tracks on this release demonstrate not just the high quality but also the great diversity of Canadian folk music as we enter the new millenium. Starting off with "Acadian Saturday Night" by folk icon Stan Rogers, the listener is led from east to west and south to north across the country and to world cultures as disparate as Madagascar, the highlands of Vietnam, the merengue of Latin America, and traditional Sufi poetry. If anyone has any doubts of the vitality of Canadian music, this release should set those doubts to rest.

Although it is not available to the general public, Festival Distribution is to be commended for assembling this broad compilation of Canadian folk music and for their continuing support of talented Canadian artists. It's well worth listening to at your local music store.

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MiNsTeR HiLL
Howard Herrick
Independent
1999
14 tracks

Listening to Howard Herrick's music is an interesting and unique experience. Herrick's largely lyric-based songs echo the vision and sound of a major segment of sixties and early seventies pop, yet manage to sound uniquely his own.

Musically, these songs have a lot of "Strawberry Fields" and "Crimson and Clover" in them. There are echoes of The Monkees in their "Auntie Grizelda" mode. Even more so, there are strong echoes of the sonic experiments of Todd Rundgren and Alan Parsons throughout these pieces.

It's not hard to imagine this recording being played in a smoke filled atmosphere of black light and strobes with psychedelic shapes and colours bathing the room. Shut your eyes and the music carries you off to a party of thirty years ago, fraught with acid and politics. This release is like an old movie, warm and comfortable, like you've been there before.

While the overall sound of this release is actually quite good, and it works well as background music, none of these songs are hit material. This cake might well have benefited from being left out in the rain.

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