Tom Russell – Museum of Memories Vol. 2: 1973-2013

TOM RUSSELL
Museum of Memories Vol. 2: 1973-2013
Frontera Records 
tomrussell.com

I’m on record as saying I think Tom Russell is the best singer-songwriter of my generation – the generation that came along 10 or 15 years after Bob Dylan bussed into New York from Minnesota and went to see Woody Guthrie in the hospital almost 53 years ago.

Tom has been incredibly prolific over the years turning out album after album – many of them brilliant concept albums – of stellar songs. And, like Dylan, there’s been a significant output of great Tom Russell songs that for whatever reasons have not been included on his official albums or on the limited edition bonus EPs that he’s released over the years.

Back in 2002, Ed Becker and John Yuelkenbeck assembled Museum of Memories 1972-2002, a collection of previously unreleased rarities, including demos and live tracks, most of which were great songs. Eleven years later, John has put together a second collection – Museum of Memories Vol. 2: 1973-2013 – that is chock full of more great material.

I know Tom’s music pretty well and there are only a few here that I’ve ever heard before: “Small Engine Repair,” a 2001 radio performance that was offered as a download bonus to people who bought the lyric book to Borderland; Tom singing a live version of “The Outcast,” which was originally sung by Dave Van Ronk on The Man from God Knows Where, Tom’s great folk-opera; and the two songs here that Tom didn’t write, the Irish song, “Fields of Athenry,” that I know from versions by Danny Doyle and Petra Haden, and the Mexican “Cancion Mixteca,” which is performed in a medley with the spoken “Donkey Show,” an early version of what evolved into “Border Lights” on the fascinating Hotwalker, Tom’s brilliantly-conceived audio collage of songs, poetry and spoken word that paid tribute to great, but seemingly lost aspects of American culture.
 

So most all of these 21 songs running some 76 minutes were new to me – and I bet that if they’re new to me, they’ll be new to almost everyone else reading this review. The album is sequenced in reverse chronological order beginning with a new recording of “Old Saltillo Road,” a co-write with Greg Trooper from the 1980s, about Elvis Presley and his boyhood home. The version included on the CD was recorded at a recent sound check. The always excellent Thad Beckman, Tom’s guitarist of the last several years is heard with him on this song. A superb musician, Thad is a most worthy successor to the great Andrew Hardin, who played with Tom for about 25 years and is heard on many of these tracks.

I mentioned Hotwalker, Tom’s exploration of lost aspects of American culture – a theme he’s returned to frequently over the years. That song about Elvis is certainly part of that body of work along with several other great songs here including “In the American Grain,” which reflects on American culture and American folksongs; “The Coat Hank Williams Wore,” a deservedly critical song inspired by a visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; and “Neighbors (Bill and Joan),” about the bizarre 1951 killing of Joan Vollmer by her husband, the beat writer William S. Burroughs.

A few other highlights include “de Kooning,” inspired by the life of the artist Willem de Kooning; “Business End of the Blues,” a co-write with Katy Moffatt that's done as a duet with Amos Garrett;  and the poignant “John Doe Mexican,” which could be about so many of the anonymous refugees that have come north over the Rio Grande (and which reminds me of those until-recently nameless deportees that Woody Guthrie wrote about).

Museum of Memories Vol. 2: 1973-2013 is a limited release available only at Tom’s concerts and online at Village Records. You can download the liner notes at this link.

Pictured: “The Upside Down Cowboys,” a Tom Russell painting hanging in my living room, and me and Tom, backstage at Petit Campus in Montreal, November 2012.

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Tom Russell – Heart on a Sleeve

TOM RUSSELL

Heart on a Sleeve (2012 remaster with bonus tracks)

Frontera

tomrussell.com

I wasn’t one of the lucky few who first heard Heart on a Sleeve, Tom Russell’s first solo LP, when it was originally released as an LP in 1984, although I did catch up with it when it was first reissued on CD about a decade or so later.

But, even before I actually heard first heard Tom on Road to Bayamon, his second solo LP, I was already a big fan of his songwriting having heard some of his early gems in versions by Bill Staines, Ian Tyson and Nanci Griffith. Two of those gems, the amazing “Gallo del Cielo,” which I first heard by Ian on the first of his great cowboy culture LPs, and “St. Olav’s Gate,” which I first heard Nanci sing at the Golem, the folk club I ran in Montreal in the 1970s, and ‘80s, are from Heart on a Sleeve, an album which revealed a singer and songwriter already well on his way to greatness.

“Gallo del Cielo” and “St. Olav’s Gate,” both of which Tom would later re-record, are certainly among the highlights of the debut album.

“Gallo del Cielo” is a vivid Tex-Mex border ballad about a desperate Mexican and his stolen fighting rooster. It’s exciting, it’s heartbreaking and every time I’ve seen Tom live he’s brought down the house with it. It’s also a great showcase for the stunning guitar playing of Andrew Hardin, an amazing player who worked with Tom for about 25 years beginning around the time of this album

“St. Olav’s Gate,” set in Oslo, is an insightful song about passing encounters that don’t turn into what we think they might have. As I mentioned in my booklet essay for The Tom Russell Anthology: Veteran’s Day, most of our younger selves have been that drunken guy waiting in vain at St. Olav’s Gate, even if our personal St. Olav’s Gate wasn’t in Oslo.

Among the other highlights are “One and One” and “The Dance,” a pair of terrific duets recorded with Shawn Colvin about four years before her own debut album; “Cropduster,” sung from the perspective of a crop dusting pilot lost in his fantasies; “Chinese Silver,” a western ballad about an unobtainable woman; “Canadian Whiskey,” which could almost be about the same woman in “Chinese Silver” a couple of decades later; and “Blinded By the Light of Love,” a Saturday night song with a great Sunday morning arrangement.

In addition to the 12 songs on the original LP, there are six bonus tracks – including “The Dance” with Shawn Colvin – recorded around that time. The arrangements, thanks to players like Andrew Hardin, are terrific and the remastered sound, thanks to John Yuelkenbeck, is fabulous.

The CD is only available online through villagerecords.com and at the merch table at Tom’s concerts.

Speaking of Tom’s concerts, he’ll be in this part of Canada at Hugh’s Room in Toronto on Thursday, November 22, and at Petit Campus in Montreal on Saturday, November 24 as part of the Wintergreen Concert Series.

Pictured: Tom Russell and Mike Regenstreif (2005).

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Bob Dylan – Tempest

BOB DYLAN

Tempest

Columbia

bobdylan.com

Tempest, released 50 years after Bob Dylan’s self-titled debut, is the work of a master songwriter -- the master songwriter of our time – informed by half a century of his own work and by the music of what Greil Marcus called “old weird America,” the folk music and folk-rooted blues and country music which developed in various regions before spreading everywhere in the 20th century via recordings and migratory performers. Some of these songs tell stories as detailed narratives, others paint pictures of scenes, both connected and disjointed. Many are filled with scenes of violence and death, with love, hate, sex and sexism, and religion. It’s impossible to know, in most of them, if Dylan is singing from his own heart or from the heart of his characters – or some combination of both.

The album opens with “Duquesne Whistle,” a train song that swings a little like an old Bob Wills tune, but which really reminds me of the Memphis Jug Band’s “K.C. Moan,” which was included on the Anthology of American Folk Music (Smithsonian Folkways), the monumental collection of songs from “old weird America” assembled in 1952 by Harry Smith (and which Dylan undoubtedly heard sung back in the day by our mutual friend, Dave Van Ronk). There’s no real narrative to the song, which was co-written with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter (the album’s only writing collaboration), but in each verse the train whistle recalls another scene: a traveler on the train, of a love relationship, childhood, etc.

“Soon After Midnight,” in folk-like ballad form seems to be a late-night confessional that could be, at least at first, either religious or romantic in nature. As the song develops, Dylan refers to harlots and “Two-Timing Slim,” whose corpse he’ll “drag through the mud.” Is it a song of regret about betrayal of a lover or wife or of God? The lyrics, like so much of Dylan’s work are open to interpretation.

There’s a lot going on in “Narrow Way,” – religion, history, war, love, sex – which all unfold in a series of images set to an intense, Chicago blues arrangement.

 “Long and Wasted Years,” is seemingly written as an apology to a lover or former lover or judging from the line, “It's been a while, since we walked down that long, long aisle,” a wife or former wife. I don’t know – and we probably can’t know – whether Dylan is singing about a relationship from his own life or in character. However, the line, “I wear dark glasses to cover my eyes, there are secrets in ‘em that I can't disguise,” strikes me as perhaps as one of Dylan’s most revealing lines about himself in decades.

The images in “Pay In Blood,” like many of these songs are vague and seem to suggest different things at different points in the song. Sometimes they seem to be coming from a religious zealot, sometimes from a political skeptic. The tone is angry and accusatory but it’s hard to tell if they’re coming from above or below, let alone left or right.

In “Scarlet Town,” Dylan takes the setting and lifts several lines from the ancient folk ballad “Barbara Allen,” and weaves a rambling, contemporary portrait of a town whose citizens’ lives encompass various shades of good, evil, love, hate, greed, vice, lust, and more.

I’ve seen commentaries on “Early Roman Kings,” which uses Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy” as its template, which interpret the song to be about a New York City street gang out for blood and money. Maybe, but my read is that it’s about unbridled capitalists who will destroy the soul of society in their quest for figurative blood and real money. Of course, as with so much of Dylan's work, the interpretation is in the ear of the beholder.

“Tin Angel,” which also touches on the greed and the need for control of an unbridled capitalist type lifts lines and some of its story from “Gypsy Davy,” Woody Guthrie’s rewrite of the traditional “Gypsy Davy,” “Gypsy Daisy” or “Gypsy Laddie” ballad. Dylan’s contemporary folk-styled ballad is a richly detailed story of love, jealousy and betrayal that ends tragically with all three characters dead in a tale of murder and suicide.

“Tempest,” the title track is another long, richly detailed folk-like ballad that tells the story of the sinking of the Titanic, 100 years ago, that mixes fact with images and details from Dylan’s imagination – the references to a character in the song named Leo were supposedly inspired by actor Leonardo DiCaprio who starred in the Hollywood film version of the story. Through 14 riveting minutes – I believe it’s Dylan’s longest song ever* – and 45 verses without a chorus, the story unfolds with seemingly as much detail as the film (minus Leo's love story with Kate Winslet's character). There’s so much going on that you really need to hear it repeatedly to let the details sink in. (*Update September 26: “Tempest” is actually about 2.5 minutes shorter than “Highlands” from Time Out of Mind. Thank you to John Yuelkenbeck for reminding me of that.)

“Roll On John,” which ends the album is a tribute to the late John Lennon filled with details from Lennon’s life and lines from several of his songs. As a song title, it completes a 50 year circle for Dylan who sang a great version of the traditional song, “Roll On John,” on a 1962 radio program in New York City. You can hear that radio recording on the compilation There Is No Eye: Music for Photographs (Smithsonian Folkways), an album put together by John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers of songs by artists he photographed back in the day.

Listening to Tempest, I can’t help but be reminded of Bob Dylan at 70, an essay I wrote 16 months ago on the occasion of his milestone birthday. Almost everything about Tempest reinforces what I wrote in that essay – from the roots of his songwriting, to his gravitas, to our inability to know him.

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--Mike Regenstreif