Family Gifts, Family Business: A Musical Autobiography, Part II

A HOUSE WHERE THE GIFT OF MUSIC IS GIVEN
Over the last 80 years, my parents and my grandfather combined have given by my estimate over half a million private music lessons (conservatively: my dad at 110 lessons a week x 45 weeks x 45 years = 222,750 lessons, plus my mom at 40 lessons a week x 45 weeks x 45 years = 81,000 lessons, plus my grandfather at 120 lessons a week x 45 weeks x 40 years = 216,000 lessons, for a grand total of 519,750 lessons.  The actual total is probably a lot higher.  It boggles the mind.).  Sharing not merely the physical and mental skills involved in playing the violin, viola, and piano, these 3 people have produced many fine professional players, but also, more importantly, a legacy of thousands of students who, whatever level of proficiency they attained on their instrument, have a deep love, informed respect, and rich appreciation of music which informs their lives every day.  After posting, a few weeks back, the first section of this little family musical autobiography-- which dwells some on the darker parts of my grandfather's musical history and legacy-- a former student of his wrote to me and pointed out that Sam was anything but a dark figure to his students.  Rather, my grandfather was a warm and bright musical light who passed on his rich knowledge and deep love of music in general and the violin in particular to thousands of students over many decades.  While he passed this gift on to my dad and ultimately to myself with some complex baggage attached, pass it on he did, and music is the gift which, once received, enriches your life every single day you are here on this planet.  My parents and my grandfather are the Givers of this gift.  Each spring, my parents hold a recital for any students in their class who volunteer to perform.  Recitals regularly feature students ranging in age from 5 or 6 on up to senior citizens and people who have been playing less than a year to people with jaw dropping skills who are receiving conservatory scholarships.  The events are celebrations not only of these people’s growth as players but also of their appreciation for music in general, and for the Great Gift of all of this that my parents bestow upon everyone in their ken.

Into this family, I was born...

THE PRODIGAL SON

Like my father, I was sent to my grandfather for lessons at the age of 4 ½ and told that I would be a violinist like my father and his father before him.  It didn’t work out that way.  I did not practice every day.  In fact, I never practiced, ever.  I wanted to play baseball, not Bach or Beethoven.   I went each week to my grandfather’s studio utterly unprepared for my lesson.  I was terrible.  I sat ignominiously at the back of the 2^nd violin section of every orchestra I ever played in and was lucky they didn’t stop me at gunpoint as I slithered in to rehearsals, and I was lucky my grandfather never smashed a violin over my head or stabbed me in the heart with a bow.  Certainly, apart from his own short-circuited performing career, I was my grandfather’s Greatest Disappointment.  Indeed growing up, I resented music and the way it dominated my family’s lives.  At one point, assigned a musical part in a Cub Scout skit, I pitched a fit, shouting, “I hate music!  Everything in this house is music, music, music, and I’m sick of it!”  I was given a different part in the skit.  However, unbeknownst to me, I had received a gift from which there was ultimately no escape. 

Although as a boy, I wanted no part of the world of classical music in which my parents moved, in the 6^th grade I took a shining to Elton John.  Taking some birthday money to the record store, I bought a cassette of Caribou, featuring “The Bitch is Back” and “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” which I played endlessly on a portable cassette player which had also been part of the birthday package.  From that moment until this day, pretty much every spare cent I have had has gone towards my personal music library.  Despite my insistence that I was musically overloaded, oversaturated, sick of it, the powerful combination of musical genetics and musical surroundings in which I had been conceived and raised had taken hold.   I blasted the hell out of “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” and “Crocodile Rock” on that little cassette player, I plunked out pop melodies, one note at a time, on the piano by ear, and I drummed to tunes in my head on the desktop at school incessantly (at one point, Doug Smith, assigned to the desk next to me, reached over, grabbed my arm, and said, with murder in his eye and voice, “If you don’t stop tapping on that desk, I’m gonna hafta kill you”).  By 7^th grade, having already amassed a hefty box full of cassettes by Elton John, Barry Manilow, and other gooey popstars of the mid-70s (yes, Barry Manilow—my dad had played for him and gotten me in to the show.  Shut up.), I demanded that if my parents were going to make me continue violin lessons (they were), that I also be allowed to learn the guitar.  They acceded.  At the age of 12, I got a cheap nylon string guitar and was sent, of course, to private guitar lessons at a nearby guitar store.

While I never, ever practiced the violin (indeed it rarely left its case at any time other than at my weekly lesson with Sam), I have played, practiced, and / or performed on the guitar pretty much every fucking day of my life since the age of 12.  Moving quickly beyond the gooey pop of Elton John and Barry Manilow into meatier territory, I was soon picking out Led Zeppelin licks by ear (yes, “Stairway to Heaven,” but also “Misty Mountain Hop” and “Whole Lotta Love”).  By high school, I had also found my people: one night I went for a sleepover at the house of my new friend Brook who, that night, introduced me to the wild art rock musics of Yes, Genesis, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, the heavy metal poundings of Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and AC/DC, and the experimental sonics of Pink Floyd, Robert Fripp, and Brian Eno.  The world suddenly exploded with possibilities for musical expression.  I didn’t realize it, wouldn’t have formulated or articulated the idea in this way until I was much older, but sitting there on the floor wedged between two stereo speakers spinning vinyl, I had found my religion, the nexus of my spirituality, the place I went and still go when I was and am lost, my bible and mode of prayer.   My spirit and soul have lived there ever since.  Music people—musicians and the folks who troll record store racks—were  and are my people, and as I learned to spot ‘em, I connected with more and more of them, and they quickly expanded my horizons to include John Coltrane’s jazz, David Grisman’s Dawg Music, and much much much more.

And my guitar playing took off.  I scraped together enough money for a cheap Les Paul copy and was soon picking out not only lead licks and melodies but thick riffs and chord changes by ear.  My parents, classical musicians trained to play written music, didn’t understand: how did I know what to play if I didn’t have the music?  Blessed with their musicians ears, marinated my whole life in piano notes and chords, and reaping ironic benefits from the years spent hacking away on a stringed instrument once a week at my grandfather’s studio, I just listened, heard the intervals, and played.  The private guitar lessons helped, too, but mostly I learned to play by sitting in my room with the guitar and my record collection.  I played in a heavy metal band (Manitcore) that was awful—our drummer couldn’t keep time and I didn’t sing so much as screeched, but we had a hell of a lot of fun.  By the time I graduated from high school, my musical tastes cut a huge swath—encompassing all varieties of rock and roll, jazz, and avant-garde music, and had even expanded enough to now include a powerful appreciation for the classical music of my parents and their musician friends.

In college, seeking to cut an artistic and intellectual figure on campus, I explored jazz more deeply—the big band swing of Basie and Ellington, the fusion explorations of Pat Metheny, the free form odysseys of Keith Jarret, the bebop and small combo improvisations of Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk.  I have often joked that my undergraduate degree should have been embossed by the local jazz club—the now defunct Nature’s Table—rather than by the University of Illinois. Also cultivating a hippy-dippy strain, I sold my Les Paul copy in favor of a steel string Alvarez acoustic, suitable for strumming Grateful Dead tunes on the quad.  I didn’t have the music theory or technique to play most of the jazz I listened to on the guitar, but I could knock out a Dylan or a Dead tune quite nicely, thank you.

A SLAP IN THE FACE

Nominally, I studied literature and creative writing in college with the goal of becoming a high school English teacher.  One night, trying to play the part of the Literary Dude, I went to an open-mic poetry reading at the Nature’s Table.  I didn’t have any of my own poetry to read (which shoulda told me something right there), but the previous day in a poetry workshop class, a girl had shared a poem she had written which really floored me.  I read it aloud at the open-mic, and although I attributed it to her (I didn’t pretend I had written the thing), I read the poem without her permission and without her even being there.  Thinking she would be flattered, I told her I had done this the next day.  She slapped my face so hard you could see the shape of her fingers on my cheek.  Reading the shock and confusion on my face, she quickly apologized and took me out for a cup of coffee to explain her rage.  She explained that she didn’t have a choice about writing poetry— that poems just came out of her without her control and that they were almost like body parts in that regard, and so reading something that she had written in public without her consent had been like showing people a picture of her naked without her consent.  Thus the slap.  While this was NOT my relationship with poetry, a flash of obvious insight did lead to the realization that this was essentially my relationship with music—that songs played in my head constantly whether I wanted them to or not, that I sat in class unconsciously fingering guitar licks, that I banged on desks and hummed incessantly, whether I wanted to or not.  I had no choice in the matter, but that as a happy cause and effect of this uncontrollable drive I had solid guitar chops, a great ear, an impeccable musical pedigree, an impressive knowledge and a record collection documenting a huge array of music, and I loved music more than anything else in the world.  Although I had, as I say, nominally been studying literature, really, I had been studying music at college and my entire life… and yet something was missing. 

For many reasons—most lying just barely under the surface of the above narrative— and despite the fact that I knew that really in the end nothing mattered to me as much as music, I lacked the guts and the confidence to take myself seriously as a musician.  I didn’t believe that I had the ability to make some kind of career out of my skills and passion.  No one had ever told me I couldn’t be a musician, but my own lack of discipline as a child and my failure to recognize and give serious credence to a muse that was clearly calling to me as a teenager and young adult left me watching the train pull away as I entered adulthood.  The Depression had cheated my grandfather, my grandfather had cheated my dad, and I have cheated myself out of what each of us might have been.

So it goes...

Allman Blues

Our first set that Tuesday night (played to an empty bar) was mostly Grateful Dead jams: Sugaree, Deep Elem Blues, Deal, etc— nice riffs and pleasant enough to noodle over, but I was feeling it was all a bit edgeless and aimless.  At the break, I said to Jim-- our lead guitar player (who was calling the tunes)-- “Y’know the Dead are nice, but if ya’ really wannna jam, I think the Allman Brothers leave the Dead eating their dust.”  A thoughtful, “Hmmmm…” emanated from Jim.  About 3 tunes into the next set, he broke into the slow blues “Stormy Monday” – set up like the Allman’s version on the seminal Fillmore East album— and suddenly we were in a completely different world: edgy, grooving, inspired, blues blood pouring out of the veins of every player onstage.  This was several months ago, and since then Allmans tunes (or blues tunes that the Allmans have famously left their stamp on) have been a foundational brick in our Tuesday evening jams.  Away from the gigs, I’ve had a hard time listening to anything but the Allmans, too.  Funny enough (and in the weird coincidental way that these things seem to happen), the Allman Brothers Band performed what they billed as their final gig just a few weeks later—this past October 29—and all of this has led me to (late, as usual) an appreciation of their pivotal role in rock and roll history in general, their place at the top of the list of Great American Rock and Roll Bands, and the way in which they demonstrate the bottomless power, versatility, and importance of the blues in our culture.

Gregg and Duane Allman were raised by a single mom (their father had been murdered) in the Jim Crow South in the 1950s.  At an early age—middle school, perhaps grade school—Duane became obsessed with the power of blues and R and B music, and initiated his brother into the whys and hows of these styles.  Duane played guitar and Gregg played keys and guitar and sang, and school and everything else besides music— music rooted in the Blues— quickly became irrelevant to the Allman boys.  Having heard Muddy Waters and others blues pickers, one day Duane picked up a medicine bottle and began experimenting with it as a slide—whaaahoow, whhhaaaaaow, wwheeooooww, wang, nnneeenoooww, neenoww, neeeent whaaaoow—and the rest, as they say, is history.  Gregg still has the coricidin bottle sitting in a place of pride on his mantle.  By the time the Allman boys were 18, they were settled on a career in music.  Cycling through a number of band configurations, relocating briefly to California, returning to their native Georgia with Duane now an accomplished and sought after session guitarist playing on dozens of soul and R and B records at the famed Muscle Shoals studio, the boys eventually formed their own band in Macon.

This was the late 1960s.  The newly formed Allman Brothers Band featured 2 guitarists (Duane focusing on slide and Dicky Betts picking and singing), Berry Oakley on bass, Gregg on keys and vocals, and 2 drummers—Butch Trucks and Jaimoe.  Tooling around Macon—a southern town reeling from divisions made sharp by the Civil Rights Movement—with long hair and an integrated lineup, the ABB did a pretty good job of pissing of the locals, but they didn’t give a shit ‘cuz they had a sound in their heads that no one had ever heard before: built on top of the thick, rich, pulsating grooves laid down by Trucks’s and Jaimoe’s double drum foundation, with roots running deep into traditional blues as traced by Gregg’s singing and Duane’s slide, and pushed to the harmonic and melodic edges of everything from esoteric jazz to gospel to redneck country by Betts, Duane, and the entire ensemble, capable of firing off a 3-4 minute rock and roll hit (“Ramblin Man”) or a 30 minute open-ended all-encompassing free for all (“Mountain Jam”) or anyplace in between at the drop of a hat, writing their own radio friendly anthems (“Midnight Rider”) or covering blues standards (“Trouble No More,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” and “You Don’t Love Me” to name just a few), the Allmans were virtuosos who connected every tributary of the American Musical River and plugged the resultant flood into a dam generating wattage hitherto undreamt of in rock and roll—American or otherwise.

While their first couple of studio albums limned the possibilities that were nascent in the band, with flashes of instrumental brilliance infusing blues traditionalism and raw original songwriting, it was the live one— Fillmore East— that really demonstrated the limitless possibilities of the ABB.  Unlike so many records from the late ‘60s and early 70s which sound like period pieces or time capsule artifacts (sorry folks, but most Hendrix records fall into this bin), Fillmore East sounds current, arresting, and relevant as it swaggers its way out of speakers today, almost 50 years later.  The blues riff and the slide work at the beginning of “Statesboro Blues” grab you at the base of the neck, the rage of “Whipping Post,” led by Oakley’s pummeling bass, continues the barrage, and Gregg’s rich, desperate vocal and the band’s fiery blues explorations of the 12 bar blues on “Done Somebody Wrong” still leave one gasping for breath—the whole damn thing still sounds fresh and alive and engaging and current. The performances, while intricate and virtuosic, are presented in elegant straightforward sonic fashion— the rock and roll band and their instruments with no cheezy stereo panning back and forth, no silly flutes, no dated electronics pulling focus from the musicianship at hand. Betts’s “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” pulls together complex harmonic, rhythmic, and improvisational elements often found in jazz but rarely in rock and roll while still harnessing the rock and roll’s rawness and power and strong connection to the blues.  While the Rolling Stones (working in ways less focused on improvisation and virtuosity, and less able to incorporate elements of jazz) had a similarly groundbreaking conversation with the Blues that remains relevant and powerful today, no American band has ever demonstrated the ability to take so many American roots strains to these kinds of sonic edges in the way the Allmans have.

The band was devastated almost immediately upon hitting its stride by the deaths, in short succession, of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley—both in motorcycle accidents only blocks from each other in Macon.  While soldiering on for awhile following these tragedies, setting off the Southern Rock movement (Lynyrd Skynyrd, inspired by the Allmans, might be the second greatest American rock and roll band of all time, after, of course, the ABB), and even wading into political waters by rubbing elbows with Jimmy Carter, the Allmans inevitably fell on hard times. Drug addiction, disco, squabbling, and other musical, personal, and cultural afflictions and conflicts eventually put the Allmans out of commission.  By the mid-1980s they had ceased to exist as a working entity.

People hafta pay their damn bills, though, hafta find some way to earn a living.  And so: the early 1990s saw Gregg mending fences, reassembling his troops, adding some new recruits, and drawing from the bottomless well of the blues to raise the ABB from the dead.  Hired to fill the shoes of Duane Allman (no small task!), then-young-gun Warren Haynes proved to have some mighty big feet.  With staggering slide chops, an encyclopedic knowledge of roots-descended music ranging from John Coltrane to Willie Dixon to Black Sabbath and beyond, and a gritty voice well-matched to Gregg’s, Haynes’s presence, along with new bass player Allen Woody, lit a new fire under the band.  The playing—as evidenced on live shows documented on both the 1^st and 2^nd sets of “An Evening with…” as well as “Play All Night: Live at the Beacon Theatre”—shows the band tight, engaged, creative, and absolutely electrified to be playing together again.  As had always been the case, the Allmans were a phenomenon best experienced live.  Studio albums also featured fresh new songs (“End of the Line,” “Sailing Across the Devil’s Sea”), too, but the band’s ability to breathe life into old-fashioned blues, especially performing live, remains, as ever, their defining characteristic.  Their role in "Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: The Allman Brothers Band" underscores their elemental relationship with the blues.

Dating back to their earliest work (covering, for example, Muddy Waters’ “You Can’t Lose What You Never Had”), the Allmans have always been able to hold rich, gorgeous conversations with the blues.  Their first reading of Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Stormy Monday” on Fillmore East— with Gregg’s rich kneading of the melody and its rhythms and it’s movement back and forth between heavy 3/4 and 4/4 grooves—remains  stunning.  Their own blues compositions such as “Get On With your Life” and “Midnight Blues” demonstrate their own deep-inside grasp of the idiom and their ability to adapt it to their particular writing, singing, and playing styles.   The more modern ABB incarnation’s Haynes led reading of Willie Dixon’s “The Same Thing” is visceral and appropriately rump shaking.  And all those blues standards they have covered over all these years-- "One Way Out," "Trouble No More," "You Don't Love Me," "Statesboro Blues," "Done Somebody Wrong" "You Can't Lose What You Never Had," and the list goes on and on and on.  The blues contain all strains of the American Musical River which led to rock and roll: gospel, jazz, country, bluegrass— they’re all there.  The blues also encompass and somehow tie together many major strains of conflict and culture which drive our country: race, religion, sex, money, vice…  The Allmans have always had a way of approaching the blues which capture all of these elements.

At the time of their “retirement” (we’ll see if they stay retired), Betts had exited the ABB as a result of conflicts with other band members, replaced the last several years by Derek Trucks— an established young gun guitar virtuoso in his own right and nephew of original and always ABB drummer Butch Trucks.  Derek Trucks don’t need the fuckin’ Allmans: his work on his own and with his wife—blues belter Susan Tedeschi— has won him a devoted and rabid following and netted him awards and kudos from guitarists and musicians from many corners.  His own recordings incorporate not only the blues, jazz, gospel, country, and rock and roll strains requisite to stand onstage as part of the Alllmans, but also weave in Indian and Latin American rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and sonic elements in ways which are musical, rich, and beguiling.  The younger Trucks’s presence reflects the band’s rich and powerful legacy: a rich celebration of the blues and its ability to tie together so many musical and cultural forces in the powerful crucible of rock and roll. 

The Allmans changed rock and roll.  Their music harnessed virtuoso musicianship, a reverence for the Blues, and the entire gamut of musical styles and lineages in the Great American Musical River to make rich musical and cultural statements which remain powerful to this day, and which have not been equaled by any American Band before or since.  Think I’ll go find a live set to spin again…

Recommended Recordings:

-At the Fillmore East
-Eat A Peach
-An Evening With the Allman Brothers Band— 1^st Set and 2^nd Set
-Play All Night: Live at the Beacon Theatre (recorded 1992)
-Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: The Allman Brothers Band
BUT PLEASE SKIP Wipe the Windows, Check The Oil, Dollar Gas, recorded at a nadir shortly prior to the dark hiatus in the 80s

Family Gifts, Family Business: A Musical Autobiography, Part I

INTRODUCTION
On a trip to New York this summer, I was fortunate enough to be given a personal tour of Carnegie Hall by the Hall’s Historian and Archivist, Gino Francesconi— an old friend of my late aunt Judith Arron, who was the Executive and Artistic and Director of the Hall from 1986 to 1999. Midway through the tour, I stood on the Carnegie stage with my daughter Alex while several Hall employees told me stories about the wonderful things that my aunt had done for the Hall and the people who worked and performed there and had difficulty composing myself for long enough to have my picture taken on the stage with Alex.  This moment was the culmination of several events in short sequence related to my family’s rich musical history— in addition to my own regular gigging, rehearsing, and musical writings here, I attended a house concert featuring violin and piano students of my parents, including my daughter, and my father’s final performance as concertmaster of the Evanston Symphony Orchestra. Music is the great gift and the business of my family.  No words can express my debt or gratitude to my father and mother, my grandfather, my aunt and uncle, my sister, and the many cousins in my family who are musicians.  These recent events, along with the suggestion from some literary friends and relations of mine that they have found postings with a personal bent to be engaging, have moved me to share my family’s story, our musical history.

MY GRANDFATHER, MY FATHER, MY MOTHER

My grandfather, Sam Arron, was a brilliant young violinist.  The son of Russian immigrants who passed through Ellis Island, Sam was the youngest child and only son in a family with 2 other daughters.   Born around 1913, and the first person in his family to be educated beyond high school, “Ami” was doted on by his parents and sisters.  He was a violinist of prodigious talent who, unfortunately, came of age as a performer during the Great Depression.  1930s Chicago newspaper clippings reviewing performances at Chicago’s then-prestigious Kimball Hall hail him as one of the up and coming classical music stars of his generation.  However, pursuing a career as a concert violinist was a risky proposition at the time—the classical music world was then, as it is now, highly competitive, and pursuing a career as a performer meant an uncertain income and future, a life of hustling to get gigs and then traveling to play them as one tried to establish oneself before arriving (or not) at a stable place, life, and income as a performer.  By this time, trading on his growing reputation as a performer as well as a flair for mentoring young musicians, Sam had also established a large and reliable teaching class in Chicago, and had married and was starting a family.  Needing a stable income and home, Sam ended his performing career and became a full-time violin teacher, working 7 days and teaching 130-140 forty-five-minute private violin lessons a week for the next 40 plus years.  He was one of, if not the, most respected violin teacher(s) in the city, sending students (including my father, my uncle, and their cousins) on full scholarships to the prestigious music school at Northwestern University and other prominent conservatories all over the country, and with a resume of students that eventually wound up in orchestras, recording studios, concert stages all over the world.  His success as a music teacher, however, was bittersweet, perhaps more the former than the latter:  he forever harbored the sensation that he had been cheated out of the performing musician’s life that was his dream.  Unspoken deep resentment, anger, and sadness always lay underneath the surface of his interactions with his family, students, and friends.

Into this atmosphere my father, Julian, my uncle, Ron, and their cousins, Sheldon and Bob, were born.  Their childhoods’ were spent in lessons at my grandfather’s studio and practicing for hours every day in rooms (bathrooms, garbage rooms, storage rooms, etc) adjacent to the studio.  School, play, and everything else were secondary to violin practice. The building in which the studio was housed was a veritable symphony of youth violinists ranging in age from early grade school up through college almost all hours of the day and evening.  Each of these boys personal narrative was slightly different—my father and his cousin Sheldon never swerved from the path proscribed for them by my grandfather, while Ron and  Bob took a few detours (Ron, at one point, had decided to become a pharmacist, and wound up playing the viola once he returned to the musical road)—but all wound up as highly skilled players pursuing higher musical education and careers in music.

Sam took his frustration over his dead-ended career as a performer out on my dad.  Despite unfailing success in auditions, and roles in the front of sections, as section leader, and as concertmaster in many high-powered orchestras and other outfits around the city (the Lyric Opera, for example), and being highly sought after as a freelance player well before he graduated college (and even in high school), my grandfather told my father that he would never be good enough to make a living playing his instrument—that his fate would be to teach, as Sam had.  This message was conveyed to my father in various ways explicit and implicit from an early age all the way through his childhood, adolescence, and even adulthood.  Convinced that he was not of a caliber to become a solo performer or a symphony player (despite clear and voluminous evidence to the contrary), he never took a symphony audition after college and will never know for sure.  Like his father before him, my father became one of the most respected violin teachers in the city, sending students to prestigious conservatories and on to careers in music, as well as introducing the joy and power and beauty of music to thousands of people who now enjoy a rich appreciation of music as part of their lives every day.  For many years, despite my grandfathers insistence that he didn’t play well enough to do so, my father also gigged as a freelancer, maintaining a similarly crushing teaching load to my grandfather and then hustling out of his studio to play in the pit for Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Junior, etc. etc. etc. each night. This was the case through most of grade school for me, and it meant that my mom, my sister, and I didn’t see too much of my dad for many years.  This eventually took a toll on family life, of course, and at some point my dad had to choose either continue gigging or continue teaching (but not both) in order to make sure his family relationships could be successfully maintained. Figuring he’d see more of everyone if he didn’t have gigs in the evening and could come home instead, he decided to continue teaching during the day (while we were all at school and my mom was also teaching) and cut out the gigs.  He and my mom continued to give recitals a few times a year, as they had throughout my childhood, to keep their playing chops sharp, and as I got older I was sometimes in charge of recording these.

As my sisters and I grew up and moved out of the house, my dad had a little bit more time on his hands, and a desire to engage his playing skills more deeply, and so he and my mom became involved with the Evanston Symphony Orchestra—a solid community symphony, comprised mostly of volunteer players with a few professionals in key positions to anchor things.  The ESO eagerly and quickly incorporated my parents into several kinds of musical and non-musical leadership roles—my father as concertmaster, and my mother as pianist / keyboardist and as a highly active Board Member and orchestra librarian.  Over the last 20+ years, with my parents in these roles (and with strong musical and administrative leadership from many other people), the ESO has grown from a solid, local community orchestra into a nationally recognized community musical organization, winning awards, premiering compositions, moving their performances from the local high school auditorium to more upscale digs in Northwestern’s Pick Staiger Concert Hall, and drawing soloists of national and international repute.  My parents musical, administrative, and social contributions to the organization were clearly in evidence as my dad and, simultaneously but less prominently, my mom retired following their final performance with the orchestra last spring in a standing ovation from both the audience and the orchestra, a ticker tape parade of cards, hugs and tears from many involved with the organization, and a torrent of social media postings documenting gratitude for and anecdotes of my parents’ many contributions over the years.  I sat in the balcony and sobbed as the audience filed out.  My pride and admiration for father’s musicianship and tireless commitment to his craft, embodied in his longstanding relationship with the Orchestra, and my gratitude to him for sharing these values with me, were and are overwhelming.

My mother did not come from a musical family.  Growing up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in fairly Norman Rockwell-like surroundings, her dad worked in the insurance industry and while my mom was growing up, her mom raised the children and took care of the house.  Neither parent played an instrument, and indeed after my grandfather—a warm, buoyant, outgoing, and active member of any group he was ever a part of—volunteered one year for a singing part in the church play, he was gently cast in speaking only roles in all subsequent years.  My grandparents loved music, however, and felt it was a valuable part of a well-rounded education.  All 3 of their kids took music lessons (my mom on piano and on violin, my uncle on bass, and my aunt on flute).  They purchased an upright piano when my mom was growing up (which lives in my house to this day), and my mom found her home and calling at that keyboard.  Musically highly talented (she was good enough on her secondary instrument— violin— to land a spot in the Chicago Youth Symphony, developed as a training ground for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) and disciplined and dedicated (my grandparents often had to insist she stop playing to eat, do homework, or anything else), my mother’s skills quickly blossomed.  While my father was compelled to practice by my grandfather, my mom logged the same kind of hours of practice of her own volition.  After high school, she spent a year in general studies at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest before transferring to the Northwestern Music School, settled beyond doubt on a career in music.  She had known my dad through the Chicago Youth Symphony in high school (he was the concertmaster there), and in college they began dating, got engaged, and after graduating, they married and started a family.  While I knew that my father was musician, I rarely heard him play—he gave occasional recitals with my mom and taught a few lessons at home, but mostly taught and gigged out of the house.  My mom’s playing, however, surrounded and saturated my house and life growing up.  A tireless practicer who loves playing and improving her playing for its own sake, whether anyone is listening or not, my mom spent hours at the piano every day, and taught lessons at home every afternoon and evening.  Piano scales, fingers exercises and music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and other greats filled every corner of our home and every nook and cranny of my memory of growing up.  We breathed piano music.  Sam, whose objections to my parents’ marriage because my dad was Jewish and my mom was Christian were considerable, was won over by my mother’s clear skill, passion, discipline, and dedication to music.  Indeed to this day, my mother is a tireless piano warrior, spending hours a day at the keyboard, accompanying dozens, even hundreds of students in solo competitions every year, on top of maintaining her teaching class.

A HOUSE WHERE THE GIFT OF MUSIC IS GIVEN

Over the last 50 years, my parents have given by my estimate, hundreds of thousands of private lessons (conservatively: 125 lessons a week x 45 weeks x 50 years = 281,250 lessons.  The actual total is probably a lot higher).  Sharing not merely the physical and mental skills involved in playing the violin, viola, and piano, my parents have produced not only many fine professional players, but, more importantly, a legacy of thousands of students who, whatever level of proficiency they attained on their instrument, have a deep love, informed respect, and rich appreciation of music which informs their lives every day.  Music is the gift which, once received, enriches your life every single day you are here on this planet.  My parents are the Givers of this gift.  Each spring, they hold a recital for any students in their class who volunteer to perform.  Recitals regularly feature students ranging in age from 5 or 6 on up to senior citizens and people who have been playing less than a year to people with jaw dropping skills who are receiving conservatory scholarships.  The events are celebrations not only of these people’s growth as players but also of their appreciation for music in general, and of the Great Gift of all of this that my parents bestow upon everyone in their ken.

 

Into this family, I was born...

Art Rock Revisited

In high school, my musical tastes were somewhat bi-polar: I alternated blasting head banging heavy metal (Judas Priest and Iron Maiden being the preferred medicines) with extended contemplative listening sessions engaged with what I called “Art Rock,” now more often referred to as “Progressive Rock.” Bands like Yes, Genesis, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer were staples of this part of my musical diet.  Awhile back Rolling Stone posted a list of “10 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All-Time” (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/readers-poll-your-favorite-prog-rock-albums-of-all-time-20120725 ) At first glance the RS list seemed deeply flawed (no Jethro Tull, the wrong Genesis albums, and no ELP— I thought, “Aw, come on, y’all!”) but it got me thinking.  Then an old high school friend of mine sent me a link to a BBC documentary called “Prog Rock Brittania” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8De_YroimA&list=RDF8De_YroimA#t=34 ).  The documentary was great— informative, thorough, and balanced— and also a ton of fun.  Unfortunately, the art rockers interviewed for the documentary expressed a sense that not only had their time passed in terms of touring and selling records, but that their work, as a result of its more grandiose and self-indulgent qualities, has fallen into disfavor or disrepute as the years have passed.  While my own tastes have moved on and become, after a fashion, more rootsy (as most readers know by now, the Stones’ Exile On Main Street is at the nexus of my musical universe), I can’t say I ever developed the antipathy for this genre that the musicians in the documentary say that they perceived.  I just stopped listening to this stuff. 

And so I’ve gone digging back through my albums over the last few months, loaded up my iPod, and gone walking with some of the Art Rock staples of my high school diet: Close to the Edge, Fragile, Going for the One, and Yessongs by Yes, A Farewell to Kings, Hemispheres, Permanent Waves, and Moving Pictures by Rush, Seconds Out, A Trick of the Tail, Selling England by the Pound, and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis, Brain Salad Surgery and Tarkus by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Red and Discipline by King  Crimson, Aqualung and Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull.  The journey has been nostalgically fun for sure, but well, um, I must confess that, well, uh, listening to it now I think much of this stuff is, er, well,… laughably barfaliciousgodawful, with a few noted exceptions: a few skinny slices of Tull, Krimson, and Rush, and larger swaths of Yes, especially live material from Yessongs. 

NOTE: some folks also put Pink Floyd in the art / prog rock category (they’re on the RS list noted above).  I do not.  While some Floyd records do display some characteristics of the art / prog rock genre (especially the lengthy cuts on Animals and Wish You Were Here), in my mind, PF doesn’t really belong in this bin.  Dark Side of the Moon (as perfect an album as has ever been made, BTW) doesn’t really fit the art rock description (see below), and Dark Side, along with the less perfect but still monumental and still not art rock The Wall, have made marks on rock and roll and mainstream culture in general which are so large as to transcend the art / prog rock niche genre.  ‘Nuf said on the Floyd.

Let’s establish a bit of genre background before we figure out why so much of this stuff fails to stand the test of time and then why these noted exceptions do...

What is “Art Rock” or “Progressive Rock?” I guess I would define it, loosely, as music performed on rock instruments (electric guitar and bass and drums and, very prominently, a dizzying variety of electrified keyboards) but less rooted in blues and / or traditional verse-chorus type song structures and more connected to classical and /or British folk music forms and structures.  It tends to emphasize longer-than-standard-3-to-5 minute songs (typical Art Rock records feature at least a couple of songs in the 8-12 minute range, and whole-album-side compositions are not uncommon) featuring extended instrumental passages and virtuosity developing melodic themes in the way classical composers might—through key changes, inversions, and variations in instrumentation, tempo, meter, etc. While there’s a lot of instrumental work, it’s definitely NOT the open “jamming” of The Grateful Dead, The Allman  Brothers, or Phish.  Lyrics typically explore fantasy and science fiction images and themes, though occasionally indulge in social commentary or other subjects.

Most art rockers came from Britain and have backgrounds playing classical music, especially on the piano.  Thus, many possess a level of instrumental technique and compositional sophistication that more mainstream rock and rollers don’t, and they are not as steeped or interested in the American blues-gospel-country descended traditions of bands like the Rolling Stones or even the Beatles.  Keith Emerson (ELP), Rick Wakeman (Yes), and Tony Banks (Genesis) all fit this description, and their work reflects it clearly.  Guitarists Steve Howe (Yes), Steve Hackett (Genesis), and Martin Barre (Jethro Tull), Robert Fripp (King Crimson) brought British folk, classical, and avant-garde influences rather than blues licks to their fretboards.  Coming of age in the late 1960s, though, they were moved by the power of electric instruments and the artistic freedoms and liberties being taken by young musicians on both sides of the Atlantic.  They wanted to combine their backgrounds and skills with the power of rock instruments to create a new kind of music.  Coming from a home in which both parents are professional classical musicians, this was an interesting and exciting proposition to me.  The first time I blasted Rick Wakeman’s “Excerpts from the Six Wives of Henry VIII” out of my bedroom speakers, my classical piano teacher mom banged on the door not to yell at me to turn it down, but to ask who was this that was incorporating Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus from The Messiah into their keyboard solo.  She stepped into the room and was impressed with Wakeman’s playing and composition, and I felt musically validated.

All fine and good, but listening back through this stuff now, most of it flops.  Why?  A succinct list of reasons:
1.   the compositions wander and fail to sustain interest
2.   related to this, the players get lost in pompous instrumental show-offerey
3.   the electronic keyboard sounds that form foundational parts of the sonic palette of much of this music now strike the ear as laughably silly, cheesy, and dated
4.   the lyrics often range from the incomprehensible to the pretentious

To elaborate:
1.   Wandering Compositions:  lengthy art rock tunes are built in one of a couple of ways.  Either a large number of short “bits” are strung together (the 8 parts of Genesis’ 25-minute “Supper’s Ready”) or a small number of themes and ideas are perseverated upon with the idea that, Beethoven-like, they will be elaborated and expanded by the compositional and technical skills of the players (Tull’s album-long “Thick as a Brick,” or Rush’s 12 minute “Xanadu”). Listening back, though, my sense is that stringing lots of short “bits” together leaves one’s head spinning disjointed, and conveys the notion that many of the bits didn’t hold enough musical water to be turned into fully realized songs to begin with.   Attempts to impersonate classical musicians by expounding on a small number of ideas, either compositionally or from a playing standpoint, also now sound quaint and often fail to sustain interest and / or simply annoy with their pretentiousness. These folks are fine musicians, but they ain’t Mozart and, to me, sound kinda silly trying.  Actually, I have been entertained by may of the shorter, less ballyhooed pieces on these records, which fall more in line with the elegant approach to musical expression—have a good idea, and express and explore it in pithy, less-than-4 minute fashion— contained in more mainstream rock and roll songwritng: “Benny the Bouncer” by ELP, “Locomotive Breath” by Jethro Tull, even “Madrigal” by Rush.

2.   Instrumental Showing Off:  OK, so Rick Wakeman (YES) and Keith Emerson (ELP) can flash some nifty classical chops, Alex Lifeson every once in awhile plays something pretty musical (the slow solo section on “La Villa Strangiato” and the solo bit on “Different Strings”), Chris Squire showed that a white guy using a pick to play a bass guitar isn’t necessarily all bad, Neil Peart is a helluva drummer, and Ian Anderson not only plays a mean flute but sometimes makes it work in the context of a rock band.  However, most of the time these guys go too far—their solos go on way too long and often descend into “lets impress the teenage guys” speed or special effects contests.  There are numerous examples: any drum solo by Peart, “Toccatta” on ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery (no one ever hummed this on the train), Squire’s bass solo live on Yessongs, the aimless wanderings in the Thick as a Brick wilderness, and on and on and on and on and on…

3.   Silly Sounds:  while the sounds of a Hammond B-3 organ and a Fender Rhodes keyboard remain totally cool, authentic, and arresting, and the original ominous Mellotron wall of sound sometimes is still kinda cool to hear, most of the synthy electronic keyboard sounds underpinning Genesis’ sound, that take up huge space and time on wanky Yes records like Tales from Topographic Oceans and Relayer, and that are laid on top of Rush tracks such as “Tom Sawyer” and “The Spirit of Radio” like pink frosting on a cupcake sound ridiculously dated and quaint: the rock and roll equivalent of Space Invaders or Pong video games—fun in a nostalgic sort of way, but not substantive enough to bring you back for a real musical meal.  Indeed, the silliness of these cheesy sounds takes the air out of art-rock selections and sections that might otherwise hold up well.

4.   Silly Lyrics: mostly the lyrics on these records range from the pompous, preachy, and pretentious (“2112” and “The Trees” by Rush, ELP’s “Karn Evil 9,” especially the "3^rd Impression" whatever the hell that means), the bizarre and ham handed (Genesis’ entire Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), or the trippily vacuous (pretty much all of Yes).  Occasionally, a cogent and / or interesting idea, story, or issue is expressed, explored, or addressed (Tull’s “My God,” Genesis’ “One for the Vine,” Book 1 of Rush’s “Cygnus X-1”), but mostly, like the music, the lyrics are over-inflated balloons of hot air.  Almost none of this stuff employs the pithy truth of rock and roll poetry.  Nowhere do lines like “The sunshine bores the daylights out of me” (Stones’ “Rocks Off”) or “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”(Eagles’ “Hotel California”) ring true and clear and float back into one’s head and one's life over and over over time.

And so most of this stuff doesn’t hold up— it sinks under the weight of its own pretense and self-absorption.  But it does have its moments.  What are they and why do they work?  Here are notes on a few things that are worth checking out, that do maintain listeners’ interest, that don’t sound silly and dated, that display the genre succeeding in its lofty aspirations:

Rush, side 2 of A Farewell to Kings:  this is a really fun 20 minutes.  While the first side of FTK lapses in musical repetitiousness and lyrical pomposity and preachiness, side 2 opens with a trio of pithy, quirky gems: “Closer to the Heart,” “Cinderella Man,” and “Madrigal.”  Working from an elegant acoustic sound palette, these 3 songs, eschewing the both the self-indulgent artiness and the heavy blues influences that pervade the band’s prior catalog, create a medieval vibe that weaves in memorable melodies and hooks, guitar solos with interesting twists and turns, and lyrics that, while admittedly preachy, are at least accessible and earnest.  The side closes with the more art rockish “Cygnus X-1, Book 1,” with creepy sonics and heavy riffing that successfully evoke the vast blackness of space in the context of an exciting, white knuckley cool sci-fi tale.

King Crimson, Discipline:  intellectual and still arresting, Adrian Belew’s presence in the band balances out Fripp’s tendency towards pretentious over-indulgence with a zany, edgy humor and down to earth pithiness.  The guitar playing is impressively intricate and wildly complex, yes, but Belew’s ability to draw bizarre sounds and apply them in musical ways grabs listeners rather than just leaving them slack jawed at the virtuosity.  Bill Bruford-- truly a world-class musician and drummer-- works in similar ways, as does the stick work of Tony Levin (BTW the stick is a bizarre instrument combining the strings of a bass and a guitar onto one neck which is played by finger tapping—yikes!).  While interest wanders a bit during the meandering and cheezy guitar-synth draped “The Sheltering Sky,” the rest of the record—from the opening witticisms of “Elephant Talk,” through the driving rhythms of “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” to the mazelike labyrinth of “Discipline” maintains interest and is moving and powerful.

Jethro Tull, Aqualung: Ian Anderson nailed it here.  Combining real rock and roll grit, grind, and rage, British folks strains, flute playing that is both virtuosic and musical, lyrics which pack a thoughtful punch, and arrangements which showcase great playing by all involved without wandering into self-indulgence, this one is a true classic.  The opening guitar riff of “Aqualung,” the flute solo barrage at the core of “My God,” the elegant folky melodies suffusing the lesser known pieces like “Slipstream” and “Wond’ring Aloud” scattered over both sides of the record all keep listeners riveted front to back.

Yes, Yessongs:  the live setting here allows the band to pack a whallop of considerable immediacy while also displaying their formidable technical chops.  While at times the record does descend into mere wankery (Squire’s bass solo on “The Fish,” Wakeman’s self-indulgent “Excerpts from the Six Wives of Henry VIII”), most of the long instrumental sections are successfully fueled by the incredible, unique, engaging fretwork and raw sound of Steve Howe’s guitar interacting with the sinewy, flexible, intricate, and still grooving drumming of Alan White (a worthy successor to Bill Bruford in the band).  Long winded instrumental passages that come off as pompous on studio records like “Close to the Edge” and “Fragile” here come alive with a visceral, thundering punch.  The band as a whole is tight and tuned in to each other, Jon Anderson’s singing is clear, purposeful, and precise, on top of everyone else’s noted virtuosity and musicianship, and so the recording showcases the genre at its finest—creative, complex, virtuosic, and riveting, with only a few lapses into overblown pomposity.

But, alas, that’s pretty much it.  Wandering through the wastelands of Rush’s Hemispheres, Tull’s Thick as a Brick, Krimson’s Red, Genesis’s Lamb Lies Down, Yes’s Tales from Topographic Oceans or the dozens of other meandering sides full of flighty lyrical nonsense, endless strings of noodling notes, and synthesized sonic cheese mostly one either falls asleep or laughs at the head-swollen pretense.  Gosh these folks can play but they don’t have much to say that you wanna hear today.  Sorry guys.

“Thank You For Everything, Emmylou!!!”

Emmylou Harris is a national treasure.  She has given us all so much over such a long period of time, she has conducted herself with consummate grace and class as a performer and public figure through highs and lows, and she is still at it, crisscrossing the country in a bus, playing shows every night, and giving each one her all.

This spring, Emmylou came to the Vic Theater in Chicago —a very modest venue in terms of both size and style, more often inhabited by up and coming bands— on a Tuesday night.  I actually don’t go to see live music as much as I should— in my dotage, I’m less willing to battle the crowds, expense, and other hassles, especially since so many great live performances are available on video through various outlets nowadays.  A few performers will still bring me out, however, and a few years ago I failed to go see Paul McCartney and realized that I’d maybe missed my last chance to see a true international treasure who had changed the world and made my life a better place.  I felt I should have brought my kids to see Sir Paul, and that I wanted to say thank you to him personally, but that I’d missed the boat.  I drive by the Vic on my way to work, and when I saw Emmylou’s name flash across the marquee one morning, not wanting to repeat the mistake I’d made with the Paul McCartney show, I snapped up tickets online as soon as I got to my desk.  Alas, the Vic is a 21-and-over venue, so I couldn’t take my kids (who have been raised, in some ways, by Emmylou, her presence has so thoroughly suffused our homes, cars, classrooms, and every other damn place we go), but this was a show that my wife was as excited to go see as I was.  The Queen of the Silver Dollar did not disappoint, and, indeed, the show proved to be a glorious catalog documenting all she has given us.

Arriving early at the Vic and standing in line waiting for the doors to open, as always I looked longingly at the entourage’s tour bus, dreaming the young man’s dream I still dream of going on tour in a band myself.  Older now, though, I know that I tire more easily, that my body makes funny creaks and groans, that it scrapes and rattles, that it aches and refuses requests, that it needs more time and care and creature comforts to make it comply with my needs, and as I stared at the bus, I realized that Emmylou is at least 15-20 years my senior, with, no doubt, all of these phenomena magnified.  And yet: she had played a gig in San Francisco 4 days ago on Friday night, played a gig somewhere in Oklahoma on Sunday night, and was here now on Tuesday night in Chicago—a road warrior still, living in the cramped make-do confines of a bus for weeks or months on end, logging thousands of road miles a year, playing towns and venues large and small, fancy and ramshackle.  Considering this, I was struck by something else:  I was one of the younger people in the line.  This is kinda unusual at this point in my life.  Hmmmmm.  Since I’m short to begin with and now also not so young, upon entering the Vic I headed upstairs for seats in the graded balcony, rather than a spot on the flat main floor—standing for 2-3 hours looking at the backs of tall people’s head never has been my idea of a great concert experience, and even less so now as I have gotten older.  Looking down from the balcony, however, I saw something I had never seen in over 25 years of seeing shows at the Vic: rows of chairs covering the floor.  The age demographic on this night was clearly very different from that of a typical Vic show.  Elated, I hustled downstairs and snagged a pair of seats closer than I ever been for any concert in my life— in the 4^th row, 15-20 feet from where Emmylou would be.

This particular tour was a celebration of her Wrecking Ball album as it approached its 20^th anniversary.  The album had been produced by Daniel Lanois, who opened this show with his elegant combination of atmospherics and twang.  More on the present and past of Wrecking Ball later, but Lanois’s set was a terrific mood setter: laying the foundation for the similarly ethereal but rooted sonic palette of the record showcased in the Main Event, Lanois and his band (this ensemble also serving as Emmylou’s band for the rest of the evening) drew sonic pictures with echoed pedal steel and fingerpicked electric guitars, over solid, sinewy backbeats anchored by bass and drums which morphed back and forth between aural soundscapes and elegant country rock and roll.  The crowd was warmed up and ready to greet the Queen…

Someone from another country once commented to me that they found the tradition of applause as a performer enters—BEFORE they have given their audience anything— strange.  An interesting point, but Emmy had given us all plenty before she started playing that Tuesday evening—really about 45 years worth of gold— and the crowd rose as one in acknowledgement of this fact as she walked on stage.  Working her way through the opening tracks of the Wrecking Ball record in sequence (as she worked her way through large cups of tea), she and her voice warmed as they rolled on.  At first scratchy, straining, or dropping out at points in the midst of “Where Will I Be” and “All My Tears,” by the time she hit “Deeper Well” she was in the groove and in full flight.  I’m more familiar with the tunes on this record through live renditions on the “Spyboy” album, which features the more aggressive flatpicked electric guitar of Buddy Miller, but Lanois more understated fingerpicking work was hypnotic, particularly as it enveloped the crowd with set-closer, “The Maker.”

As she played and sang her way through the record, she also told its story between songs, the story of her collaboration with Daniel Lanois: as “New Country” music (ugh) began to break in the early 90s, she found herself out of commercial and social favor with the new crowd in Nashville.  In her words, “I was definitely NOT invited to the party.”  To their credit, Elektra / Nonesuch Records stuck by her, continued to release her work despite sluggish sales, and, rather than cutting her loose or demanding that she hop on to the “New Country” bandwagon by reworking her sound, asked her what she wanted to do.  At the time, explained Ms. Harris, the thing she kept listening to on the tour bus was a record by Daniel Lanois, a producer known for developing multilayered dreamlike sound architectures for a variety of artists and an accomplished guitarist in his own right.  In a meeting with the record company, she mentioned this recording and, in what she described as almost comically stereotyped fashion, the record company exec yelled “Somebody get Danny Lanois on the phone NOW!”  Somebody did so and, according to Emmylou, Mr. Lanois appeared at the door of her home 2 days later with a guitar and a Bob Dylan song anthology the size of the New York City phonebook saying, “OK, so what songs are we gonna put on this record of yours, Emmylou?”  The rest, as they (and Emmylou) say, is history.  Wrecking Ball was the first of a set of several records— Red Dirt Girl, Stumble Into Grace, Spyboy, and others followed— that fused Emmylou’s haunting voice and old-country-music traditionalism with rock and roll and Afro- and world-beat influences to create a music which still defies categorization.

As the evening progressed, Emmylou also dug deep into her back catalog, acknowledging the tragic loss of her friend and collaborator Gram Parsons in the early 1970s as she introduced Parsons’ “Love Hurts,”  ripping out searing renditions of “Ain’t Living Long Like This” and “Queen of the Silver Dollar” from her 70s classics Quarter Moon in a Ten-Cent Town and Pieces of the Sky albums, and wrapping up the encore with longtime fan favorite “From Boulder to Birmingham.”  About the only thing she couldn’t do was sing backup vocals with herself, as she has done for so many other musicians over the years on so many wonderful tracks over the years, but her reading of Steve Earle’s “Goodbye” from Wrecking Ball evoked his original version of the song upon which she sang backup.

The crowd, on their feet and, like Emmy, still going strong, continued howling after house the lights in the Vic were turned on.  The lights went out again, and Emmy returned to the stage for “Green Pastures,” which, she explained, she had been playing since before she entered the business as a professional.  Biding for time as she tried to tune her guitar, she recalled playing it at coffee houses, open mics, and parties as a teenager.  The guitar, alas, wouldn’t stay in tune, and so she turned to self-mockery: “45 years in this business and 50 playing the song, you’d think I could tune the damn guitar by now.”  As a white-haired guitar tech walked onstage with another guitar (“Is this one in tune?” asks Emmy.  “Beats me,” answers the tech.  All laugh), all I could so, wanting Emmy to know how much I appreciate her spending the last 45 years of her life creating great music,  was yell out “Thank you for everything, Emmylou!”

“I’m Still...Willin’”

It’s been a crushingly hectic Spring, but now I’m back— thanks for tuning in again.  I have a thick backlog of musical musings stored up in my head that I want to share, and some are too heavy to tackle right away as I try get back into my humble blogging groove, but it’s gonna be a looooong summer, and I’m looking forward to working through the pile, including the meatiest topics on my list: my musician parents and their gift to me, the gift of Emmylou Harris to all of us, the origin of the Great River of American Music: Amazing Grace, and more.  I hope y’all will join me for the ride.

I wanna start with a reflection on Lowell George’s “Willin’”— ostensibly a truck driver’s meditation, but really it’s a song about everyone and everyone’s lives.   If ya’ don’t know it, here’s a link to a pretty magical live version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txX-kPn3h6s    

There’s so much to say about this tiny little piece of pure fucking genius— the original version clocking in several seconds under 3 minutes—  that I’m not sure where to start, but sometimes I think this is the only song in the whole world, or the only song I ever want or need to listen to, or the only song that matters, anyway.  Perhaps feeling kinda the same thing, Linda Ronstadt once said that in a year where she played over 250 arena shows (250 arena shows in a year— can you imagine that?  Whew!), the only song she still looked forward to singing every night was “Willin’.”  On her Heart Like a Wheel album, Linda offered up the song as the back half of a kind of medley, coupling it with “When Will I Be Loved:”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_1Q2SeJ5oA      
A few other people have recorded cover versions of the song, countless rock and rollers—from Bob Dylan to the Black Crowes to Phish—do it live, and nearly everyone who sits in on any kind of a jam session—from rock and roll ones to bluegrass ones to country ones to folkie ones—knows it and will jump in eagerly when it’s called by someone in the circle.  Heck, as a staple of introductory guitar classes and lessons, almost anyone who’s ever messed with a guitar knows it.  What’s the deal with this song?  What makes it the sacred and universal text that it is?  Maybe a walk through the thing from start to finish— a Rock and Roll Explication de Texte as it were— will help explain its grip on people, and give us all a greater appreciation of what Lowell left us with this one…

The song opens with an elegant, simple but haunting set of chord changes that winds up with a nifty and cool, easy to play but hard to think of, step up and step down guitar hook / riff.  The chord changes evoke a sleepy, beautiful and yet painful sensation of awakening.  This mixture of pain and beauty, as well as happiness and sadness, loneliness and connection, trouble and triumph, are at the heart of the songs’ gripping pathos and are what make it more a song about people and life than about just truckers. The song, changes, and hook / riff are easily reachable to guitar players of all skill levels and stripes.  The opening of the Ronstadt version, with the misty changes emerging from the longing closing vocal harmonies of “When Will I Be Loved,” creates a kind of miraculous wood-and-steel evocation of dawn rising over a lonely highway that, if it doesn’t raise goosebumps on you, you must be deaf or dead.

“I been warped by the rain, driven by the snow, I’m so drunk and dirty, don’t ya’ know, but I’m still…willin’.”
The line of the melody falls as it’s sung but turns up a bit at the last line, shadowing the lyric’s portrayal of someone who has taken punches from life but hasn’t been knocked out.  Simultaneously, the narrator is self-deprecating but also kinda proud of his or her survival and persistence.  Pain and beauty, humility and pride all vividly painted in a precious few words.

“Out on the road late last night I seen my pretty Alice and never hit a light,* oh Alice—Dallas Alice…” 
Here the mixture isn’t beauty and pain but loneliness and connectedness, the joy of motion and the joy of pausing, all at once— a similar blend, no less potent, and heartbreakingly poignant.  The narrator drives by himself every night but has people, especially ladies, for whom he feels genuine fondness and whom he stops to see, in many places.  *Post-posting P.S.: one perceptive reader points out that the lyric actually reads "in every headlight"

And then that guitar hook / riff again—so gorgeous, so simple and accessible, and so sinking deep into your flesh and not letting go.

“And I been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah, driven every kinda rig that’s ever been made, driven the back roads so I wouldn’t get weighed…” 
On the live version especially, the richly layered vocal harmonies on the chorus deliver a kind of sky-openinig, voice-of-god effect.  The lyric once again reflects a kind of self-effacing pride from a narrator who has seen a lot, who has done some things that weren’t quite right (but yet not too terrible), but who has not let those mistakes stop him (or her!).  Again, a delicious, touching, and familiar mixture of good and bad—the trucker’s life is all of our lives. 

And then everything stops.

“And if you give me…”

Now 3 long gorgeous notes, drawn out with pauses between ‘em that deliver a stomach-dropping, breath-stealing  falling sensation.
“…weed, whites, and wine…”

Now back in rhythm…
“…and you show me sign, I’ll be willin’ to be movin…”
While modern statistics and sensibilities related to driving under the influence certainly prevent current listeners from embracing or endorsing the lyric’s celebration of a driver hauling an 18-wheeler while loaded up on any of these substances, the narrator’s brutal frankness highlights a powerful truth about all of us: we’re all hooked on something—money, competition, art, drugs, nature, power, technology, something— and whatever it is we’re hooked on can, for better and for worse, motivate and help us to accomplish goals.

The chorus closes with the hook / riff and then most versions feature a solo—piano, picked or slide guitar, harmonica, whatever— exploring the melody of the verse.  Melancholy but not sad, persistent but tired, the melody itself, like most great melodies, sounds not so much like it was written or consciously guided by anyone, but rather like it has existed since time began.

Then the lyric moves into some edgy political territory…
“I been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet, had my head stoved in but I’m still on my feet and I’m still…willin’…”
A sense of larger, malevolent powers— Mother Nature and also criminals and / or perhaps even anti-labor / union forces— are now operating against our humble narrator, with economic, medical, and spiritual implications.  Once again, this is a sensation we all know well in one way or another— the world grinding us down.  Our narrator, of course, remains inspiringly undaunted—he’s still standing and plugging along.

“Well I smuggled some smoke and folks from Mexico, baked by the sun every time I go to Mexico…but I’m still…”
And now: ethics.  Smuggling controlled substances, immigration and immigrants.  A guy trying to do the right thing but for the wrong reasons?  Or the right reasons?  Or the wrong thing for the right reasons?  Some of the above?  All of the above?  None of the above?  Yes to all, of course-- it’s a mess, and we all face these kind of mixed up, messy–as-hell dilemmas and are operated on by these kinds of levers and forces every day.  I guess I observe a fondness for the folks he’s smuggling in, underscoring the narrator’s basic good nature, and a willingness to put himself at risk, whatever his reasons.  But it’s not easy—he’s feeling the heat, literally, of course, but metaphorically too.  A good, flawed man, doing his honest, self-aware best.  We should all aspire to this standard.

After this harrowing, revealing journey, we run through the chorus again, the song closing with the refrain “…and I’ll be willin’ to be movin’…”

Lowell George broke in to the music business playing with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention.  One story (possibly apocryphal, possibly true) has Zappa kicking Lowell out of the Mothers when Lowell played the fresh-off-the-pen “Willin’” for FZ, with FZ saying something like, “You don’t need to be in anyone else’s band anymore, you need to be the leader of your own band now.” And, indeed, Lowell left FZ and the Mothers to form Little Feat and his playing and his songs graced records by Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, and many others.  A lady I once knew actually cut a college psychology final to see Lowell and Little Feat on what, unbeknownst to her at the time, was Lowell’s last gig.  He died of an overdose 2 days later.  Lowell left us Little Feat classics such as “Sailin’Shoes,”  “Roll ‘um Easy,” “Fat Man in the Bathtub,” and "Dixie Chicken," a glorious solo record which contains, among other wonderful nuggets, another heartbreakingly incisive and pithy gem called “20 Million Things To Do,” and many other treasures.  But even if he’d left us nothing but “Willin’,” we’d all owe him a tremendous debt.  He knew us all, somehow, and captured the world and all of us in it in less than 3 minutes with this elegant piece of perfection.  Wherever he is, I think Lowell hopes that we’re all still, whatever it is that we do, willin’.