Pssst: Ryan Adams rises above Ashes

Do yourself a favor. Put on a set of headphones and click here.

What you'll be doing is taking a beautiful trip through the gentle peaks and valleys of Ashes and Fire, the latest -- and possibly the greatest album yet -- from Ryan Adams. This is a First Listen freebie from NPR, so enjoy the ride. Don't let yourself be interrupted.

We've been fans of Adams since his barnstorning alt-country days with Whiskeytown. Come to think of it, that may have been our problem. While nursing the hangover that was the breakup of our favorite band, we were slow to embrace Adams' early solo work, good as it was.  Part of our hesitation was the troubled artist's tendency to self-destruct while he was churning out a confounding catalog of music --  some of it very good, but just too damn much of it.  Does that make any sense? We wouldn't have been surprised by a tragic outcome.

Happy to say, with Ashes and Fire, everything has come into focus. We've gone from fans to disciples, and we need to start by thanking Adams, who appears to have grown more as a person than an artist during his two-year hiatus. He already had the songwriting and musicianship down.  What happened to him?  Life lessons and love. He fell in love, really fell in love, as the writing in Ashes and Fire clearly reveals. We don't believe you can write "I Love You But I Don't Know What to Say" without discovering answers about life and love along the way.

I was lost I was lost
I tried to find the balance and got caught up in the cost
I let it go when I met you
The clouds inside me parted and all that light came shining through

I promise you I will keep you safe from harm
Love you all the rest of my days
When the night is silent and we seem so far away
Oh I love you but I don't know what to say

Adams, who is now married and finally clean, also had to deal with a painful inner-ear affliction that made music-making virtually impossible. We're sure it's all much more complicated than that, but the results are crystal clear. Ashes and Fire, produced by Glyn Johns and due out Oct. 11, is one of the best albums we've heard this year. It's going up on the big board as Personal Six String Sanctuary Tout (PSSST) No. 25.

Much LeDoux about cowboys

Chris LeDoux was a true cowboy.

By Al Tays



We're mighty happy
those cowboy boots
didn't fit Al Tays --
not that he doesn't
know a good ropin'
song when he hears it.

 During my country and western period (1990-95, when I lived in Atlanta and decided to "go native") one of my favorite songs was Chris LeDoux's "Whatcha Gonna Do With a Cowboy?" in which he's joined by Garth Brooks. I don't listen to C&W radio anymore, so I hear that song only when the shuffle function on my iPod cues it up. But the witty lyrics, zippy fiddle and catchy tune never fail to make me smile. And I think about how LeDoux wasn't just a guy with a hat singing about cowboys -- he really was one. He won the world bareback riding championship at the National Finals Rodeo in 1976.

And then I think what a shame it is that Chris LeDoux died before his time.

Born on this date in 1948, LeDoux was 51 in 2000 when he was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis, a chronic liver disease.

He had to have a liver transplant. Brooks volunteered to be a donor, but his tissue was incompatible. LeDoux underwent a transplant from another donor later that year. Four years later he was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, cancer of the bile ducts, and died on March 9, 2005.

Shorty after LeDoux's death, Brooks recorded the song "Good Ride Cowboy" as a tribute. "I knew if I ever recorded any kind of tribute to Chris, it would have to be up-tempo, happy ... a song like him ... not some slow, mournful song," Brooks said in an interview with CMT. "He wasn't like that."

Thinking about LeDoux and "Whatcha Gonna Do With a Cowboy?" got me thinking about how many songs with "Cowboy" (or "Cowgirl") in the title are among my favorites. And make no mistake -- I'm no cowboy. This Boston tenderfoot (literally) tried wearing cowboy boots in Atlanta and found them to be the most uncomfortable things he ever put on his feet. And I'm allergic to horses. But I love these songs:

Whatcha Gonna Do With a Cowboy? (Chris LeDoux and Garth Brooks)
The Cowboy Tune, also known as The End is not in Sight, (Amazing Rhythm Aces)
Honky-Tonk Stardust Cowboy (Jonathan Edwards)
Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys (Willie Nelson)
King of the Cowboys (Amazing Rhythm Aces)
Should've Been a Cowboy (Toby keith)
What the Cowgirls Do (Vince Gill)

Three verses to go

Last weekend I received the biggest boost ever for a song when my brother-in-law Mike heard me play "Red Dress" -- which has only three verses (so far) and no bridge -- and said it would have been perfect at the end of the Jeff Bridges film Crazy Heart. Well he is an old schoolboy friend married to my sister, after all. And Bridges, while no slouch as a singer and musician, is not quite Bob Dylan.

And neither is Donovan, who drew those inevitable comparisons when he came up through the British folk scene in the Sixties. We mention this because it was on this date in 1965 that Donovan made his U.S. television debut on Shindig!  Looking back at him performing "Catch the Wind" we see a poised young songwriter with a positive vibe that would soon play to his laid-back, flower child persona. We also see some really bad fake trees.

In the chilly hours and minutes
Of uncertainty, I want to be,
In the warm hold of your loving mind

To feel you all around me
And to take your hand, along the sand
Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind

When sundown pales the sky
I wanna hide a while, behind your smile
And everywhere I'd look, your eyes I'd find

For me to love you now
Would be the sweetest thing, 'twould make me sing
Ah, but I may as well, try and catch the wind

When rain has hung the leaves with tears
I want you near, to kill my fears
To help me to leave all my blues behind

For standin' in your heart
Is where I want to be, and I long to be
Ah, but I may as well, try and catch the wind

A beautiful song by a great artist. But what was it like battling those Dylan comparisons? Donovan gave this thoughtful response in a 2001 interview with BBC:

"The one who really taught us to play and learn all the traditional songs was Martin Carthy—who incidentally was contacted by Dylan when Bob first came to the UK. Bob was influenced, as all American folk artists are, by the Celtic music of Ireland, Scotland and England. But in 1962 we folk Brits were also being influenced by some folk Blues and the American folk-exponents of our Celtic Heritage...

"Dylan appeared after Woodie [Guthrie], Pete [Seeger] and Joanie [Baez] had conquered our hearts, and he sounded like a cowboy at first but I knew where he got his stuff—it was Woodie at first, then it was Jack Kerouac and the stream-of-consciousness poetry which moved him along. But when I heard "Blowing In The Wind" it was the clarion call to the new generation – and we artists were encouraged to be as brave in writing our thoughts in music...We were not captured by his influence, we were encouraged to mimic him—and remember every British band from the Stones to the Beatles were copying note for note, lick for lick, all the American pop and blues artists—this is the way young artists learn.

"There's no shame in mimicking a hero or two—it flexes the creative muscles and tones the quality of our composition and technique. It was not only Dylan who influenced us—for me he was a spearhead into protest, and we all had a go at his style. I sounded like him for five minutes—others made a career of his sound. Like troubadours, Bob and I can write about any facet of the human condition. To be compared was natural, but I am not a copyist."

That's good enough for me. So is "Catch the Wind," which Donovan completes in five verses without a bridge, just a short harmonica flourish. I'm halfway home.

Movie review in a music blog: Drive

By Robert Nelson


We plan to reward Twin Cities
contributor Robert Nelson for
doing double duty this week
by reimbursing his fiancé for 
her portion of the bill.

 I love movies. I can get into a Rom-Com as easily as an action flick. I enjoy art-house as much as grindhouse. I’ll give anything a fair shake, but I hate crap. So when my buddy Kevin, who shares a similar, perhaps even more rabid flair for cinema, told me Drive was the best movie he’d seen all year, the fiancé and I decided to split the bill on dinner and a movie Friday night.

I thought it was another Fast and the Furious cash cow, but it’s not. They’re just selling it totally wrong. What you see in the trailers is really the backdrop for the main character. The plot evolves into a violent, romantic tragedy delivered in this moody, nuanced tone that calls to mind a litany of influences within a style entirely its own. It’s visually compelling, performances are stellar all around, and punctuating it all is the eeriest score since Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (composed by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood; Drive’s composer: one-time Red Hot Chili Pepper Cliff Martinez who also composed Pump Up the Volume, the movie that made me want to be a DJ).

The title song, “Nightcall” is by French house DJ Kavinsky and features Lovefoxxx, a Brazilian indie singer of German, Portuguese and Japanese decent. She delivers breathy, surfer chic vocals over a slow, haunting synth beat that totally captures the pace and cadence of the film. “Under Your Spell” by Desire, a producer-drummer-singer trio, evokes similar notions with a bit more rising action and even more melancholy. It’s a strange amalgamation of electro-synth-pop on Ambien and coke. Also heard in the film, “A Real Hero” by College featuring Electric Youth, which reminded me instantly of “Mouthful of Diamonds” by Phantogram; both are great tunes.

If you haven’t heard of any of these artists, you aren’t alone. Kevin said he might go buy the soundtrack, something he hasn’t done in a long time. I plan to dig a little deeper into their respective bodies of work, first, maybe go scavenging through iTunes or Grooveshark before I make a purchase. We can agree on one thing, however: Drive is the best movie of 2011.

Pssst: Mercury rising for Pieta Brown

Let us tell you how much we enjoy Pieta Brown's new album Mercury, which is out today on Red House Records. Once we heard it we immediately checked her tour schedule to find the closest venue to our home here in Milwaukee. There is simply no way we're going to miss her this fall. Not the way this music sounds.

There are no dates in Wisconsin, so it'll be an enchanting October Saturday night in Iowa City, Iowa, and do not doubt such a possibility exists. Brown has roots in Iowa, after all, and the Englert Theatre is the perfect place for her CD release show. And for kickers, Iris DeMent is there a night earlier to help celebrate the theatre's 99th anniversary.

Lucky us. And lucky you, if you can make it there or anywhere along the tour to catch the brightest new star in Americana music. (Sadly, not everyone has recognized this. Even our hometown newspaper, which tries be musically hip, ignores Mercury in its weekly New CDs feature while mentioning releases by Maria Muldaur, LeAnn Rimes, Daryl Hall, Switchfoot, Chickenfoot, et al.)

Brown, daughter of troubadour Greg Brown (who recorded Pieta's tender "Remember the Sun" on his new album Freak Flag), has come into full bloom as an artist. She has always had a dreamy, sensual voice with a magnetic pull. And now, on Mercury, we hear lyrical poetry that begins to set her apart from the best in the genre.

Tonight I’m dancing alone
The world left me on my own
I’m not the first
I’m not the last
Rolling stone

There are several gems on the 13-song Mercury, but none more magical than "How Much of My Love." You would love to have this dance with her, but she is confident and content to do it alone. A true rolling stone, as we have suspected since we heard her for the first time years ago at a smoky dive in Minneapolis. Guitarist Bo Ramsey was with her that night and has accompanied her most of the way. His contributions are evident on Mercury, along with those of bassist Glenn Worf, drummer Chad Cromwell, multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield and Mark Knopfler ("So Many Miles.") It is Knopfler who calls Brown's singing "effortless and natural, like rain on earth."

Mercury was recorded in three days in a studio near Nashville, where producer Richard Bennett (Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Knopfler) was clearly moved. "Pieta's songs and melodies are beautiful, mystical, at times, frightening," Bennett wrote. "Among the many miracles about Mercury are those disarming vocals, recorded live as Pieta was also playing some very righteous guitar. Records are not made this way anymore and there aren't many artists capable of pulling that sort of thing off for three days running or even just one song. Most artists aren't Pieta Brown."

No they aren't, and Mercury is all the proof you need. It's time for Personal Six String Sanctuary Tout (PSSST) No. 24, Brown's second album to make the big board. We expect there will be more, and by then the rest of the world will surely know of this stunning jewel.

Does bubblegum lose its flavor?

Yep, our guy Al Tays is right:
Susan Dey (front right) was
pretty much the ONLY reason
for us guys to watch
The Partridge Family.

By Al Tays

Now THIS is an anniversary: On this day in 1970, the first episode of The Partridge Family was shown on U.S. TV. The idea came from the Cowsills, a REAL musical family. Apparently the original plans were to use the Cowsill kids, but that was dropped because they weren't TRAINED ACTORS.

You know, I think if someone had told me I was losing a role because Danny Bonaduce was a better actor, I might have gone right over the edge.

As for the other Patridges, well, let's just say that like most males, I paid a lot more attention to Susan Dey than to David Cassidy. I'm not sure I even knew what an overbite was, but on her, it looked good.

The Partridges' biggest hit was their 1970 release, "I Think I Love You," which made it to No. 1 on the Billboard charts. Don't remember? Click here. (And this is a good place to note that only Cassidy and Jones actually sang on the early recordings.) C

Overall, the Partridges released an astounding 89 songs on eight albums. That is a heck of a lot of bubblegum.

The new X games

We had to check out The X Factor last night. HAD TO. Simon Cowell back in the saddle with a new show? And no Ryan Seacrest? We're there, if only for half of the two-hour premiere. Hey, it's a school night.

One pet peeve about American Idol is its limited age group. Why not give an old rocker a chance to show up the kids? (X Factor has four categories: Girls, Boys, Over 30s and Groups.) So while we we're waiting for that old rocker to appear a spunky 13-year-old, Rachel Crow, comes onstage and we immediately become fans of the kiddie corps.  Rachel wins over the judges and audience with an audition more memorable than just about anything seen on Idol. Give her the $5 million now and we're outa here!

Another incredible moment is supplied by Stacy Francis, a 42-year-old single mom with two young kids who says "This is my last shot ... the time is now. I don't want to die with this music in me, Simon." She belts out an amazing rendition of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman" that has nearly everybody spilling tears. Even our no-run mascara springs a leak. Simon, who has often played the bad cop but probably knows musical talent better than all of the judges on all of these shows, proclaims: "One of the best auditions I have ever heard in my life." Well, it's his show and he'll up the ante any way he can.

It isn't all good. Dan and Venita, a married couple ages 70 and 83, sing a dreadful "Unchained Melody" that leaves the judges unhinged, and they trot out some other freak shows just for shock value. The last performer is a recovering meth addict who sings an original song "Young Homie," that we're truly sorry we missed.

We're guessing X Factor will be BIG, with us or without us. Probably without us, at least until baseball is over. We're also guessing (hoping) that Rachel and Stacy will be around for awhile, so we'll have somebody to root for when we check back.